News tagged ‘Time’

According to research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, demand for Apple’s iPhone 4S helped the company to push it market share in the UK to nearly 43% in October. Apple's U.K. market share increased 2.8 percent to 27.8 percent year-to-year and it is the first time since late 2010 when Apple’s sales beat Android-based handset sales in the region.

"Apple took a whopping 42.8 percent share of all smartphone sales, giving it a significant lead over Android - a feat many thought was impossible," said Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at the firm.

About 75 percent of British customers who purchased an iPhone 4S in October already own a previous version of the device, with 14 percent upgrading from last year's iPhone 4. Sunnebo claims that the main driver for the sales of the iPhone 4S in the U.K. was the existing iPhone users. The second driver is rather long period between the launches of the iPhone 4 and 4S.

Digitimes reports that Apple plans to update its MacBook Air line in the first quarter of 2012. The company is expected to launch a new 15-inch model alongside refreshed 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch models with Intel's Ivy Bridge processors that will bring significant graphics improvements and new OpenCL support.

Apple reportedly is set to launch its new MacBook Air series notebooks with panel sizes of 11.6-inch, 13.3-inch and 15-inch in the first quarter of 2012 and will directly compete against ultrabooks from PC brand vendors, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

The sources noted that related upstream players have already started pilot production of the MacBook Air models and will add a 15-inch model into the product line to expand its reach in the ultra-thin notebook market.

Apple is likely to provide discounts on the current MacBook Air models ahead of the debut of the new models.

First rumors about new ultra-thin 15-inch notebook from Apple appeared in July. Digitimes also reported that component production for the notebook had begun with an eye toward a second quarter 2012 launch.

Local residents view Apple's massive data center in Maiden, N.C. as “disappointing development” because it seems not to answer their expectations, bringing just 50 full-time jobs to the area with double-digit unemployment rates. Residents are rather skeptical about Apple’s positive influence on the city, and thinking that the company has done nothing to improve the situation.

But, at the least, two residents, Donnie and Kathy Fulbrigh, have benefitted significantly from Apple's venture. Apple paid $1.7 million for their one-acre property. At first they didn’t want to sell their property, but Apple offered them to set their own price, and they finally gave up. As for others, the situation hasn’t changed for them. It still very hard to run a business here.

The North Carolina legislature amended its corporate income tax law in order to offer Apple tax breaks of up to $46 million over the next 10 years to build its data center in the state. According to the report, local authorities have discounted property taxes by 50 percent and personal taxes by 85 percent. In exchange, Apple has created 50 full-time jobs and is also expected to create 250 "indirect contracting jobs."

Apple has posted a new iPod touch ad entitled, 'Share The Fun'.

With iMessage, Game Center, FaceTime and more, you can share the fun on iPod Touch

Take a look:

Semi-tethered jailbreak is already available for some devices for both iOS 5 and iOS 5.0.1. But we all want untethered jailbreak and we want jailbreak for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. So why not help hackers to find new exploits and vulnerabilities?

The Chronic Dev-Team has a released a tool to collect crash reports from iOS devices in order to find vulnerabilities that could lead to an untethered jailbreak.

The idea is very simple. When your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch crashes it sends data to Apple (you can turn it this off though). Apple uses these reports to update iOS in the future. By the way, it also uses them to fix exploits found by jailbreakers. P0sixninja says that Apple closed several exploits they have found in IOS 5 beta before the final version of the software was released.

In order to find more vulnerabilities as fast as possible, the team has developed a tool which will copy the crash reports from your device and analyze them to locate potential exploits. The tool will also remove the crash reports from your device and modify your iTunes installation to prevent uploading of that diagnostic information to Apple.

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1,000 workers at a factory in southern China that provides IBM and Apple with components, including keyboards, went on strike this week complaining of overtime requirements. The employees blocked the local highway during the strike to attract public attention to nightly overtime demands, common workplace injuries, layoffs of older workers, lack of benefits and verbal abuse by managers. The strike was halted after the company officials agreed to reduce overtime at the plant.

In a statement regarding the issue, the rights group called on Apple to "take responsibility, as there are more than 300 workers working on the Apple keyboard assembly line."

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Last week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office opened an exhibition devoted to Steve Jobs. The exhibition honoring Apple’s co-founder includes 30 giant iPhone-like display panels that demonstrate the front pages from over 300 patents that bear Jobs' name as inventor or co-inventor.

“This exhibit commemorates the far-reaching impact of Steve Jobs’ entrepreneurship and innovation on our daily lives,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos. “His patents and trademarks provide a striking example of the importance intellectual property plays in the global marketplace.”

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Rumors about Apple’s plans to implement high-resolution 2048x1536 Retina display to the next-generation iPad have been circulating for some time now. According to different sources, the new iPad 3 is required two light bars in order to manage the much higher resolution, so that it will be 0.7 mm thicker than the iPad 2.

Some analysts predict that Apple will continue using in-plane switching (IPS) technology for the new display. But Jeffries analyst Peter Misek together with Forbes suppose that Apple is not going to use IPS on the iPad 3, and seeks new ways and technology to produce the iPad 3 with a thinner and lower-power design.

Also, we believe that Apple and Sharp together have a modified IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) technology to achieve 330 dpi, which is sufficient for an HD display while not using IPS nor having to include dual-bar LED backlighting. In our view, this should lead to several design advantages, namely the device can be thinner, battery life should be longer, and the overall experience for users should be meaningfully improved.

According to Bloomberg’s report, Apple launched a new class of offerings in App Store, by allowing game development studio Big Fish Games to offer its titles to iPad users on a subscription basis. Such offerings could be a new revenue stream for game publishers and new option for users, which was earlier available only for digital publications. Bloomberg reports:

“Big Fish Games, a Seattle-based game publisher, won approval from Apple to become the first to offer users access to dozens of titles for $6.99 a month. Until now, games have only been available one at a time, requiring users to download individual applications”.

The option will be available through a dedicated Big Fish app where subscribers can gain unlimited access to such games as “Mahjong Towers” and “Mystery Case Files” series.

Games that can be accessed through the subscription service are streamed to an iPad from Big Fish Games’ data centers and initially they will require Wi-Fi access to be played.

The standard subscription package from the game publisher will be offered for $4.99 a month, increasing to $6.99 monthly subscription early next year when more titles can be accessed through the app. Also the company will offer a free ad-supported option to play up to 30 minutes per day.

The famous author of Steve Jobs’ authorized biography, Walter Isaacson, has revealed in his recent interview that the passed away Apple’s co-founder had free things he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography. The most difficult for him was television with its "complicated remote controls." Isaacson said that Jobs said he felt there was "no reason" for TVs to be so difficult to use and he claimed he had managed to “crack” the secret of a simple HDTV.

That has led to a new speculation and rumors that Apple is planning to release a television set at some point in the near future. The New York Times said last month that Apple is expected to release a TV with Siri voice recognition functionality by the year 2013.

Isaacson also noted that Jobs was interested in changing textbooks and photography. Apple has already started implementation of an iPad in schools to replace standard printed textbooks and offered to use the iPad as a device for taking pictures. Apple believes that digital textbooks are more convenient and the iPad will improve quality of pictures.

The first smartphone with Ice Cream Sandwich, Galaxy Nexus, was released in the UK this week (launch in U.S. coming soon) and website AnandTech has benchmarked the new Galaxy Nexus vs. iPhone 4S.

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SemiAccurate claims that Apple developed a MacBook with AMD Fusion Llano processor last spring, but postponed mass production because of some issues. According to report, such notebook running AMD's low-power Llano chip was Apple’s original “plan A” while the current thin-and-light MacBook Air is actually the company's "plan B”.  Charlie Demerjian, the author of the report, believes that a machine with AMD processor would have lost some CPU power in exchange for "many times the GPU power."

The current-generation MacBook Air has Intel Sandy Bridge chip. Apple ultimately went with Intel because AMD was having trouble producing enough of the "premium" parts to meet demand for a refreshed MacBook Air, though multiple sources reportedly told the publication that supply was "only one of the reasons" that Apple decided not to release move forward with the machine. As far as we know, Apple is still interested in AMD processors. "Sources indicate that ARM CPUs are still on tap as soon as the 64-bit chips show up," Demerjian wrote.

Moreover, last year AMD and Apple representatives had met to discuss implementation of AMD processors into Apple’s Macs. It seems that Apple is indeed planning to begin adopting AMD's processors within the next few years.

According to FOSS Patent’s report, a pending legal case in Germany could have a profound effect on Apple with a possible injunction barring the iCloud service in this country over violation of Motorola Mobility patent.

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Popular Science Magazine has once again declared its 2011 Best of What’s New Awards , and it is not so surprisingly that this year’s top three places in the category “Computing” are all technologies found in the latest lineup of Macs.

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Digitimes reports that Apple has reduced its fourth-quarter orders for iPad 2 display panels. That might mean that Apple has already started preparing for the launch of the iPad 3 early next year. The second reason might be the reduction of customers’ interest in the device.  Moreover, Apple stockpiled components for an extra 4-5 million iPad 2 units, so that allows it to reduce its orders for the fourth quarter.

Sales of iPads at the end market totaled 11.12 million units in the third quarter of 2011, according to data released by Apple. However, inventories of parts and components prepared by the makers in the supply chain for the production of iPad 2 in the quarter are sufficient for the production of 15-16 million iPads, leaving a stockpile of 4-5 million units of iPad 2 in the supply chain, the sources noted.

Digitimes also notes that the reason for stockpiling of iPad 2 components may be preparation for the iPad 3 launch set for the beginning of 2012, suggesting that  suppliers of both display and touch panels for the iPad 3 have either already begun or will soon begin shipments to Apple.

While Apple is adjusting panel inventory for iPad 2, Samsung and Sharp already began shipping panels for the next-generation iPads to Apple in October, and Taiwan-based touch panel makers TPK Holding and Wintek will begin to ship touch panels for the new iPads to the supply chain in November-December, the sources noted.