Archive for April, 2012

Apple and some other companies will soon have to explain to the Australian Parliament why content from iTunes is more expensive for Australian consumers that for consumers in U.S. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy has approved a parliamentary inquiry that will be held sometimes this year.

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The GEVEY Ultra 5.1 for the GSM iPhone 4 has been recalled since it used Loktar Sun's free method (aka SAM unlock) to unlock your device which has been disabled by Apple. Apple N Berry is offering a full refund to customers who purchased the device. You can read their official statement here.

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According to MacGeneration, Apple's Mac App Store reached a milestone of 10,000 apps that are available for free download or purchase via the marketplace.

Apple distributes its own major software titles for the Mac platform and OS X Lion itself through the store that was launched in January 2011.

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Apple is currently in the process of blocking the SAM unlock, reports MuscleNerd. If you need to unlock a SIM or backup your unlock ticket do it now!

MuscleNerd mentions this in Twitter:

Looks like Apple's currently fixing their activation servers. But the good news is that previous tickets gotten via SAM trick still work.

Those who managed to unlock using SAM should save the unlock tickets. To do it just use iFile or iFunbox and save /var/root/Library/Lockdown, or use latest Redsn0w (Extras -> Even more -> backup).

According to iMore, Apple has replaced iMacs with iPads on the kid’s table at Apple’s retail stores. Previously, iMacs were loaded with games for kids and were placed on the kid’s table at children’s height. But with the switch not much has changed: four iPads on the kid’s table are loaded with apps that allow children to read books, draw and more.

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The NPD Group has found that about 25 percent of buyers in the U.S. have made the iPad their first-ever Apple product.

"iPad sales are growing much faster than any other Apple product has this soon after launch," said Ben Arnold, director of industry analysis at NPD. "In fact, one-in-five Apple owner households has one— nearly equivalent to the number that own an Apple computer. This demonstrates the appeal of both the new form factor and Apple’s app ecosystem."

A majority of the U.S. households that do have Apple products — 67 percent — own an iPod, and 82 percent of iPod owners polled said the media player was their first Apple product.

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The San Jose Mercury News reports that on Tuesday the Planning Commission unanimously approved the project of 21,468-square-foot cafeteria near Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. The non-Apple employees will not be welcomed in the cafeteria that will allow Apple employees to speak freely about their business without fearing that competitors are eavesdropping.

"We like to provide a level of security so that people and employees can feel comfortable talking about their business, their research and whatever project they're engineering without fear of competition soft of overhearing their conversations," said Dan Wisenhunt, Apple's director of real estate facilities. "That is a real issue today in Cupertino because we've got other companies here in our same business."

The cafeteria will be a two-story building that will include a cafe, meeting rooms, lounge areas and courtyard space. The second floor will be intended for cafeteria employees for storage, locker rooms, restrooms and more. The site will also include 70 parking spaces housed in an underground garage.

According to Good Technology’s report on device activations from its enterprise customers in the first quarter of 2012, iPhone and iPad together continue to dominate in the enterprise market with about 73.4% of all smartphone activations, and 97.3% of tablet activations in the quarter.

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UPDATE: Apple is blocking SAM unlock

These are instructions on how to unlock your iPhone using updated SAM v0.1.16. This method will work with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS on iOS 5.x. All modems are supported.

Step One
Jailbreak your iPhone. You can find instructions on how to do that using the Jailbreak Tutorials.

Step Two
Tap to launch Cydia from your SpringBoard.

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Sam Bingner has released an update to SAM that makes unlocking your iPhone even easier. The new method does not require your original SIM or iTunes.

I just pushed an update for SAM-Put in SIM you want to work, select orig carrier (or auto), click "Try Activation" under "Utils" and done

Bingner also notes that he will be updating SAM with the ability to save unlock tickets. Next up - proper backup support or multiple tickets - then restore support with options.

We've will update our iPhone Unlock Tutorial.

UPDATE: New tutorial is available here.

Apple announced that it will hold its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) June 11 through June 15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West. Tickets were sold out in just two hours ($1,599 each).

At this year’s five-day conference, developers will learn about the future of iOS and OS X, allowing them to build incredible new apps. WWDC will also feature more than 100 technical sessions presented by Apple engineers as well as the popular Apple Design Awards, a showcase of the most outstanding apps from the past year.

Activities at Apple’s WWDC 2012 include:

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Apple announced the company results for Q2 2012. Apple has $110 billion in cash reserves, which is up from $81.5 billion in September 2011. Apple was also up in every other segment with $18.4 billion in short-term marketable securities (up from $16.1 billion) and long-term marketable securities at $81.6 billion, which is up from $55.6 billion in the previous six-month period ending September 2011.

Here are some interesting numbers that Apple reported for the quarter:

iTunes and App Store:

• $1.9 billion in iTunes revenue (a 35 percent YOY increase)
• 600,000 apps (200,000 iPad specific apps)

iOS devices:

• 365 million iOS device sales
• $22.7 billion in revenue from iPhone and accessories
• 6.6 billion in revenue from iPad and accessories.
• 7.7 million iPod sales
• 94 percent of Fortune 500 and 75 percent of global 500 testing or deploying iPad

iCloud:

• 125 million iCloud users—up 25 million from February

Retail Stores:

• $4.4 billion in retail store revenue, up 8 percent
• 363 Apple Stores
• 826,000 Macs sold in store—half to new customers
• $12.2 million average revenue per-store (up from $9.9 million)
• 85 million visitors to retail—18,000 per store, per week

Here is official press release:

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UPDATE: Gevey Ultra 5.1 does not work any more.

Gevey has released the Ultra 5.1 to unlock the GSM iPhone 4 on iOS 5.1. The new version supports the following modem versions: 01.59, 2.10, 3.10.1, 4.10.1, 4.11.08, and 4.12.01.

The new GEVEY Ultra unlocks your GSM iPhone 4 running iOS 5.1 and earlier and now supports modem firmware versions 1.59, 2.10, 3.10.1, 4.10.1, 4.11.08, and 4.12.01. Currently, a tethered Jailbreak is available for iOS 5.1 for iPhone 4, and you will also need to install the latest Furious Mod file for proper operation.

You can purchase the GEVEY Ultra 5.1 for $49.99 here.

Now we have some estimations regarding the release of the iOS 5.1 untethered jailbreak. Pod2g noted that it is at least a month away.

ETA for 5.1 JB: no clue! We're going to set pieces of the puzzle together this week. We could have issues... Could be 1 month maybe 2...

I know 1 month seems long, but it's short to work on a project like this when it's a hobby and you've other things to do as well.

Last week, pod2g reported that the Chronic Dev-Team has all the exploits required to release an untethered jailbreak of iOS 5.1 for all devices, including iPad 3, iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. However it would take some time to put it together into a useable release.

The iPhone Dev-Team has updated RedSn0w with the ability to save iPhone unlock tickets (SAM unlock).

redsn0w 0.9.10b8 adds the ability to backup arbitrary directories or files from your device into a zip file on your Mac or PC. The new button is Extras->Even More->Backup and it requires your device to be jailbroken with the afc2 service enabled (most jailbreaks include that). By default it will backup your activation records from /var/root/Library/Lockdown, which is useful for everyone taking advantage of today's SAM unlock using Loktar_Sun's trick

You can download the new version of RedSn0w 0.9.10b8 here.

You can save unlock tickets through Extras -> Even More -> Backup.