Apple’s deservedly racking up a lot of year-end awards as the New Year fast approaches — from the iPad being named Walt Mossberg’s gadget of the year to Steve Jobs garnering the Financial Times’ Person of the Year award — but you can end this one to the more ignominious trophy pile: CNN has just listed Antennagate as one of their ten biggest tech fails of 2010.
Intent not to repeat this year’s shortages, Apple reportedly is “overbooking” its supply of iPad components for 2011. Suppliers of the iPad’s panel display have received orders for 65 million of the components for next year, far higher than the 45-48 million previously projected.
The move “indicates that Apple is very optimistic about the tablet PC market in 2011, and may also mean that Apple is overbooking panel capacity,” a Taiwan-based industry publication reported Wednesday.
Flying’s a frustrating experience, and I think all of us have been tempted at one point or another to take that frustration out on an obnoxious neighboring child. Perhaps he’s kicking your seat rhythmically and incessantly: not one of us would blame you for turning around, dumping your soda all over his crotch, standing up and then loudly shrieking, “Look! The baby wet himself! Big baby!” over and over again until he burst into tears and the rest of the airplane burst into applause. That’s not vindictiveness… it’s just justice.
We draw the line, however, at actually hitting kids. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what 68-year old Russell Miller did on a recent flight heading to Boise, Idaho, after a neighboring fifteen year old refused to turn off his iPhone (which seems to have been in Airplane mode, and we being used to play games and music, not make calls),
It may not really run iOS, but the latest touchscreen Nano has been hacked… and that hack may very well imply jailbreaks to come.
The hack was achieved by dev James Wheaton, who managed to install an alternate Springboard file that allowed him to remove an app from the device.
This might sound like a simple task, but it’s not: to achive the feat, Wheaton has to figure out how to bypass the Nano’s cache comparison, which scans the Springboard file for changes and reverts the device to factory settings if any mods are discovered.
In other words, it’s not that Wheaton was able to load a modified Springboard plist file deleting an app that is the big deal… it’s the circumvention of the Nano’s own anti-modding tech. That means the next step might be bonafide jailbreaking.
Wheaton’s discoveries don’t end there: he also found hidden support for apps, vCards, calendar events and more lingering in the firmware of the device. Even if the Nano will never run custom apps, some of that functionality may very well be able to be unlocked.
Apple gave us plenty to play with in 2010: most notably the iPad, the iPhone 4 and the new MacBook Air. But get ready, because in 2011, Apple will switch from giving to taking.
In his ongoing pursuit of Zen-like simplicity, Steve Jobs looks set to take away two key features of the Mac platform in 2011: optical drives and scroll bars. The impact is likely to be eye-watering for diehard Mac users, but we’ll probably come to see the wisdom of Jobs, eventually.
More and more information is coming out, suggesting how an expected iPad 2 might look or perform. Now comes word Apple may ship three versions of the updated tablet, adding a CDMA model to the already available Wi-Fi and 3G.
According to a Taiwan-based industry publication citing unnamed sources, production on the iPad 2 could begin as early as the second-half of January with Apple shipping between 500,000 to 530,000 units next month.
As we reported earlier this week, Apple blew out the competition when it came to prime real estate under the Christmas tree. Not only did Apple crush the competition when it came to laptops and MP3 players, the iPad rules and its rivals drool, according to an analyst Tuesday.
“Even with a handful of tablet competitors hitting the market, the iPad remained the only game in town” for the holidays, Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair told investors. Blair called Apple’s rivals “junk for lack of a better word.”
After taking the unprecedented step of forecasting it would sell at least 1 million Apple TV units last week, the Cupertino, Calif. company Monday confirmed it had met its goal. The milestone shatters Apple’s previous high-water mark for the $99 device set it October: 250,000 units. At the time, CEO Steve Jobs remarked he was “thrilled.”
This latest sales announcement seemed more to do with increased competition from the likes of Roku and Google than any real revenue benefit to Apple. Last week analysts described the $400 million in revenue from sales of 1 million Apple TV as “fairly immaterial.” Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, however, said the Apple TV could become “a more material contributor and game changer in the TV space,” if Apple creates an App Store for the device, similar to how the Cupertino, Calif. firm has done for other products, such as the iPhone and iPad.
The father of a five year old boy born with a rare genetic disorder that delays the development of speech has designed a new iPad app that aims to help the speechless communicate.
Look, you and I both know that leaked third-party case designs for unannounced, unreleased Apple products mean next to nothing. In fact, we’ve all been burned by drawing conclusions from purely fanciful Asian case designs before. So please take this news with a grain of salt: a new third-party case design for the iPad 2 seems to imply that the second-generation tablet will have an all-together sleeker and more iPod Touch evocative look.
Following through with their Yuletide threat, Gorillaz has released their new album, The Fall, over on their official website… an album notable for being both written and recorded almost entirely on the iPad, using downloaded App Store apps.
Is it snowing where you live currently? Are temperatures well below freezing? Are you outside? If you answered yes to any of these questions then it is likely that you are wearing gloves right now. If you are just looking to keep warm that is okay, but if you want to use your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad you’re out of luck. The touch screens on these devices aren’t compatible with gloves so if you want to use them you’ll have to pull at least one of the gloves off and risk frostbite in order to use one of Apple’s popular devices.
Now there is a solution that will save your fingers, keep you warm, and still allow you to use your touch screens.
A new lawsuit filed Monday against Apple and a number of app developers including Pandora, The Weather Channel, Dictionary.com and — uh — Pimple Popper Lite is alleging collusion to create secret profiles of iPhone users, including location, and pass that data onto advertisers without users’ consent.
Retrospectively casting an eye over an incredible year for both Apple and its customers, one of the most surprising developments of 2010 was the Mac’s long-overdue maturity into a serious gaming platform after years of false hopes and promises.
More surprising than even that, though, is the fact Apple almost had nothing to do with it: even while Cupertino oiled and massaged iOS into a platform capable of rattling the nerves of gaming’s most unassailable colossus, they continued to ignore Mac gamers and its developers.
So who was responsible for the Mac Gaming Renaissance of 2010? There’s no one company in particular, but let’s start with Valve.
Ignoring the Zune HD (as most consumers seemed to have done), the dominance of Apple’s iPod Touch over the touchscreen media player market has gone essentially unchallenged ever since it first debuted in fall of 2007… but Samsung — makers of the popular Galaxy S smartphone and the Galaxy Tab — are looking to change that at this year’s CES, when they unveil the Galaxy Player.
When Apple updated the iTunes 10 icon earlier this year, it sparked huge controversy among Mac users everywhere — many branded the new icon ugly, lifeless, and unconventional. The debate showed that lots of Mac users like to see beautiful apps with beautiful icons.
Here are 15 of our favorite Mac OS X icons from 2010 that stand out for being beautifully designed, brilliantly colorful, and wonderfully unique. We’ve selected icons that make you want to find out more about an application, and that you’d proudly place in your dock for all to see.
We hope you like them. Check them out after the break. If you know better icons, please tell us about them in the comments. Free apps for the best ideas.
Still got a lump of cash around after Christmas? An eBay seller has just posted a rare prototype of the first portable Macintosh for sale to the highest bidder.
Made from American Rosewood treated with a variety of washes and finishes, I love the look of Trunket’s wood finish stickers for the iPhone 4, right down to the adorable elephant icon. If only the font of Trunket’s logo itself didn’t look like something that would be more appropriate on some terrible nu metal band’s debut CD jacket. $24 a pop.
With Motorola’s upcoming Android Honeycomb tablet and Research in Motion’s imminent PlayBook both set to use new dual-core ARM processors, the iPad 2 will have make a similar jump if it is going to stay competitive according to a recent analyst note.
Last week, VoIP service Skype crumbled under the strain of holiday calling. In the aftermath, Skype published some support documents to help users out, but then quickly pulled them after it was discovered that not only were they looking to roll out FaceTime-style video chat to the iPhone, but also release a native iPad app… and rounding everything out? A juicy hint about the Verizon iPhone.
Eager to keep your nubile teenage daughter from using the new iPhone she got for Christmas as a sexting terminal? Cupertino’s just patented technology to keep her blossoming libido as virginal as the App Store.
Verizon may be getting a late Christmas present, if a new report proves correct. Apple is planning to ship between 20 million and 21 million iPhones in the first quarter of 2011 – 5 to 6 million of those CDMA-based. (Another 14 million to 15 million of the Apple handsets will reportedly be GSM.)
According to a Taiwan-based industry publication, citing unnamed suppliers, Asia will also get the CDMA phones. However, this latest talk of CDMA iPhones could bolster the already red-hot speculation Verizon will launch an iPhone early next year. The move would break the exclusive stranglehold AT&T has held ever since the iPhone was introduced in 2007.
Chances were, if you received some electronics this Christmas, it bore the Apple logo. Products made by the Cupertino, Calif. company were the most-gifted items, according to the online elves at Amazon.
Despite being No. 1 in “Most Wished For” TV and video products, No. 2 Roku actually reportedly was found under most trees. Amazon’s Kindle e-reader again topped the list as bestselling electronic device, the same as it has the whole holiday season.
When Stephen Colbert pulled the soon-to-be released iPad out of a custom pocket in his tux at the Grammys, he set the bar for wearable geek fashion pretty high.
Too high, maybe.
Of all the cool ways you can carry Apple’s new tablet computer, here are five that will earn you a citation from the fashion police and make your blind date run.
What’s past is present, at least in the Vintage Tech World. 2010 saw some significant stories involving those attic treasures: an Apple 1 sold for a whopping $213,000, a Mac Museum for $10k, and an Apple II Festival turned 21. Meanwhile iPads were spotted co-habitating inside old Macs, obsolete status befell our PowerPC friends, and The Macintosh Way lived again.
Travel back in time for this review of the Year in Vintage Apple News.