News tagged ‘Apple’

Finnish company Nokia admitted last week that the competition on the high-end smartphone market is high enough and it is finally affected on quarterly earnings. In the first quarter of 2010 Finnish cellphone maker earned 465$ million. In the same period of the 2009 they earned 162$ million. Well that can be explained by an economical situation in the world, but this year results were expected by analysts to be higher.

Nokia conceded the average selling price of their cellphone products dropped down from 66 to 62 euros. The numbers for smartphones are more significant - from 190 (first quarter of 2009) to 155 euros (first quarter of 2010).

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is pretty obsessed about this fact:

"We continue to face tough competition with respect to the high end of our mobile device portfolio".

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Monte Vista Christian School in California has purchased sixty Apple iPads for use in its classrooms. The devices were introduces last Thursday to those of the students who will participate in an experimental project. If the results will be successful, Monte Vista's headmaster Stephen Sharp will replace textbooks with interactive e-versions.

“There are many academic advantages. They provide new access to photos, videos, daily newspapers and resource material that enhance the curriculum.”

Marcus Scwager, who is an English teacher, is excited about the function of pop-up word definitions while reading Shakespeare's "The Tempest". Science teacher Cynthia Armstrong used an iPad to show a cutaway of female body with a zoom function for closer look.

As the iPads are used only for classroom use, students e-mail their notes to a previously created account that they can access later at home. They can use a special app for copying graphs from the board, SoundPaper app to record lectures for listening it later where they want.

Alyssa Villanueva, who is a 15-year-old student, also enjoys the iPad:

“It’s a little easier to use. You can really focus on where you’re studying."

Apple provides a $50 school discount for its tablets. The company has also developed a special program for teachers to train them to use the new technology.

Recently Apple has hired new global editorial games manager for iTunes App Store. His name is Matt Cassamassina and he has over 13 years experience of games reviewing.

Matt started his game career with the launch of N64.com. Later this resource was bought by IGN, where he continued to work. In the gaming industry he is known as the expert and information source about Nintendo.

After his appointment he wrote in his blog:

"I will be leading the charge for games on the App Store, so whether you browse through iTunes, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad, the games content you see will be handpicked and organized by me and my team. I couldn’t be happier."

Matt Cassamassina will start his work in Apple at the beginning of May.

App Store games became very popular since the release of iPod Touch. Profit from game creating and selling it on iTunes attracted many single developers which lead to a success of the iPhone and iPod Touch as handheld gaming devices. The popularity of App Store games is even frightening for Sony and Nintendo that are now looking forward to create something innovative in the gaming industry.

Few days ago Tidbits made a test of Apple's iPad's Camera Connection Kit. It was  found that the kit works fine with almost any USB microphone, headset or headphone. That means you can listen to music or even make VoIP-calls. It is reported that the quality of such calls is "terrific".

The Unofficial Apple Weblog also tested the kit and found USB keyboards to work pretty good. Well, this was expected because of official iPad Keyboard Dock support. The only problem is that USB keyboards don't have a dock so it is inconvenient to use with iPad.

As you see from the video below the kit allows you to import photos from the memory card and delete it. iPad can import not only usual images, but also RAW files from high-end cameras. Moreover, photos will be copied at full resolution and with EXIF metadata. Video may be also imported and processed with a simple editor. But note that any video clip that is larger than 640x480 and 5 megabytes will be shrunk.

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Early this morning 9to5mac.com has posted a link to an eBay page where some seller was selling 2 semi-working iPod Touches that have cameras (!) and run a development version of the iPod OS.

The devices are marked with "Apple Development Team", "DVT-1" and "DVT-2". DVT means "design verification test". As you see from the photos below the UI looks pretty strange. Some people say it is a software that hardware team gets to set.

Currently the link is being broken so we can't check the information. Maybe Gizmodo already bought it? Also, the devices look very used, so there is no reason why it can't be another Chinese clone.

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This Wednesday London Evening Standard posted an article about supposed acquisition of ARM Holdings by Apple. According to the source:

"Apple is ARM's biggest customer and speculation is that the iPad maker wants to take chip design in house."

With a reference to an unknown trader it is claimed that with such a deal Apple could stop ARM from delivering its technology to everyone else's devices. That looks convenient. But we were not sure if it is a rumor or not, so we waited for a while for further information.

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As you remember, some time ago Gizmodo acquired an iPhone 4G prototype for $5,000. The story was pretty mystical - Gray Powell who is (or was?) an Apple employee decided to drink some beer and then lost his iPhone 4G in the pub. Another guy found it and then supposedly tried to bring it back to Apple, but nobody believed it's an iPhone 4G. So he sold it to Gizmodo.

Journalists at Gizmodo were very happy - they made a video of it, took dozens of pictures, disassembled it and again made photos and videos.  Then Apple officially asked Gizmodo to bring it back and they did it.

Well now we have information from the report made by Greg Sandoval at CNET where it is said the police are currenty investigating the circumstances of the story to find the evidence enough to support the criminal prosecution.

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Apple has released a new iPhone ad called "Family Man". The commercial highlights the ability for the iPhone 3GS to capture and playback video as well as a few applications from the App Store:

- Jamie Oliver; 20 Minute Meals ($7.99)
- Elmo’s Monster Maker ($3.99)
- Viper SmartStart (Free)

Watch the video:

Android phones have an advantage over Apple's iPhone in navigation, because Google includes their free nice Navigation program, while Apple doesn't have built in navigation in Maps. Here are some good news for iPhone users:

Google confirmed at a London press conference that it plans to bring free satnav to other smartphone platforms, including the iPhone, although it wouldn’t say when.

Unlike TomTom or iGo software, Google’s satnav software doesn’t store maps on the device but downloads them on-demand from the internet. However "Google Maps pre-caches the entire route," said Mobile Maps product manager, Steve Lee. "It needs a data connection when you ask for navigation. But while driving to your destination, if you intermittently lose the connection, it will still carry on. As long as you stay on the route."

Users can choose from several viewing options: standard maps and directions, satellite view and access to Street View, plus live traffic data. Sound like a good deal.

Few days ago Lang Lang, who is a famous Chinese pianist, had a concert at San Francisco's Davies' Symphony Hall. At one moment he amazed audience with playing The Flight of the Bumblebee on an Apple's iPad! He made this possible with Magic Piano iPad app that is available for download here.

It is amazing how apps can make a device so functional. But some people say it is impossible to play like this on an iPad because its touch screen is not sensitive enough for such a fast play. You can even notice the moment when Lang Lang gives a device to conductor without skipping a beat. So probably it's just a record that was made before.

99-year-old Virginia Cambell who lives in Lake Oswego, Oregon, is an enthusiastic reader. But she suffers from glaucoma, a disease that affects her vision so it becomes hard for her to read books.

But she found a solution - it's an iPad. It is her first computer. Virginia changes fonts and increases screen brightness to gain the ability to read back. One of her daughters said the device has "changed her life".

One of her other hobbies is writing limericks, and one of it is about Apple (you'll see it in the end of the clip).

As more stories pop up every day it is no wonder why there is such a big demand for iPad.

Freelancestudios created another cool accessory for iPhone - this time it's an "iRetrophone" dock that allows you making calls with a retro handset. The design is obviously borrowed from Henry Dreyfuss, prolific industrial designer who in 1937 created the iconic type of phone.

The base is compatible with any iPhone. We also recommend installing the iRetroPhone Rotary Dialer app ($0.99) so that the pair looked really authentic.

iRetroPhone is available for purchase in ping, clear or black resin here for $195.

Some time ago we posted an article about shocking popularity of the iPad among physicians. Well yesterday PCWorld posted an article about first institution which is looking forward to use this device. It is a Kaweah Delta Health Care District in Visalia, California. Its director of technical services Nick Voloshin says healthcare workers need a device with a long battery life while moving from location to location, and iPad is a great choice not only for usual everyday tasks, but also for looking at EKG results, X-ray images, and for other purposes that can be easily delivered with Citrix virtual desktop. He has already bought three iPads to test it and have plans to deploy more than a hundred for hospice and health care workers, pharmacists, dietitians and nurses in a next two months.

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Recently Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer had a financial conference call with the press and analysts. Here are some interesting facts we gained from the conversation:

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Dan Primack from Pehub.com reported yesterday that Google acquired Agnilux. The latter is a startup company in San-Jose comprised of former Apple, P.A. Semi, Cisco and TiVo employees. It is intriguing that there almost no public information about the reasons why Google bought it and what Agnilux has recently been working on. One of the Google representatives confirmed the information but didn't comment it on.

Agnilux's website is currently unavailable, so we have no information about the company. But because of former P.A. Semi employees it seems like Agnilux may be working on a new chip that can be a rival to Qualcomm's SnapDragon or Apple's A4 SoCs. But, according to an investigation made by New York Times in February, one of the employees named Mark Hayter said:

"We want to make a splash. We don't want our manufacturer to take our intellectual property before we're ready".

So it looks like the company's main purpose in kept in a big secret. But it is known that later NYT heard from another Agnilux employee that the company is working on server and has a partnership with Cisco. Well that might be interesting to Google whose thousands of servers till this moment have been made by the company's engineers but not purchased.