Another analyst is reporting Android sales are on fire. Shipments of Android phones will grow by 561 percent in 2010 and take nearly 25 percent of the smartphone market. Additionally, Apple iPhone shipments will overtake RIM smartphones later this year, according to Digitimes Research.
In the second-half of 2010, Apple will have 15.6 percent of the smartphone market, passing RIM’s 15 percent. For the full year, however, the BlackBerry-maker will lead the Cupertino, Calif. company 16.4 percent to 15.2 percent, according to the research firm.
Adobe CEO on Apple's Anti-Flash Position: "They've made their choice. We've made ours and we've moved on."
Remember the spat between Apple and Adobe over Steve Jobs’ decision to drop Flash from the iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices made by the Cupertino, Calif. company? The argument was positioned as a fight over who would control the Internet. “We’ve moved on,” Adobe’s CEO now tells interviewers.
Talking with the London Telegraph, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen says his company is sooo over Apple. “We’d rather work with partners who are interested in working with us,” the Adobe chief tells the telegraph.co.uk website.
Apple’s sprucing up their online Support Discussions boards to incorporate more social networking features like user profiles, biographies, user avatars and even the ability to have personalized home pages, complete with widgets.
Apple’s announcement about the new Apple Support Communities is terse: “Very soon a major change will be taking place here at Apple Discussions. To help you prepare we have created some documents to give some insight and instructions on this major upgrade.”
Until the rollouts occur, it’s hard to say just how extreme a revision the new Support Communities will be, but somehow I doubt we’re about to experience the 4chanificiation of Apple’s official forums.
Overheating iPods have been consistently making the news in Japan over the last week. First, Apple admitted that their first-generation iPod Nanos can suffer meltdowns, and offered free replacements to any Japanese iPod owners who’ve experienced the problem. On the heels of that comes this story from Reuters, in which an iPod going nuclear knocked a Tokyo rush hour subway train out of commission.
If not for the bad timing, the story’s pretty funny. Around 8:20am, a train in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward was stopped by officials who noticed a strange, burning smell in the train. Staff members quickly investigated, only to be approached by a sheepish and embarrassed commuter with a smoldering, burst-apart iPod in her hands.
It’s not clear at this point what model iPod burst apart yesterday morning, and it’s almost definitely just a fluke, but one thing’s for sure: Apple Japan is going to have a public relations debacle on their hands if iPods don’t stop melting down.
Paul Devine — the Apple global supply manager who was arrested over the weekend for allegedly accepting over $1 million in kickbacks from Asian iPod and iPhone accessory manufacturers for privileged insider information — has pleaded not guilty to the charges in Federal Court.
The plea comes even as Pegatron (a division of Asustek) has suspended the head of one of their units for doing business with Devine.
Pegatron says they thought the money was a brokerage commission, and paid it to an intermediate trading company between 2005 and 2008, but occurred before Pegatron bought up Kaedar, a company which has supplied iPod boxes to Apple for years.
According to Pegatron, the executive responsible for paying Devine the kickback thought she was paying money for a legitimate commercial purpose and not as a kickback.
Pegatron isn’t the only company to have either conspired or been burned by Devine’s scheme. South Korea’s Cresyn andJin Li Mould Manufacturing have also been named in Apple’s civil lawsuit against Devine. It’s not clear at this point if these companies were actually conspiring with Devine, or if they’ve just been burned by one rogue, criminal mid-level manager.
iPad furniture may be a growing trend, but not everybody can afford $2500 for an iPad Chair (myself included). Now the cheap geeks are getting in on the fun. iVan at iPadFORUMS.net tells us of this useful domestic repurposing project:
I bought a microphone boom stand. Unfortunately this one is a little cheapish and not quite sturdy enough so I had to add a 5 pound counterweight to offset the iPad’s heft and that of the supporting panel.
That panel is cut from half inch MDF covered in black self adhesive felt material. So are the rails that maintain the pad. I affixed it to the boom with a speaker wall mount bracket.
Total cost of project, $80.
Armchair not included. You knew you were saving that weight set in the basement for something!
Apple’s flagship product, the iPhone 4, will arrive in China in early September, according to one report. The new handset will allegedly be sold by Apple’s partner in the Asian giant, China Unicom. The iPad will also arrive in the country sometimes afterward, although specifics are unknown.
MarketWatch, citing a China media group, reports China Unicom has acknowledged the iPhone 4 and the iPad will ship to the nation soon. However, the two products won’t be introduced into the China market simultaneously.
Apple will build future iPhone and other gadgets from Liquidmetal, says a former top researcher at Liquidmetal Technologies, whose technology Apple is licensing.
“I think they’re going to make the iPhone out of it,” said Dr. Jan Schroers, the former director of research at Liquidmetal Technologies, the first company to commercially develop the space-age technology. “It’s quite obvious from what Liquidmetal has done in the past and what the technology is capable of.”
Apple has signed an exclusive agreement to use the Liquidmetal Technologies’ IP in consumer electronic products. Liquidmetal is a high-strength metal that can be processed like plastic. NASA has says it is “poised to redefine materials science as we know it in the 21st century.”
Dr. Schroers is the second high-level executive from Liquidmetal to say Apple has ambitious plans for the revolutionary material. Last week, the alloy’s co-inventor, Atakan Peker, predicted that Apple may use Liquidmetal for a new antenna to replace the problematic part in the iPhone 4.
Speaking exclusively to CultofMac.com, Schroers said Apple could create very intricate and beautiful gadget cases by blow-molding melted alloy like glass. Schroers has created one-piece perfume jars from Liquidmetal using a blow mold (see the picture below).
The technology could also create permanent holographic logos that are etched right into the metal, or elaborate patterns that generate color effects.
“You can really do some novel things with metal that previously were impossible,” he said. “In two years, you could see something the world has never seen in metal.”
This perfume bottle is made of metal but was blow-molded like plastic. It is completely seamless.
Just how difficult could it be to distribute brand new iPads to every single pupil in a school? More difficult than you might think.
Fraser Speirs – caped superhero and Mac developer by night, school IT manager by day – has taken on the task at the school he works for in Scotland, and has started documenting the whole process for the benefit of anyone else who might be thinking of doing the same.
Clearly not the sort of person to let this be the end of the matter, Philip didn’t hesitate: he took after after the mugger, screaming “Somebody call the cops!” and “Give me back my phone!” at the top of his voice.
Remember: Fifth Avenue. Broad daylight. Lots of people about.
A passer-by joined the pursuit, and it didn’t take long for the thief to be caught up. He tried bluffing about having a knife, but Philip saw through it and grabbed him anyway. The iPhone was regained, the mugger ran off, and I’ll leave Philip to conclude the tale:
“Owning the newest Apple gadget is apparently very dangerous, ha ha. He didn’t go for my wallet or anything, he went for my iPhone. I might have to be more careful from now on and consider not wearing Apple’s signature ‘please mug me’ white earbuds. Oh well, live and learn, that’s New York City for ya.”
If you can’t remember how much you’ve had to drink — or have the bad luck to go out with people who never want to pay — this pub in Manchester has come up with a clever solution.
At Taps, the tables have built-in beer taps and an iPod Touch keeps tracks of just how many pints of the two kinds of beers have been glugged from each spout.
An iPod logging in pints of Heineken and Moretti at Taps in Manchester.
Reader Grzegorz over at Access Advertising sent us these pics of the iPod tab in action, noting that it’s also nice for parties: “You can top up the app at the bar and when your beer runs out, the app will close the tap. You have to go back to the bar to top it up.”
While it’s not fool proof (note the folks at the table drinking wine and what looks like stout — not available from these two lager taps) but it might be a way of avoiding runaway bar tabs.
The iPod tab runs via an app called DraftMagik one of DraftServ’s “point-of-pour” solutions for bars.
There’s been a lot of speculation that Apple will use space-age Liquidmetal alloys to make morphing iPhones or other sci-fi technology, but the company has already used the exotic alloy — and in the most unlikely place.
Recall all the fuss made when smartphones, such as the BlackBerry and the Droid were lumped in with the iPhone 4 by Apple to prove all phones had reception problems? Although the Cupertino, Calif. company eventually removed the pages from its site, Apple is getting some unexpected support – From Droid 2-manufacturer Motorola.
TechCrunch cites “a good number of reports” from users of the Droid 2 (sold by Verizon) about lost signals, even without touching the phone. The report also points to an Engadget review that demonstrated “endless fluctuating bar counts” and other problems.
As we all know, the iPad has problems charging through some USB ports… specifically if your USB port doesn’t support 10 watts of output. According to XMultiple Technologies, a solution to those beleaguered by iPad charging problems are just a $5 dongle away from serendipitous juicing forever.
Basically, it’s a sort of power-serving bridge device that you slide prophylactically over your existing Apple Dock Connector cable and which will magically allow USB ports that don’t serve 10 watts to juice up an iPad, thanks to some integrated electronics. Hmmm.
XMultiple Technologies says the iXP1-500 is “100% guaranteed to work.” I’m not quite sure how it could work, though. A dongle that isn’t externally powered isn’t going to magically serve up more electricity to an underpowered USB port. I’m guessing that the integrated electronics send a faked message to the iPad that it’s drawing enough power to charge, even when it isn’t.
More to the point, even an iPad that gives a “not charging” message is usually charging, albeit extremely slowly. So what we most likely have here is a placebo: a dongle that probably does nothing but trick the iPad into not serving up the “Not Charging” message. In other words, while the iXP1-500 is “100% guaranteed to work,” it’s still probably something of a scam. For $5, though, you don’t really have a lot to lose to give it a try for yourself.
Genius. In the style of Atom-embedded computer-in-a-keyboard solutions like the Asus EEE Keyboard, a plucky modder gutted a partially dead MacBook Air and crammed its workings into an old, heavily modified Apple Keyboard casing, precisely topped by an Apple Wireless keyboard and Magic Trackpad snuggled together.
The result? The MacBook Air Project, an all-in-one Mac-in-a-keyboard: just plug in a monitor to the MacBook Air keyboard’s DVI port and you’re ready to rip. Hey Apple: this is what the next Mac mini should look like!
Apple’s legendary reputation of being full of control-freaks raised its head over the weekend. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, some companies complain it could take more than two months to create and display a spot on Apple’s new iAd mobile advertising platform.
“Apple has kept tight control on the creative aspects of ad-making, something advertisers aren’t used to,” the newspaper reported Sunday, citing ad execs. One source told the Journal, Apple’s involvement could extend building an ad two weeks longer than usual.
We’ve been hearing from analysts how the iPad will destroy the netbook market. Now we see the end result: from one of the companies that began the trend toward inexpensive laptops, Asustek Computer. The maker of the Eee PC expects to ship 1.4 million Eee PC netbooks in the third-quarter – fewer than planned, according to a Monday report.
“Because of decreased shipments of motherboards, notebooks and netbooks, Asustek’s financial performance for the second quarter declined on quarter,” Asustek Computer president CEO Jerry Shen announced August 13.
Remember the Apple Peel 520, a case that allows you to take a jailbroken iPod Touch and turn it into a bonafide phone capable of texting and messaging?
It’s got some competition: the tPhone does basically the same thing, allowing you to slot any SIM into the case to enable calling and texting on your iPod Touch.
The main advantage here, though, is in the enclosed battery, which bests the Peel 520 with the inclusion of a 1200mAh pack, offering 50% more juice than the Peel, as well as a built-in mini USB port for charging.
The only drawbacks? Like the Peel 520, you need a jailbroken iPod Touch to enable calling, and unfortunately, the tPhone case is significantly more expensive than the Peel, costing almost $100.
Tech blogger Keith of Bit-101 just picked himself up a fancy new USB microscope, and as was his geeky wont, he immediately started aiming it at two gadgets just lying around on his desk.
On the left? The Kindle’s e-paper display, magnified 26x and 400x, respectively. On the right? The iPad’s. Thanks to the nature of e-ink, the Kindle display resolves amazingly well even blown up twenty six times, while the iPad must resort to software anti-aliasing to keep things smooth. Imagine how well that would look with a Retina Display, though.
It’s when you get to four hundred levels of magnification that things get really interesting, though, with the Kindle display breaking down into several strata of monochrome granularity, while the iPad ‘s pixels become a series of colorful bumpers of primary RGB dots. Neat!
Can’t bear to part with your mouse, but in love with the slim slate of touch-capable glass and aluminum, the Magic Trackpad? 9to5Mac calls our attention to this gorgeous mousepad by Just Mobile, the Alupad.
Gorgeously carved from a slap of anodized aluminum, then infused with a coating of iPod ivory plastic, the Alupad looks like the mousepad Apple would create if they bothered themselves with such things… and makes me even sadder that the Magic Trackpad itself isn’t large or flush enough to double as a mousepad when it’s not in use.
The price is right, too: $35 is a lot to spend for a mousepad, but most mousepads just wouldn’t go with our iMacs nearly as well.
With Apple’s recent acquisition of LiquidMetal, a lot of people have been wondering just what they’ll use their new and incredibly T-1000-like metal alloy for.
Meanwhile, we’ve been running a contest asking readers to guess what hardware element Apple is already making out of LiquidMetal. The prize? A new Magic Trackpad, which — protip — doesn’t have any LiquidMetal in it at all.
For answers, perhaps we should look at what other highly design focused companies are doing with the alloy. The interesting video from watchmaker Omega embedded above shows one possible use for the Liquid Technologies supermaterial: super durable and gorgeously aesthetic bezels.
Would Apple drop serious bank on an exclusive license to Liquidmetal just to make nicer bezels? Or are they already doing so? Your guess is as good as mine, but Leander will set us all straight later today when he announces the winner of our contest. You may want to get your last minute guesses in now
Apple keeps plugging away at getting their iOS-oriented social gaming network, Game Center, and the latest version in developer builds of iOS 4.1 include new parental features to the mix.
Joining other parental features like turning off access to Safari, YouTube, in-app purchases or location services, the new option will allow users to restrict multiplayer game settings per device. Given the amount of homophobia, racism and downright vile smacktalk that takes place in multiplayer games on other services like Xbox Live, it’s probably a wise addition.
Game Center’s probably nearing launch: Apple has tended to heavily tout the iPod Touch as a gaming device over the past year, and with a hardware refresh of that device likely to happen in September or October, we can probably expect Game Center to drop simultaneously, bundled in iOS 4.1.
There’s a lot of money in iPhone accessories, but one midlevel Apple manager may have taken things too far after he managed to make over $1 million in kickbacks for supplying Asian suppliers and manufacturers insider information about new products and other internal decisions.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, Paul Shin Devine — a global supply chain manager within Apple — used an elaborate network of national and foreign bank accounts as well as a front company to receive payments for his information. He has since been arrested and named in a 23-count federal grand jury indictment for wire fraud and money laundering. The Asian accessory manufacturers with whom Devine did business have not been named.
Needless to say, Apple’s none too happy about this:
“Apple is committed to the highest ethical standards in the way we do business,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said in a statement. “We have zero tolerance for dishonest behavior inside or outside the company.”
In fact, Apple has so little tolerance for these sorts of shady ethics that they have filed a separate civil lawsuit against Devine. Even if he escapes prison, Devine is going to be sued into a gelatin slurry by his former employers.
Somehow, I’m guessing Devine didn’t quite think this through all the way.
Near Field Communication, or NFC, is a short range wireless technology that allows you to use your mobile phone for mobile payments. In other words, walk into a cafe, wave your phone over a NFC-sensitive plate and you could automatically buy yourself a cup of coffee, no cash required. Or wave your handset in front of a parking meter to fill it up with a couple hours without digging through your change purse.
Last month, we reported that AT&T was looking to use NFC to allow their smartphones to work as the equivalent of debit cards, but it looks like Apple’s getting serious about NFC too… they’ve just hired Benjamin Vigier, an expert on NFC technogloy, as its new product manager for mobile commerce.
Just you wait: in a couple years time, you’ll be leaving your credit card at home and doing all of your payments with your iPhone.
