Archive for 2010

Today comScore released its monthly smartphone mobile report, which shows again that the Android OS gains more and more points at the smartphone market, while RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iOS continue to lose its positions. The report is based on the smartphone usage over a period between July and October of 2010, and shows that there 60.7 million people with smartphones in the USA, which is 14% more than three months before. According to comScore, every fourth mobile subscriber uses smartphone.

Other facts:

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Ticondegora Securities analyst Brian White and his team are touring Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and China this week. In Taipei he met with a few suppliers and heard from them that miniature embedded pico projectors and mobile digital TV will presumably become major selling features in the next-gen smartphones.

Though iPhone were not mentioned among these smartphones, in his note to investors White assures such features would be interesting for Apple to implement in "iPhone 5", which is expected to be released traditionally in June of the next year.

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Caris & Company analyst Robert Cihra today published a note to investors where he appraises Apple's growth as "stunning" and says that iPad will cause approximately 50% of all growth for the company in 2011.

He explains that Apple's success was reached by effective approach through innovation, while the company's competitors are lost "in a sea of otherwise commoditized hardware".

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As we wrote earlier, the latest release of Mac OS X 10.6.5 did not include the support for AirPrint, though Apple had earlier announced it. After a while the guys at Netputing released an app called AirPrint Hacktivator, which was simply copying system files from those developer betas of OS X 10.6.5 that had AirPrint support implemented.

But eventually Netputing received an e-mail from one of Apple's legal representatives omm.com,  where it was asked to remove any versions of AirPrint Hacktivator from the company's site as they redistribute Apple’s source code.

The guys were forced to agree but have kept a good heart and finally came up with a new solution:

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The iPhone Dev-Team has issued a notice stating that updating your iPhone to the iPad baseband for unlock could result in the loss of GPS functionality.

Unlockers have been reporting mixed results about GPS functionality at 06.15.00. Until we can track down what differentiates those who retain GPS vs. those who lose it, be conservative and assume you’ll lose GPS at 06.15.00. As we work on finding the cause (and possibly a fix), please report your personal findings in our comments section. (Update: early indications are that while 06.15.00 is capable of GPS, it will require some further hacks. But please still be conservative and assume you will lose GPS at 06.15, in case the hacks don’t work).

Hackers are currently working to fix this.

As usual we remind all users - if you don't absolutely need to update your baseband, don't do it.

According to MacNN report, another yesterday granted patent application reveals that Apple devises new radial pop-up menus which will be an alternative to currently used drop-down menus. Peter Warner, who is listed as a "Designer at Apple" in his LinkedIn profile, is the inventor of this patent.

The application assures that radial menus can be more efficient than the current model of moving 'to menubar to select standard features', which is used in almost every major operational system. An order for both menus can be static and prioritized, when higher priority items are being displayed more prominently.

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Silicon Alley Insider formed a chart that shows us the approval ratings of various CEOs at major tech companies among their employees. So, the chart reveals that Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs is the most favored CEO, followed by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Eric Schmidt of Google. Yahoo CEO gets high-50s point rating, while Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, comes in last place. Earlier this year Steve Jobs was also called as “the world’s most valuable CEO”.

After the release of the second build of Mac OS X 10.6.6 Apple has also updated its Developer News portal, and now it contains few new tips for developers they should read before considering to submit their Mac apps for approval. With one of it the company confirmed that it will not accept any kind of beta, trial or demo versions of the programs in its new Store.

But for those who still want to promote demo versions of their products Apple suggests developers to hosts such versions on their own websites.

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A couple of days ago Apple announced a shortlist for this year’s iTunes Best Album 2010 and iTunes Best Song 2010. The winners will be announced in early December. Everybody can vote for a favorite song or/and album on the iTunes in the “People’s Choice” categories. To vote you need download the application for the iPad, iPhone or iPod touch or visit www.bestalbumandsong.co.uk (legit Apple site). Voting has been already opened in the UK, France, Italy and Germany.

According to Computer Weekly, yesterday HTC released a statement as a response to YouTube videos, which show that the company's newly released HD7 smartphone also loses signal strength when is being gripped in a certain way. However, it looks like Taiwanese handset maker doesn't take it seriously:

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The U.S. Marine Corps is reportedly experimenting with the use of the iPad for recruiting. The commander of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command explained in his recent interview that the Corps is doing well in recruitment, but that needs a huge advertising budget. So, the iPad should help them to decrease expenditure.

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This Thursday Apple issued the second build of Mac OS X 10.6.6, namely 10J537, which is a 1000 MB download.

The first build was released almost a month ago on November, 4.

It is said that Mac OS X 10.6.6 "contains developer support for fetching and renewing App Store receipts". That suggests that 10.6.6 update will be released just in time for the opening of the new Mac App Store, which was announced to arrive in the next few months.

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This week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released another pile of Apple's patent applications that reveal the company’s interest in further improving of its technology of keyboard backlights. It is said in the documents, that though current keyboards have a light feedback, for example, when the "Caps Lock" is enabled, more informative keyboards would be more beneficial for users.

"Most conventional keyboards lack the ability to convey complex information to a user (such as, for example, more information than just whether the CAPS lock key is on). And while some conventional keyboards may include backlit keys, conventional keyboards with backlighting do not offer the ability to dynamically control lighting schemes for each of the keys individually based on interaction from the user."

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To promote its new musical social networking service Ping Apple landed an exclusive track from Michael Jackson called "Much Too Soon".

The song is included in the pop star's forthcoming album "Michael" and can be streamed within iTunes if you access Ping and navigate to the official account of Michael Jackson. This is a new way Apple successfully promotes its social network, as over a million users had listened to the song within first 48 hours after its release.

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Today Nielsen released another research that aimed to study mobile phone users and their plans on the next possible smartphone to buy. Here are some interesting facts that were revealed:

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