News tagged ‘Apple’
Qualcomm Announced Commercial Availability of 4G LTE Gobi 4000 Chips
Qualcomm has
Samsung's Patent Cases Against Apple to Ramp Up in 2012
Bloomberg reports that Samsung has won an early trial date of March 2012 for its case against Apple in Australia. Noteworthy, the judge accepted that proposal over Apple's opposition that requested a trial date of August 2012.
Australia Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett today ordered that a trial on Samsung’s claims be held in March. Cupertino, California-based Apple had opposed an early trial, with its lawyer Stephen Burley saying the company needed more time to prepare the case and favored a hearing in August.
Samsung, the world’s biggest maker of smartphones last quarter, dropped its bid for a temporary injunction barring Apple from selling the iPhones and iPad 2 and instead is seeking an early hearing. The Australian trial will be a prelude for Samsung in its U.S. case before the International Trade Commission on similar claims, which Burley said will be heard in May and June.
With the trial set for March 2012 Samsung may also add to its case against Apple new devices such as iPad 3 that is rumored to be released early 2012. The case is currently targeting the iPhone 4, iPad 2, and iPhone 3GS in Australia.
Android Tops 50% Share of Smartphone Sales, But Apple Still Dominating Profits
According to the results of worldwide mobile phone sales for the third quarter of 2011, released yesterday by the research firm Gartner, Apple's share of the total mobile phone market came in at 3.9% for the quarter, down from 4.6% in the previous quarter. However, Apple still takes fourth place behind Nokia, Samsung, and LG.
Apple shipped 17 million iPhones, an annual increase of 21 percent, but down nearly 3 million units from the second quarter of 2011 because of Apple's new device announcement in October. Gartner believes Apple will bounce back in the fourth quarter because of its strongest ever preorders for the iPhone 4S in the first weekend after its announcement. Markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China are becoming more important to Apple, representing 16 percent of overall sales and showing that the iPhone has a place in emerging markets, especially now that the 3GS and 4 have received price cuts.
iOS share slipped from an 18.2% in the second quarter to 15.0% in the third quarter. Android and Nokia with its soon-to-be-defunct Symbian platform are now leaders of the market. During the quarter, Android’s share increased by 52.5%, more than doubling year-over-year.
But Android dominates the worldwide smartphone market by units while Apple by profit. Some researches show that Apple now takes more than a half of the industry's profits.
Developers crack Siri’s security protocol to enable it with any device
A team of developers called Applidium has announced that they managed to investigate how Siri, exclusive service available on the iPhone 4S, talks to Apple servers. Applidium notes that iPhone 4S uses standard HTTPS network requests to communicate with Apple's servers, but sends data using an "ACE" command rather than regular web GET requests. Moreover, each Siri request involves a unique identifier based on UUID. Such identifier prevents access of unauthorized devices to Apple’s servers. User’s requests are compressed with the Speex audio codec optimized for VoIP. Applidium discovered that iPhone, to provide Siri’s voice recognition, should support at least Siri's basic voice recognition features, but Apple doesn’t plan to port such capabilities on earlier iOS 5 models.
So far, Applidium's investigation has revealed that Siri packages requests in compressed property lists, but further exploration of the protocol is hampered by a number of issues, including the complexity of requests, the fact that they are tied to a hardware key, and that they are subject to change.
Noteworthy, Apple could at any time stop supporting a particular hardware identifier, if it is suspected of being used to exploit its servers, and change way of data transmitting.
Applidium says "anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri! Or use Siri on an iPad!" But you will need a real unique user key of an actual iPhone 4S.
Step-by-step Tutorial: How to (Un)Tether Jailbreak and Unlock iPhone 3GS Using RedSn0w 0.9.9b8 (Windows) [iOS 5.0.1]
This is step-by-step instructions on how to perform jailbreak and unlock of your iPhone 3GS on iOS 5.0.1 firmware using RedSn0w 0.9.9b8 for Windows.
If you need unlock Redsn0w will provide you with choice of updating your baseband to 06.15. If you have new iPhone 3GS that was made after 35 week of 2011 upgrading modem will not help to unlock.
Important: official ultrasn0w unlock is not yet ready for iOS 5.0.1. You will need to wait for ultrasn0w update. For now only jailbreak! There is a workaround described here.
Important: If you need unlock and have 05.13 baseband or lower - do not update to Apple firmware, use RedSn0w or Sn0wBreeze to create custom firmware!
Tethered jailbreak means that each time you restart your device you will need to connect it to a computer and run redsn0w.
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Step-by-step Tutorial: How to Tether Jailbreak iPhone 4 Using RedSn0w 0.9.9b8 (Windows) [iOS 5.0.1]
This is step-by-step instructions on how to perform tethered jailbreak of your iPhone 4 on iOS 5.0.1 firmware using RedSn0w 0.9.9b8 for Windows.
Tethered jailbreak means that each time you restart your device you will need to connect it to a computer and run redsn0w.
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Foursquare Offers New iPad Experience In Its Web App
Following the moves of Financial Times, Fortune and other companies taking advantages of using modern web technologies, a location based social network FourSquare is also focusing on using HTML5. For majority of the social apps found in the App Store, an elaborate HTML5 web app can work just as well as native apps.
LinkedIn Announced a CardMunch iPhone App For Converting Business Cards Into Digital Form
Smartphones can be useful for doing many things, especially for management of personal information. If you regularly deal with business cards, you likely found specialized applications that allow you to effortlessly scan any business card to create a new contact entry on your device. The App Store has dozens of such apps as iPhone’s
Apple to revamp the Genius Bar with iPads, drop the Macs
Typically geniuses staying behind Genius bars use MacBook Pros to provide customers with help and support, facilitate repairs, look up customer information, and order new parts. But last week some Apple retail stores replaced MacBook Pros with iPads that can mirror functionality of the laptops.
These iPads will obviously make the Genius’ job easier and provide a much better experience for Apple’s customers that are looking for repairs and/or help from the Genius Bar. At least one reason for the iPad is that Apple’s tablet is portable so that geniuses can help customers anywhere in a store. So use of the iPads may transform Genius bar from a place in a store where you may receive quality help to the service that you can get anywhere in a store.
Using MacBook Pros, Apple has been limited to fitting only a few the computers at Genius Bars. The iPad allows Apple to serve more people at one time at Genius bar. Moreover, Apple has already developed a system called MobileGenius, which runs on iOS devices and provides the same services as MacBook Pros.
LG And Apple Are In Talks For 7.35-Inch iPad mini Displays
According to rumors from Apple’s back office, the company is developing a larger iPhone display and a smaller display for iPad. An insider
Apple Becomes Top Five PC Vendor in Western Europe
Research firm Gartner recently released its estimates of PC sales in Western Europe for the third quarter of 2011. Despite the overall decline of 11.4% for the market, Apple’s sales in Western Europe were up 19.6% year-over-year. In mobile PC market Apple showed the most significant performance of 28%, comparing to the last year performance.
Gartner especially paid attention to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, noting that in the UK Apple became one of five top vendors. Apple’s sales here increased up to 21.8% year-over-year. So now the company takes the fourth place in the United Kingdom with 7.8% of the market. Apple’s rival Samsung goes slightly behind with 7.3% of the market, despite the fact that Samsung’s growth there was 39%.
As for the U.S. PC market, Apple took 12.9% for the third quarter, demonstration significant increase in sales both quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year.
Apple's October Mac Sales Lining Up for Record 5 Million+ Units in Quarter
According to a new research carried out by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Apple’s October Mac sales in the United States were up 19% year-over-year. That means that the company could reach analysts’ expectations and sell 5.1-5.3 million units for the full quarter.
Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray shared the latest domestic sales data from the NPD Group on Monday, which showed Mac sales up 19 percent year over year in the month of October. As sales continue to pick up leading up to Christmas, he sees Apple selling between 5.1 million and 5.3 million Macs during the December quarter.
Those numbers would represent year over year growth of between 23 percent and 28 percent. Consensus on Wall Street has called for Apple to report sales of about 5.2 million Macs during the quarter.
Last quarter Apple managed to sell 4.89 million Macs. These very numbers spurred analysts to push their Mac estimates to over 5 million.
Unfortunately, the iPod shipments in the United States are continuing to decrease. In October the iPod sales were down about 18% year-over-year. That might be connected with the fact that more and more consumers prefer to use smartphones for portable music needs rather than music players. Nevertheless such decline is smaller when it was expected. Analysts predicted a 20% drop for this quarter. That is why Munster suggests that Apple may sell approximately 16 million music players in for the full quarter.
Apple's 15" Ultra-Thin Notebook Due in March 2012
Digitimes is now reporting that Apple have ordered a small number of components for a 15-inch ultra-thin notebook that Apple is said to start shipping this month with mass shipments set for the beginning of March 2012.
Upstream suppliers of Apple have recently started shipping a small volume of components for a 15-inch ultra-thin notebook model from Apple in November and the device could be either MacBook Air or just a thinner MacBook Pro. The new MacBook is expected to appear as early as the second quarter of 2012, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.
It remains unclear whether the final version of the 15-inch laptop will be marketed as a MacBook Air or a MacBook Pro. Rumors related to the new Apple’s notebook have been circulating since July, when we reported that Apple was finishing up work on a new ultra-thin laptop, and at the end of October it was rumored that Apple was finishing a “test phase” and the new machine was nearing the production. The Mac maker is also rumored to be developing a 17-inch ultraportable MacBook, though such a machine was not mentioned in Tuesday's report.
Back in February, Appleinsider reported that according to people familiar with the matter, Apple appears poised to move its MacBook Pro lines more toward the MacBook Air next year. So it is likely that the new Apple’s notebook will feature a SSD rather than HDD, similar to current MacBook Air models, and would forego an optical drive.
Step-by-step Tutorial: How to Tether Jailbreak iPod Touch 4G Using Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 (Windows) [iOS 5.0.1]
Using this tutorial you will be able to create a custom firmware and tether jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 running on iPod Touch 4G. This tutorial uses Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 for Windows.
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Step-by-step Tutorial: How to Tether Jailbreak iPod Touch 3G Using Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 (Windows) [iOS 5.0.1]
Using this tutorial you will be able to create a custom firmware and tether jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 running on iPod Touch 3G. This tutorial uses Sn0wBreeze 2.8b11 for Windows.