Blamed on everything from a software bug to greasy ear canals, the iPhone 4’s overly sensitive proximity sensor was supposed to get fixed with the release of iOS 4.1.
Don’t hold your breath, though, says Apple’s Australian mouthpiece Fiona Martin. According to Martin, the company has yet to fix the proximity sensor issue, with no other information given as to when we can expect the patch.
In our own tests, we found that iOS 4.1 Beta 2 fixed all of our proximity sensor issues, and Steve Jobs himself promised the fix next update. Either our own anecdotal experience with the 4.1 Beta fixing the proximity sensor was wrong and the nature of the issue remains unidentified to Apple or a hardware design flaw, or Miss Martin misspoke. Wednesday should tell all.
China Unicom is the only authorized and official carrier of the iPhone 4 in China, but apparently, that doesn’t mean they are content to tow Cupertino’s anti-jailbreaking line: recent advertisements for the carrier indicate that they are more than happy to jailbreak an iPhone or iPad for customers for a price.
Translated, the circled portion of the signage reads: “Supported Service: Free SIM-trimming, jailbreak, installation of more than 10 hot apps.”
How odd. Leaving aside why China Unicom would jeopardize its relation with Apple by selling jailbroken iPads and iPhones, why are they being so cheerfully helpful in allowing their customers to migrate to other networks.
We suspect that this is ultimately about censorship and warez. The promise to install “ten hot apps” is the tip-off there: by offering to jailbreak customers’ phones, China Unicom can profit from their own customers’ desire to install apps not only without paying for them, but which also haven’t been censored for the local market.
Apple’s long history of design consolidation is obvious at every level, from the no-button Magic Mouse and Trackpad, to the adoption of MiniDisplayPort, to the iPhone’s iconic home button.
But Cupertino doesn’t want to stop there: a new patent filing, Apple is now exploring ways to combine the headphone jack with the microphone on their iPhone and iPod Touch.
The patent says that “”in addition to using housing real estate, sound input apertures and electrical connectors introduce openings in the housing and breach the barrier that protects components inside the housing.”
In other words, drop a hole from an iPhone and you have less risk of dust and moisture making its way in. The advantages don’t seem to lie just in hardware reliability either: apparently, the two-in-one design would also enhance voice quality through a noise-cancelling technology Apple’s calling “audio beamforming.”
We’d say this one’s a lock: it’s not a pie-in-the-sky patent, but a natural extension of Apple’s predilection for the utmost in simplicity.
Back in June, SurfaceInk made a splash for themselves by demonstrating a 12.1-inch Ubuntu-powered tablet, clearly positioned as a possible competitor against the iPad. Seems like that might have been a mistake: as it turns out, Apple was a SurfaceInk client, and let’s just say Cupertino wasn’t too peachy on the idea of doing business with a company in bed with the enemy.
According to SurfaceInk CEO Eric Bauswell, the two companies decided to part waysbecause of “Apple’s growing awareness of our turnkey capabilities.” SurfaceInk won’t say just what they did for Apple, but given the company’s engineering work for companies like Palm and HP, it’s easy to guess that they had some sort of hand in the iPad.
What really irked Apple, though, was SurfaceInk’s 12.1-inch prototype that used a Freescale i.MX51 800MHz Cortex A8 chipset, ready to sell the reference design to any company that wanted their own would-be iPad killer and claiming they could ship such a device out by Q1 2011.
Of course, what might seem like a mistake on SurfaceInk’s part in alienating a lucrative client may very well end up proving extraordinarily lucrative: there are a lot of electronics makers out there who are scrambling to get their pants back up after the iPad proverbially dropped them, unawares. There’s a lot of lucre to be made selling as many of those guys tablets to rebrand as possible.
Paul Devine — whose offshore assets and bank accounts have already been frozen, and who was recently discovered to have $150,000 squirreled away in shoeboxes as fast “escape” money — is now said to have two safety deposit boxes, which might contain even more money and perhaps a spare passport or two.
Authorities are now demanding access to those safety deposit boxes, saying that they won’t allow him out on bail until they know the contents of those boxes since Devine is a serious flight risk. Man, this was a guy with a plan.
Mac Station, Apple reseller targeted by armed thieves in Buenos Aires' Palermo neighborhood.
Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires is being rocked by a crime wave according to recent reports, including a shootout at an Apple reseller where one alleged thief was killed by police.
The story comes to us from CoM reader Stefano Cavallaro in Argentina who tells us that after a pair of thieves attempted to raid Apple reseller Mac Station, in the city’s chic Palermo neighborhood where expensive iGadgets must have seemed an easy target, a police officer opened fire to stop them.
“There was a police officer outside the Apple store (when two armed robbers attempted to steal from the store)…The thieves and police started to shoot and one thief was gunned down while the other got away on a motorcycle…The police officer was not shot and did not sustain any injuries.”
A local internet news source confirms the story, saying that the police are still searching for the accomplice. This isn’t the first time an Apple store robbery gone wrong has lead to gunshots — in 2009 an Apple employee was shot during an armed robbery in Virginia — but it may be the first time a person has been killed attempting to steal Apple’s must-have electronic devices.
It was a busy day for police in Argentina’s capital who also had to deal with the shooting of a policeman, a hostage situation and a kidnapping.
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.
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.
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.
