Apple has announced today that the iPhone 5 will be launching in South Korea on December 7, followed by 50 additional countries throughout the month, including Brazil, Russia, and Taiwan. Add that to the 47 countries where it’s already on sale, and Apple’s latest smartphone will be in 97 markets by 2013.
In Russia, you don’t buy music… you pirate it, along with pretty much everything else digital. That could soon change, though, as Apple is apparently now inviting a small group of Russians to an iTunes event scheduled to take place in Moscow tomorrow, December 4.
Samsung has once again taken the top spot for mobile market share in the United States after attracting more than a quarter of mobile subscribers. The Korean company claimed 26.3% of the market as of October 2012, but rival Apple is quickly catching up. The iPhone maker saw the highest level of growth among cellphone manufacturers, and managed to overtake LG to take second place.
When you open up a new Apple gadget — whether it be a new MacBook Pro or an iPhone 5 — the packaging will almost always tell you it’s been “designed by Apple in California” and “assembled in China.” But Apple’s new iMacs are an exception to that, because some of the all-in-ones are being assembled in the good old United States of America.
Following its acquisition of Instagram earlier this year, Facebook is said to be eyeing up another popular service. Cross-platform messenger WhatsApp could be the next item on the social network’s shopping list as the company looks to extend its mobile presence, according to sources close to the matter.
Shipping times for the iPhone 5 have improved again as Apple continues to catch up with the handset’s initial demand. Just 7 days after shipping times dropped to one week, the Apple online store now states that new iPhone 5 orders will be dispatched in just 2-4 business days.
Fantastical — the incredible calendaring app from Flexibits — is kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup, and it’s accompanied by KitCam, a great new photography app that gives Tap Tap Tap’s Camera+ some real competition. We also have some big updates to Apple’s Remote app and Vimeo.
The new iMac went on sale in the Apple Store yesterday morning, and initial demand has already caused shipping estimates to slip from 1-3 to 7-10 business days. The base 21.5-inch model is now shipping in 7-10 days, while the faster model still ships in 1-3 days. The 27-inch iMac won’t be delivered for 3-4 weeks, meaning many orders probably won’t arrive in time for Christmas.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has noted that new iMac supplies will be constrained for awhile due to the complicated manufacturing process overseas.
Source: Apple
Apple’s new iMac went on sale yesterday, and like clockwork, the folks at iFixit have performed a thorough teardown. Given Apple’s track record, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the 2012 iMac is incredibly difficult to repair. The razor-thin LCD is glued and fused onto the frame, and accessing the RAM and hard drive is like cracking open a vault.
The new iMac scores pretty low on iFixit’s repairability scale, but the machine’s innards are still quite an impressive feat of modern engineering.
Today is December 1st, which means that it is World AIDS Day, “an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV and to commemorate people who have died.” Apple has been a longtime partner with the Global Fund and (RED), and today Apple Stores around the world are honoring World AIDS Day by literally going red. Many Apple retail store logos have been colored red to raise awareness.
Apple has also added a banner on its heavily trafficked homepage that encourages customers to donate towards AIDS research.
Kicking off this week’s list of must-have iOS games is Dreamcast classic Jet Set Radio, a terrific skating game in which you rollerblade around a fictional city and tag buildings, rival gang members, and more with spray paint. It’s accompanied by Pong World, the first official Pong game for iOS; a massive update to FIFA 13, and more.
The jury’s still out on what effect the firing in August of some key players at Hipstamatic will have on the app itself — but the toy-camera simulator is still pumping out the FreePaks, those cute virtual lens-and-film pairings that often tie in with some pop-culture reference. This time it’s based off the star-stuffed Gangster Squad flick, set to be released early next year. Oh, and they’re giving away a Canon 5D Mk III in a contest, if you’re interested.
If you haven’t gotten enough of Robert Kirkman’s uber-popular Walking Dead series, you’ll love this. On his Twitter feed today, Kirkman posted a link to the the website for new, also episodic, iOS game, The Walking Dead: Assault.
It looks much more like the comic than the recently finished season one of Telltale’s The Walking Dead game, and allows you to play as one of the characters from the original series of Eisner Award-winning comic books, published by Image Comics.
Ah, youth. Fond memories abound for classic boardgame, The Game Of Life, what with its iconic spin wheel, car-shaped tokens, and branching path game board that took us through what the game makers decided was a life worth living. Would you be a college student, on your way to become an astronaut? Or would you choose the more direct route to fame, fortune, and business success. It was just like life!
Now you can relive the classic gameplay on your Mac with The Game Of Life, published by PopCap Games and available for the Mac at the Mac Game Store for a incredibly low price of $6.99.
Griffin is officially the first legit accessory maker to sell third-party Lightning-to-USB cables. Several Lightning-compatible accessories have already come out, but no alternative sync cables. Griffin will start selling Apple-authorized Lightning cables during the first week of December in four different lengths.
Lightning isn’t cheap, so you’ll be paying a minimum of $17 for the shortest cable Griffin offers.
The 4 measurements: 2 feet for $17, 3 feet for $19, 4 feet for $25, and a healthy 3 meters for $30. All come in black and the 2 footer is coiled. For comparison, Apple sells its 3.5-foot Lightning-to-USB cable for $20 and in white only.
These cables should be available on Griffin’s website towards the beginning of next week.
Source: Griffin
Apple CEO Tim Cook has given his first major TV interview to NBC Rock Center’s Brian Williams, and the exclusive segment will be aired Thursday, December 6th.
NBC has a short video preview of what to except:
Today Facebook launched its new Photo Sync feature for all users of its mobile applications. So if you have the official Facebook app on your iPhone, you now have Photo Sync. It’s been added to the app without an accompanying update in the App Store.
Photo Sync automatically uploads the pictures you take on your device and stores them in a private Facebook photo album. You can then choose to share, file away, or delete the photos within the Facebook app.
You got a brand new baby. Congratulations. Your baby is probably the greatest thing ever. It probably even smells like love. Being a parents is amazing. I mean, I don’t really know what it’s like, but I imagine it’s pretty cool to watch a little person come out of another person and then raise it into a full-grown human like yourself and teach it cool ninja moves and stuff.
Now that you have your new baby you’re probably struggling with a name for it. All the cool ones are probably taken, and it doesn’t help that Beyonce and Jay-Z are doing pompous shit like trademarking their baby’s name. But please, PLEASE, don’t even think about naming your baby after an Apple product.
When I bought my first iPhone last month, there was one accessory I knew I wanted – the Olloclip lens. I actually kept the Olloclip site open in a Safari tab on my Mac so I could check every day to see if the fantastically popular iPhone 4/S accessory had been updated for the new iPhone.
I have been playing with this review unit for a couple weeks now and it’s just as great as I expected, although there are one or two things I don’t like. Let’s take a look…
Over the last year Apple has been trying to cure itself of its dependency on Samsung, but that’s been pretty hard to do. Samsung makes Apple’s RAM, some displays, and is the sole supplier of processors for Apple’s mobile devices.
There has been speculation about where Apple might go to supplement or replace Samsung, and one of the top contenders Apple might turn to is Intel. According to a new rumor Apple is already in talks with Intel about using them to replace Samsung.
One of the coolest new features in iTunes 11 is the ability to take a picture of an iTunes gift card on a Mac and have it instantly redeemed in the store. It’s a heck of a lot quicker than manually typing in a 16-character string.
One of the developers who helped work with Apple on iTunes 11 has explained the incredible efforts behind creating this new feature.
Maybe you’ve never heard of mineral oil but it’s an amazing liquid that let’s you perform all kind of magic. You can do neat crap with it, like take apart your perfectly good MacBook Pro, dump the components in a vat of mineral oil, and it’ll still work.
I don’t know why you would want to waste a perfectly good MacBook Pro, but one Reddit user decided a liquid cooled MacBook would be the bee’s knees, so he built it himself.
Here’s how he did it:
Apple started selling its all-new iMac online this morning, and shipping estimates for the 27-inch models have already been pushed back to 3-4 weeks. 27-inch models were shipping in 2-3 weeks only a few hours ago, but demand is already starting to put a strain on Apple’s first batch of inventory.
The 21.5-inch iMac is still shipping in 1-3 business days, but it looks like you may not be getting a 27-incher in time for the holidays.
Apple CEO Tim Cook warned us that the new iMac was going to be constrained in a “significant way” out of the gate, mainly due to the complicated manufacturing process it takes to put together such a sexy piece of machinery. After December, the iMac should start shipping faster in both screen sizes.
Source: Apple Store
As long as sports have existed, so have sports-related injuries. One injury in particular that has managed to capture the spotlight over recent years, is of course, the concussion. Head injuries, particularly concussions, have become a serious issue in both professional and youth sports.
Apple exerts more control over cellular networks than any other technology company on the planet. If a carrier wants to sell the iPhone they have to pay Apple a heft subsidy. Before getting the iPhone 5 to run on their LTE network, Apple has to come around and make sure it doesn’t suck before they enable LTE on the iPhone or iPad.
The reason behind Apple testing carrier’s networks before enabling 4G is pretty simple – Apple doesn’t want it’s users to have a crappy experience. But no other smartphone maker in the world has a policy where they get to test a carrier’s network before turning a feature on, it’s usually the other way around, and some carriers think Apple is getting a little too big for its boots.