According to a survey from retail analysis company RetailSails, Apple is the best in retail sales per square foot among 160 top U.S. retailers. As the table above shows, Apple is nearly two times better than its closest competitor Tiffany & Co, and nearly five times better than its closest technology related competitor GameStop. It is impressive that Apple managed to become the best having much less experience ( ten years) than most of its competitors included in the survey.

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According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. third largest carrier Sprint will offer iPhone 5 this year. Also the report says that Sprint, AT&T and Verizon will release the iPhone 5 simultaneously in "mid-October". At the same time Sprint will also offer the iPhone 4, as a person familiar with the matter said. AT&T has exclusively carried iPhone in the U.S. until Apple launched a CDMA iPhone 4 for Verizon earlier this year.

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This Saturday Apple plans to open other three stores, continuing its push to open a total of 30 new stores between July and September. Two stores will locate in the United States and one – in France.

• Carré Sénart (Paris, France): The store is Apple's fourth in the Paris and eighth overall in France.
• Northlake Mall (Charlotte, North Carolina): The store will be the second in Charlotte and fifth in North Carolina.
• The Promenade at Chenal (Little Rock, Arkansas): The new store is Apple's first in Arkansas.

After the opening will leave just six states (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming) without Apple Stores.

The most long-standing rumors regarding Apple's future products are rumors about television sets. The Australian site Smarthouse reported last month that Apple was in discussions with LG about producing a panel for a 55-inch TV based on OLED technology.

The Korea Times now reports that these rumors are groundless.

“It’s true that Apple has keen interest in TV, allowing users to stream music, videos and TV shows via iTunes, though that needs some iPhone and iPad integration, however, Apple is still pessimistic about using OLED displays,” said one source.

“Because Apple is worried over higher costs and technology-related issues linking to large-sized OLED displays, it is groundless that Apple has asked LG Display to supply its OLED screens for its upcoming televisions,” added the source.

Sources also added that Apple is likely to stick with more proven LCD technologies for any such television products.

“Apple has no interest in using OLED screens on its popular devices. The upcoming iPad 3 will also adopt picture quality-enhanced LCD screens, while the next iPhone will follow suit. Three or four more years will be needed to see OLED-embedded digital devices from Apple,” said a top-level executive from one of Apple’s suppliers.

iH8Sn0w released Sn0wBreeze 2.8b6, which adds support for the latest iOS 5 beta 6 firmware.

Sn0wBreeze is a quite useful jailbreak utility. It creates custom firmware and allows users to preserve baseband for unlock. This new version also adds hacktivation and removes UDID developer check. This means that you can try iOS 5 without developer account from Apple.

You can download Sn0wBreeze 2.8b6 for Windows here.

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Maybe you have already encountered a term “prior art”. This term is used in patent law and means all information that was disclosed to the public about an invention before a date of filing application. So, if an invention has already been described in prior art, the patent will not be valid. Samsung decided to make use of this law and has put forward a sci-fi argument in its legal dispute with Apple. It has gone so far as to cite a movie ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ by Stanley Kubrick as prior art against iPad.

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Apple TV 2G jailbreak utility Seas0nPass has been updated to support an un-tethered jailbreak of the latest firmware 4.3 build 8F455. Seas0nPass is one of the simplest jailbreaking tools available for the AppleTV, and is the first to support the new 4.3 build 8F455 software version.

You can download Seas0nPass here: Mac [10.6 or later] | Windows [XP or later].

You can read our step-by-step tutorial for Apple TV 2G jailbreak using Seas0nPass here.

At least one developer reportedly has found evidences confirming fact that Apple is testing the dual-mode iPhone 5, supporting both GSM and CDMA in one phone, against current App Store apps.

The logs show that the app has been briefly tested by a handful of people using what is almost certainly an iPhone 5, evidently running iOS 5, sporting two distinct sets of mobile network codes (MNC) / mobile country codes (MCC). Those codes can be used to uniquely identify mobile carriers.

Sure enough, some registrations for the app – which the developer also asked not to be named – were logged from a new Apple device, using the MNC/MCC codes from both Verizon and AT&T.

The iPhone Dev-Team released RedSn0w 0.9.8b6 that supports tethered jailbreak for the most recent iOS 5 beta 6:

We've released redsn0w 0.9.8b6 to jailbreak iOS5 beta6 (point it directly at the beta6 IPSW).

Two important notes about this version:
(1) Please let your device boot normally to IOS5b6 and do a clean shutdown (slide to power off) before jailbreaking.

(2) Boot logos have intentionally been disabled for now, so you'll see a black screen on tethered boots (you can re-enable logos or verbose boot with command-line options if you really want them back).

Due increased sensitivity to abrupt filesystem shutdowns in IOS5b6, it's very important that you do a clean shutdown before running redsn0w.

RedSn0w 0.9.8b6 supports tethered jailbreak for iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 3G, iPod Touch 4G and iPad 1.

You can download RedSn0w 0.9.8b6 for Windows and Mac OS here.

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Research firm NPD has recently announced results of its Mobile Phone Track report for the second quarter of 2011. Android is still leading the U.S. smartphone with 52% of the market; Apple's iPhone has 29% while BlackBerry devices only 11% of the market. But the 14-month-old iPhone 4 is continuing to lead the market in sales, and the 8 GB 26-month-old iPhone 3GS takes the second place, perhaps, because its that price now dropped to $49.

Here are the top five best-selling phones during Q2, via NPD’s Mobile Phone Track service:

1. Apple iPhone 4
2. Apple iPhone 3GS
3. HTC EVO 4G
4. HTC Inspire 4G
5. Samsung INTENSITYII

iOS 5 beta 6 has been released recently. It is available only for Apple registered developers. But you can try it too. Remember that you do it at your own risk. Remember your UDID must be registered at Apple in order to activate your device after install.

You can download new iOS 5 beta 6 firmware and iTunes 10.5 beta 6 using the links below:

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Reuters reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that Apple is preparing to launch a cheaper 8GB version of the iPhone 4 this fall.

A Korean company is currently manufacturing the flash drive for the 8GB iPhone 4, as one of the sources said on Tuesday, refusing to name the company. At present, Apple sources its flash drives from South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Japan's Toshiba.

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Yesterday Apple released iTunes 10.4.1 with bugs fixed, including media keys on third-party keyboards, artwork addition, movie purchasing, responsiveness, and VoiceOver.

iTunes 10.4.1 provides a number of improvements, including:

• Fixes a problem where the media keys on some third-party keyboards work inconsistently with iTunes
• Addresses issues with adding artwork to songs and videos
• Resolves an issue which may cause iTunes to become unresponsive when purchasing an HD movie
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may take longer than expected to open after waking your Mac from sleep
• Addresses issues with VoiceOver support

Japanese site Macotakara reports that Apple may be planning on unveiling an all new Mac that is “absolutely different from current products” and potentially set for introduction by the end of the year. The site also claims that  the product will be so different from current product lines that it will indeed be given a new name.

According to anonymous source in Asian supplier company, Apple seems to be preparing project to release new Mac line-up which is absolutely different from current products until end of this year.

Though this source does not told in detail, this new Mac line seems to be clearly different products from current ones, so new product name could be given.

It’s a possibility these are the ultra-thin air-like MacBooks, or perhaps Apple is designing an all new product that will see a platform switch from Intel to ARM processors.

Frank Shaw, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President, said that now industry is in a “PC plus” era and rejected that “Post-PC” era has begun.

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