News - page 2023

AT&T is informing jailbreak tetherers on grandfathered unlimited data plans that either they stop tether or sign up for 2GB tethering plan. If you don’t abide, AT&T will sign you up for a 2GB tethering plan and kill your grandfathered unlimited data plan for good.

A thorny wicket. It’s probably not fair to congest AT&T’s networks by sucking up data from your iPhone to play World of Warcraft on your MacBook Pro without, you know, paying for it, but if you’re intent on doing so, there may be a way to avoid AT&T’s scrutiny, keep tethering through your jailbroken iPhonei, and keep your unlimited data plan, all at the same time.

Acer founder Stan Shih has opened his mouth and said something extraordinarily stupid: the ultrabook and tablet form factors are nothing but a stupid fad with no future. Someone should tell Apple that, so they can stop selling iPads and MacBook Airs to a throng of millions of excited customers.

The downside of the iPhone’s gargantuan success as a money maker for Apple is that it can also have an “outsized impact” on Apple profits. The iPhone contributes 49.2 percent of Apple stock value, one analyst warns. Wall Street also said the iPad has replaced the iPod as the tech giant’s halo product, buoying sales of other Apple products. Even so, at least one analyst thinks that Apple could go as high as $540 a share.

Remember MacDefender? It was the first really big piece of malware to hit the Mac operating system, and was a huge problem for Apple’s tech support teams… such a huge problem, in fact, that Apple introduced a self-updating anti-malware database into OS X, which basically killed MacDefender and its variants off.

MacDefender worked by tricking users into believing that they’d been infected by malware (which they in fact had — MacDefender’s own — even though it was trivial to remove the infection) then tried to bilk them out of their credit card numbers for bogus anti-malware software.

MacDefender died off pretty quickly after Apple updated Snow Leopard to fight it, but the perps behind the software went unidentified. Now, it looks like they’ve been caught, raided and busted.

Responding to their customers’ garish ineptitude in trying to outprice the $999 MacBook Air, Intel has decided to do notebook makers’ work for them and put together a reference bill of materials on how to build cheap ultrabooks capable of competing Apple’s superslim ultraportable.

Apple’s stock Maps app for iOS is great at what it does, but there are a number of useful features that it’s lacking. Thankfully, Cydia boasts a plethora of jailbreak tweaks that allow us to add our own enhancements — the latest of which introduces a handy speedometer.

The drawback to success is you’re only as good as your last killer product. Perhaps that’s what Apple executives were thinking when they recently told a Wall Street analyst any rumored low-cost iPhone would have to be more than out-cheap Android, but be a ‘category-killer’ like the iPad and iP
hone.

Following the release of OS X Lion last month, some early adopters ran into issues when attempting to install Xcode 4.1 that meant installing the software was rather difficult. Apple has now addressed this in the Xcode 4.1.1 update.

The incredibly popular Infinity Blade from Epic Games was one of the first titles to be build using the Unreal engine. Famous for its eye-popping visuals, it’s so impressive that in just six months after its launch the game had achieved over $10 million in sales. If you haven’t already bought this game, now’s the best time, because it’s on sale for just $2.99. But you’ll have to be quick!

Earlier today, we told you that Apple was looking to discontinue the Magic Mouse in favor for the Magic Trackpad. This report was based off an inside source confirming that Apple was phasing out the Magic Mouse’s part number from its inventory.

Our source in Apple inventory has followed up with us, and it appears that Apple has instead discontinued the Magic Mouse’s old part number in favor for a new one. This move may indicate an update to the Magic Mouse, with the most logical prediction being better integration with advanced gestures in OS X Lion.

Lets’ face it — cycling is geeky enough with Lycra, weird cycling shoes and helmets so dorky they look like they were designed by population-control advocates — it doesn’t need the added panache of a Bluetooth speaker bungied to the handlebars.

Thanks to the massive stock selloff today, Apple is within $16 billion of displacing Exxon Mobil as the the world’s most valuable company.

At market close, Exxon Mobil’s stock fell $3.88 (4.9 percent) giving it a market cap of $366 billion. Apple’s stock fell too, but only $15.20 (3.87 percent) for a market cap of $350 billion. That puts Apple within $16 billion of Exxon. Two weeks ago, the gap was $50 billion. Any day now…

Via NYT.

Apple’s retail model has inspired a flattering crop of copycats.

After the news of the China clone stores, it looks like there is a thriving crop of pseudo-Apple resellers in Georgia.

We’ve gotten word from a previously reliable source that Apple is discontinuing the Magic Mouse in favor of the Magic Trackpad. Our retail source has informed us that Magic Mouse inventory is not being replenished for Apple stores, and that Apple is finally phasing out the Magic Mouse.

Here’s a mockup of the iPhone 5 spy pic posted to the MacRumors forums, courtesy of another forum member.

As you can see, it looks just like the iPhone 4, but thinner. There’s also no tapering or plastic back, as previous rumors have suggested.

Via Arnold Kim.

On the right, the iPhone 4’s proximity light sensor. On the right? The same part in the iPhone 5. We’re getting pretty close to launch, boys and girls, but what does a part like this tell us about what the iPhone 5 will look like?

Could this be the iPhone 5? The picture was posted to MacRumors’s forums, and was snapped at the office of a French cell phone company, according to the forum member who posted it.

I’ll be honest here, I really want HP to do well in the tablet space Theoretically, HP has many of the same advantages with webOS as Apple has with iOS: the two companies totally control both their software and their hardware… a potentially huge advantage over the competition. Plus, webOS is genuinely an awesome, exciting platform, and if it ever gets off the ground properly, iOS will benefit from some real competition.

That said, their first tablet, the TouchPad, was very much a beta product. Featuring a bulky design and a serious derth of tablet-optimized apps, not many people chose a TouchPad over the iPad. No wonder, then, that HP’s had to slice $100 off its asking price.

As BlackBerry-maker RIM clings to life-support, more than half of the smartphone’s owners have Apple’s iPhone on speed-dial. More than half of BlackBerry users intend to switch to the iconic iPhone as Wall Street experts pull the plug on RIM’s recovery plans.

Been holding out on buying Lion until you can get it on officially sanctioned physical media? According to 9to5Mac, Lion USB recover media is now available for fulfillment… an it’ll even be handed out free to those of us who aren’t able to use Lion’s built-in recovery tools to restore their hosed Macs.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXDCR41huhQ&feature=player_embedded#t=0s

Following this morning’s discovery of a new Apple patent for inductive charging, MacRumors points to a video from WiTricity, the company that develops magnetic resonance charging technology, which demonstrates a much better method for wirelessly charging our Apple gadgets using our Macs as a power source.

Apple’s intentions to introduce a wireless system to its iOS devices has been well documented over the past few months, but just exactly how it plans to do it remains to be seen. However, a new patent application published by the U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office today could reveal all.

Beware Android users, malware authors are picking Google’s platform as their first foray into mobile mayhem, security researchers say. Interestingly, there’s no mention of malware using Apple’s iOS.

Of all the things we expect to see from Apple’s iPhone 5 in the coming months, it isn’t super-speedy LTE capabilities. However, China Mobile says that it has struck a deal with Apple to bring the next-genearation iPhone to its 4G TD-LTE network.

Although its public release isn’t scheduled until this fall, Apple has already begun approving apps for its upcoming iOS 5 software for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — suggesting the firmware could launch as early as next month alongside the iPhone 5.