News from category ‘Hardware’

Apple surprised everybody when it decided to discontinue its Xserve line on November 5th.  The company officially offered a faster Mac Mini and the Mac Pro, both with Snow Leopard Server installed, as the replacement of the Xserve. IT professionals who maintain data centers small and large claim that these aren’t complete solutions compared to the density of the Xserves. About a third of Xserve shops will be migrating to other hardware within the year.  Some Apple’s System Engineers assure that Apple has another solution in the pipeline beyond what they’ve announced.  Nobody knows what it could be, because Apple builds its own A4 processors, running in parallel, and a data center for cloud services.

Some new promo materials appeared in Apple Stores around the United State. They have an interesting signage which claims that the white iPhone 4 will be available Spring 2011. That confirms an earlier report.  Though, we may hear rumors about the fifth-generation iPhone handset, which also is expected to be released spring 2011. Steve Jobs will most likely announce the device at WWDC ’11. Many believe that Apple sooner will simply release a modified version of the iPhone 4 or a white version of its fifth-generation handset than the white iPhone 4.

This week 9to5Mac reported that an American clothing and accessories retailer Gap was using Apple's iPod-based POS system in a few of its Old Navy stores. The blog wrongly decided that Apple started to market the custom mobile software used in its own retail stores, and that Gap became a retailer which helps the company to test pilot it.

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Yahoo! has placed the iPhone 4 on the top of obsessions of 2010 and the iPad is the number 3. Facebook came in at number 6. Though, the numbers are not a huge surprise. What is surprising is that the iPhone 4 became the first number after early controversy of the lost/stolen prototype and rumored “Antennagate”. Despite of all doubts the iPhone 4 is the most popular smartphones of the year in terms of sales and reviews.

Ticondegora Securities analyst Brian White and his team are touring Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, and China this week. In Taipei he met with a few suppliers and heard from them that miniature embedded pico projectors and mobile digital TV will presumably become major selling features in the next-gen smartphones.

Though iPhone were not mentioned among these smartphones, in his note to investors White assures such features would be interesting for Apple to implement in "iPhone 5", which is expected to be released traditionally in June of the next year.

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According to Computer Weekly, yesterday HTC released a statement as a response to YouTube videos, which show that the company's newly released HD7 smartphone also loses signal strength when is being gripped in a certain way. However, it looks like Taiwanese handset maker doesn't take it seriously:

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The U.S. Marine Corps is reportedly experimenting with the use of the iPad for recruiting. The commander of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command explained in his recent interview that the Corps is doing well in recruitment, but that needs a huge advertising budget. So, the iPad should help them to decrease expenditure.

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This week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released another pile of Apple's patent applications that reveal the company’s interest in further improving of its technology of keyboard backlights. It is said in the documents, that though current keyboards have a light feedback, for example, when the "Caps Lock" is enabled, more informative keyboards would be more beneficial for users.

"Most conventional keyboards lack the ability to convey complex information to a user (such as, for example, more information than just whether the CAPS lock key is on). And while some conventional keyboards may include backlit keys, conventional keyboards with backlighting do not offer the ability to dynamically control lighting schemes for each of the keys individually based on interaction from the user."

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On Tuesday Apple revealed the patent application, which depicts a laptop that slides into tablet. On the shots above you may see how the standard laptop with a traditional keyboard, body, display frame and display might be transformed into a tablet by sliding the display across the keyboard. The patent relates to scrolling operations but it does not depict real convertible laptop to tablet form factor. The idea of the patent was expressed by Apples CEO Steve Jobs while the presentation of the new MacBook when he wondered what would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up. So this patent with a touchscreen and a keyboard, laptop and tablet configurations reveals implementation of this idea and possibility of integration between the two products.

Last week we reported that the next iPad will be equipped with a gyroscope, a Retina Display and USB ports and it’s very likely will get FaceTime capabilities with a front-facing camera. Unfortunately, there is no mention of how many megapixels the cameras might be. So, resent rumor claims that Apple already selected the camera lens maker for the iPad 2.  As expected, such suppler might be the Taiwanese company called Largan Precision. Largan reportedly supplies 5-megapixel lenses for the iPhone 4. It’s also unknown whether the company was selected to ship a VGA front-facing camera, a higher resolution rear one or both.

Apple seems to have grate plans for 2011. So, we’d summarized all rumors and official statement, and formed the following list, which shows Apple's plans for the new year:

• Lion OS;
• Mac App Store;
• iPad 2
• Implementing of Light Peak optical interconnect technology developed by Intel to replace such things like USB, DisplayPort and HDMI. In future, the technology has the potential to reach speeds of 100Gbps. it is also requires smaller connections and thinner cables;
• New model of MacBook Pro notebooks equipped with Intel's Light Peak, 512 GB of SSD storage, without an optical drive. These MacBook Pro's will last longer, run quieter and be lighter and more power-efficient;
• Apple-branded Blu-ray player/burning device which is also capable of burning standard optical media such as DVD or CD;
• Subscription service via iTunes, which would be focused on video services.

According to sources close to component makers for Apple’s computers, the company ships around one million MacBooks per month in Q4 2010. Part of the new MacBook Airs is accounted to 20-25% of the volume. In the first three quarters of 2010 Apple sold about 6.88 million units, and its global notebook market share rose from 3.7% in the first quarter to 5.2% in the third. Apple’s market share in the US market surged from 6.7% to 12.6%. So, it looks like 2011 will be an interesting year for Mac users. Moreover, Apple plans to open the Mac App Store, update the MacBook Pro line and launch new OS X Lion.

Early this month we reported that Apple delayed the release of iOS 4.2 due to the Wi-Fi connection issues. Apple even released a second GM build for iPad to address the Wi-Fi issues. Finally, the iOS 4.2.1 went public. But iPad users still report that they experience Wi-Fi problems after upgrading to iOS 4.2.1. Some iPads fail to join a known WiFi network, some connect but connection drops after 5-10 minutes, some don’t drop the connection but are incredibly slow at rendering web pages and, for example, Youtube videos. Though the iOS 4.2.1 offers its users some fixes, including router reboots, resetting the iPad’s network settings and full restore to iOS 4.2.1, they seem not to work. Nevertheless not every an iPad user experiences such problems.

The Chinese Economy Daily News reports that the Apple's next generation iPad will add 5 distinct new features, including:

• Video phone
• Better mobility
• USB port
• New display technology
• 3-axis gyroscope

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Yesterday BusinessInsider revealed a top-10 list of tablet PCs that will compete with iPad in 2011. Here it is:

1. RIM's BlackBerry Playbook

Release Date: early 2011.



A 7-inch tablet is reported to be faster that iPad with its $500 price tag.

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