Archive for November, 2011

Apple has become known for its ability to get any landmark spot that it wants and its status as greatest retailer in U.S. is a persuading argument in negotiations. But as Macitynet.it reports, when the company wanted to secure one the Milan’s most prestigious landmark buildings in order to open a flagship retail store the company get outbid by the fashion label Prada.

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Yesterday we reported that Apple senior vice president for retail Ron Johnson left Apple and took CEO position at J.C. Penney. And Apple has been still looking for his successor. Cult of Mac now claims that Steve Cano has been promoted to the position of senior vice president for retail.

Apple’s new retail boss boss isn’t just some suit, though. He’s one of the first retail employees Apple ever hired, a California surfer dude who has climbed from the sales floor to the very top rung of Apple management.

According to our source, Apple is replacing Johnson with his long-time lieutenant, Steve Cano.

Cano began his career at Apple ten years ago as manager of the Palo Alto retail store, then he open the SoHo store in New York City, last seven years he worked on Apple's international retail efforts.

But Apple denies appointment of Cano. The company has said that the search for a replacement for Ron Johnson continues.

Barclays’ analyst Ben Reitzes just visited with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and CEO Tim Cook in a meeting where they discussed Amazon’s new low priced Kindle Fire tablet running on Android. According to his research note, (via Business Insider), Apple’s executives welcome the launch of the Kindle Fire on the market as it will contribute to further fragmentation of the Android ecosystem. And the more fragmentation of Android ecosystem, the better for Apple, as more customers will turn to stable Apple platform. The Kindle Fire runs on Android and at the same time it has been modified by Amazon to interact with its services and products.

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Today research company Nielsen published its survey on mobile users for the third quarter, which confirmed that Android and iOS remain two main player on the smartphone market. Android platform increased its share of the US smartphone market by 4%, from 39% to 43%. During the same period iOS remained flat with 28% share.

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The iPhone Dev-Team has updated RedSn0w with support for jailbreaking iOS 5.0.1 beta which was recently released for iOS developers. (UPDATE: iOS 5.0.1 released)

RedSn0w 0.9.9b8 recognizes 5.0.1 beta and you don't have to "point at 5.0 IPSW" any more. Since the IPSW isn't public, you'll still need to provide it once to redsn0w (Extra -> Select IPSW).

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The Bookseller reports that Steve Jobs’ authorized biography by Walter Isaacson easily became the most popular book in the States and United Kingdom during its first week of availability. For example, in the United States the book sold 379,000 copies.

Despite being on sale for just six days in the US, Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is already the 18th bestselling book of the year. It sits one place ahead of John Grisham's The Confession (Dell) and one place behind Rick Riordan's The Son of Neptune (Hyperion) in the year-to-date BookScan US bestseller list.

As we reported, Amazon had previously announced that the book was poised to become the best-selling book of 2011 despite a release late in the year. And we will probably be able to watch a film adaptation of the autobiography soon, because Sony Pictures has already acquired the movie rights to the book.

Two months has already gone since the moment when Tim Cook was appointed Apple’s CEO. The Wall Street Journal decided to take a look at his management strategy and found out some differences between his style and that of Steve Jobs.

In recent weeks, Mr. Cook has tended to administrative matters that never interested Mr. Jobs, such as promotions and corporate reporting structures, according to people familiar with the matter. The new chief executive, 50 years old, has also been more communicative with employees than his predecessor, sending a variety of company-wide emails while addressing Apple employees as "Team," people close to the company said.

Cook made significant changes in Apple’s education division. As a result the division was divided into marketing and sales divisions and then reintegrated with the company's broader arms focused on those aspects of the business. Another corporate-level change is recently-announced charitable matching program that calls for Apple to match employee donations up to $10,000 per year, a change from the Jobs who was reportedly against giving money away. Cook seems to recognize quickly expertise and achievements of his employees, and ready to promote them, such as with the promotion of Eddy Cue.

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Among the user-interface changes in OS X 10.7 (Lion), Apple also included a number of changes in the security model that may affect customers of Mac App Store in the near future. One of them is a sandboxing system which can prevent third-party apps from causing damage.

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Digitimes suggests that Apple's next iPad should enter mass production soon with a launch set for March 2012. But this new product won’t be a “real” iPad 3 rather an updated iPad 2. The “real” iPad 3 is expected to be launched no earlier that the third quarter of 2012. Although Digitimes does not provide any distinction as to what qualifies as a "real iPad 3", the site claims that it would be thinner than the iPad 2 and offer longer battery life.

The most obvious difference between the updated iPad 2 and the “real” iPad 3 is an ultra-high resolution Retina display that is rumored to be implemented in the iPad 3. Rumors about Apple’s plans to build in such display in their devices have been circulating for months. But the most recent reports indicate that Apple's suppliers are finding it challenge to produce such high density displays. Anyway Apple could change their plains at any moment.

Apple has just relased iOS 5.0.1 (9A402) to developers. The new update features battery life fixes, multitasking gestures on the original iPad, improves Voice recognition for Australian users, and features other bug and security fixes. The update is about 811MB. Developers can download it from the Developer Center.

iOS 5.0.1 beta also introduces a new way for developers to specify files that should remain on device, even in low storage situations.

Changelog:

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These days there are three main players at Linux/Windows Virtualization on Macs. One of them is a basic emulator VirtualBox that was acquired by Oracle as a part of Sun in 2009. Oracle isn’t very interested in development of free Open Source projects so it is unlikely that it will become much better in the near future.

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The legal conflict over copycat of mobile devices between Samsung and Apple continue to escalate in different countries and now Samsung requests testimonies from Apple’s designers working on iPhone, including senior vice president Jonathan Ive. Also Samsung wants to receive source code of iPhone 4S and details of agreements between Apple and Australian carriers.

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Siri, exclusive to iPhone 4S digital assistant, requires a network connection to interact with Apple cloud in order to get answers, the company said at the iPhone 4S unveiling. In order to find out how much traffic does Siri consume, Ars Technica conducted eleven tests, using Siri to make five network operations such as searching information on Wolfram|Alfa and other sources and six local tasks, including setting up reminders, alarms, dictation and other.

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The Next Web reported that South Korea had removed a ban blocking App Store games a week before the iPhone 4S launch. Korea opened up the local App Store earlier today. The Store had been closed for about two years. Of course, such ban cannot but affect Korean game developers. The selection of available games in the Korean App Store is limited for now, but it is expected to improve quickly.

The iPhone 4S is believed to face with tough competition in the region from the local giant Samsung, especially from the latest Galaxy Nexus. But Apple will obviously achieve success, predicting huge demand for their newest smartphone. Moreover, worldwide sales of the iPhone 4S are breaking all records. In the first three days of availability Apple sold four million units.

Nevertheless, Samsung intends to target Apple with new patent suits after iPhone 4S launch in Korea, even despite the fact that all their previous attempts were unsuccessful.

SmartOffice reports that Samsung is requesting Apple to provide them with the source code for the iPhone 4S firmware. Samsung doesn’t abandon their attempt to ban the device in Australia, trying to find any loophole to achieve success. Moreover, Samsung wants to know details of subsidy agreements with all Australian carriers.

“It goes to show that since the iPhone 3G was made available in Australia in July 2008, the impact on the market for every iPhone product has been significant, and has lead to a substantial increase … in market share by revenue. If subsidies are given for the iPhone 4S, there are less to go around for my client’s products,” - Samsung counsel Cynthia Cochrane told the federal court.

As for the source code Apple denies any infringement. The Company claims that Samsung agreed to license the three wireless 3G-related patents in question under FRAND agreements. Samsung thinks that agreement doesn’t cover Apple in Australia and claims Apple denied previous attempts to extend the license internationally. But it seems that all Samsung’s attempts will be unsuccessful, because the case will be handled by Justice Annabelle Bennett, who handed out the injunction against Samsung’s Tab 10.1.