News from category ‘Other’

Apple is planning to open three more stores this week in three different countries. So, with these stores, Apple will open 14 new retail stores for four weeks moving toward its goal to open 30 stores during the July-September quarter.

• Mapleview Centre (Burlington, Ontario, Canada): it will be the 21st Apple’s store in Canada. The store will be the eighth in or near the "Golden Horseshoe" region of Ontario wrapping around the western end of Lake Ontario.
• City-Galerie (Augsburg, Germany): City-Galerie will be Apple's sixth German store and the second in Bavaria in the southeast of the country.
• Campania (Caserta, Italy): Apple's seventh retail store in Italy which locates approximately 25 km north of Naples.

As it is known, iOS 5 will copy some Android features. Apart from notification system and  system-wide speech-to-text functionality, it was revealed that Apple will also implement Android-like activation of voice recognition Assistant feature.The Google’s promotional video above shows iPhone application for voice-powered search in Google.

As you can see in this video, with the app, you just have to move the iPhone up to your face, speak and in a few seconds Google will show you the page with search results. Apple plans to provide the same functionality to the iOS 5 users for its voice Assistant feature. According to code strings in the iOS 5 SDK, a user will need to put the iPhone to their ear, start speaking and the search results will be shown.

This activation method is much quicker than method in Voice Control. Currently users have to hold down the home button for several seconds to activate the service. Activation method in Assistant will not just rely on the iPhone’s proximity sensor detecting the distance from your ear, but will also rely on data from phone’s motion sensors for accuracy.

While Apple has already opened Regent Streets and London Covent Garden stores in the center of the city, a proposed development that could house Apple’s store at 100 Cheapside in rich financial district may be disallowed due to violation of neighbors’ rights to sunlight.

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According to the Financial Times, five Chinese environmental groups accused Apple’s local suppliers of systematic pollution and taking "advantage of the loopholes in developing countries' environmental management systems".

Unlike previous times, Apple apparently has soften towards Mia Jun, the director of Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (a co-author of the report) just hours before the report was published and invited her to a dialogue on the problem.

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Apple is reportedly still exploring idea of integration of USB 3.0 into its future computers.  The USB 3.0 is up to 10 times faster than USB 2.

A lot of people have been disappointed over Apple's lack of interest in the USB 3.0 standard, but thanks to a little bird, VR-Zone has heard that the company is still looking at USB 3.0 as a potential feature to add on future products. As to when and how this might happen is not something we know, but from our understanding it'll happen before Intel integrates USB 3.0 support into its chipsets.

USB 3.0 was not built in the current line of Apple’s computers, due to lack of Intel support in their motherboards. Though, Intel will be provide support for both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt in its 2012 platform known as 'Ivy Bridge', Apple may implement USB 3.0 before Intel’s adoption. But Apple is unlikely to update its iMac, Mac mini and MacBook Pro until the first half of 2012.

CNET reported that Apple once again have lost another unreleased iPhone model in Sun Francisco. As CNET claims, the device was lost in July.

Apple representatives contacted San Francisco police, saying the device was priceless and the company was desperate to secure its safe return, the source said. Still unclear are details about the device, what version of the iOS operating system it was running, and what it looks like, the source said.

Rumors claim that Apple managed to electronically trace the phone and found it in a single-family home in San Francisco. Apples representatives and local police visited the house and spoke with a man in his twenties who was in Cava 22 then the device was lost. The police searched the house but didn’t find anything. Whether or not, Apple did not file a police report about the missing phone.

You probably remember that last year Apple lost a prototype of iPhone 4 at a bar near the company's headquarters. This device was sold to Gizmodo. Apple initiated legal action that ended just couples of days ago.

New York Post and a few arabian sources have been digging up interviews with Steve Jobs’ biological Syrian-born father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, who is an Executive Vice President of a Reno casino, Nevada. John is an 80-year old workaholic, determined to avoid retirement at all costs.

For all his accomplishments, the Syrian immigrant says he is overcoming with guilt over his treatment of 56-years-old Jobs, and, given his son's health woes and decision this week to step down as Apple CEO, fears his time is running out.

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Have you ever wanted to run your iOS applications on your Mac, Windows or Android device? Creator of iEmu, new Kickstarter project, want to raise funds to make this possible.

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Apple stated to AllThingsD that offering of TV show rentals via iTunes was discontinued. Now users can only buy full episodes for just a dollar more than the previous rental price. The main advantage of buying full episodes is the possibility of re-watching them as many times as you want.

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By the letter sent by Steve Jobs to Apple's Board of Directors he has resigned as CEO of Apple. But he remains Chairman of the Board and appoints Tim Cook as his successor. The Board of Directors has approved his request.

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

As it is known typing on an iPad is not as comfortable as on traditional keyboards. However, in time frustrations goes away as users adapt to new way of typing. If you were to work with iPad’s onscreen keyboard like with traditional keyboard, you would definitely make accidental key presses. This considerable lowers the speed of typing, so users have to not rest their fingers on keys.

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United Airlines has recently announced that it is going to use iPads as electronic flight bags to replace bulky and heavy flight bags full of navigational charts and other materials and rolling out 11,000 iPads to its pilots. The iPad offers quick and easy access to required data at all times and will streamline work of pilots.

Each iPad, which weighs less than 1.5 pounds, will replace approximately 38 pounds of paper operating manuals, navigation charts, reference handbooks, flight checklists, logbooks and weather information in a pilot's flight bag. A conventional flight bag full of paper materials contains an average of 12,000 sheets of paper per pilot. The green benefits of moving to EFBs are two-fold--it significantly reduces paper use and printing, and, in turn, reduces fuel consumption. The airline projects EFBs will save nearly 16 million sheets of paper a year which is equivalent to more than 1,900 trees not cut down. Saving 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 3,208 metric tons.

This Saturday Apple plans to open other three stores, continuing its push to open a total of 30 new stores between July and September. Two stores will locate in the United States and one – in France.

• Carré Sénart (Paris, France): The store is Apple's fourth in the Paris and eighth overall in France.
• Northlake Mall (Charlotte, North Carolina): The store will be the second in Charlotte and fifth in North Carolina.
• The Promenade at Chenal (Little Rock, Arkansas): The new store is Apple's first in Arkansas.

After the opening will leave just six states (Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming) without Apple Stores.

Maybe you have already encountered a term “prior art”. This term is used in patent law and means all information that was disclosed to the public about an invention before a date of filing application. So, if an invention has already been described in prior art, the patent will not be valid. Samsung decided to make use of this law and has put forward a sci-fi argument in its legal dispute with Apple. It has gone so far as to cite a movie ’2001: A Space Odyssey’ by Stanley Kubrick as prior art against iPad.

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At least one developer reportedly has found evidences confirming fact that Apple is testing the dual-mode iPhone 5, supporting both GSM and CDMA in one phone, against current App Store apps.

The logs show that the app has been briefly tested by a handful of people using what is almost certainly an iPhone 5, evidently running iOS 5, sporting two distinct sets of mobile network codes (MNC) / mobile country codes (MCC). Those codes can be used to uniquely identify mobile carriers.

Sure enough, some registrations for the app – which the developer also asked not to be named – were logged from a new Apple device, using the MNC/MCC codes from both Verizon and AT&T.