Video: Apple Universal Bumper for Verizon & AT&T iPhone

Shortly after the official announcement of the Verizon iPhone two weeks ago, bloggers and journalists who attended the media event in New York noticed that the CDMA iPhone had a slightly different design for the volume keys and mute switch button on its left side. And when it comes to the iPhone, different design means one thing: some cases won’t fit. Like Apple’s own bumper, for instance.

It appears, though, that Apple already had a solution ready for Verizon’s day one  on February 10: a universal bumper that fits both the Verizon and AT&T iPhone. With narrower, but longer volume and mute switch holes, the new bumper easily adapts itself to standard GSM and CDMA iPhone 4’s.

Video from @Alerio25 embedded below. [Thanks, Mario!] Read more

Apple Adds iPhone 5 Suppliers, Launch “During Summer At The Earliest”

We’ve heard rumors about the next-generation iPhone that suggest the device might get NFC capabilities, a dual-core processor and a brand new redesign, but we didn’t know much about the actual release date. Apple usually unveils new iPhone models at the WWDC in June, with US launch to follow after a few weeks; according to a report from Digitimes this morning, launch of the iPhone 5 will happen “during summer at the earliest”.

Apple has also added new suppliers to the iPhone 5 production chain:

Foxconn will become the iPhone 5’s new earphone supplier. Japan’s Foster was the previous supplier, but a strengthening yen has spurred Apple to look for more cost-effective sources, the report said, noting that related orders are estimated at NT$5 billion (US$171.7 million). Foxlink will produce earphone jack sockets for the iPhone 5.

With a shortage of HDI boards, Apple has also newly added GCE as a supplier, but will continue to source from Compeq Manufacturing and Unimicron Technology as well.

In October, rumors suggested the iPhone 5 had hit “EVT” testing stage.

Flight Control Lands Nearly 4 Million Sales

Firemint, which recently acquired Infinite Interactive has posted on it’s blog some sales statistics of it’s popular Flight Control game that is currently featured in Apple’s Top Paid Apps of all time. As of the post it had sold 3,881,634 copies and has raked in $3.8 million dollars and that’s after Apple 30% take.

As demonstrated by the graph it released that is shown above (click for larger size) it’s pretty clear that Christmas and big feature updates really helped increase sales of the game. In particular the addition of Game Center support led to a peak of 120,000 sales, the largest peak since the release of the app. The new maps update and Retina display support were the other notable peaks.

Also notable is the sales by country, as the graph below the break shows, the US has the lion’s share followed by Great Britain, Australia and Germany.

Read more

The iPad Screen Resolution Rumor Merry-Go-Round

Well in the past 24 hours we’ve had another two rumors regarding the iPad 2’s screen resolution. First there was DigiTimes that reported Apple would up the iPad’s screen resolution to that oft-reported figure of 2048 x 1536. Then Kevin Rose who had previously stated the iPad 2 would have a Retina Display reversed his position with a picture of text messages from his supposed source who said “no change in resolution” which he posted on Instagram.

Then there was also the suggestion that floated across various blogs and publications that Moore’s law suggested the iPad 2 wouldn’t have a retina display. Both DigiTimes and Kevin Rose have dubious accuracy regarding Apple rumors and this vicious back and forth contradictions of rumors regarding the display are certainly odd.

UPDATE: Oddly, Kevin Rose seems to have removed the Instagram photo which is now unaccessible and does not appear in his Instagram feed.

So readers, what are your thoughts on this whole high resolution/retina display on the iPad 2 rumor merry-go-round?

[Via Cult of Mac, DigiTimes]

XBMC Comes to the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 2

XBMC, a popular media center originally made for the first Xbox has become fairly widespread has been available for a variety of platforms, today that platform base extended to include the new Apple TV, iPhone and iPad.

The client on these new platforms is not stripped down to simply just view streams but is fully fledged with all the features you would come to expect it to have on a Windows PC. Because of this it is being distributed for the iOS devices through a Cydia repository and for the Apple TV through an apt-get install.

Scott Davilla one of the XBMC developers talked to TUAW and he revealed that development for the Apple TV 2 started only on November 1st last year and the iOS versions a few weeks later. He notes that the built in web server is currently disabled and the skin isn’t optimized but says improvements will be made including the possibility of implementing AirPlay into all the Apple related releases.

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments that occurred whilst XBMC was ported was the discovery of an API called VideoToolBox that allows hardware video decoding, encoding and scaling of the video size to match the final display size. So powerful is this API that Davilla and others that developed XBMC for iPad are able to stream full 1080p video with no transcoding to the iPad and it plays nearly perfectly, only dropping a few frames. Davilla’s confident however that the A4 processor can handle 1080p and will be working to ensure fully smooth playback.

TUAW put together some video’s demonstrating it running on all three of the new platforms, check it out here.

[Via XBMC, TUAW]

TestFlight Goes Live For Everyone - Distribute & Receive Beta Apps Effortlessly

TestFlight has been in lockdown mode for a while, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to put the service through its paces before they opened their doors to everybody this evening. I’ll just say that TestFlight is incredibly convenient for installing beta applications on the fly - there’s nothing more annoying than unzipping iPad or iPhone files, dragging them to iTunes, syncing, and it doing all over again when updates are distributed. TestFlight simply has you log into their site via your iPad or iPhone, tap a button, and you can browse through the beta apps developers have subscribed you to for immediate downloads. It’s so much easier for developers to submit one beta to TestFlight than to package their app and distribute it to dozens of emails, and it’s much easier on the tester to be updated and install updates. It’s completely Apple worthy, and if you’re a developer we encourage you to sign up for the service so you can focus on creating content instead of worrying about beta distribution.

TechCrunch notes that the service is free to developers, while a paid Enterprise version is in the works that will allow for licensed versions of apps to be passed through the airwaves (presumably for corporate/in-house application use).

[via TestFlight, TechCrunch]

Verizon Launches First Official iPhone Commercial

It begins. Verizon has just launched its first official commercial for the iPhone 4, the very same iPhone that’s been in the Apple rumors for years. In case you missed it, it’s real and  it’s coming on February 10. The commercial is a little too dramatic, maybe, but I guess it’s also appropriate: Apple will sell millions of these things this year.

“To our millions of customers, who never stopped believing this day would come…”

February 10. Verizon iPhone. Video below. [Youtube via Engadget] Read more

Lyrica 2: Redesigned, And Still The Best App To Tag Songs

A few days ahead of the opening of the Mac App Store, we previewed a nifty little app for the Mac called “Lyrica” which helped you display lyrics from songs playing in iTunes through a translucent black, HUD interface. The Mac App Store launched, the app was priced at .99 cents, it was one of the few useful apps in the Music category – it snowballed. It quickly jumped the charts to get in the first spots of Top Paid, and two weeks after the grand opening it’s still firmly positioned in the top 30 apps.

It turns out, though, that many users didn’t like the HUD style of the app, which may or may not make it difficult to read lyrics on a translucent background. So developer Florian Zand redesigned the entire application and added some new features during the process. Lyrica now comes with a white, cleaner look with a stacked style that kind of reminds me of a newspaper. I also like the fact that I can choose between different fonts – personally, I sticked with Georgia.

Graphics changes aside, the app now searches through seven lyrics databases, including AZLyrics and MetroLyrics. Several preferences have been added (Lyrica can still automatically tag any song playing in iTunes, even if it already has lyrics on its own) and the developer also implemented a new functionality to replace and remove broken lyrics. Useful for those (like me) who tried to tag their music library in the past with some shady Mac app that didn’t work at all.

Lyrica is available at $0.99 in the Mac App Store. It’s getting better on every release, and even though it’s not perfect yet (and design-obsessed folks will still have something to say about it) it just works, better than many other apps sold at a higher price by well-known developers. Give it a try.

Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.6.7 To Developers

Looks like 10.6.6 wasn’t the last version of Snow Leopard, after all. Earlier today Apple seeded a new version of OS X to developers, 10.6.7. Build number is 10J842. From the release notes, the focus areas are:

  • AirPort
  • Bonjour
  • SMB
  • Graphics Drivers

Mac OS X 10.6.6 was released two weeks ago with support for the Mac App Store. No word yet whether or not support for AirPrint through shared printers will find its way back into this new version of OS X once it’s released.