News - page 2180

Look at this incredible picture from London’s Mail on Sunday showing the massive crowds that line up every morning to buy unlocked iPhone 4s.

The Mail claims the unlocked iPhones are being shipped to Asia and the Middle East, where the iPhone 4 has yet to go on sale. Unlocked handsets can be sold for double their purchase price. At first I thought the picture was from the grand opening of Apple’s new Covent Garden store, which opened recently, but the Mail says the lines are forming every morning:

At 6.50am in Covent Garden security guards stopped people from joining the queue. About 230 were cordoned off behind airport-style barriers waiting for the shop to open.
At 7.30am a manager came out and stood on a chair and said: ‘We have iPhones for you. We will open the store in half an hour. Just be nice. Be orderly.’A cheer broke out as the shop doors opened just before 8am.

The New York Times says the same thing is happening in NYC, but may slack off when the iPhone 4 goes on sale in China on Saturday: Buyers Send iPhones on a Long Relay to China.

Thanks Kato.

CES won’t be around for another few months or so, but there’s already big iPhone news emerging from Las Vegas. Wahoo Fitness, start-up created with the purpose of transforming the iPhone into a serious fitness tool, is introducing their two big “Fisica” products at Interbike, the annual bicycle trade show taking place in the desert for the next few days.

You know me, you know I love my iPhone photography toys. One of my favorites is QuadCamera, which I last mentioned here back in 2009.

The app has undergone a steady series of updates since then, but the latest adds support for both of the iPhone 4’s cameras. Now you can take multi-shot photos of yourself, or of anything you might wish to hold above the iPhone 4 while it’s lying face-up on a table. I decided to spare you the horror of my own unshaven, sleep-deprived, stress-ridden visage in favour of some shots of my MBP, but I’m sure you get the idea. There’s always Flickr.

(If you’ve upgraded to iOS 4.1, make sure you check for and install the very latest QuadCamera update, otherwise you’ll encounter a bug that prevents the app launching.)

Many other photo apps have come and gone, but QuadCamera is one of the small handful that’s remained on my iPhone ever since I bought it. It’s quick and it’s fun, and well worth dropping a couple of bucks on.

If anyone expected Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg to use an investor conference Thursday to spill his guts on whether the carrier will soon be selling the iPhone, they were sorely disappointed. Instead, Seidenberg played his cards close to the vest, not once mentioning the topic on so many tongues: how soon will AT&T’s exclusive arrangement with Apple end.

However, the CEO “said he hopes Apple Inc. will come around and allow Verizon to sell the phone for a new network it’s building,” according to the Associated Press. That 4G network won’t be complete until next year, Seidenberg said. His appearance comes prior to a planned keynote address in January at CES 2011.

Welcome to the Volkspad. What the Volkswagen did for autos, the iPad could do for mass adoption of Apple computers – or so says a keen observer of Cupertino, analyst Gene Munster. “We see the iPad as the Mac for the masses,” the Piper Jaffray analyst told investors Thursday.

The Apple tablet will be “a secondary computing device for those who already have a primary computer, a primary device for those who could not previously afford a Mac, and the first Apple product that will be a success in the enterprise,” Munster writes. The iPad will outsell the Mac in 2011 with 21 million units expecting to ship next year – nearly doubling the analyst’s previous forecast for 14.5 million tablets. With such a rosy picture, little wonder the analyst believes 94 percent of tablets sold this year will carry an Apple label.

Think Geek — those purveyors of gadget accessories you never even knew you needed — are now collecting preorders for this awesomely clever iPhone case with flip-out keyboard.

Although we arch an eyebrow at those who simply can’t get over the lack of physical QWERTY keys on the iPhone, the TK-421case is perhaps one of the more cleverly designed accessories to bring some thumbable texting buttons to Apple’s touchscreen handset that we’ve seen so far. The keyboard flips out from where it is hidden at the bottom of the case, solidly clicking into place and pairing with your iPhone through Bluetooth so that it can be used like a thumbpad to answer texts, respond to emails or type in blog posts.

The Tk-421 comes in two separate models which will both ship in November for $49.99, one for the iPhone 3GS and one for the iPhone 4. If you have a 3G or lower, though, you’re out of luck. As Think Geek notes: “. Yes. We know that the iPhone 3G is the same form factor as the 3GS but unfortunately Apple decided that the 3G was just too slow to add Bluetooth™ keyboard support into the OS… go figure.”

When Steve Jobs first unveiled the new AppleTV on September 1st, he promised the new streaming-only AppleTV would ship in the next four weeks.

It looks like Apple’s going to make its deadline: we’re now hearing reports from our readers and from other sites that people who have preordered the new AppleTV are starting to have their credit cards charged.

Apple usually only starts pushing through credit charges on preorders when they are actually ready to ship out hardware, so it seems pretty obvious that the AppleTV is about to start dropping onto people’s porches fairly imminently.

Any other readers getting payment notification for their preorders… or, even better, shipping confirmation? Let us know in the comments.

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If you need to take the G Train in New York City or pay for a cab you’re jumping uptown, you now have a new way to pay for your ride: with your iPhone.

Visa has just announced that they have inked deals with the New York City subway to let you simply display your iPhone in front of a kiosk or turnstile in select locations as part of a trial of their payWave system.

What’s payWave?It’s essentially just Visa smart chip circuitry that allows you to wave a credit card or payWave-equipped device in front of a cash register, no signature or pin codes required.

Since the iPhone doesn’t have payWave circuity installed by default, if you want to use it with your iPhone, you need to use a specially designed payWave case to graft the functionality onto your handset.

If you’re willing to pick up one of those, though, you can start helping VIsa test out the service Think of the possibilities! While all those other suckers wait in line to recharge their Metro Cards, you’ll be able to breeze past the turnstiles with an Obi-Wan-style wave of your iPhone.

Pretty neat, but eventually, you can probably expect your iPhone to handle this sort of thing natively. Apple’s been doing some hiring and some research into Near Field Communications, and that, more likely than not, means that a few years down the line, you won’t need a special case: your iPhone will be your credit card.

Apple’s new, iOS-driven Apple TV is largely selling itself to consumers as a box that will allow them to stream all of their favorite television shows for 99-cents a pop whenever they want, but that price point is facing some notable resistance from network executives, and may quickly inflate once the device begins shipping at the end of the month.

Although Apple has inked deals with News Corp’s Fox and Walt Disney’s ABC to make shows available for $0.99 when the Apple TV launches, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker does not intend on following suit, claiming that the price point was setting the bar too low.

“We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content. … We thought it would devalue our content,” Zucker said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference.

The value of a dollar just keeps on climbing.

Though Apple CEO Steve Jobs is still paid only a buck a year for his Cupertino duties, the latest Forbes list of the top 400 wealthiest Americans pegs his worth at $6.1 billion… up a billion dollars from last year.

As usual, most of that wealth does not come from Apple, but rather Jobs’ position as the primary shareholder of the Walt Disney Corporation: his stocks there are valued at roughly $4.4 billion. That fact alone never ceases to amaze me. From a pure income and valuation perspective, Apple is basically Jobs’ hobby. None the less, Apple’s stock has continued to soar over the last year, closing at a record high of $287.55 per share just this Wednesday.

All in all, Jobs managed to claw his way up a spot in the rankings from last year, now coming in as the 42nd richest American and 136th richest man in the world. Rather embarrassingly, however, Jobs was overtaken by several ranks in this year’s list by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s hoping Steve smacks that sweaty, frog-eyed little upstart down the rankings a few dozen spots in the years to come.

More and more, the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines is starting to seem like it might be a promise of the end of arbitrary app rejection. Following the surprise about course by Apple when it comes to allowing Google Voice apps on the App Store, it now appears that they’ve also rescinded their long-standing ban on App Store ringtone makers.

Pretty much since the App Store’s inception, applications that allowed users to make ringtones from the songs on their iPhone have been verboten. Exactly “why” has always been up for debate: although Apple did sell ringtones through iTunes, they clearly didn’t mind users rolling their own, as evidenced by GarageBand’s Export Ringtone feature. Whatever the reason, though, it was plenty hard to sneak a ringtone maker by Apple up until recently. Since the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, though, no less than five ringtone makers have gone live on iTunes… seemingly ending the arbitrary blacklisting.

The iPad has made the consumption of digital media revolutionary and it is getting increasingly more useful for creating content. So today content creation took a small step forward with the release of updates to Apple’s iWork suite of apps:  Keynote, Numbers and Pages.

The apps have been updated to provide better support for Microsoft Office when exporting to Excel (.xls) or Powerpoint (.ppt)  and Apple has included a number of improvements in these app updates.

Additionally, the apps can now also directly access your MobileMe iDisk and other WebDAV servers:

With the latest Keynote, Pages and Numbers for iPad, you can now transfer your documents directly to and from your MobileMe iDisk so you can work on them anywhere you have an Internet connection. For example, create a new Pages document on your iPad and copy it directly to your iDisk. Then, when you are back at your Mac, open the document from iDisk and continue editing right where you left off.

Welcome changes to apps that I’ve found useful while on the go. If you haven’t tried them yet they are worth a look, but don’t expect them to replace their desktop counterparts. If you need to take them for a test drive stop by any Apple store for a peek, since according to the local store that I called, the iWork iPad apps are installed on all iPads on display.

Click the read link below to see Apple’s complete list of changes made to the apps.

The iPod Click Wheel’s days seem numbered at Apple.  With the iPod nano having abandoned tactile functionality for a touchscreen (and iWatch emulation), and the iPod shuffle never having earned the honor, only the iPod Classic (itself a senior citizen) now sports the versatile, groundbreaking interface.

Many a jogger, commuter or pocket-iPod user has spent countless hours twirling the Click Wheel dial and listening to music – not to mention playing Brickles!

Or sometimes, you make music with the Click Wheel.  As nostalgically shown by Matt and Keith over at Matt’s Macintosh (who clearly seems to be enjoying his Final Cut Pro workstation)!

What’s that you say? Not enough work stress in your life? We’ve got something that’ll ramp it right up, courtesy of Dutch graphic designer/cartoonist Metin Seven: a half-foot, 3D-printed bust of a glowering Steve Jobs. Try positioning it on your desk facing you, somewhere off in your peripheral vision, for maximum effect.

Steve can be ordered from cutting-edge craft-site Shapeways for $116.81 in a color option described as “white strong & flexible.” Obviously.

Fuse Box, the company behind some of the best collaboration tools on the Internet, announced this week the arrival of Fuze Meeting, the first web conferencing service that allows users to run a meeting from an iPad. Dubbed ‘meetings in a pinch,’ the Fuze Meeting app (iTunes link) supports Keynote presentations on and off the iPad, content uploads from third party apps such as Dropbox and SuharySync, and full duplex in-app VoIP so users don’t even need headphones to join a meeting.

Some of the cooler features supported by the app include support for HD video content and Fuze Box’s iPoint™ Laser Technology that transforms a user’s finger into a digital laser pointer, viewable by all meeting participants. Cloud storage enables users to pull any document or file directly from the server and also add content from the iPad straight into a meeting, then store it on the cloud for later. Both hosts and attendees can share, control, and present content from their iPad.

Chat integration with AIM, Yahoo, Google, OCS and others allows users to see who is online and bring them into a meeting from wherever they are and in-app account creation lets users meet exclusively from the iPad without ever booting up a desktop PC –- making the app a truly mobile solution.

Users who download the app before October 15 can use an upgraded version of the app free for 30 days, after which, accounts will convert to the always free lite account.

iBooks and games may be currently popular apps for the iPad, but if Apple’s latest game-changing device is going to have real legs it will one day have to be seen as a productivity tool. And productivity means business. The success of Fuze Meeting should be a good indicator of iPad’s potential value in the academic and enterprise spaces.

Adobe will only begrudgingly admit Apple’s recent decision to allow the graphics format back into the iPhone development toolbox was helpful. Talking to analysts, Adobe’s CEO said only the impact of Apple’s relaxed standards “was muted.” The comment, while mild, could be the first steps toward detente between the media tools maker and the creator of some of the most-used media platforms.

Following a decision earlier this month to resume working on its Flash CS5 Compiler for the iOS platform, “a number of people who had created products using our tool submitted that to the Apple Store and were approved,” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said.

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More signs appear every day that Apple is prepping a CDMA version of its popular iPhone for early 2011. The Cupertino, Calif. company reportedly has told suppliers it wants the first 3 million CDMA-only handsets ready for December 2010. The addition of a CDMA version alongside the current GSM-only iPhone should push fourth-quarter iPhone production to between 21 million and 22 million Apple handsets, one analyst told investors.

Citing overseas suppliers, Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Jeffrey Fidarco said shipments of GSM-only iPhones will be betweem 18.2 million and 18.4 million for the September quarter, a figure he described as “well above investor expectations.” Additionally, the analyst forecasts Apple will sell 11.6 million iPhones for the fourth-quarter of fiscal 2010, a 39 percent jump from the 8.4 million Apple sold in the third quarter. The recent launch of iPhone sales in China, along with Apple’s goal to launch the iPhone 4 in 88 countries by the end of September will aid results in in the fourth-quarter, the analyst told investors.

The highly rated Springpad “remember anything” service is rolling out several nifty new features — starting with mobile notifications that will alert users to events, news and special offers.

Springpad is a free lifestyle service that makes it easy to save digital content — everything from news stories to recipes, email, wine labels, restaurant reviews, travel tips and so on.

It rivals similar services such as Evernote and Backpack, but value adds by analyzing saved content and layering it with metadata like special deals, nearby retailers, and useful links. If you save recipes, for example, it can automatically generate shopping lists of ingredients. Scan the barcode from a bottle of wine, and it’ll give you info and also find a local retailer.

“Anytime, anywhere, anyhow — it makes it drop dead simple to capture stuff you want to remember,” said Springpad CEO Jeff Janer in a phone interview last week.

Saved content is synchronized across iPhone, iPad, Android and Web apps. The service was recently named one of Time magazine’s 50 Best Websites and favorably reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

On Wednesday, the service is adding alerts to its mobile app — event reminders, news alerts, to-dos, price drops, coupons, and special offers, etc. If you show an interest in Apple’s iOS, for example, it will alert you if Apple issues a software update.

The company is also releasing an extension for Google’s Chrome, which will make it easy to add content without leaving the browser. An extension for Safari will follow in about 30 days, Janer said. It is also adding push notifications to Android (available today) and iOS, which will available in about a month pending Apple’s approval.

Here’s a video of the new features in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REssNBbtmjc&hd=1

Google Earth has long been one of the most impressive apps on iOS, but the software just got an entirely new and subaqueous dimension: in Google Earth 3.1 for iOS, you can now explore underwater landscapes (or, as Google calls it, “ocean bathymetry and ocean layer content.”

Dive below the ocean’s surface to explore underwater canyons, or travel to the ocean’s deepest point, the Mariana Trench. Once underwater, simply swipe the screen with two fingers to “look around.” You can always reset your view by clicking on the north arrow on the iPad, or on the compass on the iPhone and iPod.

First person out there to spot R’lyeh, please let me know the coordinates: it seems like I’ve spent all morning searching the Pacific depths for the non-Euclidean city in which dead Cthulhu “wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Google Earth is a free download on the App Store.

In the past, Blackberry makers Research In Motion have had questionable success in updating their handsets to be competitive in a post-iPhone world, but that’s not about to stop them from challenging Apple’s iPad: the company is expected to debut their own 7-inch tablet at next week’s RIM Developer Conference.

Rumored to be named the BlackPad, RIM’s iPad-clone is expected to run some variation of the the QNX operating system instead of their own Blackberry OS 6. At 7 inches, the BlackPad would be closer to the (still untested at market) form factor of the Samsung Galaxy Tab than the iPad’s 9.7-inch display, and would likely be similar to the Galaxy Tab in other key specs as well, such as dual camera capability.

Interestingly, sources speaking to the WallStreet Journal say that RIM is going a curious direction when it comes to 3G: the only way you will be able to access cellular networks on a BlackPad is by tethering it to a BlackBerry smartphone.

With AT&T’s exclusive hold on the iPhone due to end soon by many accounts, many are wondering if Verizon will get their own version of the iPhone early next year… and how much that will hurt AT&T. According to analysts, a Verizon iPhone wouldn’t hurt AT&T very much, and now AT&T is echoing the sentiment themselves: we’re not worried.

AT&T Chief Randall Stephenson recently spoke at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York City, Stephenson stated that while the iPhone was a major success for AT&T, two-thirds of iPhone purchases came from previous AT&T customers and were not likely to switch to another network just because the iPhone opened up over there as an option.

More to the point, Stephenson says that the iPhone 4 was such a huge success that they’ve locked in a huge chunk of their existing customers into new two year contracts. Added together, Stephenson thinks it’s unlikely that a Verizon iPhone would lead to a mass defection of users.

He’s probably right, at least immediately… but this isn’t about a cataclysmic migration of users that occurs the second AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity ends. This is about the long tail defection of individual users over a period of a couple of years who are so fed up with AT&T’s clumsy service and incompetence that the only thing keeping them there is the best phone on Earth. Unless AT&T takes the quality of their service more seriously without the iPhone exclusivity than they did with, there still may very well be trouble for Ma Bell down the road.

Are you wondering how a company like Nokia can, on the one hand, claim that it is selling more smartphones every day than the iPhone, and yet be kicking its CEOout the door like a mangy dog? These pie charts ought to make everything crystal clear.

Advisory firm Canaccord Genuity told investors to buy, buy, buy Apple stock on Tuesday, targeting Apple’s price at $356 per share… and to give investors an idea on why they were so excited about Apple’s prospects, they accompanied their note with the following observation: even though Apple only sold 17 million handsets in the first half of 2010, Apple has pulled in 39% of the mobile sector’s profit.

Meanwhile, Nokia, Samsung and LG sold 400 million phones last year — over twenty times as many handsets as Apple sold iPhones — and yet their profit was dwarfed by Apple’s in the same period.

As Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley notes, “[W]where most handset OEMs struggle to post a profit or even 10% operating margins… we estimate Apple boasts roughly 50% gross margin and 30%+ operating margin for its iPhone products.”

No wonder the boards of companies like Nokia are lopping off their key executives’ heads and bowling them out the door.

Police in Los Angeles are reporting higher numbers of thefts involving victims distracted by iPods or cell phones.

“People are walking around the street in public with their head down texting and thinking about a conversation, rather than up looking around them, and it’s given criminals an opportunity to snatch these cell phones and iPods out of people’s hands in broad daylight,”  Lt. Paul Vernon of the Los Angeles Police Department told local news station ABC 7.

While we’ve reported frequently on iPhone snatch-n-grabs involving people on the phone, this is the second US city authority recently to warn against using mobile devices while, uh, mobile in public.

Chicago’s transport authority reported an uptick in e-thefts warned riders that using iDevices on public transport makes them easy pickings for thieves who want those gadgets. The CTA is developing a poster to warn riders that electronic devices are often targeted by thieves, who single out people sitting or standing near the door so they can snatch an iPod or other device, then make a quick escape. The CTA  won’t be the first to launch the iWarning: in 2007, authorities in Brixton, South London launched an awareness campaign with posters declaring, “They want your iPod!”

The LAPD’s Vernon estimates that there are almost 400 robberies and grand thefts in downtown LA, 70 of them related to cell phones and iPods. While that’s only about 18 percent, it’s still high enough that police want to warn against the dangers of digital distractions.

It does seem a drag that you can’t use your devices as they were intended — when you’re mobile. That said, I’m pretty careful about making mobile calls on the street and which neighborhoods are “safe” enough to shut out with music from an iPod.

Cervantes Mobile’s latest iPhone accessory, the Jorno, is basically technology that’s been floating around for nearly a decade: a folding keyboard for serious writing on a handheld device. I had something just like this for my old Dell Axim PDA back in 2002, and while the Jorno docks with the iPhone through Bluetooth instead of a physical connection, otherwise it’s pretty much identical.

I can’t make any bones about the Jorno’s price: at $79, I’d say it’s too expensive by half for such old tech. That said, I will say that the Transformers-like process of folding one of these keyboards was such a clickety-clacketing delight that I still count my old fold-up Axim keyboard as one of the best gadgets I ever owned, and this is pretty much the same thing. If you want to have an easily pocketable yet full-sized physical keyboard to do serious writing on your iPhone or iPad, then, you could do worse than giving this cute like keyboard a shot.