News tagged ‘Apple’

Along with "Try Before You Buy" Apple added Genius section to the iPad App Store. Though there was no official announcement, according to MacRumors the section appeared as far back as last night.

"Genius" option can be found next to "Updates" section at the bottom of the store. If you click on it for the first time you'll need to agree to the terms of service and activate the feature.

Genius is designed to create lists of recommended apps that based on users' previous purchases. That makes it easier for users to uncover, download and buy more relevant applications.

Genius page also includes "iPad Upgrades" section that has iPad versions of apps that have been earlier developed for iPhone.

New section in App Store called "Try Before You Buy" allows users to test drive selected list of apps before purchasing it.

At the current moment section contains freemium, "lite" and ad-supported apps that have both free and paid versions. If the app doesn't have free version, it will not appear in the section.

Section "Try Before You Buy" can be found under the "Free on the App Store" heading. Currently there are 98 apps, including such games as Labyrinth 2, Metal Gear Solid Touch, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown and free versions of apps like AccuTerra and Moodagent.

This Thursday Macrumors received photos of one of the next-gen iPod touch parts, which reveal a hole above the display that will be most likely used for the camera. The pictures were sent by an unknown iPhone parts supplier.

Previously some resources reported about the presence of a camera and flash on the back of upcoming iPod touch. If all this information is true, the next-gen device will have two cameras to support FaceTime like the iPhone 4.

Apple wanted to build camera into the last iPod touch a year ago, but due to the technical problems the decision was annulled. When the final version of the player appeared on the market a space for camera was found inside of it after disassembling.

FaceTime support in iPod touch will be no surprise as previously Steve Jobs said that this year Apple will ship millions of devices compatible with FaceTime.

Some time ago users started to jailbreak iPhones in Apple Store. It appears that Apple banned JailBreakMe.com on any device at Apple Stores through DNS forward to Apple.com.

Here are some comments from Twitter:

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Electric Pig previews London's new huge Apple Store in Covent Garden. It looks like an Apple Mall, rather than just a store:

There is a big a security hole in iPhone iOS. The device is insecure in a big and obvious way. You should be extremely careful of what sites you visit.

The FlateDecode vulnerability can be used when a PDF File is embedded within a Web page. Basically Safari tries to parse the PDF. And when it does it executes some code. Hackers can use this exploit to read and write iPhone data, get your contacts, sms, even delete something. So they can get all kinds to access your personal information stored on your iOS device.

Apple will fix it some day. Until then you need to take care of your iPhone security. There is a fix for that. It is available via Cydia for jailbroken devices. So you need to jailbreak in order to secure (funny isn't it?).

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked to reporters at yesterday's Techonomy conference about Google Android and Apple iPhone. Worth watching:

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Today ChangeWave Research revealed the results of its survey on iPhone 4. 213 new handset owners were questioned in a few weeks after the launch of the latest Apple's smartphone, between July 19 and 28. Here is a list of facts that were revealed:

• In June 6.3% of iPhone 3GS owners experienced dropped calls, in July only 5.2% of those who use iPhone 4 had dropped a call at least once. ChangeWave Research's vice president Paul Carton says that means that iPhone 4 is quiet better at making calls:

"Despite all of the issues surrounding the antenna, in actuality iPhone 4 owners reported experiencing fewer dropped calls on the average than iPhone 3GS owners".


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Recently Vupen, which is a French security firm, posted an advisory that contained information about two critical security vulnerabilities in Apple's iOS. After a while hacker comex used these flaws to create a jailbreak, which is now widely known and available on JailbreakMe.com.

But according to Reuters, yesterday Apple decided to react and its spokeswoman Natalie Harrison revealed that the company is currently investigating Vupen's advisory. So it looks like these exploits are going to be fixed soon!

Yesterday Apple released iOS 4.1 beta 3 for developers. Build number is 8B5097d for the firmware and 10M2308 for the SDK. Here is what's new in beta 3:

• A revised API that allows applications to have an access to contact thumbnail pics;
• Media playback enhancements, which include new classes in AV Foundation, related to batched playback, writing/reading and file compression;
• New features of Game Center: now players can track their in-game achievements and game scores on leaderboards and find teams for group play. But it was also found that Game Center is no longer supported for iPod touch 2G and iPhone 3G, though it is unknown whether it is a permanent change or not.

Final release of iOS 4.1 is expected to be shipped in September or October.

According to a new report, published by Philip Elmer-DeWitt from Fortune, Apple's share on the portable PC market grew from 5 to 12% in the second quarter, making it the third world biggest mobile PC vendor after Dell and HP in volume sales.

Such data was revealed by Chris Whitmore, who is an analyst Deutsche Bank.

"Our retail checks suggest this share shift continues in July, where the iPad is directly cannibalizing demand for other vendors' notebook products. Remarkably, Apple's traditional MacBook business posted accelerated unit growth on a Y/Y basis in 2Q despite the launch of the iPad while every other Top 5 vendor slowed."

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Jailbreaking an iPhone 4 is easy. Jailbreaking at an Apple retail store is fun. One of the users did that and captured everything on video. Take a look at the video:

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FaceTime feature gives users the possibility to make  voice calls. Apple restricted this feature to Wi-Fi only. Today it became possible to use it over 3G!

Setup Instructions:

1. Jailbreak your iPhone 4 via www.jailbreakme.com.
2. Download and upgrade to the latest Cydia package.
3. Open Cydia, Go to Manage then Sources.
4. Click Sources, Edit then add: http://apt.modmyi.com
5. Search for "My3G" -- download, and install it. It costs $2.79. My3G makes Apps believe that they are on WiFi instead of 3G.
6. Go through the Rock setup process with a username and password. Open My3G and leave all settings on the default.
7. FaceTime should now work over 3G! -- Make sure to "Forget" the WiFi network you are on (via iOS settings) if you want to test it.

We haven't seen any difference between the 3G FaceTime call and a WiFi FaceTime call. The quality is very good.

Here's a video demo:

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Here's an interesting video from MuscleNerd, who jailbreaks an iPad using JailBreakMe in a plane (over New Mexico via "Gogo Inflight Internet" wifi). Nice!!

Along with a special press conference, dedicated to iPhone 4 antenna issue, Apple published a special page about the problem (here = http://www.apple.com/antenna/). You may remember we wrote about a series of videos posted on this page, where the company tried to convince everybody that almost every smartphone has an antenna issue. RIM's BlackBerry Bold 9700, Samsung's Omnia II, HTC's Droid Eris and Nokia's N97 were taken as examples. Now these videos are deleted from the Apple's site, though they are still available at the company's official YouTube channel.

After the press conference Apple's competitors claimed that their phones do not experience signal attenuation as much as the iPhone 4 and were dissatisfied by Apple's way of solving the antenna issue.