Archive for 2011

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.

This Thursday, Apple will implement some interesting changes in its retail stores. These changes are self-check capability and expansion of the system allowing to pick-up online orders in Apple Stores. New features will be launched in the form of update to the Apple Store App.

Pickup of standard items will be available in about 12 minutes after placing online orders. During this time system will send the order to the retail store and employees will set aside them for pickup. Customers can skip the line and just have to sign for the item and leave.

Engraved and build-to-order devices and other out-of-the stock products, will be shipped to the local Apple Store free of charge. Then the system will let you know the date of pickup and push notification in the App will inform you about arriving it to the store. The item will be available for pickup in 12 minutes after receiving the push notification.Apple expects that most customers will finally use in-store pickup system for buying products.

Another interesting feature that Apple is going to launch will streamline the retail experience at Apple Stores. Customers will be able to buy cheaper items, like cases, without even talking to an employee. That is how it will happen: after finding the product you want to buy, like a case, you open the Apple Store app that will offer an option to buy an item in the store. In the app you will scan the item with the camera of your device, click buy and the system will charge the credit card linked to your Apple ID.

Self Check Out and In-Store Pickup will launch on this Thursday worldwide.

Apple always cares about its image. Such control spreads even on social networks, especially Facebook. Of course, Apple has its own Facebook pages and Twitter channels to share news, product updates, support documents, etc. But the company seems to control pages of its employees in social networks : Tweet/post/blog negatively about Apple and you’ll get fired.

One of Apple’s employees in the UK left negative comments about Apple on Facebook. He claimed that the post were not public. But he was fired for “gross misconduct”. Apple does warn potential employees in advance to refrain from commenting on the brand. It seems that commentary on Apple products, or critical remarks about the brand are indeed strictly prohibited, because such action could be damaging for Apple’s image and commercial reputation.

In June, Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, announce his transition to J.C. Penney as CEO of department store chain. Yesterday Apple removed Johnson from the list of senior executives.

After working as a key merchandising executive at Target for 15 years, Johnson was personally lured away by Apple's Steve Jobs in 2000. Having joined Apple, he became responsible for the launch and strong growth of Apple's retail store segment.

The international component of Apple's retail business will be the most crucial element going forward. The company already announced that it intends to open forty new retail stores during fiscal 2012, with 75% of those locations coming outside of the United States.

Johnson also pioneered the successful "Genius Bar" concept that has become a staple of Apple's stores - a concept that Jobs himself was initially against.

Apple has not announced Johnson's successor yet. It is believed that Johnson’s position will be taken be the current Apple vice president for retail Jerry McDougal, who served under Johnson for over ten years. But Apple seems to be still looking for the best possible candidate. After Johnson’s announcement about his departure, Apple started "actively recruiting" for a new retail chief and in August the company took its search abroad in hopes of finding a replacement.

Net Applications have published its latest data on web traffic from mobile devices, which show that Apple’s iOS took advantage of iPhone 4S launch and continuous iPad momentum to reach a 60% share of mobile web traffic. During October iOS has accounted for  61.64% of the web traffic.

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These instructions will show you how to make your tethered iOS 5 jailbreak a semi tethered jailbreak for iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

A semi-tethered jailbreak is a workaround solution which solves the problem of being unable to reboot with a tethered jailbreaked device. The semi tethered jailbreak by BigBoss will allow you to reboot on the road, but with limited functionality.

You can use your phone, text, safari and many other features. Once you get home and can use redsn0w again to “just boot tethered”. Once you do that, you’re back to fully functional state.

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Today Apple announced that the third round of iPhone 4S rollout will begin on Friday, November 11th. The next phase will involve 15 new countries: El Salvador, Armenia, Albania, Poland, Guatemala, Panama, Bulgaria, Greece, Hong Kong, Montenegro, Romania, Malta, New Zealand, Portugal and South Korea. Today iPhone 4S is available in 29 countries and Apple plans to launch it in over 70 countries by the end of this year.

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Rumors have it that there are Apple TVs that can run Hulu Plus app inside Apple. The app is full-featured and can be rolled out to Apple TV users. Actually, the app has been completed at least month ago, but there are some political issues standing in the way of launching Hulu Plus for Apple TV. Apple appears to have some consideration that the Hulu Plus could decrease iTunes TV sales.

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Rumors about release of the native Gmail application from Google have been circulating for about three years since Apple launched the App Store. Bloger, MG Siegler claims that Google “is on the verge of launching their native Gmail app” and have likely already submitted it to Apple for review. If the company approves the application, it should be released soon.

The native Gmail app will likely bring other key functionality as well: like Priority Inbox and one-click starring of messages. Other possibilities include some of the stuff Google is about to roll out for Gmail proper: like contact icons, better threading, and deep searching functionality. Maybe there will even be some Google+ integration, which Google is also hard at work on for Gmail.

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Last week, Apple released its annual financial report for fiscal 2011, revealing some interesting facts. Moreover, the report includes some Apple's planned capital expenditures for fiscal 2012

The Company’s capital expenditures were $4.6 billion during 2011, consisting of approximately $614 million for retail store facilities and $4.0 billion for other capital expenditures, including product tooling and manufacturing process equipment, real estate for the future development of the Company’s second corporate campus, and other corporate facilities and infrastructure.

The Company anticipates utilizing approximately $8.0 billion for capital expenditures during 2012, including approximately $900 million for retail store facilities and approximately $7.1 billion for product tooling and manufacturing process equipment, and corporate facilities and infrastructure, including information systems hardware, software and enhancements.

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A security firm Sophos, released a report which claims that a new Trojan horse was found to be hidden in a Mac OS X application, Graphic Converter 7.4.

The new Trojan called DevilRobber can steal sensitive user data, usernames and passwords, and take control of the computer’s GPU to generate Bitcoins, a form of currency used online, and is capable of spying on users by taking screenshots of their activity and sending the images online. DevilRobber, also known as "OSX/Miner-D," also runs scripts that can copy information “regarding truecrypt data, Vidalia (TOR plugin for Firefox), your Safari browsing history, and .bash_history” to a dump.txt file. The malware is also able to search for “pthc” files (the term means pre-teen hardcore pornography). And probably that is one of its secondary features to find traces of child abuse on affected computers that could be used against owners of such computers, for example.

Sophos suggests that users may notice that their computers have been attacked by the Trojan. This may affect overall computing performance when the Trojan steals GPU resources. The company asks users not to download software from unreliable sources. Though, common anti-virus programs are able to detect the Trojan.

Last week it was reported that after pricing information on Intel's upcoming Sandy Bridge E processors surfaced, Apple’s potential options for Mac Pro line update in early 2012 began to clear up. Apple has not updated the Mac Pro line since mid-2010, and Intel’s delays in new processors have pushed their update out from this year to first quarter of 2012.

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Apple released three new advertisements for the iPhone 4S.

The first one is called iCloud and shows the out of the box iCloud integration for the iPhone 4S:

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Low battery life is one of the major issues for early iPhone 4S owners who constantly searching answers on Support Communities forum. Thus far Apple has remained silent about the matter. It appears that the problem is also affecting some iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, suggesting that it is rather a software defect than a hardware problem.

iDownloadBlog reports on interesting remedy that helped some users to improve the battery performance. The Setting Time Zone feature in iOS 5 appears to cause excess power consumption as the device repeatedly detect user location to set the time zone. To turn off this functionality, open Settings App, go to Location Services, System Services and disable the Setting Time Zone function.To make your iPhone last more, you may also want to switch off Diagnostics & Usage and Location-Based iAds in this menu.

Apple offers this advice to improve battery life of your iPhone:

“Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down)”.

Macworld’s mentions launching a system diagnostic app in order to pinpoint which unnecessary processes are running in the background and discov