News from category ‘Other’

Last week Apple launched the first Mac App Store section: Personal Projects, in which it displays apps for a specific creative audience. There are apps for musicians, designers, photographers and video editors to organize their projects and ideas at home. Now there are only five apps featured in each of four categories (covering things from design to music and photography). It looks like Apple had trouble finding enough quality apps to fill the space.

The  Amazon UK website placed several manuals for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion  that will be released late in July. That fact might suggest that the operating system will also launch around that time. It seems that the OS will be released right after WWDC, this year expected to be from July 5 to July 9. The cover of one of the Mac OS X Lion manuals makes reference to the already announced Launchpad and Mission Control features but also references the dock, most of which was demonstrated last year at the Lion announcement. Noteworthy to say that the release date of these guidebooks is a good indication of product launches. For example, Amazon information predicted the release date Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac.

Cult of Mac reports that Apple is working on a new notification system for iOS.

Apple’s pop-up notification system for new text messages, voicemails and the like has often been criticized as one of the weakest parts of the iOS. Notifications are intrusive, modal and often cryptic. It’s a mess.

And to build new technology into the operating system, the company is going to acquire a small iOS development firm that currently offers a notification system in the App Store. Cult of Mac suggests that it might be Boxcar, which offers an iOS application providing push notifications for a variety of services.

Recent rumors claim that Apple plans to update its MacBook Air line with Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors. The company is going to replace the Core 2 Duo chip, found in the current generation of MacBook Air, which is two generations behind Intel's processor. So it will be a significant upgrade for Apple's MacBook Air. The refreshed is expected in June, sometime during the WWDC 2011. Remind you that last fall the MacBook Air was already updated. It received a new, thinner design, and flash memory drive.

If you want to look cool to the opposite sex becasue of your gadgets, you should first buy an iPhone, than a cool MacBook, than a regular book. And only after that you can consider buying an iPad. This is becasue according to the Retrevo Gadgetology study using an iPad is lower on the list of things men and women find attractive than even reading a book.

We’re not sure why this is so, perhaps there is an element of resentment toward iPad owners among those unfortunate to be iPad-deprived. 50% of men under 35 say they find people with cool phones more interesting, 46% say they are more interested in people with cool laptops. Women under 35 on the other hand, are less impressed by people’s gadgets. Only 36% saying they find cool cell phones impressive while 38% of the same group of women like people with cool laptops more.

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Table 1
Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users in 2010 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2011)

Today Gartner revealed the results of another research, where it was found that Apple's achievements in 2010 had led to the situation when the company's competitors experienced reduced sales and eventually lost significant market shares.

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Today Mike Abramsky, who is an analyst from investment firm RBC Capital Markets, released a note to investors, where he said that Apple and Verizon will sell more than 1 million iPhones in a week after its launch. He also forecasted that in the first quarter of device availability both companies will sell approximately from 3 to 4 million handsets.

He also took available inventory and estimated pre-order numbers and found out that Apple, Best Buy and Verizon may stock out completely as soon as in the first week after the launch of the device. The analyst believes that Apple has 1-1,5 million units for the launch in its channel inventory.

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Apple recently added a small but useful tweak to the Mac App Store. Now when you are going to purchase any application, there will appear a window asking you to confirm your decision. Helpful thing for those who might already spend some money accidentally purchased an app. Now the Mac App Store doesn’t allow you to toggle the purchase confirmation off, as in the iOS App Store.

The New York Observer reports that Apple may be looking to build a retail store right in the middle of New York's Grand Central Terminal. Reliable sources tell The Observer that the company hopes to open a store in the transportation and retail hub, though it has yet to begin the long approval process necessary for opening in a city landmark. Obviously, Grand Central Terminal is prime real estate for pretty wealthy shoppers. No information about how long it would take for an Apple Store to get approved and built, is available.

Wall Street Journal reports that the next version of the iPad is now in production. The new iPad will be available through both Verizon and AT&T but not Sprint or T-Mobile, according to the newspaper.

The new device will be thinner, lighter and will come with a faster processor, more memory and a more powerful graphics processor, said the people familiar with the matter. It will have a front-facing camera for the first time for features like video-conferencing, but the resolution of the new iPad's display will be similar to the first iPad, they said.

iLounge has discovered that despite having a brand new antenna, the Verizon iPhone 4 also has antenna issues when held in a “Death Hug”. The “Death Hug” is when the phone is cupped by both hands and held in landscape orientation. A position is common when playing games or using the widescreen keyboard. The CDMA iPhone 4 still lose substantial cellular signal strength, as well as Wi-Fi signal when loading web pages.

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iFixit tore down the Verizon iPhone 4 and fond out inside a Qualcomm MDM6600 chip that supports HSPA+ data rates of up to 14.4 Mbps, as well as CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. A/Rev. B. The same chipset has the Droid Pro that supports both GSM and CDMA - which means that Apple could support GSM! Apple of course has not included a SIM-card slot in the Verizon iPhone, and thus the device can not actually be used on GSM networks. The use of this particular chip signifies that the iPhone 5 will surely be dual-mode, allowing Apple to ship one handset for both Verizon and AT&T, as well as every other carrier in every other country.

The new Windows PCs both, HP’s latest TouchSmart series, look exactly like Apple’s multitouch iMac. Some Apple’s patents over the past year suggest that the company has been experimenting with multitouch-capable iMacs with pivoting displays that pull down to a more appropriate horizontal orientation when a user wants to interact with on-screen elements directly. HP’s multitouch computers feature a pull-down design that drops the multitouch display into a horizontal position to reduce arm fatigue. Just like the Apple’s patent!

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The next-generation iPhone will be probably announced between June 5th and 9th , 2011. On these very dates Apple booked the Moscone Center in San Francisco for this year’s WWDC. Noteworthy to say that on the Moscone Center’s website the June event is listed as the “Corporate meeting”, though, such description is usual one for this Apple’s event. Apple’s next iPhone is traditionally announced at each year’s WWDC event held at the Moscone Center sometime in June. Moreover, there are two other “Corporate Meetings / Events” on the Moscone schedule: one for May 10th through 11th, and the second between June 22nd and 23rd. The May event probably is for the iPad 2 launch and the June is for something more important because it is placed closer to WWDC.

MacRumors has reported that Apple is planning to eliminate boxed software, which only takes up retail space that could be used for higher profit items such as iPad or iPhone accessories. Apple is going to distribute their software through the Mac App Store, strongly believing that the future of software sales will be digital distribution. But how Apple will deal with software which is not available through the Mac App Store? It's not clear now. Though, the idea of total elimination of boxed software also sounds unreal. Perhaps Apple will replace such software with USB software installers.  It may make more sense; nevertheless, such replacement doesn’t appear to be quick.