Archive for 2010

Here is an interesting video from CNN about iPad, Kindle and publishers:

Here's a link to youtube.

According to BusinessInsider, reviewers will receive iPads from Apple reportedly this week:

"We've heard from an industry source that Apple is either shipping iPads to reviewers this Thursday, or has already shipped them to be received this Thursday."

It is interesting, that there is no information whether Apple will send wifi or 3G versions of the device.

As iPad goes on sale April 3, reviewers will have approximately a week to test the device before they will publish their reviews.

As time goes by Apple CEO receives more e-mails and answers on some of it. If you analyze his behavior, you can see that it becomes a tradition to answer to company's customers before the announcement of a new device. So maybe we can expect something revolutionary again, but at this moment we can just take a look at what we have for today.

Two days ago a Macrumors reader mailed a letter to Steve Jobs. He was concerned about whether Apple will lose their vision on the MacBooks' department. The answer was:

"Not to worry."

Another TUAW reader asked if he will have an ability to transfer his Google Docs to the iPad through iDisk or iWork.com. Steve Jobs answered shortly again:

"Yes".

A man calling himself Julio R. was wondering, if we can expect a universal mailbox on the iPod Touch or iPhone. Jobs reply:

"Yep".

TheAppleLounge reader mailed this:

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A shop in Istanbul, Turkey has posted a video demonstration of how they perform a 'hardware unlock' on the iPhone 3G with firmware 3.1.3 and new baseband. The video shows ElektroPower performing a hardware teardown to reflash the Baseband to 04.26. Nice!

Today Apple began selling iPhones without AT&T plan. Apple's new policy is that anyone can walk into an Apple Store and pick up an iPhone 8GB for $499, 16GB for $599 and 32GB for $699. They allow one unit per customer per day, up to 10 iPhones.

The iPhones are still locked to AT&T's network. Of course, these devices will be sold with the latest baseband which is not yet unlockable; however, you can use RedSn0w to perform a tethered jailbreak.

Opera Mini has been submitted to the AppStore. The browsing speed is impressive, since Opera is sending traffic through its servers which compresses webpages. The iPhone picks up the compressed content and displays it at rates which Opera believes to be up to five times as fast as Mobile Safari. This technology works nice especially on low speed networks.

Check out the video below.

Will Apple let Opera Mini into the AppStore? The chances are quite low.

Update: Opera published a counter tracking how long the approval process has taken.

Take a look at Opera on iPhone photo gallery:

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The BlackSn0w Unlock utility by Geohot has been updated by MSFTGuy and PushFix to work with the latest firmware 3.1.3. However it works only with baseband 05.11.07 (!!!).

This modified version of BlackSn0w works for iPhones upgraded with PwnageTool or Sn0wbreeze, preserving the baseband version 05.11.07. Users who have updated to OS 3.1.3 by any other method have the 05.12.01 baseband so BlackSn0w and UltraSn0w will not work.

This new version of BlackSn0w will be very useful for iPhone 3GS OS 3.1.3 / Baseband 05.11.07 users who can’t downgrade to earlier versions but still need unlock.

According to iHackintosh, this new version also fixes a small bug making WiFi much more stable.

Blacksn0w RC2 will be available on ModMyi repo soon. If you don't want to wait just add the source http://cydia.pushfix.info/ to Cydia and install it now.

Important: Blacksn0w for 3.1.3 is still in RC stage and there may be some issues or bugs. This is not an official update performed by Geohot, who has clearly indicated that he will not be updating any tools for the 3.1.3 firmware.

California-based company MicroUnity System Engineering filed a lawsuit against Apple, Acer, HTC, LG, Google, Nokia, Motorola, Palm, Samsung, Spring, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and AT&T. It accuses these companies in infringement of 14(!) separate patents about mobile processors.

The lawsuit was filed few days ago in a District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, a place where patent complaints are filed commonly in hopes to get a favorable outcome. The devices named in the document are iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch (32 Gb and 64 Gb versions), Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One, Palm Pre and Nokia N900.

The patents that were named in the suit are listed below:

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CBS Outdoor claimed last week it will remove 2 Apple billboards because of a cease-and-desist letter, that was sent from the city attorney's office earlier.

But that is not the end of the problems for this advertising company, as it may hold the responsibility for that amount of time the ads were displayed. At the moment there is no information about whether Apple will assist anyhow or no.

The issue is induced by the continuing crackdown against "supergraphics" in Los Angeles. For the last few months many illegal signs have been removed. One of the resonsible persons even spent three days in jail for posting forbidden advertisements.

Apple also had problems with their ads before. The giant iPod Touch advertisement at 1205 N. Highland Ave. broke and felt down on the ground last October. Another banner became related to a political controversy, and one dubious Apple billboard was removed without explanation in November.

If you think Steve Jobs is a man of worth, then this is definitely for you. Jay Hauf created an iconic Cubee Jobs template, and made it available for download. All you need is to print, snip and finally build.

As you see Apple's CEO is holding an iPhone is his hand, so you'll need to make your own device if you're obsessed with the upcoming iPad. The instructions can be found here.

The scheme is available for download below.

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There are 30,000 games on the iPhone and this number is growing. People pay for games, but exactly how much do they pay? A new report from mobile app analytics company Flurry gives some impressive numbers. Flurry estimates that users spent $500 million on games in the US AppStore during 2009. This is up from $115 million in 2008. Compared to the overall U.S. console and portable video game market, the iPhone/iPod Touch now represents 5% of total video game sales. In just the portable videogame market, the numbers are even more exciting - Apple has 19% of portable games revenue.

The numbers are especially painful for Sony who had four times as much revenue as Apple in 2008 which dropped to just over half of Apple's revenue in 2009. With the iPad coming soon the iPhone OS will grab even more of that Portable Gaming revenue.

Apple just announced that iTunes users now have the ability to gift apps to one another. The process is quite simple, like gifting a song - all you have to do is click the 'gift app' button. You must use your credit card on the account and cannot use gift cards or any other types of promotional payment to gift apps.

If you want to use this feature you have to sign into your iTunes account and accept the new terms policy.

From Apple:

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Here is a new concept for the iPhone 4G created by user JCross:

In some ways we can consider it as a small version of the iPad. However it looks more like an iPhone. The screen is slightly larger and there is also space for the front camera. Do you like it?

A UK user wrote an email to Steve Jobs asking about Picasa Albums on the Apple iPad. Steve Jobs answered. However instead of just telling him that Apple (obviously) wouldn't support Google's Picasa library format, Jobs writes that iPhoto has a "much better Faces and Places features" than Picasa.

Here is the header infomation below and yes Steve Jobs is still using the old 3.1.2 firmware.

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Two days ago Steve Jobs joined the meeting with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Lucile Packard Hospital for Children in Palo Alto, California. The event was aimed to  help advance organ donation legislation.

In 2009 Jobs received a liver transplant in Tennessee. He said he was fortunate he could get a new organ, because without it he could die.

So now Jobs, obviously, wants to help save more people's lives. If the legislation will be passed, Californians will be able to affirm their preferred organ donor status much easier. Apple's CEO says the current system is an obscure process.