Archive for 2010

On June, 4 Apple sent a letter to the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) with request to keep new iPhone’s photos and any information about it in secret for forty five days.

Though this is a standard practice for Apple, the situation looks pretty strange as the device’s internals had been already revealed with numerous prototype leaks. But Patently Apple, the company that obtained and published the letter, found the explanation in the document itself:

“Although Apple has begun to market the device publicly, these documents reveal technical and design information that has not yet been publicly disclosed in such marketing and that is protected by Apple as confidential and proprietary secrets”.

AppleInsider created a list of new iPhone’s technical details and features that Apple may want to keep in secret for a while. It includes new features of A4 SoC, details of new frame antenna, new cellular radio support for pentaband UMTS (850/900/1700/1900/2100MHz) 3G bands, details related to possible support of T-Mobile (AWS UMTS IV band) and Verizon/Sprint (CDMA/EVDO) networks.

A new Apple’s patent application entitled “Digital Radio Tagging Using an RF Tuner Accessory” has been revealed this week. It describes an HD Radio technology that may be later delivered to iPod touch and iPhone and gives its users greater flexibility in interaction with broadcast media. Nowadays HD Radio is a trademarked wireless radio format that allows FM and AM radio stations to simulcast analog and digital audio at the same time on the same channel. Currently it is owned by iBiquity.

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When Gizmodo showed new iPhone's prototype most of us stopped expecting from Jobs anything shocking on WWDC 2010. But he amazed us, and not only with new display's resolution, FaceTime function and 802.11n support, but also with gyroscope. Many developers instantly realized - this is a new breakthrough.

While conventional accelerometer measures linear acceleration as a change of direction apart a change in velocity, a gyroscope measures angular acceleration, or in other words, a change in both direction and velocity at the same time. Thus the device can sense its rotation while ignoring hand jitters and linear movements, which is impossible for accelerometer.

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Because of an upcoming iOS 4 and iPhone 4 Apple released new version of iTunes which has a number of significant improvements that listed below:

• Synchronizing with iPhone 4;
• Synchronizing and reading ebooks with iPod touch or iPhone with iBooks 1.1 and iOS 4;
• Synchronizing and reading PDF documents as books in iBooks 1.1;
• Organizing apps into folders on iOS 4 home screen via iTunes;
• Improved back-up speed while syncing an iPod touch or iPhone with iOS4;
• Improved artwork appearing speed when exploring media library.

iTunes 9.2 may be downloaded directly from Apple's Site here or via Software Update in Mac OS X (~102MB) or Windows (~92MB).

Yesterday AT&T suddenly entirely stopped accepting iPhone 4 preorders. The company said that it was the busiest online sales day in its history.

Meanwhile AT&T's site started to show old information on iPhone 3GS prices, that was actual before iPhone 4 was announced. Some people also claimed they were shown info that wasn't theirs on AT&T's and Apple's site (the latter sometimes pulls information from AT&T's site to verify shipping address).

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Today Apple released a new application for the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad that allows customers to find the company's local stores, purchase its products, read customer reviews and so on. It's called simply an Apple Store and it’s free. The app requires the device running iOS 3.0 or later and has only English interface.

Here is a short list of available features:

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So today is the day when iPhone 4 becomes available for preorder in the U.S., Germany, France, Japan and the U.K.

The Apple's site reveals that the white model is currently unavailable, which was explained by yesterday's AT&T memo, where it is said that supplies may be scarce at launch. The AT&T site reveals that white iPhone 4 is "coming soon", though it is disclosed in the memo that the company's stores will actually take reservations for white model, but it will be shipped later this summer.

Anyway, black iPhone 4 and 8GB iPhone 3GS may be freely preordered, and then picked up in stores or shipped directly to your home on June 24.

The price for iPhone 4 with a two-year contract with AT&T in the USA is $199 for 16GB model and $299 for 32GB model.

The price for unlocked iPhone is €629 for 16GB model and €739 for 32GB model in France, the prices for U.K. customers were revealed earlier.

Hackers who created the Spirit jailbreak have successfully been able to run flash content on the iPhone. Hopefully an acceptable Flash player will arrive soon for jailbreaked iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.

Today, Apple announced that iPhone 4 is available for purchase through Apple's online UK store. The good news is that there are unlocked versions. The prices are £499 and £599 for 16 GB and 32 GB versions respectively.

Special pricing like in the U.S. and contract with carriers will be also available.

Today Best Buy announced that as of Tuesday, June 15, every customer will have an ability to visit one of its retail stores (including  Best Buy Mobile standalone stores) to make an order for a new iPhone 4 and then take it on June 24. Both 16GB and 32GB models will be available for reserve.

President of Best Buy Mobile Shawn Score is glad to propose customers pre-order feature:

- Adding the iPhone 4 to our stores alongside other great smartphones like the HTC EVO from Sprint and HTC Incredible on Verizon, gives customers a great opportunity to view each side-by-side and get the mobile phone that works best for them.

Best Buy will become the second iPhone 4 retailer after Radioshack, which confirmed last week that it was authorized by Apple too.

As we wrote before, on June 24 iPhone 4 will also be available at Wal-Mart locations, but the company will not take pre-orders on the device.

AT&T, which will also sell new handsets, didn’t give any information on taking pre-orders.

A wonderful story happened with one WWDC attendee.

One developer of China's popular IM client TenCent got an invite to an Apple's annual conference and made a long trip to San Francisco where he was robbed. As a result he got his iPad smashed and a few signigicant injuries. The story would be sad if this guy didn't go to Apple Store and had his iPad replaced for free after revealing his story. Moreover, when the developer checked his e-mail later, he found a letter from Steve Jobs with a short "Safe travels home" message.

Photographic coverage can be seen below.

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Kim Yeo-hee is known as an iPhone girl who creates music using only iPhone apps. She became famous after posting a video where she performs Lady Gaga's Poker Face, which has recently achieved 4.2 million views.

She always wanted to start a career of performer and songwriter, and it looks like her desire is finally fullfilled - according to Wall Street Journal, recently she made a deal with South Korean label Dreamhigh-Ent. As she said in her interview:

“Since I bought my iPhone, I kept playing with it and experimenting with different apps and got totally hooked".

It seems that iPhone can even make dreams come true!

According to 9to5Mac, new pre-release of upcoming iOS 4 reveals new feature of exporting video to Facebook. As it can be seen from the screenshot of the code, the maximum height and width of the video will probably be 480 pixels, and the maximum frame rate will be 30 frames per second.

Previously Apple supported export to e-mail, Mobile Me, MMS and YouTube (second picture above).

If you remember, few weeks ago we posted a video describing how you can attach an iPad to the wall with a Velcro. Well, for those, who didn't like the design side of the idea here is a new accessory created by Arodsin Redningar, a Swedish designer. It's called iPad Capsule and it's a wooden frame that coated in a protective white paint.

It is specially angled and you can’t turn it 360 degrees, but it's surely looks good.

At the moment there is no information about the price or availability.

More photos below.

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New reports made by Mac Stories and PadGadget reveal new data on App Store. Here are the most interesting facts:

1. Over 2,100 titles in the Apple's App Store are iPad games;
2. 78% of all iPad apps are paid (which is almost equal to 80% value of previous Moblix report);
3. Almost 75% of all 225,000 iPhone apps are also paid;
4. 2,5 months needed for iPad apps library to reach the 10,000 milestone (For comparison, it took five months for iPhone apps and 11 months for Google's Android Market to get the same result).
5. Currently iPad apps store is the third biggest after iPhone and official Android apps store.
6. RIM's BlackBerry App World, Nokia's Symbian platform and HP's Palm/webOS have less than 7,000 apps.

It is important to note that Google currently forbids putting Android Market on non-smartphone devices, so there is no opportunity to compare the actual numbers of Android and iPad apps.