News from category ‘Official’

Federal prosecutors in New Jersey have started investigation concerning the issue with illegal obtaining and transmitting data from users their consent or knowledge through various smartphone applications. The prosecutors are investigating whether various applications on smartphones such as the iPhone and various Android phones are not notifying users what data is being collected and why such data is required by the application. As far as we know, in the United States it’s prohibited for IT companies to collect any information about user without notice. The Wall Street Journal tested 101 applications and discovered that 56 of those transmitted the unique identification number for the device without letting users know, 47 transmitted the phones location and 5 sent a users age, gender and other personal information.

The new numbers saying how many iPad 2 units Apple received from its suppliers in March were recently revealed.  A report claims that Apple received between 2.4 million and 2.6 million of the iPad 2 units in March. Given regular stock-outs of the iPad 2 in March, Apple presumably sold through the entirety of shipments it received. That would mean Apple sold at least 2.4 million units in March. Moreover suppliers noted that sales of the iPad 2 are running faster than the first-generation device. For comparison, the first-generation iPad took 28 days to reach its first million sales. Apple has been silent about sales of the iPad 2 since the device launched in the United States early last month.

Yesterday Apple launched its new iPhone application, iAd Gallery, for showcasing the best iAd campaigns on iOS. The application consists of several iAds for iPhone, you can browse by advertiser, category or ad feature.

The iAd Gallery is a celebration of advertising, featuring iAd campaigns from some of the world’s best brands and their advertising agencies. The iAd Gallery gives you easy access to a selection of the fun and informative ads that have run in some of your favorite apps. Use the Browse feature to discover ads you haven’t seen, or to find those you want to see again. Even lets you tag your favorites to a Loved section that’s all your own.

Apple has released a TV advertisement for the new iPad 2. Let's watch:

Cydia is the well-known alternative App Store for jailbroken devices, now installed on 10-15 million iOS devices accounting for roughly 9% of the total iOS userbase worldwide, according to the latest numbers shared by Cydia’s creator and main developer, Jay Freeman aka Saurik.  1.5 million users log in Cydia on a daily basis. So it’s not surprise that such large companies like Toyota have seen  the potentialities of the Cydia and now wish to promote their brand and products via Cydia or invest into an advertising campaign.  They’re simply looking for new ways of promoting their products, for example, Scion, Toyota affiliate, already created the theme for jailbroken devices in order to advertise their new 2011 tC vehicle.

Market research firm comScore released details of the smartphone market share for the November 2010 – February 2011 period. The company surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found out that Samsung the top cellphone manufacturer with a 24.8% market share.  Apple ranked 5th place with a 7.5% share in February, up 0.9% from November 2010. As comScore notes Apple saw the “strongest gain” thanks to the release of the Verizon iPhone 4, which was the “most acquired handset in the month of February” in the United States. Though, among the mobile operating platforms Google’s Android system demonstrates the strongest growth.

69.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February 2011, up 13 percent from the preceding three-month period. Google Android grew 7.0 percentage points since November, strengthening its #1 position with 33.0 percent market share.

Yesterday, on April 3 the Apple’s iPad celebrated its first anniversary. 365 days ago the original iPad went on sale in the United States. The Apple’s “magical device” that was smaller than a laptop but bigger than a smartphone, was exactly what many people had been looking for. Moreover, the iPad created a new market of devices without physical keyboard with large Multitouch screen.  iPad for Apple was a terrific commercial success. The company sold more than 15 million devices, and over 75, 000 native applications via the App Store. The iPad became an iconic device, and now there are long lines around the globe to get the chance of buying an iPad 2.

Yesterday Apple released the second developer preview of Maс OS X Lion for testing purposes. The new Build 11A419 is not a Gold Master Candidate build, as it still contains many known issues that need to be fixed. Changes included in the update are currently unknown. It seems that the update is aimed at allowing developers to download future updates. Nevertheless, TechCrunch reports that this is indeed the "golden master candidate" build it discussed over the weekend and that the company is simply not going to push out a final release candidate until around its Worldwide Developer Conference in early June.

Yesterday Apple posted on its website an announcement saying that it will reveal its earning for the second fiscal quarter of 2011 and host a conference on April 20th. The company is expected to provide sales numbers for the iPad 2 and the Verizon iPhone, which was initially rumored to have sales “below Apple’s expectations”.  During the conference the company plans to discuss financial results of its second fiscal quarter. The conference call starts at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific after release of financial results which typically comes around 4:30 PM Eastern.

iPad 2 antenna: GSM (top), CDMA (middle), and Wi-Fi (bottom)

iFixit announced that they completed the teardowns of the GSM and CDMA models of iPad 2. Wi-Fi version of the iPad 2 was torn down on launch day. The GSM model has the micro-SIM card slot along the upper left edge to provide the device with subscriber information. On the CDMA version such information stores directly on the WWAN board inside. The CDMA iPad offer slightly different antenna configurations, it has an additional antenna and an integrated GPS receiver. What’s really curious is that the 3G version of iPad 2 has the older Infineon 337Se833 baseband chip rather than a dual-mode Gobi chip found inside the CDMA iPad 2. Maybe it was a supply issue or an engineering decision designed to cut costs a bit.

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Amazon has announced its own Amazon Cloud Drive and Amazon Cloud Player to store and distribute music, video, photo content via the cloud.  These services allow customers to securely store music in the cloud and play it on any Android phone, Android tablet, Mac or PC, wherever they are. Customers can easily upload their music library to Amazon Cloud Drive and can save any new Amazon MP3 purchases directly to their Amazon Cloud Drive for free.

In other words now Amazon is offering the following services to its customers:

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Apple has announced that the WWDC 2011 will be held on June 6-10 at the Moscone West Center in San Francisco. This year conference will be special because Apple is planning to introduce the next iOS version and preview Mac OS X Lion.

"At this year’s conference we are going to unveil the future of iOS and Mac OS,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “If you are an iOS or Mac OS X software developer, this is the event that you do not want to miss.”

The conference itself will be home to over 100 technical sessions and 1000 Apple engineers. Here are the specifics from Apple:

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Apple seems really dislike everything that helps users to jailbreak their devices. This time Apple blocked access to the Cydia website via Wi-Fi network in Apple retail stores. If you try accessing Cydia on a device connected to one of Apple’s Wi-Fi hotspots, you’ll be surprised to see Apple’s website load instead. As far as we remember, last year federal regulators said that it was no longer illegal to hack or jailbreak an iPhone. However, Apple doesn’t care about that and continues its “war” with jailbroken devices.

Recently Apple released the iOS 4.3.1. The iOS 4.3.1 is available for the GSM iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 2, iPad, and the third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. The update doesn’t available for the CDMA iPhone for Verizon. The build has number 8G4 and contains the following improvements and bugs fixes:

• Fixes an occasional graphics glitch on iPod touch (4th generation);
• Resolves bugs related to activating and connecting to some cellular networks;
• Fixes image flicker when using Apple Digital AV Adapter with some TVs;
• Resolves an issue authenticating with some enterprise web services.

You can download iOS 4.3.1 here.

Apple is continuing their new "if you don’t have an iPhone…" campaign, this time showcasing Apple’s iOS social gaming platform Game Center.

If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have the largest selection of games. And you don't have Game Center, that let's you play with your friends wherever they are.