Apple may ship a CDMA version of its popular iPhone later this year. Pegatron, an electronics manufacturer with plants in China, has received orders from the Cupertino, Calif. company to produce a CDMA version of the handset ready for fourth-quarter shipping, an industry publication reported Thursday.
If correct, the rumor appears to signal a shift by Apple away from its usual iPhone supplier, embattled Foxconn, and bolster a Wall Street Journal report that the handset maker would produce a CDMA phone this September.
Even the iPhone isn’t powerful enough yet to run Blizzard’s fanatically popular World of Warcraft MMORPG, but thanks to the World of WarcraftArmory App has long given the mobile night elf or orc alike the ability to access their characters’ stats, check the leaderboards, browse items or calculate their talents.
A forthcoming update to the Armory App finally adds in a long-requested killer feature: the ability to use the auction house out of game. The feature is called Remote Auction House, and it allows you to browse the auction house for free out of game, or to pay an extra subscription price of $3 per month to buy, create or re-list items without ever logging into your Mac.
The subscription fee is a bold move, but Blizzard has proved time and time again that the die-hards raiders will keep ponying up. I’ve known more than a few gamers in my time who spend hours a day in the Auction House: a few bucks a month to allow them to do their auction grinding on the subway or at the park would, to them, be a small price to pay for a little more sunshine in their lives.
The updated app is now out, but the Remote Auction House functionality hasn’t yet been pushed live. Expect it soon.
Ayman Shamma’s iPad steel drum just might revolutionize music on street corners and subway stops.
Shamma made a pair of drum sticks out of conductive material, then wrote an iPad app that mimics the sound of a steel drum, without any heavy equipment to lug around.
You can whip up a pair of drumsticks in about half an hour following his tutorial and start annoying the neighbor’s immediately with Shamma’s preferred apps, Magic Piano or iDaft.
Apple’s iTunes has widened its lead over traditional music sellers, capturing 26.6 percent of digital music sales in 2009, up from 21.4 percent in 2008 – the year Apple became the No. 1 destination for music sales.
Walmart, which had held the title of top digital music store, fell further behind iTunes with 12.5 percent of the 2009 market, down from 14.9 percent in 2008, according to a May 22 Billboard survey. Other bricks-and-mortar music vendors, such as Best Buy and Target, also lost ground.
You can claim your invitation by logging into MobileMe through me.com. The invite should be on the bottom left corner. MobileMe Mail beta is currently only available in English.
The “Spirit” iPad/iPhone jailbreak is available for download from the Dev Team. You can download Spirit here.
The free, untethered jailbreak is available for Mac and Windows, and works with any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch on firmware 3.1.2, 3.1.3, or 3.2. It’s a quick, easy, one-click process, according to QuickPwn, although the Cydia app is buggy. Just download the jailbreak software, plug in your device, and your iPad or iPhone is instantly recognized. Hit the “Jailbreak” button and you’re done.
Note: Before performing a jailbreaking make absolutely sure you’ve got a backup of your SHSH blobs so that if anything goes wrong you can restore to 3.1.2. You can find a step-by-step guide from Redmond Pie here.
Spirit is not a carrier unlock (which allows you to use unauthorized wireless carriers like T-Mobile).
The Dev Team highly recommend syncing with iTunes before trying this jailbreak. If anything goes wrong, you will have to restore the device. It’s especially iffy on the iPad.
Note: On iPad, all this is still sort of beta. Some packages in Cydia, not designed for iPad, might screw up your system and require you to restore. Be careful. (And no, Cydia’s appearance is not final.)
The iPad in Germany will have data plans from at least three carriers on launch, Cult of Mac has learned.
In a surprise move, Apple isn’t partnering with T-Mobile, the official iPhone carrier, but E-Plus, the country’s third largest mobile operator.
However, not to be left out, T-Mobile is also preparing to offer a low-cost data plan for the iPad.
T-Mobile’s move as well as recent announcements by other European providers illustrates the likelihood that multiple carriers in several countries around the world will offer competing data plans for the iPad, which should drive down monthly data costs and also result in heavily subsidized iPads offered by multiple networks to anyone who is willing to sign a traditional contract.
It may also indicate that month-by-month 3G off-contract will widely be available both in Europe and abroad through Apple’s exclusive iPad 3G partners.
The iPhone 3GS. Creative Commons-licensed photo by Fr3d: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fr3d/2660915827/
Another analyst has piled onto the growing sentiment that Verizon will not offer a CDMA iPhone by the middle of 2010 – or not until 2011. Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner said Wednesday a 2-month manufacturing delay in a “key component” will push the CDMA handset’s launch back to the fourth quarter of 2010 or the first quarter of 2011.
The hitch is due to “a manufacturing delay of several months in a key component,” Gardner told investors Wednesday.
If you’ve heard those rumors of Verizon selling the iPhone this summer, don’t hold your breath, suggests an analyst. The talk is just the latest gamesmanship by Apple in an attempt to throw Google’s Android phones off-stride.
Although Verizon’s 90 million customers would allow Apple to directly confront the growth of Android-based phones, there remains some major sticking points before any agreement between the Cupertino, Calif. company and the carrier are signed, Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu told investors Wednesday.
A couple of weeks ago I canceled my MobileMe account. Why? Because it didn’t do the one thing I wanted it to do: share my calendar with my wife so we could coordinate our busy lives. That’s all.
I love MobileMe’s email, calendar, contact syncing (especially on the iPhone) and even iDisk. I gave Apple a year to improve it, but nothing happpened, so I switched.
Here’s how to recreate all of MobileMe’s features for FREE (except one) and how I use it to sync my iMac, MacBook and two iPhones.
