Forzefield Studios’ space shooter Infinity Field HD was updated with Joypad support. Joypad is an app which allows users to control supported games on Mac or iPad from an iPhone by turning it into a virtual controller with configurable buttons.
Japanese blog Macotakara reports that Apple’s contract manufacturers Pegatron Technology and Foxconn Electronics was commisioned to begin assembly of next iPads for a launch in early March.
On Tuesday Kodak has filed lawsuits against Apple and HTC claiming infringement of patent violations regarding the sharing of digital pictures between various electronic devices. The claim accuses Apple of violating four digital photography patents Kodak said it obtained after "concluding it would be desirable for people to easily share pictures" from digital cameras without having to first upload them to a central PC. Apple and HTC are likely to cooperate with each other over the Kodak suit, although the companies are suing each other.
Essentially, any Apple product with a camera is affected by the proposed suit, but specifically cited examples include the iPad 2, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, and the iPod touch (4th generation).It is unclear whether software like Apple's Photo Stream, which allows digital images taken on one iDevice to be pushed to other devices through the company's iCloud, or other third-party apps that allow for image transfer over Bluetooth or WiFi are being targeted in the suit.
Apple’s spokesman Steve Dowling confirmed on Tuesday that the company recently purchased Anobit Technologies, an Israel-based flash memory component maker, though it declined to reveal the cost of the deal. “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans,” Steve Dowling added. As far as we remember Apple planned to spend for acquisition of the company as much as $500 million. According to a Hebrew-language newspaper, the deal was finalized in December.
Apple already uses Anobit parts in its iOS devices and the MacBook Air, and the firm's proprietary "Memory Signal Processing" (MSP) technology reportedly attracted the Cupertino, Calif., company's interest. Anobit claims MSP can improve the reliability, performance, efficiency and endurance of flash memory.
Apple Senior Vice President and General Counsel Bruce Sewell has issued a letter on Monday where Apple informs the company's shareholders that its annual shareholder meeting will be held at 10 a.m. Pacific on Feb. 23 and will include four shareholder proposals. Last year's meeting was also held on Feb. 23. Only shareholders of record as of Dec. 27, 2011 will be eligible to attend and vote at the meeting.
The agenda for the annual meeting includes: the election of Apple's board of directors, ratification of Ernst & Young as its independent registered public accounting firm for the year, an advisory vote on executive compensation and consideration of four shareholder proposals.
The first shareholder proposal is the request for a "Conflict of Interest Report" that requires to disclose any investments of board members that would represent a financial conflict of interest, describes the role board members play in the development of the company's policies.
Apple has been long using graphics processing unit (GPU) manufactured by Imagination Technology in its iOS devices. Currently Apple is utilizing PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU in the A5 system-on-a-chip found in the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.
Imagination has now revealed new details on the upcoming Series6 family, touting performance improvements of 20x or more for the G6400 and G6200, the first two members of the family.
According to latest data from research firm NPD, iPhone 4S is turning the tables in the tough competition between Samsung and Apple. Analyzing U.S. smartphone sales data for November and October, the NPD found out that iOS considerably increased its share in U.S. smartphone sales, while the Android platform lost significant share to Apple (via Fortune).
9to5Mac has reported a couple of hours ago that has discovered something potentially major: Siri Dictation references inside the iOS 5.1 beta 3 released today. Sonny Dickson (9to5Mac’s tipster) was looking through the iOS 5.1 beta 3 settings application on the iPad and discovered a new section in the keyboard menu called “About Privacy and Dictation.” When he opened it, as shown above, the iPad provides the user with the standard legal literature and feature information for Siri Dictation.
Dictation is not actually functional on the iPad 2 running iOS 5.1 beta 3, so perhaps this will be an iOS 5.1 launch feature for the iPad, or it may be an iPad 3-exclusive feature; a similar process to the iPhone 4S exclusively gaining Siri and Siri Dictation support in iOS 5.0. We’re also hearing this link/document is also appearing on retina iPod touches as well.
OnLive, video game streaming company, has introduced a virtual, streaming Microsoft Windows 7 Desktop app for iPad. The Desktop app, introduced at CES, will finally be available on other platforms including Apple’s Mac. The full-functional versions of Microsoft Excel, Word and PowerPoint will be available to users soon after CloudOn released its Office solution for iPad.
It looks like iPad 2 and iPhone 4S untethered jailbreak will truly be a team effort. Recently another hacker Saurik joined the team and made "some major contributions" yesterday.
Last week Pod2g announced that Planetbeing, MuscleNerd, and P0sixninja joined his effort to release an untethered iOS 5.0.1 jailbreak of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 (A5 CPU devices).
Today, MuscleNerd noted that the team has received some major contributions from saurik:
Upstream supply chain sources claim that Apple manufacturer Pegatron is believed to have received a "small volume" of orders for the third-generation iPad, which is rumored to launch in March. DigiTimes reported on Tuesday that this year Pegatron focuses on production of future generations of the iPad while Foxconn focuses on iPhone manufacturing. In that case, the company’s strategy is to decrease risk while improving the quality of its products.
"Pegatron Technology has reportedly already landed a small volume of orders for the upcoming "iPad 3" (generally called by supply chain players)," the report read, adding that Pegatron declined to comment on the rumor.
Pegatron is said to see a "significant increase" in orders when Apple will be ready to launch a so-called "iPad 4" in October with an initial volume of 7-10 million units.
According to DigiTimes sources, Apple sold 1.2 million of its thin-and-light MacBook Air over the holiday buying season. These numbers are 200,000 more than Apple achieved in the September quarter. Thanks to MacBook Air sales, Apple became the only vendor that managed to maintain its total notebook shipments from the third quarter to the fourth of calendar 2011.
DigiTimes also claims that another strong performance for the MacBook Air comes as Apple is expected to refresh the ultraportable notebook line in the coming months with Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors. Apple PC competitors are doing their best to replicate MacBook Air success, and going to launch their own notebooks based on the "Ultrabook" specification from Intel. Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba reportedly plan to price comparable models $50 to $100 below Apple's MacBook Air pricing.
ChangeWave Research yesterday released the results of its new survey of North American smartphone customers. The survey demonstrates that over a half of those looking to purchase a smartphone over the next 90 days are planning to buy an iPhone 4S. But the 54% share of future buying plans held by Apple as of December was down from 65% in September.
The late December survey looked at smart phone demand trends going forward, and finds Apple iPhone demand remains incredibly strong more than two months after the iPhone 4S release.
Among respondents planning to buy a new smart phone in the next 90 days, better than one-in-two (54%; down 11-pts) say they'll get an iPhone.
Apple has never dominated smart phone planned buying to this extent more than two months after a major new release.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California's Supreme Court has affirmed a $920,000 tax refund for Apple dating back to 1989, but it refused to hear the company's request to lower its tax bill for income earned abroad. The court upheld an appellate ruling earlier this week that returned $231,000 in taxes to Apple, along with $689,000 in interest.
However, it is only a partial win, as the Supreme Court rejected Apple's request to reevaluate tax rates on foreign-earned income. "Apple argued that its foreign dividends from that year should be attributed to income from previous years that had already been taxed," the report read.