News tagged ‘iPad’

Lately Apple has released a third beta of the iPhone OS 4. It is specified as build 10M2247 and available for registered developers. Previous beta release was issued two weeks ago. The situation looks familiar as last year iPhone OS 3 had also gone through 5 beta cycles before it was publicly announced.

Currently the new update is unavailable due to installation problems, but those of the developers who successfully downloaded and installed it have already revealed what's new in the release.

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The picture above reveals that World of Warcraft was launched on the iPad. We don't know does it work correctly because there is no video yet, but there is information that the game was launched via Gaikai.

Gaikai is a service that allows you to play games in a browser, directly from the cloud. The scheme is pretty simple - the service runs and hosts the games and then streams it to the user using Silverlight, Java or Flash. As you know, iPad doesn't support Flash but somehow WoW works through Gaikai.

Gaikai and its competitors (OnLive and OTOY) are still in beta, but when it'll reach maturity there is a big chance to successfully use it for playing graphically intensive games on different devices including iPad.

Today Steve Jobs revealed that last Friday Apple's iPad reached one million sales:

"One million iPads in 28 days -- that's less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone. Demand continues to exceed supply and we're working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers."

The company also revealed next facts:

• 12 million apps for iPad were downloaded from the App Store already;
• 1,5 million e-books were downloaded from the iBookStore;
• 5,000 applications were created specifically for the iPad (the number of apps for iPod touch and iPhone is more than 200,000)

There were no information revealed about a breakdown of 3G vs. Wi-Fi-only sales, but one analyst told that on Sunday 49 of 50 retail stores were sold out of both models.

Piper Jaffray's analyst Gene Munster predicts that the Wi-Fi iPad will be more popular and will take 60% of sales while iPad 3G-capable model will carry only 40% of overall sales. He also believes that Apple has already more than 1 million iPads, which proved to be true.

Finally the jailbreak for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch from the Dev Team is available for download. It's free and untethered and it's called "Spirit". The jailbreak supports every iDevice with firmware version 3.1.2, 3.1.3 or 3.2.

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Few days ago John Batelle from the Searchblog wrote an interesting post about his thoughts on Siri, an app that was recently acquired by Apple. His says with devices like iPhone or iPad we starting to use apps more than browse the Internet. Apple understands that and looks forward to increase its share on a market of apps. And Siri is a wonderful choice - its perspective, functional, unusual enough for nowadays. With cash that Apple has, it doesn't need strong and focused reasons to make such a deal.

Batelle's another thought is that with Siri Apple may become a rival to Google. Just imagine yourself saying to the app "Chicago rental car» and after that it answers:

"...You don't need to rent a car. You can use the Chicago Transit. Here's an app for it. You can get from the airport to everywhere you want to go without having to rent a car. Plus, you'll save $150 which we know is a goal of yours because you've been interacting with the Mint application..."

The idea of searching the information will also be implemented in applications we will use. And if we'll get used to it, it will seem to be much more convenient than launching a browser and typing something into the search pole.

As you already know iPad 3G became available this Friday. Well iFixIt already obtained it and found out what are the differences between its 3g and Wi-fi versions. Here is what they've revealed.

iPad 3G has a black plastic window for better antenna reception. It also changes the way to open the device - you'll need to start separating from the right side and then go to the top and bottom of it.

iPad 3G has five antennas:

1. One antenna is in the plastic window to handle the cell reception.
2. Another antenna is attached to the LCD frame with the same purpose.
3. GPS antenna is also situated in the plastic window.
4. Wi-fi antenna is in the Apple logo.
5. Bluetooth antenna is situated on the left of the dock connector.

To make 3G connections iPad uses the same baseband processor as in iPhone 3GS, and presumably it's the Infineon 337S3754 PMB 8878 X-Gold IC. For GPS connections device has a Broadcom BCM4750UBG Single-Chip AGPS Solution.

More photos of separated iPad 3G are posted below.

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Wow! Hours after iPad 3G sales launch and it has already been jailbroken! Below is a video of MuscleNerd where jailbroken iPad 3G runs Cydia.

MuscleNerd used the jailbreak called "Spirit". It's a tool that makes untethered unlock of iPad, iPod Touch 3G and iPhone 3GS and DevTeam promises it will be available soon. Stay tuned for further instructions how to save your SHSH Blobs and then use Spirit to jailbreak your device.

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Recently Сhitika estimated the number of iPads sold by making a study based on its own online advertising network. The report reveals than Apple has sold more than 1 million of their tablets. The exact number is being refreshed every second so you can check it out here. And this is a current scale of iPad's popularity in some U.S. cities:

• California - 19,12%
• New York - 8,3%
• Texas - 8%
• Florida - 5,88%
• Illinois - 3,84%
• Wyoming - 0,03%

The report also has information than an average iPad has approximately 2,33 different IP addresses. Necessary data was received by tracking browser cookies.

Earlier Apple has also revealed that at the end of the first week there were sold more 500,000 iPads. The company claims it's very surprised with a level of initial demand.

And some humour on IphoneRoot. Here is a set of pictures made by someone named ntr23. They reveal a story of unboxing iPad by three brave Lego men.

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Yesterday Apple released a minor update for its media player suite iTunes. Now the version of the app is 9.1.1 and here is a list of issues that were fixed:

• Addressing some issues that improve stability and performance.
• Addressing a usability issue with VoiceOver and Genius Mixes;
• Addressing several stability issues with VoiceOver;
• Addressing issues with converting songs to 128 kbps AAC while syncing (this function was previously available only for iPod shuffle)

More information about security updates can be found on Apple's support page here.

You can update your iTunes via software update utility or download it directly from Apple.

Yesterday Apple closed a deal of acquiring Intrisity, a small company in Austin, Texas, that specializes on mobile computer chips producing.

This is a second time for the last two years when Apple buys a small chip company to have the facilities for making fast and power efficient processors. In 2008 Apple purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million, but with the lapse of time many chip maker employees had left company because of inadequate compensation (by the way, some of them are now in Agnilux, another company that was recently acquired by Google).

Well-known chip analyst Tom R. Halfhill has information from his sources that Apple paid $121 million for Intrinsity, but company’s representative Steve Dowling didn't comment on this information.

Such a deal isn't expensive for Apple at all, thinks Tom Halfhill:

“The purchase price is like pocket change to Apple, and they get a lot of benefit”.

It is widely speculated that iPad's A4 chip is based on Intrinsity technology that improved its processing power from 650 MHz to 1 GHz without increasing the battery consumption. With acquiring this chip making company Apple will be able to increase that 350 MHz by itself. Moreover, the company seems to be looking forward for creating its own version of ARM chip. Some other companies like Qualcomm, Marvell and Nvidia had the same experience and spent millions of dollars to gain a satisfactory result.

It is interesting that rumors about this deal started when some people saw that a significant number of Intrinsity employees changed their employer section to Apple in LinkedIn.

Also Apple's desire to create its own mobile chip contradicts to its strategy of purchasing Intel chips for computers.

Recently Oprah Winfrey declared herself a fan of iPad in the front of millions of TV viewers. She called the device "amazing" and said that its hardware will "change the way kids learn." TV host admires its backlit touchscreen and thinks it has great opportunities for reading, playing games and sharing photos.

Some time ago Oprah has been promoting Amazon Kindle on TV, and once the sales of this device were boosted so strong the company had problems with keeping up with demand. When she has been speaking about iPad she also mentioned Kindle in the past tense, like she "HAD a Kindle". But later her spokesperson said she still uses both devices.

Oprah's Book Club may be viewed in iBookstore for iPad, and its books may be purchased for a standard fee.

Famous iPhone hacker, Geohot, is working on a new jailbreak tool for future iPhone/iPad with firmware 4.0. The codename of this new utility is LimeRa1n. No release date yet. We'll keep you updated.

As you remember, recently we wrote about police investigating the deal about Gizmodo purchase of an iPhone 4G prototype. The company paid $5,000 to obtain it from an unknown person who found it at one of the California's bars.

Last Friday California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team visited Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home and seized 2 servers and 4 computers for a felony investigation of an iPhone 4G prototype. If to be exact, here is a list:

• MacBook
• MacBook Pro
• 32 Gb iPad
• 16 Gb IPhone
• AirPort Extreme
• IBM ThinkPad
• Dell desktop
• External hard drives and some other devices and accessories

This information was revealed by Gizmodo. The author of the post placed copy of the warrant, which was issued by a superior court judge in San Mateo County, California. It is also stated in the article that warrant is invalid because of a section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.

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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.