Archive for March 11th, 2011

Apple opened its virtual doors around 1AM this morning and now the iPad 2 is available for order on the US Apple Online Store. There is a choice out of 18 models - WiFi, GSM or CDMA; Black or White; 16, 32 or 64GB. All 18 models are available for order and they all ship in 3-5 business days. UPDATE: most of the models are now ships within 2-3 weeks.

Apple’s iPad 2 Smart Cover is available as well, shipping in 1-2 business days. Smart Cover is available either leather ($69) or Polyurethane ($39) option with 5 colors per material. As we were told during iPad 2 presentation - Apple is also selling an HDMI cable ($39) for the iPad 2.

Those who do not want to order their iPad 2 online can purchase one at an Apple retail, AT&T, Target, Verizon, Best Buy, Walmart, or Sam’s Club store starting March 11th at 5 PM local time.

Multiply analysts expect that Apple could sell 600, 000 iPad 2 during this launch weekend. On launch day of the first-gen iPad, on April 3, 2010, the company sold 300,000 units of WiFi-only original iPad. iPad 2 is expected to outpace the original model. Tim Bajarin, an analyst at Creative Strategies, believes that sales of the iPad 2 could reach 500,000 this weekend. Analysts from Romand & Renshaw and Piper Jaffray & Co. also expect the iPad 2 to outsell its predecessor. The two leading reasons for more iPad 2 sales have to do with more stores selling the device on opening day and the addition of the white model. Moreover, early reviews of the iPad 2 have praised Apple for improvements made to the device.

Apple’s new iOS 4.3 includes change that requires reentry of your iTunes Store password to make in-app purchases, even if the user had just entered the password to download the application. That change was made to address concerns over incidents when children managed to pay lots of money for games and prevent children without knowledge of the device's iTunes Store password from accessing in app purchase content.

Parents had complained to the The Post that in the 15-minute period after an app was downloaded, children were buying sometimes hundreds of dollars of purchases on games such as Smurfs’ Village and Tap Zoo — popular iTunes games that are also among the highest-grossing programs for in-app purchases.

Hacker with nickname I0n1c has demonstrated an untethered jailbreak for iOS 4.3 using his iPad.

I0n1c posted the video below on YouTube. Current untethered jailbreak is alpha, it is not finished. So no due dates yet. We do not know when untether will be available for public. We'll keep you updated.

iDealsChina reports that managed to get engineering diagrams of the new iPhone 5, showing a larger display and a thinner bezel.

We just got what appears to be mold engineering drawings for iPhone 5. These would be used by case designers to create plastic, TPU, aluminum, silicone and leather cases. A while back we hear rumors that iPhone 5 would have a curved back but these images show iPhone 5 with the same form factor as iPhone 4 but with an edge to edge screen.

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Apple will soon disable restoring to iOS 4.2.1 for iPad and iPhone. In order to preserve jailbreak and unlock save your SHSH keys now! 4.3b keys might also help you in future untethered jailbreak.

You can do that using TinyUmbrella utility. Download it for Mac or Windows here. Just run it and push "Save ALL SHSHs" button.

The other way is to save SHSHs via Cydia. Run Cydia and make sure the keys are saved (green line on the top).

Forbes released its annual list of the world’s billionaires this week. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs was ranked at number 110 with a net worth $8.3 billion. Jobs' net worth also ranks 34th among billionaires in the United States. Last year he was placed at 136th place with $5.5 billion.

Insanely creative Apple chief transforms a multibillion-dollar industry every few years. First, personal computers with Apple II, Macintosh; then film with Pixar; music (iTunes), mobile (iPhone). Now iPad is treated as messiah tablet, savior for publishing industry. Apple still sells computers, but twice as much revenue now comes from music distribution and hand-held devices. Shot past long-time rival Microsoft as world's most valuable tech company in May. Shares of Apple surged more than 80% over the last year. Still, the majority of Job's fortune comes from Disney; as largest shareholder he owns about $4.4 billion of stock.

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As far as we know, the Apple’s browser Safari was always the subject of intense criticism for its various security weaknesses.  A couple of days ago Safari got pwned again at the hacking challenge pwn2own. It took the French team consists of specialists of security firm Vupen just a few seconds to exploit an unpatched Safari vulnerability. “We pwned Apple Safari on Mac OS X (x64) at pwn2own in 5 seconds,” they tweeted. Just a few minutes before the contest, Apple released Safari 5.0.4 alongside iOS 4.3. Vupen said that the update 62 vulnerabilities, breaking “some exploits but not all.”  The winners were awarded $15,000 and a MacBook Air. In addition to Safari, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 was also hacked pretty quickly.

Yesterday ChangeWave revealed the results of another survey, which shows that 82% of future tablet owners would prefer to buy an iPad instead of its competitors, namely Motorola Xoom and RIM Playbook.

3,091 consumers were asked in February what tablet would they like to buy and only 4% and 3% would choose Xoom and PlayBook respectively. Another 3% would stick with Samsung Galaxy Tab.

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