News from category ‘Hardware’
Supplier Denies Shipping iMac Touchscreens to Apple

DigiTimes reports that Sintek Photronics has denied claims from late last week that the company has shipped samples of touchscreen panels to Apple for testing in a touch-capable iMac. Barry Wu, VP and spokesperson of Sintek Photronics has denied reports that the company is sampling projected capacitive touch panels for Apple's iMac. Rumors appeared after new Apple patent application, which suggested that the company is at least toying with the idea of a touch-capable iMac. It has been suggested that the company could instead a fully touch-capable Mac OS X offer iOS as layer on top of Mac OS X, allowing both operating systems to coexist on the same machine.
New Apple TV's Component Cost Pegged at $64

Research firm iSuppli estimated the component costs for the new Apple TV at under $64, representing a 35% margin on the new device before accounting for such expenses as research and development, software, patent royalties, marketing costs. The most expensive components in the new Apple TV are the A4 processor that powers the device ($16.55) and the 8 GB NAND flash memory chip ($14.00). It is worthwhile to say that Intel’s Pentium Chip ($40) plus the chipset ($28) on the previous model alone cost more than the whole new AppleTV today ($99 new vs. $299 old).
Wall Street analysts report Apple develops new iPhones
Shaw Wu, who is an analyst at Kaufman Bros., said yesterday he has information that Apple develops new models of iPhones, which have both smaller and larger touch screens. According to his sources close to Apple's supply chain overseas new products will most probably appear next year and support such carriers as Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.
"Our sources believe these likely represent new high-end and low-end iPhone models to complement its current iPhone 4. One possibility we are picking up is a "mini" or "nano" iPhone with a smaller candybar form factor leveraging technology in its new mini touchscreen iPod nano."
iPad's touch screen makers are increasing their revenue
Yesterday Taiwanese news resource DigiTimes reported that TPK Touch Solutions and Wintek, which are Apple's partners that make touch panels for the iPad, will experience revenue growth in the last quarter of year 2010, which is evidentially caused by the strong demand for the tablet device. Nevertheless, some other company’s partners like J Touch and Young Fast Optoelectronics are expecting traditional decline in the end-of-year season.
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Hacked MacBook reborn as a tablet
You need an iPad? And you have a broken MacBook? So, you can do your own tablet! Just look what Matt at Enigma Penguin did with his old MacBook. He decided that he would recycle his old laptop and turn it into a tablet.
UK Prime Minister is an Apple fan and iPad user

We know that the White House is full of iPad users, now it’s the same in the UK. UK Prime Minister David Cameron has come out to declare himself an iPad (and Mac) user.
New Apple TV Allows App Installation, Needs Launcher

Developer Steven Troughton-Smith found out that iOS applications can installed on the new Apple TV. You only need to slightly modify the applications to identify them as Apple TV-compatible. Of course, Steven’s discovery is an important step in developers' quest to run applications on the device, but the applications are not yet usable, as the Apple TV doesn’t have any application launcher that would be required for an app to function.
Apple Testing Touchscreen Panels for Future iMac?

DigiTimes claims that Apple has recently received samples of new touch panels that would be used in a new touch-capable iMac. These touch panels are typically produced by placing touch sensors over the panel, and then a cover glass over the sensors. Such method does not require any extraordinary costs and manpower efforts, but affects display brightness. The new iMac is rumored to have a good vertical and horizontal viewing angle, and its projected capacitive touch panel will decrease dimensions of future iMac and reduce thickness and weight.
First rumors of a touchscreen iMac appeared in January, with claims of a 22-inch model set to debut sometime during 2010. A second rumor surfaced in June claiming that Apple would be holding a special event to introduce a touch-enabled iMac running both Mac OS X and iOS within the following two months. But both of them failed to take place.
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The Apple TV has just been jailbroken

Today the new Apple TV has been jailbroken by hacker MuscleNerd from DevTeam. He used the SHAtter exploit. This means that hackers were able to gain full access to the device. Here is MuscleNerd's comment on twitter:
AppleTV 2G SHAttered and jailbroken (not quite sure how to run apps yet!)
MuscleNerd and the rest of the Dev-Team will probably create a public release of some utility soon. Here is a youtube video showing off the jailbroken device:
CNet video: AppleTV review

CNet reviewd the new Apple TV 2-nd generation. Here's what they think of it:
The good: Costs $99; rent movies and TV shows from the iTunes Store; 99-cent HD TV show rentals on some Fox and ABC shows; supports Netflix streaming; incredibly small design; outstanding user interface; can be controlled by iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch; streams music and videos from PCs and Macs running iTunes; promising future AirPlay functionality should be available in November.
The bad: Very limited selection of TV shows, especially compared with Amazon Video On Demand; confusion between what's available on Apple TV iTunes Store and PC-based iTunes store; doesn't support the full suite of media apps (Pandora, etc.) available on the iPhone and iPad; can't connect to older, pre-HDMI TVs.
The bottom line: The Apple TV's new low $99 price makes it an easy impulse buy for Apple fans looking to bring Netflix into the living room, but you may want to wait until more content--or Apple's forthcoming AirPlay update--becomes available.
Watch the video below:
iPhone App Store Games section updated

Recently Apple has updated Games section for the iPhone version of the App Store. This updated games section now has its own games pane, which consists of 4 parts: New, What’s Hot, Categories (way to get into all the gaming categories) and Genius.
Apple Planned HDR Photography On iPhone 3GS?

We’ve gotten some evidences proving that Apple originally planned to include HDR support for the iPhone 3GS, but dropped it. Just look at this picture, found in the iOS SDK:
Apple TV teardown

The experts at iFixit torn down the new Apple TV. Here some interesting info they managed to find out inside the new Apple’s set-top box:
Apple TV in action video
PCMag posted an interesting video demonstaration of new Apple TV in action. Let's watch:
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