News from category ‘Other’

A number of iPhone 3G owners are reporting the appearance of hairline cracks in the plastic finish of the phone. According to threads on Mac Rumors forums and Apple’s Discussion Boards, the cracks appear to be manifesting mostly in the white 16GB version of the phone; however, Engadget notes this may be due to the fact that the cracks are easier to see in the white model than the black (see photo below). Importantly, iPhone owners experiencing the issue report that the cracks appear without the device being dropped, sat on, or misused in any way. It is unclear what might be causing the problem, or how widespread the issue is.

The big winners in Apple's new online App Store are gamemakers, who dominated sales in the week since the new iPhone 3G hit stores.

Seven of the top 10 paid applications, including the top five, were video games, led by Sega's Super Monkey Ball, a rolling racing game. Even among the free iPhone and iPod Touch applications, which include popular social networking sites like Facebook and the Internet radio service Pandora, the top title is Tap Tap Revenge, a rhythm game similar to Guitar Hero.

These 10 titles sold the best in the iTunes App Store:

1. Super Monkey Ball (Sega) games

2. Texas Hold 'Em (Apple) games

3. Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3-D (Vivendi) games

4. Enigmo (Pangea Studios) games
5. Tetris (EA) games

6. iBeer (Hotrix) entertainment

7. Recorder (Retronyms) utilities

8. Solitaire (MobilityWare) games

9. Units (Crossword Solutions) utilities

10. Scrabble (EA) games

There is a chance that copy/paste feature will be implemented in firmware version 2.1. Apple already mentioned that copy/paste will be, the question was when.

Some curious developer found the following within the English-language 'Localizable.strings' file located in 'System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/WebKit.framework':

Therefore, it's unclear whether those references represent the groundwork for upcoming iPhone features or simply exists as carryovers from the WebKit frameworks used to develop applications for the Mac and Windows PCs.

Apple is already providing developers with a new iPhone firmware beta with enhanced location-finding that could lead to true navigation as well as the roots for background push services.

The one of new features is update to core Location - it can now recognize the cardinal direction of an iPhone with GPS as well as its velocity, both of which are ingredients necessary to providing turn-by-turn directions. The additions confirm statements recently by Apple's Greg Joswiak, who rejected earlier claims that iPhone 3G's GPS antenna wasn't powerful enough to handle navigation and in turn explained that "complicated issues" are holding the device back from serving as a true navigation unit.

Apple is also implementing a rough version of its background push notification service in the 2.1 firmware. Announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference, the feature lets third-party native programs receive data such as alerts or new messages without actively running. The measure saves processing power without interrupting some apps that depend on constant access to the Internet.

The inclusion of this early version of the code alludes to the 2.1 update becoming public at the same time as the push notification service itself, which is tentatively due for September. In the meantime, Apple and its US partner AT&T are known to be testing iPhone 2.0.1, a maintenance release that likely fixes some of the outstanding bugs with the initial 2.0 release.

via appleinsider

Couple new adv videos from Apple:

And one more in French:

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Investment bank Piper Jaffray said Tuesday it believes Apple is readying new iPod and notebook products that will apply downward pressure to profit margins because they'll be priced more affordably, such as 13-inch MacBook that will fetch less than $1000.

"We believe there is an 80% chance Apple will introduce redesigned MacBooks and possibly new MacBook Pros at lower price points," he wrote. "Specifically, Apple may re-enter the $999 price point (currently $1099) with the MacBook, or test the $1,799 price point with the MacBook Pro (currently $1999)."

The Piper Jaffray analyst reiterated his Buy rating and $250 price target on shares of Apple.

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via appleinsider

New IPhone SDK (build 9M2199a) is avaliable. Download here. It's about 1.2 Gb.

Thanks to Dev Team and the porting work of Jay Freeman as well as the authors of 3Proxy, it is now possible to "tether" your iPhone 3G and use its Internet connection on your laptop.

Warning - Tethering your iPhone is against the iPhone data plan terms. AT&T could slap you with huge fees if you overuse this. I recommend only using it during emergencies.

Here is a basic plan (by the way, this should work for old IPhone also):

• Jailbreak your iPhone 3G
• Install 3Proxy and Terminal
• Create an ad-hoc Wi-fi network using your laptop
• Join the network with your iPhone
• Find the iPhone's IP address
• Open Terminal and run the proxy program
• Open Safari on your iPhone and open a web page
• Configure your browser to use the proxy

Later we'll discuss it with more details.

Step 1: Jailbreak your iPhone

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Cupertine California—July 21, 2008—Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 third quarter ended June 28, 2008.

Apple shipped 2,496,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 41% unit growth and 43% revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 11,011,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 12% unit growth and 7% revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 717,000 compared to 270,000 in the year-ago-quarter.

The Company posted revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $5.41 billion and net quarterly profit of $818 million, or $.92 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.8%, down from 36.9% in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 42% of the quarter’s revenue.

Not bad at all.

via apple.com

There is not much defference between Safari 1.1.4 and 2.0. But Under the hood, MobileSafari 2.0's performance is hugely improved over 1.1.4. Everything related to web surfing feels faster, web pages consistently load faster on 2.0, both via Wi-Fi and EDGE. This has nothing to do with the new iPhone 3G hardware — this is about dramatic performance improvements on original iPhones upgraded to the 2.0 OS.

Using MobileSafari simply feels faster, especially with web applications. Feel is by nature subjective, but JavaScript benchmarks back this up.

In August last year, Craig Hockenberry posted a few simple benchmarks to compare the iPhone's processing power and JavaScript interpreter against Safari 3 running on a Mac with a 1.83 GHz Core Duo. At that time, the current version of the iPhone OS was 1.0.1. Here are the results of those same benchmarks on original iPhones running the 1.1.4 and new 2.0 OS versions, with Hockenberry’s 1.0.1 results included for comparison:

The last column shows how many times faster the 2.0 version of MobileSafari was versus 1.0.1 and 1.1.4. The same results, charted (smaller bars are faster) can be viewed above.

The results are obvious. WebKit JavaScript performance has improved steadily and significantly in just one year, with a huge jump between 1.1.4 and the new 2.0.0. In side-by-side page loading tests between two original iPhones running 1.1.4 and 2.0.0, the new version consistently finished at least a few seconds faster.

For all the hubbub regarding the new App Store, most “iPhone software” runs in the web browser. But improvements in WebKit performance often help native iPhone app performance, too — a slew of my favorite native iPhone apps have built-in WebKit browsers (e.g., NetNewsWire, Twitterrific, Instapaper, and Cocktails). When WebKit performance improves, any app that uses WebKit improves, and WebKit improved a lot between iPhone 1.1.4 and 2.0.0.

via daringfireball.net

Russian newspaper Vedomosti investigated how much the new IPhone 3G costs in Russia, country where users cannot buy IPhone officially.  The results are impressive.

Several russian web sites offer IPhone 3G 8Gb for $1200. Rumors say that In Moscow it is possible to find one foe $775, but it is not easy. However $1200 is not the limit at all. In some big shopping center in Moscow one can buy IPhone 3G for $3449.

Some analysts report, that there are about 400,000 IPhones in Russia. Every month this number increases by approximately 33,000.

With the iPhone 3G not even ten days old, virtually all of the Apple retail store stores open within the United States are without any examples of the device to sell on July 21st.

The shortage is severe enough in the 38 states that claim Apple stores that it's easier to count the locations that do have iPhone 3G units than those that don't.

In California, the only Apple store with any iPhones is the Pleasanton store with only 16GB black examples, while New York City's Fifth Avenue store is the only one in all of New York state known to have any examples left, with just 16GB white models in stock.

Only a single Honolulu store and the Salem, New Hampshire store can also claim to have any units available, and each only lists one model as ready for Monday.

Apple has been continually resupplying its stores with new iPhones - in many cases on a daily basis - but has seen fewer and fewer of its stores touting next-day availability in the several days since the July 11th debut of the handset upgrade.

Whether or not Apple's supply will meet demand in time to prevent a repeat of May's complete stockout is also far from certain. When grilled on an unprecedented spike in preorders, Britain's iPhone carrier O2 said it might take "some weeks" before it could satisfy enough of its customers on a regular basis.

via AppleInsider

"AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi even hotter, which is why we are proud to offer iPhone customers free access to the nation's largest Wi-Fi hotspot network with more than 17,000 hotspots, including Starbucks. Now users can relax and access music, e-mail and web browsing services with their favorite blend in hand from the comfort of their favorite location."

AT&T provides an online tool to find a Wi-Fi spot near you.

This is about Wi-Fi spots in the US. AT&T has access (company-owned, branded and roaming) to over 70,000 Wi-Fi hotsport in 89 countries and 389 airports.

Update:

Unfortunately, everyone got too excited over nothing - the Wi-Fi is still not available, and the “document” was a mistake. Here is an email from one of their spokespeople:

• We have not made any announcement regarding free Wi-Fi and iPhone. The webpage was posted in error and is being removed. Wi-Fi is a real differentiator for AT&T and it is our intention to make it available to as many customers as possible, but we have no announcement at this time.

It will be opened in Peking on the 19th of July. All personnel will speak both Enlish and Chineese, and it will be possible to get small consultations in other languages, for example in German.

via DeepApple

Will IPhone 3G blend? See the video:

Almost a year ago the same guy tried to blend first vesrion of IPhone. Watch the video:

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