News from category ‘Other’

Four new job offers have been posted on Apple's site and reveal that company is looking for a software engineers to work on its navigation software.

All four job listings offer a full-time job in Santa Clara Valley, California. The description explains that Apple wants "outstanding engineers to deliver the next generation of Apple products".

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Yesterday Peter Kafka from MediaMemo had reported that according to multiple sources the News Corp's newspaper Daily will be launched on Jan. 17. He added that previously the launch date was shifted several times, but the reported date is a "much safer bet".

Rumor has it the Daily will cost only $0.99 per week and will be updated every day. The publication will be only available for Apple's iPad and include multimedia features like "some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about".

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Another Apple's patent application had been unveiled this week by the U.S. Patent and trademark Office. It is entitled "User Interface for Media Playback" and describes a new UI for browsing music albums on the iPhone and other touch-based devices.

The technology uses the idea of Cover Flow interface, which allows users to flip through album art and select the desired music, but now albums are proposed to be moved in a spiral form, not horizontally.

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Although Apple blocked the producer of a lifelike action figure of Apple CEO Steve Jobs from selling it, one of the figures was sold for $2,500 on eBay. In November the producer quickly sold out the initial run of 300 limited edition figures. Some days later Apple sent a cease-and-desist email to the website, citing California Civil Code Section 3344, "which prohibits the use of any person’s name, photograph or likeness in a product without that person’s prior consent." Now we see that one of the figures was listed for sale for a starting price of $1,000, but eventually sold for the $2,500.

The Japanese newspaper Nikkei reports that Apple and Sharp are partnering to build a 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) plant in China to produce LCD displays for the iPhone. “Sharp Corp will spend about 100 billion yen to build production lines for small and midsize LCDs, with Apple Inc slated to purchase bulk of the output for its iPhone”, - the newspaper said. Mass production is expected to begin in the second half of 2012.

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Word Lens is an eye-catching iOS app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It is based on an augmented reality technology and offers real time translation of text. The only thing you need to do is just to point your device's video camera at a sign and the program translates and superimposes the translated text onto the video in real time. Now available only language packs for Spanish to English and English to Spanish for $4.99 each. More language packs are in the works. Text is translated on a word-by-word basis, so context is not taken into account.

Apple may refresh an iWork pretty soon. Some Apple Store Employees report that “there is no iWork on the shelves, no iWork in stock and none on the way”.  A quick check to Amazon shows none in stock there. Family packs are only available. Meanwhile, Apple's online store auto-completes "iWork 11" as a possibility when searching for "iWork". Perhaps, Apple is planning on launching iWork '11 alongside the Mac App Store. Apple promised to launch the Mac App Store on January 6th, 2011.

This week Time magazine has published its annual "Person of the Year" issue with Mark Zuckerberg posted on its cover. Apple's CEO didn't receive that title though it was named among "People Who Mattered":

"With each passing year Steve Jobs and his sleek Apple products not only succeed in impressing the techiest of tech addicts, they also manage to create a whole new batch of gadget enthusiasts.

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According to MacNN, yesterday The Ministry of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages announced that it had granted formal approval of the iBookstore. Its Minister James Moore positively commented this decision:

"Our Government is committed to strengthening Canada's economy through all its sectors, especially arts and culture. Apple has demonstrated how iBookstore Canada represents new opportunities for Canadian authors and publishers, and I have determined that this investment will be of net benefit to Canada."

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Another Gene Munster's research note reveals that Apple will release the CDMA-enabled iPhone in early to mid 2011, ad 2,5 million of these devices will be sold by Verizon in 2011.

Piper Jaffray, where Munster works at, assumed that Verizon will sell approximately 25 million smartphones in the next year, and 36% of it (or 9 million) will be Apple's iPhones. But the majority of those who will buy CDMA-enabled iPhone occurs to be the switchers from AT&T, and that's why only 2.5 million Apple's phones will be sold by Verizon.

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According to the Wall Street Journal, yesterday the Japan Book Publishers Association, the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan, the Japan Magazine Publishers Association and Digital Comic Association issued a joint press release, where Apple's content is called as infringing and "illegal". Particularly, the works well-known Japanese authors Keigo Higashimo and Haruki Murakami were mentioned as illegally scanned and distributed via the App Store.

“The associations we represent believe that Apple bears grave responsibility for this problem".

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Yesterday Apple released a software update 4.2.1 for the second-generation Apple TV to address resolution problem caused by incorrect displaying of content and downloading issue that may cause a movie o TV show to be re-downloaded.  Some users noticed that the update might resolve also flickering issue. Some of users used a HDMI to DVI cable to watch the Apple TV content and after the update, the flickering was gone. Though, other users found that the update doesn't resolve their issues.

The U.S. Army seems to indent to equip its soldiers with a smartphone making it a standard piece of soldier’s equipment. Soldiers will be given opportunity to choose between Apple's iPhone or one running Google Android. The Army is even going to pay the soldier's monthly phone bill. Army – issued smartphones are already used for different purposes but now it id interested in deploying handsets in war zones. The idea is to make it easier for soldiers to access data and receive updates on the go, no matter where they are.

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Sencha, which is a web application developer, has recently compared Android-based Samsung Galaxy Tab and Apple's iPad and made a conclusion that a Samsung's tablet is "a little bit of disappointment".

As Sencha develops different JavaScript frameworks that enable developers to creating rich mobile apps for Android and iOS devices built from web standards, the company is interested to know how good actual products perform and support HTML5 and related web standards. The latter include overall JavaScript performance, embedded multimedia playback, Web Sockets, Canvas animations, SVG and advanced CSS3 transforms. Here are the results received by Sencha in their tests of Galaxy Tab and iPad:

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This week Google has released a new version of its client app for Android Market, which will work on any smartphone running Android OS 1.6 or higher.

The company aims to facilitate the process of discovering new software and its purchase. That's why new Android Market will have a Cover Flow-like style of app listings and include new categories like Widgets and Live Wallpapers, as currently the catalog is filled pretty much with these kinds of software. Besides that, app pages will now have more info and links to related content.

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