News - page 2079

If you’re on iOS 4.3.2 and fancy taking a joyride on another company’s network besides the one you are indentured to, good news: the iPhone Dev Team has released Ultrasnow 1.2.2, which will allow you to unlock iOS 4.3.2 on both the iPhone 4 and on the iPhone 3GS.

If you’re on the 3GS, you’ll need to be both jailbroken and on the 06.15.00 baseband, which is easy enough to do… *cough*.

Once accomplished and rocking either an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 3GS with baseband 06.15.00 restored, you’ll need to preserve the old baseband and grab Ultrasnow through Cydia. The process is a bit complicated, and sometimes results in test participant implosion, so follow this tutorial for a walkthrough on getting through the carrier unlock process safely.

In a typically terse email to a concerned iPhone customer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs thundered down some authoritative wisdom about the so-called iPhone LocationGate scandal: Apple isn’t tracking anyone, and if you think that Android isn’t tracking you, think again.

Apple has increased its supply commitments by more than a third to $11 billion – a record – during the March quarter, according to an SEC filing. The jump from $7.9 billion usually spent in that three-month period indicates the Cupertino, Calif. company is pulling out all stops to ensure it meets demand for the iPad 2 and expected iPhone 5.

“We believe the increase is attributable to procurement ahead of a tight supply environment and expected shipment increases in June (iPad) and September (iPad + iPhone),” Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty told investors.

Last month, President Obama almost smacked some goofus upside the head for insinuating he couldn’t get an iPad. “I’m the President of the United States. You think I’ve got a – you think I’ve got to go borrow somebody’s computer?” he said.

It was a perfect little moment of presidential sass, and the only way it could have been more perfect is if Obama had called his interlocutor a jive turkey before actually smashing him over the head with his iPad. However, questions abounded, including what flavor of iPad Obama favored: a first-gen model or the iPad 2?

Well, here’s your answer, courtesy of the White House’s Flickr account. The president owns an iPad 2 and what appears to be an unassuming gray polyurethane smart cover… a wise choice on the President’s part, given how prone to picking up Marmite and beer stains the leather covers are.

But one great, eternal question remains: does the president use the iPad 2 WiFi-only model, or the iPad 2 3G? Update: As a reader points out, it’s an iPad 2 3G!

[via TUAW]

We’ve been following the roll-out of iPads in schools, now principals are getting them too.

Much like city councilors, the administrators are using tax dollars for iPads to reduce paper and, to some extent, paperwork.

Case in point: in Salisbury, North Carolina, all seven principals in the district are using them to perform teacher evaluations, classroom walkthroughs and assessments, calendars . The highly totable tablet allows them to patrol the halls and take notes, potentially making them more present and active in school affairs.

The rationale seems sound, until you read this:

“I walked through rooms showing my iPad off to students, taking pictures and having conversations with kids about how technology makes learning more fun,” Nancy Barkemeyer principal of West Rowan Middle school said. “Having a new ‘toy’ helped me make connections with some kids.”

Still, aside from trying to impress the cool kids (do we ever stop trying?), it might be good that school principals get up to speed, tech-wise.

What do you think about spending tax dollars for administrator iPads?

Via Salisbury Post

Tablets are set to create 17 percent of all wireless data demand by 2020. Already, the media-saavy tablet category creates five times as much data traffic as the average smartphone. The tablet’s demand on the network is growing at 30 percent per year, according to Goldman Sachs.

As an illustration, the Cisco Global Mobile Date Forecast says the average data traffic in 2010 per tablet was around 405MB each month. By comparison, a smartphone generates 79MB of data traffic each month.

A new jailbreak tweak that’s just hit Cydia enhances your Tweetbot experience by introducing a ‘now playing’ feature – enabling you to tweet the music you’re currently listening to at the tap of a button.

The simple hack adds a new button to the window in which you compose your tweets – and one tap will insert the artist and the name of the song you’re listening to, in addition to the ‘#nowplaying’ hash tag.

While there are other third-party Twitter clients that support this feature straight from the App Store, there aren’t many to choose from. And if you’ve already fallen in love with Tweetbot, this tweak is a great add-on. It’s free to download – all you have to do is search for ‘Now Playing for Tweetbot‘ within Cydia.

We loved the Tweetbot app from Tapbots in our review, and this extra little bit of functionality makes it even greater for music lovers. It’s also another great example of the way in which applications can be improved with minor jailbreak tweaks.

[via iPhone Download Blog]

High resolution artwork discovered in the latest build of Mac OS X Lion has generated rumors that Apple could be planning to bring a Retina display to the Mac. Preview 2 of Lion, which was released in late March, features icons in sizes up to 1024×1024, and a desktop background at a resolution of 3200×3200.

The new Lion wallpaper was discovered at the beginning of April by OSXDaily, and was noted for its ultra-high resolution which no Apple display has ever supported. The new icons – which are double the size of the current 512×512 Mac OS X icons – were discovered over the weekend by MacMagazine.com.br.

Considering there is currently no need for icons or wallpapers of this size, these discoveries would suggest Apple is working on bringing a better display to the Mac. MacRumors notes that Apple has built-in Support for HiDPI display modes in Lion:

Taking cues from iOS, Apple has reportedly built in support for what it calls “HiDPI display modes”. These HiDPI modes allow developers to supply 2x-enlarged images to support double-high resolution displays. Like the iPhone 4’s Retina Display, this means that user interface elements will remain the same size, but everything will be twice the resolution and therefore twice as detailed.

While a Retina display Mac would be pretty neat, I would much prefer one in my iPad first.

After 86 hours of downtime, the man behind Cydia has confirmed that the app is finally back online following an issue with Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service. In a message posted to Twitter on Sunday night, Jay Freeman – better known as Saurik – wrote:

After 86 hours offline, Cydia is finally back! I’m eating some celebratory cake, and am looking forward to a night with >1.5 hours of sleep!

The downtime limited Cydia’s functionality for all users, and meant purchasing packages, using the Theme Centre, and managing Cydia accounts was near impossible.

Though some users may have had some success with accessing these services more recently, there were still intermittent periods of downtime as Amazon’s EC2 service slowly came back online.

All issues seem to have been completely ironed out now and Cydia is fully functioning for all. Hooray!

[via iPhone Download Blog]

Pictures taken by a source at Best Buy reveal that the retailer’s inventory database is currently listing an April 27th launch date for the elusive white iPhone 4. The device featured in the pictures is the GSM model – which supports the AT&T network – though it is expected that the CDMA model designed for Verizon will launch on the same day.

One report over the weekend claims that 16GB and 32GB models of the white iPhone 4 have already been shipped to Best Buy stores located throughout the U.S. – with around 10 16GB models on order for each store. Inventory numbers for the 32GB are currently unconfirmed.

The entire Internet is aflame, at least by. The standards of your average Saturday night, on word that Boy Genius Report has gotten ahold of a strange pre-production white iPhone 4 loaded up with admin and field-testing apps and running quite nicely on T-Mobile 3G. That’s quite newsworthy, as no shipping iPhone supports the obscure 1700 MHz AWS band that T-Mo rolls in the U.S.

There are many number of ways of faking this — I still find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t take some serious pictures of the hardware in search of differences from the existing iPhone 4 if you actually had it in your hands — but the various software screens are fairly convincing, including a number of apps I’ve heard are used in testing, but that mere mortals like us never see.

On the one hand, it makes sense for Apple to expand it’s reach to as many standards as possible now, especially since AT&T will likely own T-Mobile unless anti-trust regulators hold up the acquisition. On the other hand, the intent of that deal is to convert all of T-Mo’s towers to LTE fairly rapidly. It’s interesting.

Have a look through the gallery and let us know what you think — I’m actually most skeptical of Apple Connect. Would Apple really copy pattern unlock from Android?

Mowing the lawn is the outdoor equivalent to vacuuming your carpet: it has to be done regularly, and most people put it off. But now you don’t need a riding mower with dual-cupholders to impress the neighbors while being slovenly. Husqvarna has just introduced an iPhone app for remote deployment of their Automower robotic lawnmowers with GPS Communication Units.

The Automower works by following a thin wire laid on or under the grass. Using SMS Text Messaging, you can display the location of your mower on 
Google Maps, tell your machine when to start and stop, return for a charge, or check current operating status. There’s also a GPS Theft Tracking feature in case your mower ventures too far away under somebody else’s control. Would that be called Find My Lawnmower?

Doing yardwork from the couch gets my vote! Or it would, if I had a lawn…

[via TG Daily]

Apple may be prototyping an iPhone 5 with a tapered design, a larger 3.7-inch screen and a gesture-sensitive Home Button.

This is according to the ex-Engadget crew at the new “This my Next” website, who whipped up the mockup above to illustrate the various rumors they’re hearing.

• New design: Apple is testing several prototypes (we all know this) and one of the leading candidates for the iPhone 5 is thinner than the current iPhone 4 and looks “more like the iPod touch.” It has a teardrop shape – thinner at the bottom than the top, like the new MacBook Air.
• Gesture-sensitive Home Button: The Home Button will be bigger and will understand a gestures. “Our sources say that gestures are definitely coming in a future version of iOS,” says
• Larger screen: the screen will go up to 3.7-inches, not 4-inches as rumored. It will keep the current resolution, dropping pixel density goes from 326 to 312, but will still be a Retina Display (it’s still above 300ppi).
• No Bezel: Screen will be edge-to-edge, occupying the entire front of the iPhone. That means no bezel (or almost no bezel).
• Hidden earpiece & mouthpiece: The earpiece and sensors are behind the screen itself.
• Inductive charging: It may or may not have wireless inductive charging. Crystal ball is cloudy.
• NFC: Likewise it may or may not have NFC.
• Global radio chips: It’ll be based on Qualcomm’s dual GSM/CDMA Gobi chipset, which means it’ll work on a ton of GSM and CDMA networks worldwide, most importantly in China.

Joshua Topolsky warns, however, that none of this is set in stone: “Keep in mind that this info isn’t fact — we’re getting lots of threads from lots of places and trying to make sense of the noise. The versions of devices our sources are seeing could be design prototypes and not production-ready phones. Still, there are strong indications that Apple will surprise a public that’s expecting a bump more along the lines of the 3G to 3GS — and this is some insight into where those designs might be headed.”

Looks like the white iPhone 4 is just about to be released.

One customer in the UK was able to buy a 16GB white iPhone 4 from Vodaphone, and an internal memo from BelCompany in the Netherlands says the near-mythical handset is being released next week — Wednesday, April 27th.

In addition, retailers in Europe are getting supplies of the iPhone with “do not open until April 27” stickers, says 9to5Mac.

It is not clear, however, if that is the worldwide launch for the white iPhone 4. But it certainly looks like it.

Apple has a great recycling program, but they are not the only company to offer such a program. Both RadioShack and Best Buy offer their own recycling programs. I thought it might be nice to share some information about these alternative programs with you on Earth Day.

The reason I’m mentioning this is due to the fact that I often hear from readers that aren’t close to an Apple Store. They often tell me that they may not even have a store in their city or state. Ouch.

Country living might be restful, but I’m glad that I live in a big city since Houston has six Apple Stores accessible to everyone living in Houston or the surrounding areas. Fortunately, some of you without such good access to Apple Stores just might have access to a RadioShack or a Best Buy. So let’s take a look at what they have to offer.

Well, crud. I knew the day was coming when my beloved 11-inch MacBook Air would become obsolete, but I hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. It appears those hopes are dashed: Apple will reportedly refresh the MacBook Air line in June, replacing the current Mini DisplayPort with their new 10Gbps bi-directional Thunderbolt I/O port.

I like to imagine that Bulletproof started out as a pitch by Mobigame to develop an official, first-person game based upon the Matrix trilogy.

“Okay, dudes, get this: here you are, and you’re Neo, and there’s like five agents in front of you, shooting at point blank range, and then you stop time, and then you start punching the bullets right out of the air, and OH MY GOD IT’LL BE AWESOME.”

“Pass,” says Warner Bros. But no problem: you just change the background, slap some vaguely Soviet guard hats on the agents, and sell the whole game to Amnesty International, pitching it as a way to raise awareness of human rights violations around the world.

Now that’s business savvy.

When Valve Software released their much anticipated physics-based shooter Portal 2 earlier this week, they did so on pretty much every platform that could handle it, including the Mac, PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Unfortunately, despite its beefy A5 processor, the iPad 2 wasn’t on that list… but if you just can’t get enough Portal 2, you can at least download a new app for an exclusive, multimedia behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Valve’s new classic.

Called The Final Hours of Portal 2, the app is primairly a 15,000 word essay on the making of Valve’s much anticipated new game, documented with videos, lots of behind-the-scene pictures and interviews. It’s written by Geoff Keighley, an excellent video game journalist who wrote “The Final Hours of Half-Life,” “The Final Hours of Half-Life 2” and “Knee Deep In A Dream: The Story of Daikatana”. Collectively, these are some of the best example of long-form video games journalism ever, and I anticipate “The Final Hours of Portal 2” will be good company for them.

[via MacStories]

Although Verizon gained much of the attention over the iPhone 4, AT&T apparently added more subscribers enticed by a previous-generation Apple handset. Verizon gained less than 500,000 new customers during most of the second quarter while AT&T signed-up more than 800,000 new iPhone users, according to a Friday report.

In the two months of the three-month period the iPhone 4 was available throught Verizon, the carrier attracted 2.2 million iPhone devices. AT&T, however, experienced a record 3.6 million iPhone activation during the quarter — a 33 percent increase over the same period in 2010. The lack of any run-away success for Verizon runs counter to previous polls suggesting the carrier could siphon-off 26 percent of AT&T customers.

Why does AT&T need to gobble up T-Mobile? It’s all about dropped calls on the iPhone and the sick amount of data the iPad is slurping up, AT&T argues in their latest filing with the FCC.

Apple’s iPad sales for Q2 were significantly lower than some analysts were expecting, especially given the 7MM+ iPads Cupertino was able to push over Q1.

What the heck happened? Did demand slacken because of the imminent arrival of the iPad 2? Could Apple not produce enough iPad 2s to satisfy demand because of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan?

According to comments made by research firm iSuppli, Apple’s low sales number for the quarter were primarily due to production issues that led to extreme shortages of display and speaker parts.

So, after all the bad reviews and the tear-down, how are consumers reacting to RIM’s PlayBook tablet as an iPad alternative? The device sold between 45,000 and 50,000 on its first day, two analyst have publicly stated. However other observers (which preferred to remain unnamed) see the figures as too high, especially given its limited availability and exposure.

Jeffries analyst Peter Misek earlier this week said Research in Motion sold 45,000 PlayBooks — 25,000 of which were pre-orders — Tuesday. RBC analyst Mike Abramsky views the PlayBook launch as “stronger than the launch of Motorola’s Xoom Tablet, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab, although it’s too early to judge sustainability.” Ah, that pesky little question of sustainability. That’s where it gets interesting.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaNALBJ39LA&feature=player_embedded

BMW’s Connected Drive program has been all about increasing communication in your car, now you can control your iPod Touch or iPhone and some of its applications using the same Apple interface on the car’s console screen.

Watching the video above where the driver uses Pandora is like a jaunty little requiem for commercial radio. Once your device is in the cradle, you can access your music library or the apps and control the volume using either the radio, the steering wheel or the iDrive Controller.

Other apps you can control from the car include what one reviewer called a “minimalist” integration of Twitter and Facebook.  It may not look great, but it sounds like it may come in handy while on the road, since the app can pull your location and destination from the navigation system then post an update telling all and sundry you’ll be there in 15 minutes.

They’ve been talking about it for at least a year, the BMW Apps are available on cars made from March 2011 on and SUVs rolling off factory lines from April 2011.

What’s next? BMW say they are in talks with other app makers, so you’ll be able to do stuff like make restaurant reservations and buy movie tickets from your car.

Via Autoblog

A unique service offering to unlock any GSM iPhone, no jailbreaks required, has suddenly shut down, leaving many customers awaiting refunds. Increased scrutiny from Apple may very well be responsible… and curiously, even the providers of the service had no idea how it worked, or why it’s all stopped.

An Apple executive reportedly will be in New York to obtain agreements with the recording labels yet to sign-on to a cloud-based iTunes deal. Thursday, multiple reports suggested the Cupertino, Calif. company is preparing to launch a service enabling iTunes users to store and listen to songs over the Internet.

Although Amazon launched a cloud-based music locker service in March, Apple reportedly may offer a service with “better user interfaces, sound quality, and other features” with the help of the licensing pacts. Among the features could be the ability for Apple to store a single copy of a song that is then streamed to multiple users.