Archive for September 7th, 2011

Recently in an interview on State of the Union of CNN channel, Jim Hoffa, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Union President, claimed that Apple is unpatriotic as it outsources manufacturing in other countries.

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Today Intuit announced that the QuickBooks for Mac 2012, financial management software for small businesses, was enhanced for OS X Lion. Over fifty new features were added to the software, including vendor and customer history panels, transaction list, improved search with filters and keywords. The software will be put on sale September 26 as a digital version for download on the Apple’s and Intuit’s online store, Amazon.com and other retail stores at $230 for a single user. Boxed versions will be available from October 9.

Today Adobe announced that Digital Publishing Suite will support Apple upcoming Newsstand service for iOS 5. Newsstand feature is designed to serve as the organization centre for digital subscriptions in Apple’s iOS 5, allowing users to easily access the recent content downloaded in background mode.

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After amazing lost of the iPhone 5 prototype, Apple seems to start worry about their forthcoming devices, having posted a job listing for two positions that are titled “New Product Security Managers”. Noteworthy to say, that these positions became available just a day after there appeared rumors claiming that Apple had lost the iPhone 5 prototype at a San Francisco bar. That’s probably somewhat of a coincidence, but it is obvious that the company does its best to protect future products and its intellectual property, describing the new jobs as follows:

The candidate will be responsible for overseeing the protection of, and managing risks to, Apple’s unreleased products and related intellectual property. Position will reside in Cupertino, California and will require up to 30% travel (international and domestic). The individual will collaborate with other security managers by contributing to, and managing execution of, strategic initiatives set forth by Director, Global Security.

MacRumors reports that Apple is shipping its new 27-inch Thunderbolt Display to its retail stores and resellers this week. Early online customer orders are expected to begin shipping on September 15. Apple unveiled this 27-inch LED display in July. The display is the first display that can boast about of the new Thunderbolt I/O technology. The display requires a Mac with a Thunderbolt I/O port. Such Thunderbolt compatibility allows the displays to act as a docking station using a single Thunderbolt cable.

“The Apple Thunderbolt Display is the ultimate docking station for your Mac notebook,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said when the display was first unveiled. "With just one cable, users can dock with their new display and connect to high performance peripherals, network connections and audio devices.”

The Thunderbolt Display features a built-in FaceTime HD camera, 2.1 speaker system, three USB ports, one Firewire 800 port, one Gigabit Ethernet port, and a second Thunderbolt port to enable daisy chaining, a 16:9 edge-to-edge glass design with an ultra-wide 178 degree viewing angle.

Apple reportedly has made a deal with Simplo and Dynapack to produce and supply a thinner and lighter battery for the iPad 3. Such battery means that the company may work on the iPad with a potentially thicker high-resolution Retina display. The cost of new batteries is 20-30% higher that the current iPad batteries but provides longer service life and higher safety.  Mass production of such batteries are planed on the first quarter of the next year.

With the upcoming iPad 3 to feature a thinner, lighter battery module that is widely believed to be priced 20-30% higher than iPad 2’s, Simplo Technology Co. and Dynapack International Technology Corp., both Apple Inc.’s contract suppliers of iPad and Macbook battery packs, will hence secure a surefire profit drive for the near future.

Institutional investors pointed out that the battery pack for iPad 3, scheduled to be massively produced in the first quarter of next year, has been redesigned to be thinner and lighter with a longer service life than iPad 2 edition’s.

Apple’s current generation of MacBook Air is very popular with customers. Apple sells up to 500,000 units per month. MacBook Air’s success has drawn the interest of “Ultrabook” models’ manufactures whose aim is to compete with the MacBook Air. Intel and Windows PC seem to test the waters, limiting initial shipments to a combined 50,000 units.

First-tier notebook brand vendors Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Asustek Computer, understanding that demand for notebooks is unlikely to recover in the fourth quarter, while Apple's products are taking up all the glory in the market, will limit their initial Ultrabook shipment volume to below 50,000 units for testing the water, according to sources from notebook makers.

Intel planed that Ultrabook pricing will start under $1000 but the company faces difficulties trying to bring costs to the point where they can compete with the MacBook Air.

We already reported that in the second quarter of 2011 Apple had passed Nokia as the world's largest smartphone vendor as measured by shipments. But Nokia still excelled Apple in sales to end user. Digitimes Research now projects that Apple will be a top smartphone vendor of 2011 with nearly 19% of the market at 86.4 million units.

Apple is expected to overtake Nokia as the top ranking vendor in terms of shipment volume in 2011, while Huawei Technologies will enjoy robust growth in shipments enabling the China-based company to close its gap with Sony Ericsson and Motorola.

Apple's smartphone shipments are projected to top 86.4 million units in 2011, up 82% from 47.5 million units in 2010. In contrast, Nokia's smartphone shipments in 2011 will decline to 74.4 million units from over 100 million in 2010, said Luke Lin, analyst for Digitimes Research.

Here is a great step-by-step video describing how to:

• install iOS 5 Beta 7 without Apple Developer account
• preserve baseband for future unlock,
• jailbreak and hactivate iOS 5 Beta 7

Let's watch:

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