News - page 2111

Increased data usage — particularly music downloads — fueled a 3.7 percent jump in fourth-quarter net profit for China Mobile, the world’s largest wireless carrier announced Wednesday. The news comes as Apple CEO Steve Jobs reportedly is ‘very interested’ in creating an iPhone that works on the nation’s home-grown 4G standard.

China Mobile earned 32.4 billion yuan during the quarter ended Dec. 31, higher than the 31.8 billion yuan analysts had expected. In the wake of the report, chairman Wang Jianzhou announced plans to increase handset subsidies by 15 percent in order to attract more data users. Data service revenue comprised 31 percent of the carrier’s operating revenue in 2010. Data “was an essential driver of total revenue growth,” Wang said.

One of the drawbacks of the cheaper, WiFi-only iPad 2 is that it doesn’t have GPS — so it can’t run any of those beautiful fullscreen navigation apps.

GPS is limited to the more expensive 3G iPad models. But if you own a GPS-enabled iPhone, you’re in luck. The WiFi-only iPad 2 inherits GPS functionality when it’s tethered to an iPhone.

The trailer for Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard is the first “interactive” game trailer I’ve seen. Check it out below. You hit the hotspots to “play” the game. Pretty cool. Reminds me of Myst.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t get the initial text from AT&T offering me 1,000 free Rollover minutes.  I had to beg for mine by sending a simple text containing the word “yes ” to a  number (11113020) that people shared with me.

I’d heard that AT&T was sending out texts or notices (not sure which) that some of the people asking for these minutes would not be getting theirs, but today beggar or not I got mine as you can see from the screen shot above.

Thank you AT&T!

So what about you? Did the AT&T overlords grant you 1,000 free Rollover minutes?

Two iOS game developers based in Japan are doing their bit to help out with the recent tragic events in their country by slashing the prices of some of their most popular iOS titles and donating 100% of the proceeds to the Red Cross Disaster Relief. Sega has reduced the price of all four of its Sonic titles, while Capcom has reduced the price of Street Fighter for a limited time:

• Sonic the Hedgehog – $1.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – $2.99
• Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1 – $3.99
• Sonic Spinball – $0.99
• Street Fighter IV – $0.99

If you’ve been thinking about purchasing these games, there’s never been a better time to buy them, and they’re even more satisfying when you know your money is going towards such a great cause. And if you already own them, why not gift them to a friend?

After the tragedy of the recent 9.0 earthquake and the resulting tsunami, Apple has decided not to launch the iPad 2 in Japan on March 25th.

“We are delaying the launch of the iPad 2 in Japan while the country and our teams focus on recovering from the recent disaster,” said Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris.

There is no rescheduled launch date planned, and the length of delay will depend upon how long it takes for Japan to recover from recent tragedies, which have culminated with the threat of meltdown at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Yesterday, Apple Bitch broke the news that Apple Stores would be opening an hour early today to start selling a new shipment of iPad 2s to customers. Today, they’re noting that while many stores did open early in case they had iPad 2s to sell, most stores received no new iPads at all… and those that did only got an extremely limited number of units (less than half a dozen).

I can personally confirm this, as I went down to Boston’s Boylston Street Apple Store this morning an hour before opening time. While the Boylston Street Apple Store did did have staff waiting at the door at 8:30am, nearly an hour and a half before opening time, they confirmed that they had no new iPad 2 units to sell when asked, and suggested checking back the next day at the same time.

Overall, if you haven’t ordered an iPad 2 already, it looks like we’re going to see an extremely constrained number of Apple Store iPad 2 units for the next month at least. However, reports indicate that the store will put any new units up for sale first thing the next morning after their delivery, so if you want an iPad 2 sooner rather than later, calling in late for work might be the only way to get one.

When it comes to attracting consumers to video subscription services, convenience wins out over other factors. That’s the message behind new research finding Netflix gets 60 percent of the U.S. digital subscription market, leaving Apple’s iTunes No. 3, with just 4 percent. Cable giant Comcast placed second, according to a NPD Group report on domestic digital video demand between January and February 2011.

The iTunes service tied with satellite provider DirecTV and entertainment behemoth Time Warner. Although the Apple service began in 2006, iTunes began renting movies in 2008 and 99-cent TV episodes in 2010. Despite consumers knowing iTunes had a more up-to-date inventory for rent, Netflix was given the nod due to the “overall shopping experience” and “value for price paid,” NPD announced Tuesday.

Here’s a weird fun fact for you on a slow news Tuesday: there’s a very real familial link between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and TV’s Homer Simpson. Here’s how.

As some of you may know, Steve Jobs was put up for adoption as an infant. What you may not know is that Steve Jobs’ birth parents are Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, who put him up for adoption because they weren’t married at the time.

Later, when they married, they had another child: Mona Jandali. However, Jandali abandoned both Mona and her mother when Mona was five. Joanne eventually remarried, at which point Mona decided to take her stepfather’s name and became Mona Simpson.

Desktops? Laptops? The conversation has shifted to tablets, and Apple appears to be at the center of this whirlwind. Yet another research firm is forecasting the global growth of “tab computers.” Canalys expects to see 52 million of the devices shipped this year – and Apple’s iPad will account for 75 percent of the sales.

The numbers mirror an earlier Goldman Sachs forecast for 54.7 million tablets, 37.2 million from Apple. Analysts at JPMorgan had a more dire warning: there could be a tablet ‘bubble’ as rivals push production, yet see limited sales.

Leave it to Gelaskins, makers of some of the best looking protective “covers” for electronic gear on the market today, to have nearly 300 choices for personalizing your iPad2 already in stock.

Much of the artwork available for these striking gear condoms (printed on feather-light, flexible space-age material invented by 3M) is intricate, busy and wild — taking away, in some eyes, from the elegance of Apple’s iPad design.

Here, for readers’ consideration, then, are a dozen creations of a more subtle bent, which tend to both command one’s attention as artwork, while supporting a showcase for the latest iteration of Apple’s post-PC mobile communication platform.

Each iPad2 skin sells for $29.95 through the Gelaskins website, where you can see the whole mind-blowing collection — along with their vast inventory of skins for other devices.

OK, this is a little WTF, and I haven’t yet been able to verify it myself (because reception’s pretty good where I live), but: Boris Veldhuijzen van Zante over the The Next Web says he’s discovered a trick to improve iPhone 4 reception: stick it in a glass.

Although we won’t know for certain how many iPad 2 tablets were sold this weekend until Apple releases actual figures, that hasn’t stopped a patchwork of estimates and insider reports. The latest metric coming to us is that 7,200 of the next-generation devices were sold Friday at the Cupertino, Calif. company’s New York City flagship store, the first day the iPad was available.

While the report cites a “well-connected source,” the numbers seem to echo a statement on weekend iPad 2 consumer demand. Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster and his team found 1,109 people were lined-up at the Fifth Avenue Apple Store this weekend – up from 703 when the original iPad was released in 2010.

Speaking of Samsung, can you tell that Apple’s biggest rival in the nascent tablet market is feeling the heat from the iPad 2? According to new rumors and the leaked spec sheet above, Samsung’s already readying to counter Apple’s second-gen iPad by dropping the price of their 7-inch WiFi tablet the Galaxy Tab to just $399, undercutting the cheapest iPad 2 by $100 bucks.

It would be a smart move by Samsung. After the iPad 2 was announced, Samsung openly admitted that they would need to reconsider the pricing of their forthcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1, a ten-inch version of the original Galaxy Tab that is more iPad-like in form factor.

Of course, it also implies a certain degree of desperation to take a credible share of the tablet market from the iPad. At $399, Samsung would almost certainly be selling the Galaxy Tab at a loss. $399 is about what I think a Froyo-based 7-inch tablet should cost, but it’s probably not what it does cost to manufacture. Samsung won’t be able to keep this up forever.

If you like staring at silicon without its clothes on, you’ll love this: Chipworks has done a teardown of the iPad 2’s new A5 processor.

It’s a technical read, and frankly, I’m not Cylon enough to understand most of it. The most interesting detail for us laypeople is that it’s actually pretty honking huge: at 120mm, it’s actually more than twice the size of the A4’s 53mm CPU, allowing Apple to cram in more cores, transistors and a bigger GPU for more oomph all around.

According to Chipworks, the SoC is still pretty much off-the-shelf. It’s manufactured by Samsung, despite Apple’s rumored partnership with TSMC to build iPad 2 chips, so it doesn’t look like Apple’s given Sammy the boot just yet for daring to release their own tablet.

Ouch. If you haven’t ordered an iPad 2 yet, I hope you’re willing to wait over a month to get one, as iPad 2 shipping estimates have slipped again, this time to four or five weeks for most models.

iPad 2 shipping estimates have been slipping since mere hours after it went on sale online in the wee hours of Friday. Originally put up for sale online at 1AM PT with a 3-5 business day shipping estimate, that slipped in mere hours to 5-7 days, then to two weeks and now to over a month.

If you haven’t ordered your iPad 2 online yet, your best bet might be to drop by your local Apple Store on the way to work today. Rumor indicates that Apple Stores will open at 9am today to service iPad 2 sales on a fresh shipment, and I can confirm that, at least at the Apple Store I’m currently parked at, Apple employees are already bustling around inside.

Here’s an astonishing post from Kevin Rose, publishing an (anoymized) email from a friend of his who works for Apple in Japan.

Still haven’t bought your iPad 2 yet and wondering which flavor of 3G to get: AT&T or Verizon? Ma Bell’s now sweetening the pot if you’re willing to sign up with them. According to a mailing AT&T is sending around, they’re offering a free month of iPad data for a limited time, with no commitment or associated fees. All you have to do is call them up at 1-888-237-5888 and it sounds like they’ll hook you up.

AT&T phrases this offer as a way to “try your iPad” on their mobile broadband service, but of course, if you bought an AT&T iPad 2, you don’t really have a choice either way anymore.

In case you missed it, Apple stole the spotlight this year at SXSW by launching iPad 2 in a temporary popup shop right in the heart of Austin.

I had heard that Apple was opening a popup store at a secret location during SXSW, but the location wasn’t a secret for long.

Long lines, big signs, high fives—even dancing ensued once the twitterverse got wind of the popup’s location. It was a crazy fun time, so if you haven’t seen it yet, check the video and let your eyes behold the insanity of this brilliant iPad launch.

PS, excuse the video’s abrupt ending, my camera ate some of my video bytes.

Microsoft is killing the Zune player after five years of unsuccessfully trying to compete with Apple’s iPod.

The Zune is being discontinued thanks to weak ongoing sales, Bloomberg reports. It will not be refreshed when current units sell out.

When the Zune was introduced in 2006, in mold-breaking brown nonetheless, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer predicted the player would one day overtake Apple. But it failed to even crack the top five MP3 players. According to NPD, Apple had 77% market share in 2010.

“MSFT abandoning Zune last sign AAPL totally dominated portable music for the last decade,” tweeted industry analyst Michael Gartenberg. “Sony, Samsung, Dell all failed to move needle.”

Gartenberg also predicted that tablets will be the next Zune.

Pundit Paul Kedrosky said: “My main reaction to news that Microsoft is going to stop selling Zunes is … Microsoft still sold Zunes?”

Instead of selling hardware players, Microsoft will shift its focus to putting Zune on smartphones running Windows mobile OS.

With its world class design, Microsoft’s young hip image, and ground-breaking advertising like the spot below, is it any wonder the Zune failed to take off?

(This is a joke, btw)

Just like CBS I don’t know if this is real or fake. However, it is interesting and intriguing. The video shows a man who uses his iPhone, a video transmitter, and a repeater to hijack video billboards in Times Square.  In a sense it looks like he’s hacked the video feeds going to these video billboards displayed in Times Square.

He starts off with small video billboards at ground level and eventually works his way up to a giant CNN billboard high above the middle of Times Square.

Real or fake? Tell us what you think by leaving a comment.

[via CBS News]

Rocker Jon Bon Jovi says Steve Jobs is “personally responsible for killing the music business” with iTunes.

In an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, Bon Jovi says kids no longer enjoy the “magical” experience of buying and enjoying LPs because of digital downloads. He hates to sound like an “old man,” he says, but it’s all Jobs’ fault:

“Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it. God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’. Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.”

I’m an old man too, but I’ve never enjoyed music more. I much prefer my fantastic Sonos music system than my old record player. I do recall the excitement of buying a new LP every week. I doubt I’d get the same excitement these days, but that’s not Steve Jobs’ fault.

As for killing music, I’d say Bon Jovi has done more on that front than Steve Jobs.

Incidentally, Bon Jovi sits on a White House panel with Jobs’ wife, Laurene Powell Jobs. Both are members of the White House council for Community Solutions. Might be awkward at the next meeting.

The Sunday Times Magazine: LITD: Jon Bon Jovi, 48, rockstar (paywall)

Way back in 1978, Apple Corps successfully got Apple to agree never to enter the music industry in court… a ban that Apple was obviously successful at whittling away at, slowly but surely, over the next twenty odd years. That culminated in a 2007 settlement that resulted in most of Apple Corps’ trademarks being given to Apple, Inc… a settlement that ultimately led to the release of the Beatles catalog on iTunes back in late 2010.

Curiously, though, one Apple Corps trademark that Apple never got was for Apple Corps’ distinctive and fruity logo. That’s now changed, with Apple having applied for Apple Corps’ Granny Smith apple logo with the European Treademarks Office on March 11th, 2011, covering everything from computer hardware, online social networking services, musical instruments, games, clothing, advertising and broadcasting.

In trademark disputes, gaining control over your opponent’s official logo is what is called a fatality. After twenty three years, it looks like the dispute between Apple Corps and Apple is over once and for all.

Back in September, Apple filed a patent that would make the audio jacks in their iOS devices even smaller, using deflectable pogo pins instead of cantilever beams to extend into the jack’s cavity and conduct audio and electricity to your headphones.

It was an interesting patent, but Apple’s patents have a tendency to never materialize. This one did, though: according to Kevin Fox of Mozilla Labs, the iPad 2 is the first Apple device to use the new pogo pin audio jack.

Check out this video of the iPad 2 playing Chair Entertainment’s Infinity Blade on a 50-inch LG HDTV running at 1080p, thanks to the new iPad HDMI adapter. That’s a ten-dollar game looking just as lurid and beautiful in high-definition as a $60 Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 game.