First Hong Kong Apple Store To Open By The End of 2011

ifoAppleStore, a reliable source of information when it comes to detailing Apple’s projects in the retail space, has apparently uncovered the plan behind the first Apple Stores that will open in Hong Kong by the end of 2011 and the second quarter of 2012. In fact, the lack of Apple stores in Hong Kong is surprising after 10 years of Apple retail – but the company is planning two grand openings in significant locations in Hong Kong Island, the financial center of the city.

Both stores will open inside malls on the lower floors “of high-rise office buildings” – a move that should grant Apple visibility and the obvious accessibility of lower entrances. The Apple retail team has scouted several locations, and reportedly decided to pick the International Finance Center (IFC) for the first store, and the upcoming Hysan Place for the second one. The IFC includes office buildings, a cinema, a mall, and a five-star hotel. Apple will open the new Store in Tower 2, in a section of the mall of approximately 6,300 square-feet. As for the design:

Even though the IFC Apple store will be inside, it will not suffer from lack of visibility or visitors. The inside view will be panoramic, with a transparent view to the inside. Outside the mall, Apple might erect a back-lit Apple logo to promote its brand, and might even clear the now-obscured windows to provide even more visibility of the store’s interior.

The second store at the Hysan Place might be launching – according to sources – alongside the Hysan Place itself (which is currently under construction) in 2012, but it’s still unclear whether Apple is planning on opening the store in the lower floors, or higher than the IFC. You can check out a gallery of photos over at ifoAppleStore.

Opera 11.10 Released With Smarter Speed Dials, Improved Turbo

Alternative web browser Opera has always been the one that experimented with features and user interface schemes before the “big players” like Firefox and Chrome implemented them. This is true for tabs, tab groups, speed dials, and many other little touches the Opera developers played with over the years. The browser failed to gain a massive traction among average users, but it’s got a loyal userbase willing to test the latest beta or alpha version. Opera released today a new stable build for Mac, Windows and Linux – initially codenamed Barracuda and now available for download with version number 11.10.

Opera 11.10 builds on the features introduced in Opera 11 such as tab stacking and extended HTML5 support by further refining the interface, improving support for CSS3 and HTML5 standards, and introducing a tweaked version of Opera Turbo that works through Google’s WebP engine. First off, Speed Dials have been slightly redesign to feature a “flow layout” that allows users to decide the numbers of columns to display and the size of thumbnails – which, by the way, should offer crisper graphics. You can add as many Dials as you want without limitations.

A Mac-specific tweak involves the browser tabs that now have a closing animation on OS X machines. More importantly, the Turbo functionality that’s aimed at speeding up browsing on slow connections like tethered phones and public hotspots has been improved in the way it handles compressions using WebP. Images should be compressed more, better and faster than before, but we’ve noticed some issues with heavy compression cutting off parts of an image or graphics from websites.

Check out the full 11.10 changelog here. The new version of Opera is available here, and there’s a demo video embedded below. Read more

Sydney Hotel Deploys iPad 2s In Every Room

After the deployment of iPads in The Plaza hotel and others, The Establishment Hotel in Sydney Australia has become the world’s first to provide iPad 2s in every guest room of their hotel. The hotel, located in the financial district of Sydney, acted quickly to purchase enough iPads for their more than thirty rooms as they went on sale in Australia on March 25th and has since implemented them earlier this month.

The iPads, which are provided free of charge to all guest rooms, include a selection of music, movies and apps. In particular the hotel includes a welcome video to the hotel, a broad selection of international newspapers on the iPad, travel applications such as Trip Advisor, a Merivale bar and restaurant guide and of course Angry Birds. The hotel also features unlimited free WiFi for all guests and an Apple TV with surround sound system in each of their rooms, letting guests AirPlay content from the new iPads to the TV or sound system in their rooms.

Merivale CEO Justin Hemmes has said that they are looking at what they can do next and how they can bring “innovation to our guests”;

Now that we have the hardware, we are only limited by our own imagination. Well, maybe also by the software developers’ abilities but seriously, we will be looking at ways in which we can integrate this technology further into the whole guest experience

 

Piecable Viewer Runs iPhone Apps From Your Browser

New startup Piecable today launched their first product; Piecable Viewer and it is really neat, letting anyone test out an iPhone app, but on their browser! The service will let any developer create a web browser compatible version of their app for testing or demo purposes and some apps including Yelp, Hipmunk and Foodspotting are already up and running working flawlessly.

Piecable Viewer runs the emulated app through Flash and it doesn’t require any code modifications to work except for the addition of a single line of code. Piecable CEO Fred Potter said “It ends up being the easiest way ever to share an iPhone app on the web,” further making the point that there is no hassle of UDID exchange or the 100 device limit that Apple imposes “it’s zero friction and hassle”.

The service, which is also set to support Android soon, is employing a tiered pricing plan for developers wanting to use it. It is free for 1 simultaneous viewer, 1 app and a link that expires, $30 for 3 simultaneous viewers and 5 apps and $60 for 10 viewers with unlimited apps and no expiry date on the links.  Jump over to the Piecable Viewer website to try out running an iPhone App in your browser!

[Via TechCrunch]

Apple To Begin Assembling Products In Brazil? [Updated]

As noted by 9to5mac, a local Brazilian report claims Apple has filed documents at the Jucesp (Junta Comercial do Estado de São Paulo) to begin assembling “products” in Brazil. It is unclear what kind of products Apple is willing to assemble in the country, but the report goes on to specify that a previous rumor suggested governor of São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin would announce Apple’s new factory in Brazil on April 22nd. UOL Technologia also claims other tidbits in the past weeks indicated Apple was shipping containers full of components from Asia to Brazil; furthermore, the city of Jundiaí was rumored to be among the candidates selected by Foxconn to build a new facility in Brazil – although this might not be strictly related with Apple’s plans.

From a rough Google Translation of the original report, it appears there might also be tax exemptions involved in the process:

With the installation of a factory in Brazil, Apple may benefit from tax exemptions offered by the government Rousseff for tablets, which will reach 9.25% for PIS and when the classification of the device to switch to “computer”. The arrival of Apple to Brazil could accelerate the adoption of this exemption - and would benefit from other manufacturers such as Samsung, which already produces in the country Galaxy Tab.

There is still no information whether Apple will use its own plant or at Foxconn, assembly line installed in Jundiaí.

The documents filed at the Jucesp can be viewed here. UOL Technologia says it’s also unclear whether Apple will deploy its own facility or use a Foxconn one built in Brazil, but it seems like the main intention is that of moving some parts of Apple’s production line out of China and all the way down to South America. On a side note, back in November we reported Eike Batista – Brazilian billionaire and the eighth richest person in the world – wanted to invest in a $1.6 billion construction project to bring an Apple facility to Brazil to “create job positions, generate revenue and lower costs of Apple products for Brazilian customers.”

Update: MacMagazine [Google Translation] reports a “contact at Apple Brazil” informed them the updated Jucesp records weren’t created by Apple. Apparently this is the only official Apple Jucesp record in Brazil, and the new one was probably created by “a squatter.” Speculation about the facility still persists, but Apple is denying the rumors.

[Thanks Newton Mota]

Company Claims To Offer Permanent iPhone Unlock That Lasts “Forever”

Company CutYourSim, specialized in SIM cutters and adapters for the iPhone, has launched tonight a new service that promises to provide a permanent iPhone unlock solution that doesn’t need jailbreak, additional software or hacks. The company claims their method will carry on forever through any iOS or baseband update, so users don’t have to worry about updating to the latest version of iOS. More importantly, CutYourSim says it doesn’t affect your iPhone’s warranty status “because this is an official iPhone unlock.”

How is this possible? Apparently, someone at CutYourSim found a way to “whitelist” devices by adding IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) numbers to Apple’s own database – something that of course isn’t possible unless you have access to the aforementioned database. Which leads us to think Apple might soon find a way to block the service – but, then again, we don’t know all the details behind Apple’s IMEI database so we can’t judge right now. It is possible, however, that the procedure involves accessing the IMEI database from a carrier’s online backend. CutYourSim also says currently the CDMA sold on Verizon isn’t supported, and that the method doesn’t change a phone’s IMEI (which is illegal) but simply adds it to the whitelist. Interestingly, CutYourSim says this method has been around for a while (but never worked on AT&T) and was never cut off by Apple. Curious.

Previously, people who wanted to buy an iPhone from the United States at a cheaper price had to rely on tools like ultrasn0w for their unlocking needs. Otherwise, the phone wouldn’t work on an unsupported carrier. The obvious downside to hacks like ultrasn0w is that every iOS release and baseband update can “break them”, forcing iPhone users to stay on an older iOS version until a new unlocking tool is released. This is exactly what CutYourSim wants to improve by offering an unlock that works with any iOS update – again, because an iPhone’s IMEI is added to Apple’s whitelist.

Personally, I don’t recommend buying the $169 unlock process from CutYourSim as I have a feeling the whole thing is illegal and requires hacking into Apple’s own database. Still, I believe it would be interesting to know the technical details behind the process, and feedback from those who went ahead and purchased the unlock. If you did, let us know. [via @chronic]

New Thunderbolt Products Are Coming: Announcements from NAB

Since the introduction of the new MacBook Pros in February, many have wondered how long it would take for third-party manufacturers to ship the first Thunderbolt-compatible products. Developed by Intel and brought to the market by Apple, Thunderbolt is a brand new I/O technology that allows for multiple data transfers at 10 Gbps connection over a cable, with an additional 10 Watt feed to power external devices with the addition of “daisy-chaining” one peripheral to another. You can read more about Thunderbolt in our initial roundup.

At the NAB trade show that’s currently ongoing in Las Vegas, several companies have unveiled their first Thunderbolt products that will ship later this year starting in July. As reported by MacRumors these products are aimed at video editing / movie professionals, but they show the industry is clearly interested in supporting the new technology that’s rumored to be implemented in upcoming refreshes of the iMac and Mac mini lines as well. AJA, Blackmagic, and Promise have all announced Thunderbolt-enabled peripherals for audio capture and playback device (Blackmagic’s UltraStudio 3D) or “high-framerate 2K 3D, 4K and 5K workflows, and portable HD connectivity” (AJA). Promise had already announced its Pegasus storage line with Thunderbolt back in February.

Early reports coming from the NAB show floor indicate the Thunderbolt enclosures from Promise “scream” with the updated CS 5.5 suite, and hopefully we’ll have the chance to check out demo videos and benchmarks in the next few hours.

Meanwhile, we’re all waiting for the Final Cut announcement rumored to be scheduled for tomorrow at the tenth annual SuperMeet at the Bally’s Event Center. According to people familiar with the matter, the new Final Cut will take advantage of Thunderbolt and feature iPad integration, as well as file based workflows.

The iPad 2 Dock Review

The iPad 2 Dock is by far the accessory people ask about when getting a new iPad 2. Apple’s iPad Camera Connection Kit and their Digital AV Adapter are clear in purpose; both products add utility to the iPad when used with a camera or television. The iPad 2 dock, however, is a questionable purchase. What utility or benefit will it provide me, and should I pay a pricey $29.00 for a plastic stand that comes with no cable and only provides audio out? The portrait only dock is an additional expense many owners are unsure about, and today we’re taking a look at whether one of these guys can be of benefit to you now that customers are receiving the first batch of shipments in the United States.

Read more

Best Buy Forcing Customers To Buy Service Plan To Get An iPad 2?

Following last week’s reports about Best Buy holding iPad 2s in stock without selling them to customers because of “an upcoming promotion”, a new story comes today from a CrunchGear reader that had to buy an additional Best Buy Service Plan in order to get one of the iPads held by the store. CrunchGear reports the guy initially asked for an iPad 2, but he was told they had none in stock. Upon further inspection of the store, he noticed 40 iPad boxes stacked on top of each other, and asked why they were there. An employee told him those iPads were sold, but later a manager confirmed he could get one if he agreed to pay $109 for a Service Plan (not required by Apple).

I said that doesn’t seem right. He then told to try and find one somewhere else they can do what they want. To make a long story short I purchased it just to find out if that was policy. I just went to another store spoke to a manager and was told that is not policy and should have not be forced to but the coverage just to purchase an iPad.

Obviously, a customer shouldn’t be forced to buy an additional support plan to get an iPad 2. We also don’t believe this is part of Best Buy’s rumored “upcoming promotion” – why would anyone want to spend $109 more with no discounts on the whole bundle whatsoever? Rather, people can just get a $79 AppleCare protection plan.

Did you try to buy an iPad 2 from Best Buy recently? Did they try to convince you to buy a Service Plan together with the device? Let us know in the comments below.