Yesterday Silicon Alley Insider reported that Palm had a chance to be acquired by Apple, but eventually HP’s bid was higher. Referring to an anonymous source that was familiar with the negotiations, author Dan Frommer wrote:
"Apple was mostly interested in Palm's huge library of intellectual property and patents (450+ patents on file, another 400+ applications on file). And unlike some other bidders, Apple even seemed committed to funding Palm's operations, perhaps to challenge RIM's dominance in the keyboarded segment of the smartphone industry, our source says."
It is reported that Google also wanted to purchase Palm to spite Apple, but the company didn't know whether Apple was actually bidding for Palm, so no moves were made in that direction.
Eventually HP acquired Palm and now has plans to use its webOS in company's future tablet devices that will compete with Apple's iPad.
Following the release of the 4.0.1 firmware for iPhone and 3.2.1 for iPad Apple has released the SDK to go with it. Although the update seems like nothing, and is really is nothing, developers need to update in order to run their apps on new iOS 4.0.1 iPhone or 3.2.1 iPad.
Apple has just released iOS 4.0.1 for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4. The free update fixes the issue with signal indication - the math formula to display the iPhone's service signal bars. Official changelog for iOS 4.0.1:
Improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display
The updates for the iPad OS 3.2.1 are:
Improved Wi-Fi connectivity
Fixed an issue that could prevent copy and paste of single-page PDF attachments in Mail
Addressed an issue that could cause video playback to freeze
Improved reliability of video-out when using iPad Dock Connector to VGA Adapter
Today Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes released another article which reveals that the producing of next-gen iPad will be started in the last quarter of 2010. New tablet will have 7-inch and 5.6-inch OLED displays supplied by Compal Electronics. Both of these small (compared to the current 9.7-inch model) devices will "target the e-book reader market, separating them from the 9.7-inch model, which mainly targets multimedia entertainment".
Choosing the OLED panels is explained by the assumption that its costs will be dropped soon, as LG display and Samsung Electronics are currently devoting resources into its development. Read the rest of this entry »
According to The Wall Street Journal, last week Chinese Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center approved Wi-Fi enabled iPhone to be put on sale soon in China. The problem is that on the accompanying picture it is clearly seen that the approved device is the iPhone 3G or 3GS, but certainly not the iPhone 4.
Apple’s smartphone went on sale last year, but it was Wi-Fi disabled because technology's standard was temporarily banned by the Chinese government. In May 2009 the ban was relaxed. Read the rest of this entry »
Well-known blogger Jonny Evans from ComputerWorld posted yesterday an interesting article where he analyzed some of recent trends in Apple's success and made few conclusions about the company's next steps. Here is a short list of it: Read the rest of this entry »
MuscleNerd, famous hacker from DevTeam, has announced via Twitter that an upcoming comex release will jailbreak all 4.0 devices. This will include latest iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, new iPod Touch and iPad.
jailbreak for all devices at 4.0 is already handled by upcoming @comex release so, good time for iphone4 unlock stuff
Comex is also well-known, he authored the 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 jailbreak called Spirit. He's also recently demonstrated Frash, an upcoming release of Flash for the iPhone and iPad.
Flash has been ported to the iPad. Unofficially of course. The project is called Frash and is basically a port of Adobe Flash runtime for Android running on iPad using a compatibility layer. Its coming from a well known iPhone hacker named comex.
The YouTube description of the video explains everything about the port as follows.
Frash is a port of the Adobe Flash runtime for Android to the iPhone, using a compatibility layer, by comex ( http://twitter.com/comex ). Frash can currently run most Flash programs natively in the MobileSafari browser. Frash currently only runs on the iPad, but support for other devices (3GS+ only due to technical restrictions) is planned, as well as support for iOS 4.
A release is planned for when Frash is stable. Developers are welcome to join the effort at http://github.com/comex/frash – fork it and send a pull request with your patches.
Shot on an iPhone 4 and edited using iMovie on the phone.
The Facebook application for the iPod touch/iPhone is now compatible with the iOS 4. Other new features are icons in high resolution, fast switching and also Korean/Russian localizations. There were also several minor bugs fixed.
Facebook is available for download from the App Store for free.
Will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas is reported to have used the MobileMe Find My iPad service to help catch a thief who had robbed his Bently, stealing jewelry and some other belongings worth $10,000 in total.
Will used the built-in tracking system on his iPad, located the criminal and reported his whereabouts to the police which found some of the stolen goods and gave them back to the singer.
Hulu officially announced their Hulu Plus service for iOS Devices. The application is available via AppStore for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. With Hulu users will be able to stream in HD entire current seasons of shows such as Glee, Modern Family, The Office and 30 Rock as well as the entire back library of many other shows, such as Arrested Development, The X-Files and Heroes. These can be viewed on TV, computer, iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch over Wi-Fi or 3G.
A new version of the Google Docs Viewer has been launched by the company for the iPad, Android and iPhone to let you view PDF, doc, docx and ppt file uploaded to your documents list without needing to download the file itself.
With our mobile viewer you can switch quickly between pages and pan/zoom within a page. On your iPhone and iPad, you can pinch to zoom in or out. You can try it out by going to docs.google.com on your Android-powered device, iPad or iPhone and select any document in these formats that you've previously uploaded.
A new version of the Google Docs Viewer has been launched by the company for the iPad, Android and iPhone to let you view PDF, doc, docx and ppt file uploaded to your documents list without needing to download the file itself.
With our mobile viewer you can switch quickly between pages and pan/zoom within a page. On your iPhone and iPad, you can pinch to zoom in or out. You can try it out by going to docs.google.com on your Android-powered device, iPad or iPhone and select any document in these formats that you've previously uploaded.