News tagged ‘Notes’

Regional Express (REX), Australian largest independent regional airline, had to extinguish a glowing iPhone 4, emitting “dense smoke” while a flight from Lismore to Sydney. A flight attendant extinguished the smoking smartphone and no one was injured during the incident. The situation, obviously, has sparked concerns over the handset's battery. The defected device was the GSM version of the iPhone 4, according to the model number of the device.

This issue, probably, caused by battery overheating wasn’t a unique one for Apple's devices. As far as we know, the company recently initiated a replacement program for the first-generation iPod nano due to potential battery overheating issues earlier this month, although Apple notes that the problem is very rare, but the likelihood of overheating does increase over time.

One of the biggest consumer electronic battery scares in recent years occurred in 2006. Microscopic metal particles were found in 9.6 million lithium-ion Sony batteries that the company had to recall. Such batteries were also used in Apple’s iBook and PowerBook G4 and Apple recalled 1.8 million batteries.

The Wall Street Journal’s sources confirm that Sharp will indeed produce display parts for the upcoming Apple’s iPad 3.

Apple Inc. is adding Sharp Corp. as a maker of screens used in the next-generation iPad, people familiar with the situation said Thursday, as the U.S. consumer electronics company moves to diversify component suppliers for its products.

Apple is also investing in Sharp's panel manufacturing factories in Japan. According to sources, Apple wants to ensure that Sharp will able to produce enough panels to satisfy Apple’s needs. Sharp already supplies panels for the iPhone and can be supplier of panels for the next-generation iPhone that is expected to be launched next year.

We should admit that Sharp was expected to be Apple’s new source of iPad screens. Moreover, the recent analyst report notes that production of iPad 3 screens already started and that Apple and Sharp have developed a new technology to allow a thinner high resolution display for the next iPad.

The US Patent & Trademark Office published (via PatentlyApple) an Apple patent application describing a new way of interacting with content on iOS devices. The concept is called “Persistent Overlay” and it aims to provide users with quick access to songs, files, photos and other data through an always persistent, accessible UI.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to FOSS Patent’s report, a pending legal case in Germany could have a profound effect on Apple with a possible injunction barring the iCloud service in this country over violation of Motorola Mobility patent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Digitimes reports that Apple has reduced its fourth-quarter orders for iPad 2 display panels. That might mean that Apple has already started preparing for the launch of the iPad 3 early next year. The second reason might be the reduction of customers’ interest in the device.  Moreover, Apple stockpiled components for an extra 4-5 million iPad 2 units, so that allows it to reduce its orders for the fourth quarter.

Sales of iPads at the end market totaled 11.12 million units in the third quarter of 2011, according to data released by Apple. However, inventories of parts and components prepared by the makers in the supply chain for the production of iPad 2 in the quarter are sufficient for the production of 15-16 million iPads, leaving a stockpile of 4-5 million units of iPad 2 in the supply chain, the sources noted.

Digitimes also notes that the reason for stockpiling of iPad 2 components may be preparation for the iPad 3 launch set for the beginning of 2012, suggesting that  suppliers of both display and touch panels for the iPad 3 have either already begun or will soon begin shipments to Apple.

While Apple is adjusting panel inventory for iPad 2, Samsung and Sharp already began shipping panels for the next-generation iPads to Apple in October, and Taiwan-based touch panel makers TPK Holding and Wintek will begin to ship touch panels for the new iPads to the supply chain in November-December, the sources noted.

A team of developers called Applidium has announced that they managed to investigate how Siri, exclusive service available on the iPhone 4S, talks to Apple servers. Applidium notes that iPhone 4S uses standard HTTPS network requests to communicate with Apple's servers, but sends data using an "ACE" command rather than regular web GET requests. Moreover, each Siri request involves a unique identifier based on UUID. Such identifier prevents access of unauthorized devices to Apple’s servers. User’s requests are compressed with the Speex audio codec optimized for VoIP. Applidium discovered that iPhone, to provide Siri’s voice recognition, should support at least Siri's basic voice recognition features, but Apple doesn’t plan to port such capabilities on earlier iOS 5 models.

So far, Applidium's investigation has revealed that Siri packages requests in compressed property lists, but further exploration of the protocol is hampered by a number of issues, including the complexity of requests, the fact that they are tied to a hardware key, and that they are subject to change.

Noteworthy, Apple could at any time stop supporting a particular hardware identifier, if it is suspected of being used to exploit its servers, and change way of data transmitting.

Applidium says "anyone could now write an Android app that uses the real Siri! Or use Siri on an iPad!" But you will need a real unique user key of an actual iPhone 4S.

Flurry, mobile analytics firm, reports that portable gaming has seen a continuous shift from dedicated gaming devices to smartphones and other multifunctional devices.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chinese customers prefer to buy Apple’s iPhone than Nokia’s smartphones, according a report published by the investment bank Morgan Stanley. As more than a third of 2,050 surveyed urban Chinese mobile phone users express a preference for iPhone, twice that for Nokia's models.

Apple presence on Chinese smartphone market grew significantly in 2011. Not surprisingly that over fiscal 2011 the company managed to earned as many as $13 billion, comparing with $3 billion in fiscal year 2010. Morgan Stanley says it believes "China could surpass the US as Apple's largest market in about three years, adding nearly $30 billion more per year to the top-line along the way." The firm notes that sales of iPhones are also driving purchases of related Apple products, noting that Mac use is nearly four times higher among iPhone users, where Mac user share jumps to 35 percent from the standard 9 percent of the general population.

Morgan Stanley’s survey demonstrates that Apple increased its share by 6 percentage points to reach 34 percent of planned purchases in the region. Nokia dropped 8 percentage points to make up just 16 percent of the nation's planned purchases.

As Apple promised, pre-orders of expected iPhone 4S is become available. Now it is possible to pre-order new iPhone through Apple’s website in Australia, Germany, France, Canada, the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. Besides, pre-ordering is also available through the websites of carriers in these countries.

Read the rest of this entry »

Keeping to the Apple’s schedule, the company opens six more stores on this weekend. It starts with the Nanjing East store in China opening tomorrow (Friday, September 23) and then the IFC (Hong Kong), Hornsby (Australia), Centro Sicilia (Italy), New Haven (Connecticut) and Metrotownn (Canada) Apple Stores will open on Saturday. The Nanjing East store (shown above) is the third Apple in Shanghai. IFC store is the first store that locates in Hong Kong. ifoApple Store notes that this store features a unique design:

The rear wall of both levels are glass windows looking out towards the city. On the inside, the lower level has two wide stainless steel walls, with a visitor entrance in the middle. The walls include back-lit display cases promoting Apple’s products. The upper level has an all-glass front window visible from the mall hallway.

Today Adobe announced in a blog that it will add new features to its AIR platform and Flash Player allowing for use of 3D-accelerated graphics in mobile and desktop devices. Also the company notes in a press release:

Read the rest of this entry »

After Apple and Intel made joint announcement of the new Thunderbolt input/output technology, one of the highly anticipated products to work with this technology has been the Little Big Disk from LaCie. This drive, which comes in SSD and HDD variants, in February was announced to be launched in summer, however only now it have eventually arrived at Apple Stores worldwide. LaCie notes:

Read the rest of this entry »

As Macworld reports, Apple has introduced a change to the Mac App Store showing warnings to users who attempts to buy apps, which they have already purchased from outside developers and which is already installed on their machines. The warning says:

Read the rest of this entry »

CNet notes that Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors will include improved graphics processing unit (GPU). According to Anandtech, Intel expects that graphics processing on next generation chips will be 60% faster than on Sandy Bridge processors that are currently shipped in Apple’s computers.

Read the rest of this entry »