Killian Bell - page 329

Citing sources “familiar with the matter,” a new report suggests Apple will launch its new lineup of iMacs tomorrow, May 3rd, featuring Intel’s newest family of Sandy Bridge processors, and the company’s high-speed Thunderbolt port in place of the current Mini DisplayPort.

Apple has recently been taking steps to ensure a smooth roll-out of the new iMacs, according to the same sources, who apparently continue to provide accurate information when it comes to Apple’s plans, says the AppleInsider report. One confirmed that a “visual night” is scheduled for the early morning hours of May 3rd, “so it is highly likely that whatever new product that is going to be refreshed or introduced will be done on [that day].”

A “visual night” is when several Apple retail employees are called in to work throughout the evening and into the early hours of the morning to make changes to store layouts, often removing old products to make room for new ones.

Previous reports have already speculated that Apple was getting ready for the imminent launch of updated iMacs, and stock of the current generation all-in-one is slowly diminishing. The last time the iMac family was updated was some 9 months ago.

Credit cards at the ready!

As with any new Apple product, shortly after its release the white iPhone 4 received a customary teardown to see what’s inside. You’d be forgiven for thinking the internals for the white device are exactly the same as those featured within its black counterpart, but surely Apple changed something while it was delayed for all those months?

Well, the first teardowns for the new device reveal changes to both the proximity sensor and the rear-facing camera lens. One of the rumored issues which caused the white handset’s delay was light leakage into the camera; it seems Apple has rectified this issue with a more recessed camera lens.

As you can see in the comparison photo (top), the camera lens on the white device on the right is embedded much deeper into its surround, when compared to the lens featured on the black device on the left.

As for the proximity sensor, these are also different on each device, however, it’s currently unclear how the two components differ. Its obvious from recent images of the white iPhone 4 that Apple has modified the design of the proximity sensor externally: what was once tiny little holes above the device’s speaker is now a much more pronounced opening.

Kicking off this week’s roundup of must-have iOS applications is the brand new TweetDeck app for iPhone, which its creator claims has been completely re-imagined and rebuilt from the ground up to be fast, flexible, and powerful.

Fring is the popular video chat and VoIP application for iPhone and iPod touch. It deserves some recognition this week thanks to its recent update that makes it the first application for iOS to offer group video calling with support for up to four people.

Fahrenheit – or Celsius if you prefer – is a new weather application that displays the temperature in your area on your home screen. No, it doesn’t require a jailbreak: it uses the iOS application badges to display the current temperature over the application’s icon with push technology.

Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-have iOS apps – including TuneIn Radio and Lamebook – after the break!

Remember Comic Life – the awesome application for creating comic books out of your photos that used to be bundled with Intel Macs? Well, now it’s available on the iPad; taking the latest functionality from the desktop application and wrapping it up into an easy to use touch interface.

Comic Life for iPad has everything you need for creating and sharing comics, including fun and quirky templates, stylized image filters, and an easy-to-use drag and drop placement. You have full control over the design of your comics with a huge selection design options – colors, fonts, gradients, balloons, captions, panels and more.

Create comics out of the photos in your device’s photo library, then add balloons, captions, lettering and templates to tell your story; while the smart text layout and image filtering functions ensure your projects always look fantastic.

Use the integrated e-reader to view your creations in fullscreen, and when they’re ready for the big time, share them with your friends via Facebook and email. You can also print your comics via AirPrint and share them between other iPads with the intuitive ‘drag & drop’ feature.

Comic Life from Plasq is currently on sale for a limited time to celebrate its App Store release. Grab it now for $7.99!

There are plenty of accessories for the iPhone that can enhance our experience with the device, such as the huge variety of musical docking stations, fancy protective cases with built-in bluetooth keyboards, in-car chargers, stylus pens, the new Square credit card reader, and even guitar connection kits.

But what about the accessories that are yet to be invented? Here’s a list of 8 accessories that we wish were real, including an electric shaver attachment, a laser pointer and smudge-proof screen spray:

TV Tuner

There might be applications in the App Store that allow you to catch up with your favorite TV shows, such as Netflix and Hulu, but there aren’t many ways to watch live TV on our iPhones. The iPhone TV Tuner (pictured above) would allow us to do just that, with no data connection required.

Apple has surpassed Microsoft in quarterly profits for the first time ever, bagging $760 million dollars more during the first calendar quarter of 2011. Microsoft announced today that its net profit for the past quarter – the company’s third fiscal quarter – is $5.23 billion. Last week, Apple reported profits of $5.99 billion over the same period, which is its second fiscal quarter of 2011.

Six months ago, Apple’s excellent performance in recent years was highlighted when the Cupertino company surpassed Microsoft in quarterly revenue for the first time in nearly 15 years. Despite this, Microsoft continued to hold Apple off when it came to profits, largely due to the high profit margins it achieves with its software business.

Apple’s latest accomplishment is now the third time the company has trumped Microsoft over the past year. In May of 2010, Apple first surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization, then went on to surpass Microsoft in quarterly revenue in October, and has now surpassed Microsoft in quarterly profits.

Apple’s market cap is now nearly $100 billion higher than Microsoft’s. It’s no wonder Apple has enough cash reserves to keep the company going until 2018, without selling another single product.

[via MacRumors]

A new patent discovered by Patently Apple reveals that Apple is working on its own fitness center application for the iPhone.

The patent titled “Systems and Methods for Accessing Personalized Fitness Services Using a Portable Electronic Device” was originally filed in October, 2009, and describes an app that can benefit its users by helping them with their diet; suggesting when they should go to the gym and what exercises they should do; and allowing them to compete with friends and be ranked on their performance.

Services are broken down into four categories: New Customers, Getting There, In the Gym, and Post Workout; which will help users find their nearest fitness center and motivate them to actively attend, encourage them to workout and suggest different exercises, and provide post-workout motivation and fitness tracking features.

As we are all well aware by now, yesterday saw the launch of the white iPhone 4 in 29 countries around the world. What you may not be aware of, however, is that the white iPhone is ever so slightly thicker than the black model, as discovered by some early adopters of the device.

A MacRumors reader was one of the first to discover the difference, and emailed the site to let them know:

Just picked up the white iPhone 4 and realized it doesn’t fit into my Incase slider case. It appears that Apple has increased the size of the plastic that borders the glass on both sides by about 1mm

Ryan Cash of Marketcircle also discovered the difference, but it didn’t take an ill-fitting case for him to realize: Cash claims to have noticed simply by picking the device up:

A colleague of mine just picked up a 16 GB iPhone 4 in white. I was a bit surprised when I picked it up off his desk (I had my black 32 GB in my other hand at the same time) – it immediately felt thicker. We placed them side-by-side on his desk, and sure enough, the white iPhone was a hair thicker.

Fring – the popular video chat and VoIP application for iPhone and iPod touch – has just been updated to introduce group video calling with up to three other people. It’s the first application in the App Store to offer this feature, and it’s completely free.

To use Fring for video calling, you will obviously need a compatible device, such as the iPhone 4, the iPad 2, and the latest iPod touch. Fring is also available on compatible Android devices and supports cross-platform communication, so you can call and video chat between iOS and Android. The application works over 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi.

Fring uses a feature called ‘Dynamic Video Quality’ (DVC) that automatically and continuously adjusts your video call quality to match your connectivity; which its developers say provides you with the best audio and video quality possible.

If you’ve tried the new group video calling feature, let us know what it’s like in the comments.

While the vast majority of us gave up hope on the white iPhone 4 and just bought the black one instead, one analyst believes that the white device’s “mystique and scarcity value” could generate 1-1.5 million sales per quarter for Apple. Brian White, an analyst at Ticonderoga, believes the delay in the white iPhone’s release could drive sales.

Speaking to The San Jose Mercury News, White said:

The purchase of consumer electronic devices is not always a completely rational decision, and people buy Apple products for many different reasons, including status, aesthetics, functionality, quality and the ‘cool factor.’

In our view, this delay has created a certain mystique and scarcity value around the white iPhone 4 that we believe could drive incremental iPhone 4 purchases in the range of 1 million to 1.5 million units per quarter until the iPhone 5 potentially comes to market in September.

The white iPhone 4 finally went on sale today – 10 months after it was announced. Various manufacturing difficulties were blamed for its delay, and at times many speculated the device would never make it to market. A Cult of Mac poll yesterday revealed that only 12.41% of readers will buy the white iPhone, while 40.98% said they were now waiting for the next generation of the device.

[via MacLife]

Bob Mansfield is Apple’s Senior Vice President of hardware engineering, who earlier this week sold 99% of his shares in the company for $13.7 million, according to an SEC filing. Mansfield frequently trades his Apple stock; selling shares while they’re at their peak, then buying more as they fall with a 15% employee discount. His latest sale is his largest so far.

On Monday, Mansfield reportedly sold 38,863 of his Apple shares – leaving him with just 501 – each worth $351.89. Over the last three years, Mansfield has sold almost $58.5 million worth of investments, taking home $37.9 million after taxes.

Apple has reportedly purchased the iCloud.com domain for the new cloud-based storage service it is currently working on, paying $4.5 million to the previous owners who have now rebranded their service. Visitors to iCloud.com are currently redirected to the new service – now called CloudMe – but it is believed Apple will take over the domain when it’s ready.

The report comes from GigaOm, who cites a source familiar with the company:

My source, who is familiar with the company, says that Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple for about $4.5 million. Xcerion hasn’t responded to my queries as yet. At the time of writing, the Whois database showed Xcerion as the owner of iCloud.

MacRumors also received some information on the iCloud rebranding last week, but were unable to obtain enough information at the time to link the change to an Apple takeover.

Apple’s upcoming cloud-based storage service – also dubbed a ‘music locker’ – will purportedly be a solution for storing music and other content online which can then be streamed to internet connected devices, such as the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

The most recent speculation has suggested that Apple is currently in the process of signing deals with all of the major music labels and getting the service ready for launch. An announcement is expected at WWDC in June.

A crash report received by iOS developer FutureTap reveals that Apple is currently field testing the next major release of its iOS firmware using third-party applications from the App Store. In a message posted to Twitter, FutureTap discloses a crash log from a device running iOS 5.0:

Just received the first iOS 5.0 crash report. MKUserLocationBreadCrumb sounds interesting.

FutureTap followed up the message with a screenshot (above) of the crash log, highlighting the “MKUserLocationBreadCrumb” API. MKUserLocation is part of the iOS MapKit Framework, which is used to find your device’s current location; while the “BreadCrumb” element is said to indicate a new tracking feature.

It’s possible the new feature has something to do with the new mapping technology that Apple revealed it was working on in a press release yesterday, however, this isn’t expected to appear as a finished product for another couple of years.

While there’s nothing major here, this crash report reveals – unsurprisingly – that Apple is readying its iOS 5 firmware for its announcement at WWDC in June. We will probably see its release alongside the fifth-generation iPhone – expected this fall.

[via AppleInsider]

Gameloft is famous for using hugely popular games as the inspiration for some of its iOS releases. For example, Modern Combat 2 is not too dissimilar to Modern Warfare 2; N.O.V.A. bears some resemblance to Halo, and Starfront’s similarities to Starcraft are uncanny. As a keen iOS gamer, I like this. Though some game developers are beginning to offer iOS versions of their most popular releases, some still aren’t, and I admire how Gameloft offers a substitute to some of my favorite console and PC games.

Gameloft’s latest release is called Order & Chaos Online – and is their iOS answer to World of Warcraft (WoW). It just hit the App Store and comes with a $6.99 (universal) price tag. That’s not too bad for an iOS game, but you’ll also need to pay a subscription fee. You get three months free when you first login, and to continue playing after that you’ll have to pay $0.99 per month, $1.99 for three months, or $2.99 for six months.

Order & Chaos Online is a true real-time, full 3D massively multiplayer online role playing game, or ‘MMORPG’. It features a vast fantasy world for your to explore with thousands of other players from around the world. When you begin the game, you use the character creation system to cuztomize your hero.

Apple is certainly rather talkative today; as well as confirming the release of the white iPhone 4 tomorrow, it has also issued a press release announcing that the iPad 2 will launch in another 12 countries this week.

Tomorrow, April 28th, the second-generation tablet will hit Japan; while Hong Kong, India, Israel, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and UAE will get the device on Friday, April 28th. China will also get the device on May 6th.

Customers can purchase the device at Apple retails stores from 9 a.m. local time, select Apple authorized resellers, and from Apple’s online store beginning at 1 a.m.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for the iPad 2 I ordered in the U.K. on April 1st. What gives?

Apple has today issued a press release and finally confirmed the launch date of the white iPhone 4. It will be available beginning tomorrow, April 28th, from Apple’s online store, its retail stores, AT&T and Verizon stores, and select Apple authorized resellers.

It was also be available from various carriers in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.K.

Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president – who confirmed in a tweet that the device would launch this spring – said in the press release:

The white iPhone 4 has finally arrived and it’s beautiful. We appreciate everyone who has waited patiently while we’ve worked to get every detail right.

The device launches 10 months after it was first announced, with various manufacturing issues rumored to be the cause of the delay. Apple’s official statement will finally spell the end of white iPhone 4 rumors. Oh, Lord, what a wonderful day.

Crucial has just launched its new M4 lineup of 2.5-inch solid-state drives, which are the successors to the RealSSD C300 range, and boast faster read and write speeds. The M4 uses 25nm technology NAND flash created by its parent company Micron, and is available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB models.

Crucial claim the new M4 SSDs reach read speeds of up to 415MBps – a 17% increase over its predecessor – while write speeds are up 20% with speeds of up to 260MBps.

As with all SSDs, however, this technology doesn’t come cheap. The 64GB M4 will cost you $130, which rises to $250 for the 128GB, $500 for the 256GB and $1000 for the 512GB. All can be purchased directly from Crucial and include a three-year warranty.

While the M4s are pretty pricey, solid-state drives are a great way of improving the speed of your Mac. Traditional hard drives are famous for being the bottleneck in modern-day Macs, and since the release of the incredibly nippy second-generation MacBook Air, many users have realized the difference an SSD can make and have adopted the new technology. Recent tests have proven that MacBook Pros equipped with SSD drives are significantly faster than those with traditional HDDs.

[via Macworld]

Apple pushed out the 9.1.2 update to iPhoto ’11 yesterday, introducing some new card themes and improving the application’s stability with several bug fixes.

Improvements to the application include fixes for the zoom slider in magnify view, an issue which prevented the toolbar from auto-hiding in full screen view, and minor issues with formatting with book, card and calendar themes.

The full release notes for the 9.1.2 release are as follows:

This update adds new card themes to iPhoto ’11. It also improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues, including the following:

• Addresses an issue that prevented the Zoom slider from being accessible in Magnify (1-Up) view
• Fixes an issue where Toolbars were not auto-hiding in Full Screen view
• Search field now correctly performs an “includes” search when searching by text string
• Fixes minor formatting issues with book, card and calendar themes
• Message Size of emails now correctly updates when changes are made using the Photo Size menu
• Addresses an issue that prevented some iPhoto 5 libraries from upgrading correctly
• Multiple book pages can now be drag-selected when in All Pages view
• Design tools in print project panels are now accessible via separate Layout and Options buttons
• Photo backgrounds applied to a book are now preserved when book type is changed
• Tab key can now be used to navigate through all text fields in a book project

The update is recommended for all users of iPhoto ’11.

iPhoto ’11 users can get the update via Software Update, Apple’s website, or through the Mac App Store.

A new report from Nikkei Shimbun – the Japanese newspaper behind the iPhone 6 LCD rumors – claims the iPad 2 will finally launch in Japan on Thursday, April 28th. The second-generation tablet was delayed for over a month due to the earthquake and tsunami that recently devastated vast parts of the country.

Apple announced that it would be delaying the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan in the middle of March – stating its teams were focusing on recovering from the recent disaster – and the company is yet to release an update on the delay.

The iPad 2 was scheduled to launch in Japan on March 25th – the same day it hit 25 other countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Mexico, Norway and the U.K.

If Nikkei’s claims are accurate, the iPad 2 will launch in Japan just a day after the white iPhone 4 is released worldwide; a busy week for Apple, it seems.

[via MacRumors]

ipswDownloader is a great new tool that makes the process of finding and downloading iOS firmware releases incredibly simple. Developed by Vitaly Parovishnik, and available for both Mac and Windows, the app supports every iOS device there is – including AppleTV – and features iOS firmware from version 1.0.1.

What’s great about ipswDownloader is that once you’ve selected your device and the firmware version you want to download, it provides additional details on the release that jailbreakers in particular will find incredibly valuable; such as the baseband version, whether the firmware can be jailbroken and unlocked, and the size of the download.

ipswDownloader is completely free to download and use. The full list of supported devices can be found after the break.

Remember that really cool transparent rear panel for the iPhone 4 we posted about a while ago? It was allegedly achievable by removing your device’s rear panel and eliminating its black paint with some paint thinner – allowing you to look in on the iPhone’s internal beauty. Now you can have your own transparent iPhone without ruining your device’s housing with paint thinner.

iFixit have just released their new transparent iPhone 4 rear panel for just $29.95. The panel includes the flash diffuser and camera lens, so you require nothing more to acheive this ultra cool mod.

Installing the panel is easy: you simply remove the two screws at the base of your device and the rear panel slides off. Recent iPhone 4s will require a pentalobe screwdriver, whereas earlier models will require a Phillips #00 screwdriver.

The panel is currently only compatible with GSM models of the iPhone – apparently Apple has modified the rear panel layout for the CDMA iPhone, so Verizon customers are out of luck.

As a massive fan of first-person shooter games, I’m always looking for great iOS shooters that will help me get my fix when I’m away from a console. Thankfully, the App Store is home to some great FPS games from developers such as Gameloft, EA Games, Treyarch and Villain.

Our latest app list is a collection of the best FPS games in the App Store – check them out after the break!

Sony surprised visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show back in January when the company announced its intentions to take second place in the tablet market within a year, despite not having a tablet under its name. But at a media launch in Tokyo on Tuesday, the company announced two new devices that will be coming to take on the iPad this fall.

Identified, for now, by the code names S1 and S2, the new Sony tablets will be powered by the latest Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system, and will both feature Wi-Fi and 3G/4G capabilities. The S1 will feature a 9.4-inch display and a Tegra 2 processor, with an “off-centre of gravity design.” It will also boast an IR port for controlling Sony’s line of Bravia televisions.

The S2 has two 5.5-inch displays with a foldable design; which can be used independently to display different functions, or together for browsing websites and other tasks.

Sony chose not to reveal any further details about either tablet, disclaiming that “design and specifications are subject to change without notice.” Both devices will be compatible with selected PlayStation games, and are scheduled for a worldwide launch this coming fall.

The S1 certainly looks like a pretty swanky tablet in the picture above, but I’m sure I like the foldable design that comes with the S2. Until we know more details about each device’s technical specifications, it’s hard to determine whether these Sony tablets will worthy adversaries for the iPad 2. However, I can’t imagine Sony would release them if they weren’t strong contenders.

[via AppleInsider]

It seems more and more likely that Wednesday will be the day the infamous white iPhone 4 is launched, finally putting an end to the rumors that have surrounded the device for the last 10 months since it was originally announced. There’s one more before the big day, however: it seems that only the 16GB model of the device will be available when it hits stores.

A UPS shipping invoice obtained by Boy Genius Report shows a shipment of 20 white iPhone 4 16GB units destined for one AT&T store, while there are no 32GB units to be seen. A separate report over the weekend claims that both models of the device were being shipped to Best Buy stores across the U.S., but inventory numbers for the 32GB device could not be confirmed.

If you’ve waited 10 months for a white iPhone 4, it seems you may be stuck with a 16GB model if you have no intention of waiting any longer.

It’s safe to assume the white iPhone 4 won’t be on the list of Apple’s best product launches.

No matter how harmless this whole iPhone tracking feature may be, some people still aren’t happy about it. While many of us have brushed it off and chosen to ignore what seems like something blown way out of proportion, others have decided to take things a little more seriously.

Now dubbed ‘Locationgate’, the issue has been the subject of class-action lawsuits and government investigations. But surely if users are really concerned about their iPhone tracking their every move, they can just turn location services off, right? Wrong.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that even with location services disabled on the iPhone, the device continues to collect and store users’ location data with the help of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots. This isn’t a dirty little secret, however; this is well within the rights of every cell phone maker. But what’s interesting, is that Apple seems to lie about it.