News from category ‘Official’

Apple released new MacBook Air, which are faster and have new features. 9to5mac has published detailed comparison tables that compare the new models to the previous generation models.

11-inch models:

13-inch models:

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Fortune has published a report by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster related to the performance of the App Store. Munster claims that iOS device owners have downloaded more applications in 2011; moreover such applications are more expensive comparing with the average price for an application in 2010.

- More apps: The average iOS device owner will download 83 apps in 2011 vs. 51 in 2010, a 61% increase year over year. "Smartphone users are showing an increasing appetite to use apps to add features to their phones," Munster writes, "and iOS has the leading app ecosystem."

- More expensive apps: The ASP (average selling price) per app is rebounding. ASPs are up 14% y/y in 2011 vs. an 18% decline in 2010. "After the initial race to the bottom in App Store pricing," says Munster, "we are seeing users pay up to add features and games to their iOS devices."

82% of downloads from the App Store are free applications, the rest 18% are paid ones with an average selling price of $1.44. For 2010 and 2011 the average price of application was increasing that could be caused by the iPad launch. iPad applications in general have higher prices than applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The release of the Mac OS X Lion is nearing and Apple has just invited registered Mac developers to submit their applications for OS X Lion to Mac App Store. But it’s unclear how many apps the Review Team could manage to approve before the rumored Lion launch.

OS X Lion, the eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system, will soon be available to millions of Mac users around the world. Submit your Lion apps for review now so they can be on the Mac App Store when Lion ships this month.

OS X Lion provides developers with new features like full-screen mode, push notifications for apps, new Aqua controls including iPad-inspired popovers, auto-save and versions, as well as sandboxing and multi-touch gestures. Lion is expected to be released any day this week as Mac App Store exclusive.

Apple has finally fixed the iPad 2 availability problems, as it is now quoting just 3-5 business days on every model of the iPad 2. We could see the same availability back in March, after that it grew upto 5 weeks.

If you are planning to buy an iPad 2, now could be the time to do it. However there are constant rumors an iPad 2 HD coming later this year in October. So you might want just to wait a bit.

A federal judge has denied Apple’s preliminary injunction against Amazon. A preliminary injunction is usually ordered when the judge believes that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of the case, or a substantial threat of irreparable damage.

In March Apple accused Amazon in using the term “Appstore” for its Android marketplace (the company believes that the terms is its trademark) and asked the judge to prohibit Amazon to use the term. The company was afraid of confusion between Apple and Amazon's app stores and believes that use of the term by other companies can "confuse and mislead customers."

Apple is expected to post its official financial results for the third quarter 2011 on July 19, but now we may hear different prediction. One of them has been made by the non-Wall Street Apple analysts at the Apple Finance Board. They believe that Apple has sold more than 8 million iPads and 17 million iPhones in the third fiscal quarter of 2011. Wall Street’s analytics claim “the company earned $5.69 per share on sales of $24.67 billion”.  The Finance Board predicts that Apple will post revenue of $26.5 billion.

The June quarter represents the first fiscal quarter in which Apple iPad sales are a factor in the prior-year performance. This factor alone will have an impact on year-over-year revenue growth. iPad unit sales and the resulting revenue were not a factor in the prior-year financial performance comparisons in the December (FQ1) and March (FQ2) quarters.

In Q2 2011 Apple’s revenue was $24.67 billion. The company sold 4.69 million iPads, 18.65 million iPhones and 3.76 million Macs.

Asian sources claim that touch panels for the iPad 2 that do not meet Apple quality requirements are used for production of iPad clones. In second quarter of this year 12-15 million of 9.7-inch IPS panels were manufactured by LG Display and Samsung Electronics, but Apple produces only 7-9 million iPad 2s. So it seems that the rest of panels that don't pass Apple's quality standards was sold to China-based white-box vendors.

Today Apple controls approximately 60 percent of the world's touch panel capacity and actively obtaining components that are in short supply. Now Apple has booked up much of the available production capacity, so other manufactures experience problems with release of their own tablets. For example, Amazon that could face difficulty with display orders for its LCD tablet.

Arstechnica and iFixIt claim that Apple’s new Tunderbolt cable is actually a "smart" cable that contains circuitry and firmware. iFixIt have already torn down the cable, having found inside two Gennum GN2033 chips in the connector that works as a transceiver to enable “reliable data transfer at cutting-edge speeds over low cost, thin-gauge copper cables.” There were also found additional support chips and resistors, so the total number of chips inside the Thunderbolt connector is 12, of course not including multiply smaller electronic components.

Quite interesting that the current Thunderbolt ports found in iMac and MacBook Pro are planned to be compatible with future Thunderbolt cables, bringing a significant speed improvement. But the current generation of such ports works on the traditional wiring.

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On January 9th 2007 Steve Jobs presented the first ever Apple iPhone to the world. The Apple CEO started off the epic keynote by saying the famous lines, "This is a day, I've been looking forward to for 2 and a half years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything…".

The iPhone launched on June 29, 2007. In its 4 years of existence, the device has changed a lot, starting from iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS and now it is iPhone 4. All these devices were truly revolutionary.

2011 has been an interesting year for the iPhone. In February Apple introduced the Verizon iPhone, ending AT&T 3 year exclusiveness in the US. In April we finally saw the white iPhone 4.

Apple sold close to 20 million iPhones last quarter and the rate is still quite amazing. The company is expected to sell 100 million units of its next-generation iPhone that will be probably released this fall.

Apple indeed "reinvented the phone". The iPhone completely redefined how a "smartphone" should look and act.

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The Next Web reports that Apple has started to issue refunds to App Store customers for Final Cut Pro X, Motion, or Compressor after a wave of criticism from professionals due to absent of many “pro” functionalities of the previous version.  One of the customers posted the e-mail demonstrating how Apple is dealing with these problems:

Moving forward, I understand that you are not satisfied with the app “Final Cut Pro”. I can certainly appreciate you would like a refund, and I would be more than happy to help you out with this today. In five to seven business days, a credit of £179.99 should be posted to the credit card that appears on the receipt for that purchase.

Please note that this is a one time exception because the iTunes Terms and Conditions state that all sales are final.

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Apple has released iOS 5.0 beta 2 today. As usual it is for developers only, and for those who have activated UUID.

New firmware is available for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch 3G, iPod Touch 4G, iPad 1, iPad 2 and Apple TV.

The most interesting new features one can find are: wireless syncing (works at least with iTunes 10.5 beta 2 on Mac OS 10.6.8 or Lion), new UI for notifications and silver iCloud logo in Setting. Apple also added functionality that let's you wirelessly restore your iDevice from an iCloud backup.

Manolution has published an interesting detailed timeline that show events and stock prices throughout the historic battle between Microsoft and Apple.

Despite maintaining dominance of the OS market for over three decades, Microsoft’s stocks continue to trade at or below their first ever public value of $27.50 (at closing on 3/13/1986).

Thanks to Apple’s extremely successful ventures into various hand-held gadget markets (namely the iPod, iPhone and iPad) Apple’s stock continues to rise, trading at over $300 more than that of Microsoft’s as of 6/6/2011.

Take a look at the infographic (~3Mb):

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Let us remind you some facts about the legal battle between Apple and Samsung.  Samsung filed the countersuit in response to the Apple’s suit, where demanded Apple hand over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 or their newest prototypes to investigate them and to avoid misunderstanding in future. Though, Judge denied Samsung’s request, having explained that “Apple’s request for expedited discovery was far more justified and far less prejudicial”. Apple required early access to all Samsung’s new devices.

The judge made a lot of effort in her 11-page order to explain that Samsung is entitled to “parity” but its motion was overreaching in this case. Instead, it may be necessary for the court to evaluate such a motion against the background of the iPhone 5 (as far as any Samsung phones are concerned) and the iPad 3 (as far as any Samsung tablet computers are concerned), whenever Apple is in a position to present those products.

Today Nokia introduced its MeegoOS-powered N9 phone. Well, we all know that Nokia has dropped Meego project and don't plan to support it, but the company decided to release this N9 anyway.

It looks good and quite familiar. There is some similarity with previous generation Apple iPod Nano.

Here are couple N9 video reviews from Engadget:

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This morning Adobe announced a large number of software updates to the Flex Framework and Flash Builder that will make it possible for developers to create projects for BlackBerry PlayBook, iPhone and iPad, besides Android support that was implemented in April.

Now version 4.5 of Flex and Flash are added to Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium and Master Collection, but also they can be bought separately (Flash Builder Standard for 249$, Premium for 669$). In a blog post Adobe’s Puneed Goel gave praises to the release:

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