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News tagged ‘Intel’
Apple intern's thesis leaks secret project to port Mac OS X to ARM processors
In 2010, Tristan Schaap, who now serves as a Core OS engineer at Apple, published a Bachelor thesis on his 12-week stint as an intern with Apple's Platform Technologies Group, a subdivision of the Core OS department. The thesis revealed that the former Apple intern had been working on the secret project to port Mac OS X Snow Leopard to the ARM architecture.
According to the paper, Schaap worked with the group to get Darwin, the "lower half" of Apple's Mac OS X operating system, to boot onto an ARM processor from Marvell. During the course of the project, he achieved his goal of "booting into a multi-user prompt," though some issues still remained due to a "poor implementation on the debug hardware."
Apple iPhone 4S A5 chip incorporates Audience EarSmart noise reduction tech for Siri
Apple's A5 System on a Chip incorporates noise reduction technology by Audience, Inc., which optimizes the performance of Siri voice recognition on iPhone 4S.
Audience explains that by "imitating the complex processing that occurs from the inner ear to the brain, Audience's intelligent earSmart technology distinguishes and interprets sounds as people do naturally. In a mobile device, the earSmart processor effectively isolates and enhances the primary voice signal and suppresses surrounding noise--for both transmit and receive--to enable clear conversations nearly anywhere."
The company notes that "far-field uses are more vulnerable to background noise interference and poor voice quality given the speaker's distance from the device," an issue that has previously been noted in regard to rumors that Apple might deploy TV systems incorporating Siri voice technology.
Absinthe v0.4: jailbreak utility for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S is updated
The Chronic Dev-Team has released an update to its Absinthe jailbreak utility that brings support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Intel + PPC) and fixes several bugs.
@pimskeks announced the update:
#Absinthe 0.4 released greenpois0n.com/?p=173 - OSX 10.5 support (PPC+Intel). Re-jailbreaking not required. Changelog: pastebin.com/DdwGKstR
What's New in Absinthe v0.4:
- Mac: added support for OSX 10.5, PPC and Intel CPU
- added consistency check on startup to make sure required files are in place
- Windows: fixed bug in payload generator that might cause a crash
You can download Absinthe for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux from here.
Here are our step-by-step tutorials:
- HowTo untether jailbreak iPad 2 with iOS 5.0.1 (Mac OS X)
- HowTo untether jailbreak iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0/5.0.1 (Mac OS X)
- HowTo untether jailbreak iPad 2 with iOS 5.0.1 (Windows)
- HowTo untether jailbreak iPhone 4S with iOS 5.0/5.0.1 (Windows)
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Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Tab 10.1N escape German injunctions
Samsung's modified Galaxy Tab 10.1N seen on the left compared to the original model
A German Munich Regional Court judge has recently made a decision against granting Apple injunctions on two Samsung products. The judge also noted that at least one of the patent mentioned in the action was likely to be revoked at trial.
The two products, Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone and its revised "10.1N" version of the Galaxy Tab (redesigned by Samsung to escape the original injunction on sales Apple won last September) will be available for sale in Germany while the case against them continues.
As for the Galaxy Nexus, Apple argued for an injunction on sales based on a "patent granted last year protecting some technology related to touch screens."
Court upholds ban of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany on new grounds
A German appeals court on Tuesday upholds ban of Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 8.9 sales in Europe's biggest economy.
The decision by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court (DHRC) upholds a ruling from last September but does so based on Germany's unique unfair competition law rather than the earlier court's finding that Samsung committed a violation of a Community design. As such, Apple won't have success replicating the decision in other European countries, according to legal analyst Florian Mueller, as Samsung succeeded in defeating design-right claims by Apple that could have contributed to a broader, more material ruling covering most of the European Union.
Steve Jobs asked Google to stop poaching Apple workers
A court filing that is a part of a civil suit involving the employment practices of seven major tech firms was unveiled on last Friday. It includes an email, which late Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs sent to former Google chief Eric Schmidt. Jobs asked Schmidt to end poaching Apple’s workers.
The March, 2007 email specifically asked Google to put a stop to its active recruitment of an unnamed Apple engineer, and alluded to halting worker poaching in general, reports Reuters.
"I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this," Jobs wrote in his email to Schmidt, who was on Apple's board of directors at the time.
Apple Is Looking To Open R&D Center In Haifa, Israel
Following Apple’s acquisition of Israeli flash memory company Anobit, an Israeli business newspaper Calcalist that Apple wants to open a research center near Haifa city by the end of February. Reportedly the facility is located at the south of the Haifa city, in the neighborhood of Microsoft, Philips and Intel, who also have research centers there.
Apple working on version of Siri to help you purchase products online
This week AppleInsider discovered a new patent application from Apple that demonstrates company's interest in expanding its Siri voice-assistant to help with online shopping. The current version of the service available exclusively on the iPhone 4S does not allow users to make online purchases. The voice-driven personal assistant software responds with "Sorry, I can't purchase that," when a user tries to complete transactions with online stores.
The patent application, entitled "Intelligent Automated Assistant," is a detailed look not only at what Siri can already do, but what it might be able to do in the future. And it specifically highlights e-commerce as a key function of its "Intelligent Automated Assistant." The application notes that Siri could be used for "online purchases of items such as books, DVDs, music and the like."
Strong Secondary Market For Used iPhones Benefits Apple, Users and Carriers
AllThingsD on a survey made by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) which analyzes the impact of the market for iPhones that are given away or resold when users buy the latest models. The survey looked at users upgrading to new iPhones beginning with the launch of iPhone 4S in October and found that 53% of those customers had returned their used iPhones to the secondary market.
ITC rules Motorola did not violate Apple patents
The U.S. International Trade Commission has ruled a couple of days ago that Motorola's Droid line of smartphones does not violate Apple's patents.
"We are pleased with today's favorable outcome for Motorola Mobility," Scott Offer, senior vice president and general counsel of Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. "Motorola Mobility has worked hard over the years to develop technology and build an industry-leading intellectual property portfolio. We are proud to leverage this broad and deep portfolio to create differentiated innovations that enhance the user experience."
Apple awarded 676 patents in 2011
According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple was awarded a total of 676 patents in 2011. Now Apple is No. 39 among companies awarded inventions in the U.S., comparing with the last year result, when Apple won 563 patents and was ranked the No. 46 global company in terms of inventions.
The No. 1 inventor in America was IBM, which was awarded 6,180 patents in 2011. The second place belongs to Samsung, which won 4,894 inventions outside of its home country of Korea. The third place took Canon with 2,821 patents. Panasonic came in the fourth place with 2,559, while Toshiba took fifth with 2,483 inventions. Microsoft is in the sixth place, with 2,311 patents, Hewlett-Packard with 1,308 patents in 14th place, Intel with 1,244 patents in 16th place, and AT&T, whose 721 patents put it in 35th.
Apple becomes No. 3 PC maker in US
Research group Gartner released preliminary PC shipment results for the fourth quarter of 2011, showing that Apple climbed to third place among U.S. PC vendors as the rest of the top five vendors saw shipments decline year over year. Apple saw 20.7 percent growth of Mac sales in the U.S. market from the year ago quarter, and took the No. 3 spot behind HP and Dell.
However, customers shied away from the world's largest PC maker in the fourth quarter, causing a 26.1 percent decline year over year. Shipments fell from 5.6 million in the last quarter of 2010 to 4.1 million. Dell had a 4.5 percent decline in shipments from 4.2 million in the year ago quarter to 4.0 million in the most recent quarter.
Apple sold 1.2M MacBook Airs over holidays, new models with Ivy Bridge loom
According to DigiTimes sources, Apple sold 1.2 million of its thin-and-light MacBook Air over the holiday buying season. These numbers are 200,000 more than Apple achieved in the September quarter. Thanks to MacBook Air sales, Apple became the only vendor that managed to maintain its total notebook shipments from the third quarter to the fourth of calendar 2011.
DigiTimes also claims that another strong performance for the MacBook Air comes as Apple is expected to refresh the ultraportable notebook line in the coming months with Intel's next-generation Ivy Bridge processors. Apple PC competitors are doing their best to replicate MacBook Air success, and going to launch their own notebooks based on the "Ultrabook" specification from Intel. Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba reportedly plan to price comparable models $50 to $100 below Apple's MacBook Air pricing.
Apple to ship high-res 'iPad 3' in March, 'iPad 4' in October
Citing component makers in Taiwan, DigiTimes reported on Friday that the so-called "iPad 3" will launch in March with a high-resolution Retina Display, while an "iPad 4" will arrive in October of this year to counter a rumored Google-branded tablet as well as touchscreen devices running Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system.
Apple will ship the so-called "iPad 3" with a full HD display in March and then "iPad 4" - named so by its component suppliers - with killer applications in October, according to industry sources in Taiwan. [...]
But a true battle for market share will arrive in the second half of the year when Apple ships its iPad 4 in October, about the time when Microsoft releases its Window 8 and Intel unveils its Clover Trail-W platform, the sources commented.
The 9.7-inch iPad 4 is expected to come with much upgraded hardware specifications and integrated applications so as to compete with an array of Android-, Wintel- or WoA (Windows on ARM)-based tablet PCs to be released in the fourth quarter, said the sources.
Finally, Digitimes suggests that Apple will continue to sell the current iPad 2, but will drop its price to $399, much like Apple currently does with older iPhone models, to counter lower priced tablets that are available, such as the Kindle Fire for $199.
Apple's New Patents Describe Various Aspects Of Thunderbolt Technology
United States Patent and Trademark Office published a series of patents () suggesting that Apple is attemting to possess as many Thunderbolt related patents and trademarks as possible despite the widespread impression that technology is a result of collaboration between Apple and Intel.