Archive for September 3rd, 2011

The Makayama Movie Mount is a case for iPad 2 that can significantly improve video capture by clipping to the device a number of accessories related to professional photography. These peripherals include third-party tele-lenses and wide angle lenses, lights, microphones and a tripod providing pan and tilt camera movements, and stable shots.

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Today San Francisco Police Department spokesman Lt. Troy Dangerfield has confirmed that four officers “assisted” two Apple investigators in searching the house and car of Sergio Calderòn, who was claimed to have found the prototype of the iPhone 5.

Dangerfield says that, after conferring with Apple and the captain of the Ingleside police station, he has learned that plainclothes SFPD officers went with private Apple detectives to the home of Sergio Calderón, a 22-year-old resident of Bernal Heights. According to Dangerfield, the officers “did not go inside the house,” but stood outside while the Apple employees scoured Calderón’s home, car, and computer files for any trace of the lost iPhone 5. The phone was not found, and Calderón denies that he ever possessed it.

Apple found out through GPS signal that the lost phone was in Calderón’s house. Calderón told that one of six men, who came in his house in order to find the iPhone 5 prototype, gave him his phone number. Later this man was identified as an investigator employed by Apple.

The visitors also allegedly threatened him and his family, asking questions about their immigration status. “One of the officers is like, ‘Is everyone in this house an American citizen?’ They said we were all going to get into trouble,” Calderón said.

Apple is planning to open three more stores this week in three different countries. So, with these stores, Apple will open 14 new retail stores for four weeks moving toward its goal to open 30 stores during the July-September quarter.

• Mapleview Centre (Burlington, Ontario, Canada): it will be the 21st Apple’s store in Canada. The store will be the eighth in or near the "Golden Horseshoe" region of Ontario wrapping around the western end of Lake Ontario.
• City-Galerie (Augsburg, Germany): City-Galerie will be Apple's sixth German store and the second in Bavaria in the southeast of the country.
• Campania (Caserta, Italy): Apple's seventh retail store in Italy which locates approximately 25 km north of Naples.

As it is known, iOS 5 will copy some Android features. Apart from notification system and  system-wide speech-to-text functionality, it was revealed that Apple will also implement Android-like activation of voice recognition Assistant feature.The Google’s promotional video above shows iPhone application for voice-powered search in Google.

As you can see in this video, with the app, you just have to move the iPhone up to your face, speak and in a few seconds Google will show you the page with search results. Apple plans to provide the same functionality to the iOS 5 users for its voice Assistant feature. According to code strings in the iOS 5 SDK, a user will need to put the iPhone to their ear, start speaking and the search results will be shown.

This activation method is much quicker than method in Voice Control. Currently users have to hold down the home button for several seconds to activate the service. Activation method in Assistant will not just rely on the iPhone’s proximity sensor detecting the distance from your ear, but will also rely on data from phone’s motion sensors for accuracy.

iH8Sn0w released Sn0wBreeze 2.8b7, which adds jailbreak support for the latest iOS 5 beta 7 firmware.

Sn0wBreeze creates custom firmware and allows users to preserve baseband for unlock (ultrasn0w doesn't work with iOS 5 yet). This new version also adds hacktivation and removes UDID developer check. This means that you can try iOS 5 without developer account from Apple.

You can download Sn0wBreeze 2.8b7 for Windows here.

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The next iPhone that is codenamed "N94" has gained FCC ID "BCG-E2430A". This information was found in the latest iOS 5 Beta 7 release, from a file named "RegulatoryInfo-N94AP@2x~iphone.png" as related to the General > About > Regulatory section of the device’s Settings app.

This provides more proof that Apple is moving closer towards releasing much rumored iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S. The actual FCC filing is yet not found in the equipment authorization database, since Apple products typically don't show up in the data FCC's database until the same day the products are unveiled. This FCC IDs for iPhone 4 GSM and iPhone 4 CDMA are "BCG-E2380A" and "BCG-E2422A".

Whether this is an next-gen iPhone 5 or the much rumored iPhone 4S, we'll most likely have to wait till the fall to find out.