News from category ‘rumors’

Gizmodo posted shots of dorm blocks, in which Foxconn’s factory workers spend their off-duty lives. Men and women have separate facilities. Eight workers sleep in four bunk beds in a room about the size of a two-car garage. Long shifts, under-exploited exercise equipment, sinks on the balconies, where workers have to wash their clothing and themselves, and tiny televisions (one per a floor) in depersonalized common rooms, this is life at Foxconn’s iPhone factories. Since a spate of eleven suicides earlier this year, every building on the Foxconn campus is draped in netting. It is morbid but seemingly effective; there have been no suicides since the nets were installed in May.

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As we all remember, Apple announced that the white iPhone 4 won't appear in retail until spring 2011. But it seems not a problem for a German e-tailer Notebook.de, which has already started shipping the elusive handset. But its price is quite high! A plain, black iPhone 4 16GB would set you back between €649 and €699 in the EU market, but the white one goes for €1999. The 32GB model is listed at €2199. The retailer specifically states that phones in question are not modified in any way and that they are factory packaged, describing them as a "rarity".

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Both Apple and rival Google are interested in purchasing mobile payments company Boku. San Francisco-based Boku is a startup company, which aims to bring "bank-grade payments technology" to mobile platforms and create the standard for online payments using a mobile phone. The company has partnered with mobile carriers to allow customers to purchase goods using their mobile phones. Customers simply enter their mobile phone number when looking to purchase an item and a confirmation message is sent to their device. The resulting charges are then added to your wireless monthly bill. It would eliminate the need for the use of credit cards for online transactions. As expected, Apple may spend at least $250 million (and up to $450 million) to acquire BOKU.

Modern people can’t live without their gadgets. Some of them can’t even make a marriage proposal without assistance of the iPhone! Just like Frank, who used multiple iPhones to coordinate and secretly film his proposal. On October 24 he proposed to his girlfriend Kasey. An elaborate surprise proposal was made in New York City's Central Park. Hidden cameras were synced with special iPhone applications so the entire event could be watched from a safe distance. Kasey was lured to a specific location by a friend of Frank. It was a totally awesome proposal and, of course, Kasey said "yes".

The Web is full of reports that the iPhone alarms (for all models of device) going off an hour later than usual when switched between Daylight Savings Time and Standard Time. Later, we reported that firstly this problem was found out in Australia, now Europe faces with the same. So even though the iOS clock changed correctly over the weekend, the alarm is still locked to Daylight Savings Time. Apple acknowledged the bug with a promise to fix it with a software update.

Thanks new iPod touch, which looks enough like the iPhone 4, the girl from Stanton, Delaware, hadn’t been kidnapped. The incident happened in the past week on Wednesday, the person suspected in kidnapping attempt asked the 12-year-old girl to get into his van in front of her middle school. But the girl, instead of panicking, put her iPod against her ear and told him she was dialing 911. Believing that she was using an iPhone, the driver immediately sped off. The local authorities didn’t eventually get called (iPod touch doesn’t have call function) and are still looking for the suspect.

At Adobe's MAX 2010 conference earlier this week, the company showed a demo of a new tool, which allows developers to convert their Flash projects to a combination of HTML5 and related non-Flash technologies.  The tool is available only for developers. It seems that Adobe is looking for a new ways to help developers offer their content in multiple formats. Especially after recent study concluded that more than half of the H.264-encoded video on the Internet is now available in HTML5 format.

An investment firm Detwiler Fenton & Co. claimed today in its note on Barron's that OmniVision will be the supplier of CMOS image sensors for the next-gen iPad. That means the next iPad will have a forward-facing camera to support FaceTime feature.

Moreover, it is said in the note that Omnivision will also supply another 5MP camera which will be allegedly placed on the rear side of the iPad. OmniVision is an existing Apple's partner which currently supplies sensors for iPhone.

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John Savio created a very amazing costume for Halloween, which looks like a real iPhone 4, but 10 times larger than the original. It is thin, has rounded corners, LED light on the back as a flash and even touchscreen. The costume was created from 40" LED LCD Panel used as the smartphone’s screen. It is powered by two car batteries and run by Jailbroken iPhone 4, weighs roughly 75 lbs. The process of costume’s creation took about 40 hours to complete.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has announced that the owners of new 11-inch MacBook Air are allowed not to remove their notebook from bag at security checkpoints in U.S. airports.

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It seams that hackers have had their hands on the iOS 4.2 beta 3 for iPad. But, as we know, there is no official jailbreak for it. Recently the well-known iOS hacker posted aт interesting picture in Tweeter. The shot depicts an iPad running MobileTerminal, a jailbreak application, which gives users full access to the terminal command line interface. But it looks strange, because it means that the hackers missed the beta 4, which should be released this past Tuesday, according to the Apple’s schedule. This could signal that Apple may skip beta 4 altogether and go straight to a GM build sometime next week.

Yesterday we told you that the rumored white iPhone 4 became available for reservation via Apple Store application. But today Apple has removed mention of the model from its ordering page. Apple continues to use a white iPhone 4, however, in promotional images for the company's bumpers. The white model is also still shown in Apple's iPhone 4 image gallery.

Apple is said to be hosting an exclusive, secret iPhone and iPad developer’s summit in Cupertino, starting next Tuesday and running for 3 days, which the company is going to hold to improve the quality of software on the App Store. As known, this event will be a more intimate version of the iPhone Tech Talks that Apple held last year.

Of course, the stealth summit will be invitation only event, so Apple will invite only those developers, who it wants to see there. They will be granted time with Apple engineers, and may receive help with their applications. It is believed the event is timed to the release of iOS 4.2. It will be the first time then the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch will all be running the same version of iOS.

Taiwan Economic News received information from its industry sources on CDMA version of the iPhone 4. The newspaper reveals that Foxconn, which is a subsidiary of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., will ship the CDMA-enabled iPhones 4 to Apple in the next year. It is also suggested that the device will be offered by China Telecom and Verizon Wireless.

But Foxconn will not be the only producer of CDMA iPhone. Rumors had it in May that Pegatron won the contract for the device and that it will allegedly start the production in November. Foxconn's share of the order is declared to be 15 million units.

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Apple partnered with Gemalto (digital security firm) to create a custom SIM card. Such card will be integrated into the iPhone as a built-in chip, which will contain subscriber identification information for carriers and allow users to activate their devices with a broad array of carriers. The new device will be of most use in Europe, where there are many competitive carriers operating on similar technologies.

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