A new survey is out attempting to measure the satisfaction of iPhone 4 users with the two U.S. carriers now offering the Apple handset. If you bypass the statistical dead-heat on the level of overall satisfaction, twice as many iPhone 4 owners report dropped calls on AT&T as compared to Verizon Wireless.
An average of 4.8 percent of people surveyed by ChangeWave said they had dropped iPhone 4 calls on AT&T, versus an average of 1.8 percent of Verizon customers surveyed. The percentages closely align with a survey of general cell phone customers which found 4.6 percent of AT&T subscribers and 1.4 percent of Verizon customers reported dropped calls.
Images have surfaced of an iPod touch equipped with a capacitive home screen button and 128GB of storage space. The device is marked with a “DVT-1” badge previously found on an iPod touch discovered back in 2010, and thought to be the code Apple uses to identify prototype devices.
Other than the capacitive home button and the increased storage, it doesn’t look like anything else is different in these pictures with regards to hardware. However, what’s interesting is that it looks like the device is running version 4.2.1 of iOS, suggesting that it may have been in testing for some time.
The quality of the pictures is poor, and it looks as though the build quality of the device is just as bad – indicating that the device featured is rather a fake than a next-generation iPod prototype.
iPhone customers who jumped AT&T’s ship for Verizon upon the unveiling of the CDMA iPhone did so for mostly one reason: better call quality. But does the data back up the hope?
According to Changewave’s February data, it sure does. Their survey found that new Verizon iPhone users are experiencing fewer dropped calls than their friends over at AT&T, with only 1.8% of all Verizon customers experiencing dropped calls compared to almost 5% at AT&T.
Those numbers are really good for Verizon. Even better, 46% of future iPhone 4 buyers say they’ll get a Verizon iPhone, compared to only 27% for AT&T.
Estimated growth of PC sales in 2011 were cut in half while demand for tablets increase, prompting one Wall Street analyst to tell investors Tuesday Apple’s iPad has ‘usurped’ a portion of PC sales.
Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore trimmed his PC sales forecast to 4 percent growth, down from the 9 percent growth previously expected. Meanwhile, he expects 2011 tablet sales to increase to 45 million units, up from his previously expected 40 million. The analyst believes Apple will sell 35 million of the 45 million tablets.
I wondered how long it would take for someone to release a song or album that had been recorded using GarageBand for the iPad. Well, not even a month after its launch, pop punk band The Ultramods are the first to record all instruments and vocals for their 12-track album using the $4.99 application.
In an interview with The Loop, the band – which writes “pervy pop punk” and “technologically obsessed new wave” music – said that all of the instruments used on the album were those included in the GarageBand app.
If you’d like to hear their album, ‘Underwear Party’ is now available in the iTunes Store for $10, or you can listen for free on the band’s website.
Though The Ultramods are the first to record an album with GarageBand, English band Gorillaz announced back in November that their upcoming album ‘The Fall’ was recorded entirely on an iPad using a range of third-party apps. The album was released to the band’s fan club in December, and is currently available for pre-order through iTunes with an expected release date of April 19th.
The iPad 2 has beaten off competition to earn the top tablet rating in a recent Consumer Reports test. Devices tested along with the iPad 2 included tablets from Archos, Dell, Motorola, Samsung and ViewSonic. In a press release issued on Tuesday, electronics editor Paul Reynolds said that Apple’s device is ahead of its competitors on both quality and price:
So far, Apple is leading the tablet market in both quality and price, which is unusual for a company whose products are usually premium priced.
Each tablet was evaluated in 17 criteria, which included touch screen responsiveness, versatility, portability, screen flare, and ease of use. The iPad 2 topped the ratings, scoring ‘excellent’ in nearly every category.
Apple’s chief competition for the time being is the Motorola Xoom – which boasts the same 10-inch screen as the iPad but adds a built-in memory card reader and support for Adobe Flash. However, the Xoom’s $800 price tag doesn’t do it any favors.
The biggest difference between the 10 tablets tested was battery life. Obviously the iPad 2 came top with an impressive 12.2 hours of use, while the Archos 70 Internet Tablet could only manage an embarrassing 3.8 hours.
The first generation iPad was also part of the test, beating many of the other tablets but drawing equal with the Xoom.
So, it’s official – right now the iPad 2 is the best tablet available. But you already knew that.
Speaking at a keynote session at Storage Network World in Santa Clara, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was asked how tablet devices had changed the computer industry – his answer was that these devices are for ‘normal’ people – not geeks. Woz told the audience of enterprise storage engineers that:
The tablet is not necessarily for the people in this room. It’s for the normal people in the world.
Woz also said that it was also Steve Jobs’ intention to create products that were normal consumer appliances:
I think Steve Jobs had that intention from the day we started Apple, but it was just hard to get there, because we had to go through a lot of steps where you connected to things, and (eventually) computers grew up to where they could do … normal consumer appliance things.
A lawsuit filed by Mirror Worlds LLC related to patents which they claim Apple infringes in Cover Flow has been successfully appealed. On Monday a federal judge overturned a jury’s verdict and ruled that Apple was not guilty of patent infringement, which could have cost the Cupertino company $625.5 million.
U.S District Judge Leonard Davis said that the evidence wasn’t enough to support the damage award:
“Mirror Worlds may have painted an appealing picture for the jury, but it failed to lay a solid foundation sufficient to support important elements it was required to establish under the law. The evidentiary record is insufficient to support the jury’s damage awards.”
If you’re on holiday in Madrid, Spain, and missing your iOS device, a new service developed by PadInTheCity means you can rent an iPad to use on your trip. For €39 (around $55) per day, visitors can rent a 3G iPad, with unlimited data access, and nearly 30 pre-installed tourism and business apps to help them make the most of their trip.
One of the big questions everyone’s asking about the iPhone at the moment is whether or not a fifth generation device will launch this summer. According to a new report from Korean site ETNews.co.kr, Apple is planning to release the iPhone 5 during the 4th week of June, with Korean carriers SK Telecom and KT among the first providers to offer the device:
iPhone 5, the next model of iPhone 4, will be released on the coming 4th week of June. In the midst of the iPhone 5 postponement rumors, Apple has confirmed that iPhone 5 will be released as planned and it will be released simultaneously in Korea through SK Telecom and KT.
A couple of screenshots have just leaked of Microsoft’s Windows 8 tablet user interface.
Currently in pre-beta, Windows 8 is Microsoft’s shot at building a UI that’s suitable for both tablets and PCs. Windows 7 is not being ported to tablets. Early versions of Windows 8 have reportedly been shipped to Microsoft’s hardware OEM partners. So far, the UI hasn’t been seen, but two new screenshots indicate it is based on tiles, very much like Windows Phone 7.
The screenshot above shows the home screen, which features Microsoft’s Bing search engine front and center. Underneath are big tiles for shortcuts to Web apps or Web pages. Each app opens in a full-screen version of Internet Explorer, according to Within Windows, which first published the screenshots (The site is currently down. The screenshots have been republished at WinRumors)
The screenshot below shows a new e-reader app that includes built-in support for Adobe’s PDF format. Looking at the diagrams in the screenshot, it will include page scrubbing (to quickly scrub through a document) and multi-touch pinching and zooming. Apple may not like that.
Microsoft appears to be pushing a new file format called AppX (.appx), which will reportedly allow Windows Phone 7 developers to repackage apps in AppX and offer them through an app store that will be built into Windows 8. Sound familiar?
Our take? It looks OK. The tiled interface is pretty good on Windows Phone 7, but why are there still scrollbars if the interface is full-screen?
Since its refresh in October 2010, the popularity of Apple’s MacBook Air has been rapidly increasing according to new research by J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz. Sales of the device have seen a 333% year-over-year rise, with a projected annual revenue of a whopping $2.2 billion.
“We believe that the growth rate of the MacBook Air stands to moderate, but we expect the product to exhibit increasing contribution to the overall Mac business,” Moskowitz wrote. “(The fourth quarter of calendar 2010) was the first quarter in which the MacBook Air accounted for greater than 10% of total Apple Mac units. More importantly, the MacBook Air accounted for 15% of total notebook sales during the quarter, versus 5% in the prior year.”
The latest refresh to the MacBook Air line introduced an ultraportable 11.6-inch model – a perfect alternative to users looking for the portability of a netbook but with the stability of a Mac. When the device first launched back in January of 2008, a 13-inch machine was the only option, with a starting price of $1,799. Now there are two machines to choose from, both of which come equipped with SSD hard drives as standard, starting at just $999.
It’s believed that the lower starting price and a choice of two notebooks are the main reasons behind the growth in popularity of the MacBook Air.
The official Facebook application for the iPhone has been updated today, introducing new features that allow you to view your friends’ Places check ins in map view, check into events you’re attending, and ‘unfriend’ people directly from your device. The update also makes improvements to the news feed and the notifications UI.
In case there’s any doubt about whether the iPad has ushered in a post-PC era in mobile computing, Zen Viewer is one app to consider on your path to enlightenment.
Made by the Skins Factory, Zen Viewer is a feast for the eyes, drawing on iPad’s generous screen real estate and graphics capabilities to make document management on Apple’s flagship iOS device a nearly sublime experience.
Choose from a half dozen customizable themes to suit your prevailing technical chakras and let Zen Viewer organize and balance the files on your device with its fully searchable file system, document reader, image viewer, audio and video playback device and audio recorder.
The app is fast and responsive, a wonderful showcase for the iOS touch navigation platform, with its colors and graphic elements lending a rich gravitas to the otherwise mundane realm of file management. Audio and video playback are flawless and the recording feature should be a boon to anyone still having trouble with the touch keyboard.
Some bugs and glitchy performance with WiFi transfer look like they need some polishing, which Skins Factory support says is being addressed, but for $2.99 and such an early version release (1.6.6 is the latest, updated 3/29), Zen Viewer has great potential.
Earlier today, two men and a woman tried to rob the Apple Store in Otay Ranch Town Center, Chula Vista, San Diego. They failed, and after a shootout with a security guard on duty, one of the men is dead.
Shipping times for the iPad 2 from the Apple online store have dropped today, with new orders now facing a wait of 2-3 weeks down from the previous 3-4 weeks. The new shipping times aren’t just U.S. specific either – they apply to every country in which the iPad 2 is currently available.
A reduction in the shipping delay of the second generation iPad is a sign Apple is clearly dealing with the overwhelming demand of the device’s international launch.
The new MacBook Air is set to come a reliable $2.2 billion revenue stream for Apple as strong demand for the lightweight laptop continues. The Cupertino, Calif. company shipped 420,000 of the laptops in the fourth quarter of 2010, amounting to a 333 percent year-over-year growth – three times the MacBook Air’s previous quarter high-mark.
After borrowing many features from the iPad – such as its light weight and instant-on capability – one analyst Monday termed the MacBook Air a “quasi-tablet.”
Bad news for fans of lesser-known Mac browser Camino: a big chunk of the code it depends on to display web pages is being officially retired by developers at Mozilla who maintain it.
On Sunday an untethered jailbreak for devices running iOS 4.3.1 was finally released by the Dev-Team in the shape of PwnageTool and redsn0w. However, early jailbreakers are reporting that the exploit is causing issues with Wi-Fi on their devices.
I0n1c – aka Stefan Esser – is the brains behind the jailbreak, and confirmed the problem in a tweet earlier today. However, it seems users are only experiencing the issue with certain routers.
A registered sex offender was sentenced to two decades in prison after engaging in sexually explicit chats and exchanging photos with a 12-year-old and a 13-year old girl.
Franklin DeCapua, who was living in Rochester, New York, found the girls in Nebraska by using a popular social networking app called Whoshere on his iPhone.
The girls, who are neighbors, were using it on the iPod Touch. The trio sent each other sexy pics and chatted about meeting for a sexual encounter. DeCapua was arrested before the planned meet-up.
TrapCallis an application by Tel Tech Systems that enables an iPhone user to find out who’s calling them from blocked or private telephone numbers. It just arrived in the App Store, but the developers submitted the application to Apple months ago – waiting a staggering 201 days for their app to be approved.
By using the TrapCall service and accompanying iPhone application, users who receive calls from a blocked number can tap the sleep button twice to decline it and pass it over toTrapCall. Almost instantly, the service will then send the user a text message with the name, telephone number and address of their caller.
The iPad is Apple’s strongest answer to the Android platform. That’s the word from a firm looking over the web analytics results of some 4 million online users. Although the Google platform has a sharp lead over the iPhone 4, “iPad is outgrowing the entire Android ecosystem so significantly [that] it more than makes up for the iPhone deficiency plus some,” a search engine expert reports.
As for Android’s lead over the iPhone, it is slight and requires the full resources of the Google mobile operating system – both smartphones and tablets – to pull ahead of just one Apple iOS product. “Android has never come close to passing iOS as a whole,” according to Jeff Trimble of ROI365.
During the annual Qingming Festival, Chinese residents honor their dead ancestors by burning fake luxury items and money, sending them into the beyond for the spirits to enjoy.
In Malaysia, there’s an entire cottage industry of fake items that springs up during the festival, allowing Confucian practitioners to buy all sorts of simulated luxuries expressly for burning.
This year, what’s the hottest fake gadget being burned during Qingming? Fake papercraft models of Apple’s iPad 2, of course.
It can be expensive to upgrade your iPhone before your 2 year contract is up. You’re largely paying off your iPhone through a two year subsidy, after all, which means that if you want the iPhone 5 after you just got the iPhone 4, AT&T — while delighted to extend your contract — needs some dosh to not come out behind in the deal.
No one debates that. What people do debate, though, is how much money it should cost an end user to upgrade their iPhones early. Currently, it can cost up to $499 to upgrade to a 32GB iPhone 4 before the end of your two year contract… even if you’re in your last months of the existing contract.
Well, guess what? It’s about to get worse. Starting yesterday, new pricing for iPhone Early Upgrade Pricing went into effect, bumping the price of an early upgrade another $50 across the spectrum of AT&T iPhone models.
While GarageBand for iPad is a neat little acoustic sandbox for even we tone deaf plebs, it was of particular interest to musicians who were already heavily invested in GarageBand for Mac. With the iPad version, these musicians hoped they’d be able to put together a few bars of a ditty on the subway or during a flight, flesh it out a bit, then import it into their Mac at home for a polish; alternatively, they hoped they could take their current GarageBand projects on the road with them.
Unfortunately, when GarageBand for iPad actually ended up hitting, it actually was quite difficult to do any of the above. That wasn’t intentional, though, and over the weekend, Apple pushed the 6.0.2 update of GarageBand for Mac out through the usual channels, bringing support for opening projects imported from GarageBand for iPad.
