This Week's Sponsor:

HomeSnap

A Private, Read-Only Window Into Your HomeKit Home

Posts in news

Jailbreak Hack Puts Verizon iPhone on Pay-As-You-Go Network

Not so popular over here in Italy but apparently widely recognized in the States, pay-as-you-go networks allow you to get a phone from shady stores / individuals with pre-paid credit to consume at your own needs. Personally I prefer to keep my iPhone in safe waters with a proper subscription and data usage, but there’s some people who really prefer the pre-paid option over a more “secure” carrier offer. As noted by Engadget, it is possible to make the CDMA Verizon iPhone run on Cricket’s pay-as-you-go network, but you’ll have to jailbreak your phone, install some utility to set up the process and let a Cricket guy flash the device’s memory for you. Hmm. Would you trust that?

Still, it’s possible. Check out the video proof below. Read more

Apple Removing 32 Games and 3rd Party Mac Products from Retail Stores

According to The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, Apple is in the process of removing a series of boxed games and third-party Mac products from its retail stores to make room for other services that require space and additional employees. Namely, Apple has apparently decided to cut 32 games off the shelves and products like printers, hard drives and scanners to leave plenty of room for employees to work on the “personalized setups”, a service launched in January that allows customers to go through a friendly Mac setup process together with an Apple Store employee that will guide them through the first OS X installation, iTunes account creation and Mail setup.

Due to the popularity of the personalized service, Apple is expanding it and will need to make more room for employees to work with customers.

Among the products that will no longer be displayed in the retail stores are printers, scanners and possible some hard drives. These peripherals will still be stocked in the store and available if a customer requests them.

At the point of sale, the Apple salesperson will still recommend the customer purchase one of those peripherals if they feel it fits in with the customer’s purchase.

With the removal of 32 games from the Apple Store, the number of games being displayed on the shelves will go down to around 8 per store, according to The Loop. It also appears that employees will being suggesting customers to go look for games in the Mac App Store – again, a very easy way to promote the new digital online store in the heavily trafficked retail locations. Apple has also recently stopped selling boxed copies of MobileMe, which is now exclusively available online and it’s rumored to be revamped soon with a free version for iOS and Mac users.

64 GB iPhone 4 Prototypes On Sale in Hong Kong?

Take this with the proverbial grain of salt, but as noted by M.I.C. Gadget it appears that a series of iPhone 4s with capacity of 64 GB have been put on sale in grey markets of Hong Kong. The sellers are claiming these are “engineering prototypes” snatched directly from Apple in some way, running iOS 4.1 build 8B117 and carrying a lot of XXXs where the model numbers are ID should be.

According to Unwire.hk, this suspicious 64GB model has started selling in Sin Tak, the greatest grey market in Hong Kong, and the sellers claimed that these are engineered models and available in small quantity.

Do we believe this? Personally not so much, but I wouldn’t be surprised to know someone in mainland China managed to get a 64 GB prototype (which it’s very likely Apple has been testing for years) and put it on sale. What about the “small quantity” though? Did they really get multiple prototypes from a single source? Might as well be fake, considering how Apple could easily block and wipe these units remotely.

Still, a 64 GB iPhone would be great.

TweetDeck Teases New App That Will “Raise The Bar” On iOS

Popular service TweetDeck has announced this morning that a major update to their official iOS app is in the final stages of testing and it will be a completely revamped version of TweetDeck for iPhone and iPad. Ready to be submitted to the App Store “in the next couple of weeks”, the new iOS TweetDeck will apparently put huge focus on iOS 4 compatibility and Retina Display graphics, as well as the possibility to create “flexible” columns blending status updates and messages coming from Twitter and Facebook.

This totally new, fully iOS4-compatible TweetDeck app has been built completely from scratch. It is not only the most powerful and flexible mobile app we have ever produced, but also the most jaw-droppingly beautiful. This is the app your retina display has been crying out for.

A major new feature of iOS TweetDeck will be totally flexible columns. You want to create a column blending your Mentions and some Twitter Lists? No problem! Always wanted to see your Facebook feed and Twitter DMs in a single column? We’ve got you covered! New iOS TweetDeck puts you in control of your columns, giving total flexibility over which feeds appear in which columns. Your social world has never been so personal.

TweetDesk says the Android app has been insanely successful (in spit of fragmentation issues) and set new standards for the service on mobile platforms. The new iOS iteration promises to “raise the bar” for iPhone and iPad apps – something we’re pretty sure several users are looking forward to after the whole Twitter Quick Bar debacle.

Whether or not TweetDeck will prove itself to be the answer to an official Twitter client clearly shifting the focus to promoted tweets and ads, we’ll have to wait and see.

Apple Asks Developers To Update Apps for iPad 2

In a note posted on the iOS Dev Center and, most specifically, on the webpage that lists the new features of the upcoming iOS 4.3, Apple is asking developers to update their apps for the iPad 2 to take advantage of the improved hardware performances of the device.

With a new A5 dual-core chip running at 1 Ghz per core, Apple clearly mentions that most operations inside applications will be faster “ouf of the box” but developers can further tune their software with tools like OpenGL Profiler for “greater performance”. Even though Apple hasn’t stated how much RAM went inside the iPad 2, the A5 chip alone should be twice as fast than the A4 in iPad 1 with graphic performances up to 9x faster. Most apps will be generally faster on the iPad 2, but developers can manually update their apps to use the new iPad 2 hardware if they want to.

Developers are also asked to enhance their apps “with new user experiences” thanks to the iPad 2 cameras and gyroscope + accelerometer. While the possible implementations of rear and front-facing cameras are pretty obvious (self portraits and HD video, expect a lot of Photo Booth and iMovie alternatives coming from 3rd party developers), Apple has put the focus on the precision granted by the combination of gyroscope and accelerometer with “6-axis of motion sensing, including user acceleration, full 3D attitude, and rotation rate”.

The iPad 2 will be released on March 11 and it will come with a special version of iOS 4.3 (containing FaceTime and Photo Booth) pre-installed.

iPad 2 Launch Details Roundup

There has been an avalanche of information regarding the iPad 2 launch since the Apple event last week so if you are confused, unsure or just want a refresher on the launch details just jump the break for a full roundup of all the important details!

Also be sure to check out our iPad 2 roundup to get all the details what exactly is new and awesome about the iPad 2.

Read more

Yes, The iPad 2 Is Carrier Unlocked

Over the weekend there were some reports that WiFi+3G iPad 2’s would be locked to a specific carrier after people read on the Canadian Apple site that “the iPad model you purchase is specially configured to work with either Bell, Rogers, or Telus.” It turns out that this wordage, whilst technically correct, is very confusing in that whilst the iPad is initially configured to work with a specific carrier, it can be reconfigured to work with other carriers at any stage.

This has been confirmed by a number of people from iPadinCanada to TUAW that have all confirmed from a variety of sources including Rogers Wireless, Apple Experts and Apple Support that you can swap SIMs and carriers with the iPad 2. The only issue (a very minor one) is that the iPad will need to connect to iTunes after the SIM has been swapped to download the new carrier settings, which is required for the 3G service to be usable.

So to be totally clear to all those interested, the iPad 2 is not carrier locked, rather Apple has just over-simplified the information it provided, because you can indeed reconfigure the iPad to work with another carrier with a simple SIM swap and iTunes sync. The one caveat to all this is of course the Verizon (CDMA) iPad 2 which will not be able to switch to any carrier using a GSM network because it does not contain a 3G chipset compatible with GSM networks.

[Via TUAW]

iPhone 5 To Revert Back To Aluminum Back And Internal Antenna?

A Chinese source has told Economic Daily News (translated by Macotakara) that Apple is abandoning the glass backing of the iPhone 4 in favor of an aluminum casing as well as ditching the external antenna design. According to the source the;

Decision to design similar to iPod touch instead of using glass is supposed that Apple seems to stop problems which are told widely damages from scratching, difficulties of painting white and weight of glass.

The source also reported that Apple is abandoning the current external antenna design that was plagued with controversy over the “death-grip” signal loss and attenuation issue. Although unclear, it seems that the translation implies that the “antenna will be designed to penetrate cellular and Wi-Fi waves via resin made Apple logo” which Apple actually does have a patent for.

Finally the source noted that Apple will include the new A5 processor in the fifth iteration of the iPhone, the same processor in the new iPad 2. As with all Apple rumors, including those regarding the iPhone 5, take them with a grain of salt. In particular when the source has a shaky record in previously predicting a 7-inch iPad by Christmas 2010.

[Via MacRumors]

Test Shows iPad 2 with iOS 4.3 Is Incredibly Faster Than iPad 1

Surprise: the iPad 2 running iOS 4.3 is faster than the original iPad running iOS 4.2. According to CNET UK, which had the chance to run a JavaScript SunSpider benchmark test on the iPad 2 during a brief demo at San Francisco, the iPad 2 will outperform the competition and even other Apple’s devices when it comes to web browsing experience and overall snappiness of the browser application. The SunSpider test is usually a good test of how a browser will perform with “heavy” webpages with lots of content and functionalities such as Facebook.

Indeed, Apple itself promotes the new Nitro JavaScript engine that powers Safari on iOS 4.3 as “twice as fast” than its predecessor on iOS 4.2. The original iPad, however, also comes with a slower and non-dual core processor (Apple A4), whilst the iPad 2 will get a dual-core A5 and likely more RAM. These hardware features, together with the iOS 4.3, should make the device a lot faster than iPad 1, iPhone 4 and several Android tablets out in the market or coming soon.

Back to the SunSpider JavaScript test, CNET writes:

Incidentally, when you compare the iPad to the other devices we tested, Android phones and tablets don’t come out particularly well. The Galaxy Tab is more than 3x slower than the iPad 2 in this test, and about 2x slower than the original iPad with the new software. The Google Nexus S smart phone doesn’t fare too well either, at nearly 3x slower than the iPad 2. There’s really good news for iPhone 4 owners out there: when it arrives, iOS 4.3 will deliver a 2.5x speed increase in this test.

The one device we’d like to test, but can’t, is the Motorola Xoom. This tablet has a dual-core processor and runs the latest version of Android, 3.0 Honeycomb.

We will get our iPad 2’s next week and we’ll make sure to run some tests as well to see how the new tablet is really faster than other devices with iOS 4.3 and the iPad 1.