News from category ‘Other’

The United Kingdom wireless carriers have begun lowering their prices on the first-generation iPad in anticipation of the launch of the iPad 2 in April. Both T-Mobile and Orange are now selling the original iPad for £99 with a 24-month data contract. This £100 is a strongly indication that carriers know that their current iPad stocks will soon be in less demand. Though, there is no information on official launch of the iPad 2. But on April 3rd will be a year since the original iPad was released, the history of iOS product launches strongly suggests a late March or early April debut of the iPad 2.

A new leather case for the next-generation iPad appeared on German website Macerkopf.de. Design of the leaked case confirms all rumors about tapered edges, thinner design, rear-facing camera and flat back, but also provides some details on the actual name of the “iPad 2”. The terms iPad 2 was used by journalists and bloggers for indication of the second-generation iPad. That case comes with packaging with a simple label “For the new iPad” that might mean that iPad 2 will actually be called simply iPad.

It is also noteworthy to say that current iPhone 4 accessories don’t come with labels like “Made for the iPhone 4″. Instead, Apple went for a simple “Made for iPhone” that doesn’t point to the “iPhone 4” name in any way.

Bloomberg reports that the next-generation iPad might be delayed until June. Such delay might be caused by design changes made by Apple. The design changes that are allegedly causing delays could go from new display technology or Retina Display to rear-facing camera adoption and a Light Peak interface for the new iPad. To tell honestly, “design changes” could mean anything. Moreover, Apple usually releases new iterations of iPhone in June, so June sounds a little strange for the iPad 2. A new iPad in June would have to face the obvious competition generated by the iPhone.

Apple recently filed a new patent application that describes a new feature, “Safe Deposit Box”, which will appear in a new Mac OS X Lion. “Safe Deposit Box” will allow users to secure important files. Users will be able to drag a particular file to a safe deposit icon - files could be automatically encrypted and hidden from access - that then secure the file and also upload the secured file to the cloud for backup that means that important files would be stored beyond the home computer. Users could then access secured files through a safe deposit box window by selecting the safe deposit box icon and verifying his or her identity. It seems that this feature would be included into Lion’s Time Machine but, as usual, there is no guarantee.

Today Apple should start delivering its sealed product line of MacBooks Pro to brick-and-mortar stores of its largest European resellers, according to the information sent by the company to those resellers last weekend.

But February, 21st is also a President's Day in the US, and Apple has been avoiding launching major products on federal holidays, so the partners were told that an official announcement will follow shortly after shipments will be delivered, according to AppleInsider that in turn cites a person familiar with the matter. It was also reported that Apple has vocalized its right to cancel reseller licenses from those dealers who will tamper with the sealed shipment before the announcement will be made.

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Apple today released a fifth beta of Mac OS X 10.6.7 to developers for testing. This time Safary was added to the list of focus area to concentrate on, joining Mac App Store, AirPort, Bonjour, SMB, and Graphics Drivers that had been included in previous builds. No known issues are listed in the documentation again. Fourth beta of Mac OS X 10.6.7 was released on February 11. An estimated target date for public release of Mac OS X 10.6.7 is still unclear.

This Wednesday Boy Genius Report revealed that the launch of the Verizon iPhone 4 did not meet the expectations of Verizon and Apple. Their unknown Apple source even provided figures of sales in five Apple stores, two of which are "very, very prominent" locations. Here are the provided numbers for sales of iPhones with contracts of different carriers.

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According to ABC News, today in the evening Steve Jobs is going to meet President Obama.

Google's current CEO Eric Schimdt, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt will also attend a business leaders' event, said people familiar with the meeting. The goal of the meeting was explained by White House official.

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Apple’s recent customer survey, conducted in order to estimate satisfaction with the new MacBook Airs, contains some questions about 3G data use and connectivity. That fact allows us to suggest that Apple might be planning to add this feature on its future models of laptops.  The current MacBook Airs comes with built-in Wi-Fi module. Now Apple is interested in how often users connect to network via 3G and what type of device they use to connect to a 3G network. Obviously, this option only increases popularity of that already well-known device.

A Taiwanese news site reports that Apple is now testing three radically different prototypes of the next iPhone. The first prototype, for business, a Blackberry-like iPhone 5 with a slide-out physical QWERTY keyboard for faster typing. Another iPhone 5 prototype is said to closely resemble the current iPhone 4 with a longer-lasting battery and an 8 megapixel rear camera. If this prototype is released, the iPhone 5 will be to the iPhone 4 what the iPhone 3GS was to the iPhone 3G. Of the third prototype, nothing is known, but it may be the 4-inch iPhone 5 we posted about earlier today.

Rumors say that Apple might expand the next generation iPhone’s screen to 4 inches to better compete with Google Android.

The component suppliers noted that the production lines for Apple's next generation iPhone have begun testing, and Apple is interesting in expanding the screen size to 4-inches to support the tablet PC market as the vendor only has a 9.7-inch iPad in the market.

Though, Apple’s prototypes for testing usually have little bit different designs than real products.

Developer Steve Troughton-Smith has tweeted that customers of Three in Ireland and the UK and China Unicom in China woke up today and found that that Cydia on their devices was blocked by the carrier. So, now the jailbroken devices don’t have access to certain content from Cydia when on the Three and China Unicom networks. Though, only main page is unavailable. Moreover, Cydia is blocked over 3G networks that means that the popular store still available via Wi-Fi.

One man from Atlanta has recently visited local Walmart store to purchase an iPad, but when he came home he found it was a fake. The thing he bought was of aluminum case with Apple logo and paper homescreen under a fake glass on the front. Most probably it was a store display unit, which shouldn't be sold.

Eventually the man decided to sue Walmart, as the latter doesn't plan to refund him and blames Apple as it is them who handle operations with actual devices and store demo units.

Some local news speculates that the man could purchase a real iPad and then swap it with fake.

This week Mike Abramsky from RBC Capital Markets released another note to investors, where he said that partnership between Microsoft and Nokia can "inadvertently help" Google Android, Apple and possibly RIM.

This Friday, at conference in London Stephen Elop, who was a Microsoft's Business Division head and now is a CEO at Nokia, along with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the strategic alliance.

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New rumors about possible update of the MacBook Pro line claim that the new laptops might appear on March 1st. March 1st falls on a Tuesday which is typical for Apple's releases. Moreover the previous update of the MacBook Pro was in April 2010 and now some resellers noticed that MacBook Pro models are on tight supply, and all problems with Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, which are expected to be built in the new notebooks, were solved, so any delay will be minimal. Many also expect that some of the models may take design from the MacBook Airs.