It is Sunday today and I think that you know what that means, huh? It’s time for our traditional top 10 stories of the week. A number of interesting things happened during the past seven days, I must say. But everything in its turn.
A couple of months ago, David Hsieh of DisplaySearch said that Apple was planning to release a 12-inch MacBook Air with Retina display in 2014. Usually reliable KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reaffirmed Hsieh’s words, however, these were still only rumors.
Apple’s iPad Air has taken a top tablet spot in December in the USA. More than 40% of all Apple tablets sold during the holiday season were iPad Airs, reports research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. Anyway, these are only the estimates.
According to Fortune’s recent report, Apple sold as many as 55.3 million iPhone units during the Q4 of 2013. It should be noted, however, that these are only the estimates made by a group of professional and amateur financial experts, not the actual results.
As usual, the predictions made by professionals and young analysts differ.
Winterboard has been recently updated to work properly on all 64-bit Apple devices running iOS 7 such as iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display. What that means is there should be no bugs now, so all those people who like to customize and change the default Apple themes and wallpapers can at last sigh with relief. Well, at least we hope for that.
The evad3rs have just released a new version of their jailbreak tool - evasi0n7 1.0.4, which is expected to bring numerous security improvements to the iOS 7 jailbreak.
Evad3rs have released a new version of their jailbreak tool. Evasi0n7 1.0.3 is compatible with computers running both OS X and Windows; it also contains a number of important fixes and improvements.
The company from Cupertino will soon announce its Q1 2014 earnings. This means Apple executives will officially unveil the results of the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini sales during the first quarter of their availability, apart from that, they will talk about iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c sales during the holiday season.
The company from Cupertino may start producing more advanced processors in 2015. Or, it is better to say, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung will switch to new 14- and 16-nanometer fabrication processes. What’s even more interesting is that TSMC is expected to become Apple’s main supplier with 60-70% of orders.
Ahead of holidays, Apple’s iPad mini supplies finally begin to improve. As noted by MacRumors, Apple is now capable of shipping its ‘small’ tablet to any location in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Asia Pacific within 1-3 business days. For those who live in Europe, shipping times have recently decreased to 3-5 days.
DisplayMate, a company that specializes in precise display testing, has recently compared three most popular 7-inch tablets - iPad mini with Retina display, Kindle Fire HDX 7 and Nexus 7. Guess what - Apple’s tablet was criticised for what the experts call “really bad planning”. iPad mini was given the last, third place.
American regional carriers are starting to offer cellular iPad mini with Retina display. Models with 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB are now available on several networks across the USA.