This Week's Sponsor:

Copilot Money

The Apple Editor’s Choice Award App for Tracking Your Money. Start Your Free Trial Today

Posts tagged with "apple"

iPhone Parts For An N90A Model Found In Foxconn’s Brazil Factory?

The above photo, taken by Gizmodo Brazil, is supposedly a new iPhone SKU taken from a Foxconn factory in Brazil. Shown on a quality control form, these iPhone parts are for a model N90A iPhone - a new model that does not currently exists.

Our Brazilian brothers, Gizmodo.com.br, got their hot little hands on a few photos of one a new iPhone, to be announced next week. How? Well, there’s a Foxconn factory in Brazil, and Pedro & co got one of their men inside. Inside, they found a new-SKU iPhone that looks just like the old iPhone 4.

A report from earlier this week noted that an iPhone with the codename N90A had appeared in Apple’s internal inventory system. Because the current codename for the iPhone 4 is N90 it is believed that this new SKU would represent an iPhone 4 with minor changes — likely becoming the cheaper iPhone available with 8 GB of storage at a lower cost.

[Translation of key sections of the above image, from Mike in the comments below]

JULGAMENTO DO LOTE means something like BATCH EVALUATION RESULT, certainly from quality control. APPROVADO and REPROVADO means APPROVED and REPROVED and the current batch was reproved with the indication “lentes manchadas” (stained lenses), written in blue over the REPROVADO box.

[Via Gizmodo]

The Strenuous Relationship Between Apple And Facebook

It’s been known that Apple and Facebook have had a strenuous relationship over the past year and a half or so - with the debacle of iTunes Ping being the key event known to the public over which the companies clashed. Mashable has a nice scoop today that delves deeper into the rift between the two companies and how things seemed to have taken a positive turn in recent months.

According to Mashable’s sources, Apple approached Facebook over fully integrating Facebook into iOS 4 as well as making their own Facebook app — apparently “lacking confidence in Facebook’s ability to build a great application”. Disagreements arose and negotiations broke down, Apple canned most of the Facebook integration, except Ping which they didn’t fully inform Facebook of — this then led to Facebook banning Apple from the APIs soon after it launched.

Three months ago Steve Jobs supposedly visited Facebook to talk with Mark Zuckerberg about a Facebook iPad app. Jobs learnt that Facebook was working with HP to release a native webOS app and according to Mashable’s sources, Jobs was furious about it. Zuckerberg tried to appease Jobs by pulling the app, but Jon Rubenstien of HP’s webOS division refused. Nonetheless the app wasn’t perfect when released and was restricted because Facebook pulled certain APIs, just as it had done with Ping in the previous year.

Was Facebook playing both sides? Absolutely, says a source close to HP. Facebook was made aware of the application and device integrations. The company knew what was coming, changed its tune right before release — and only did so to appease Apple. For its part, HP was furious. It had hoped the Facebook application would help differentiate the TouchPad from other tablets on the market.

Since then it appears Facebook and Apple have mended their relationship. As reported earlier this week from MG Siegler of TechCrunch, Apple and Facebook have been working together on a Facebook iPad app and on an HTML5 web app platform (Project Spartan) and could well be sharing the stage at Tuesday’s iPhone event to launch the products. Just as Siegler mentioned, Mashable notes that this collaboration seems to stem from the fact that they both share a common enemy: Google.

Be sure to jump over to Mashable and read their full article, they mention other interesting snippets of information and do a great job of putting together the juicy jigsaw puzzle that is the Facebook and Apple relationship.

[Via Mashable]

 

Facebook’s iPad App And Project Spartan Likely To Launch Next Week, Possibly At Apple’s Event

Back in July TechCrunch revealed that Facebook had already developed an iPad app that was live inside the iPhone app. It seemed feature complete, which has confused many as to why Facebook has taken so long to launch it — they didn’t even launch it at last week’s f8 conference. If MG Siegler of TechCrunch is correct (which he has been for many Facebook scoops this year), it has been waiting on another of Facebook’s Project Spartan and various negotiations with Apple - as was reported this week.

Earlier today another TechCrunch writer, Alexia Tsotsis found some screenshots of Project Spartan (see above) which MG Siegler believes to be the real thing. He writes this morning that “the planets are aligning” and that the Facebook iPad app and Project Spartan (of which both have seen delays and delayed each other) will launch next week.

According to him Apple has been involved with both projects and that the two companies have been collaborating on both projects. His sources note that the two Facebook projects may launch at next week’s Apple event (Mashable also suggests this), potentially as part of a demonstration that shows off improved HTML5 support on iOS. But if that arrangement falls through Facebook will apparently reveal the two projects during a Monday event.

But make no mistake, the relationship between the two companies is tenuous at best. Both know that they’d probably be better of working together, but both also believe that they don’t actually need each other. Hence, the dancing we’ve been seeing and hearing about. The two are frenemies. But the launch of Google+ has made the common enemy very clear…

Project Spartan is an HTML5-based development and distribution platform that’s being built with Mobile Safari for iOS in mind. When MG Siegler first posted about Project Spartan in mid-June, he described the purpose of it as:

Facebook will never admit this, but those familiar with the project believe the intention is very clear: to use Apple’s own devices against them to break the stranglehold they have on mobile app distribution. With nearly 700 million users, Facebook is certainly in the position to challenge the almighty App Store distribution mechanism. But they need to be able to do so on Apple’s devices which make up a key chunk of the market.

[Via TechCrunch]

The Daily Averaging Only 120,000 Readers A Week

The promised iPad-only newspaper, The Daily, that News Corporation created with some Apple support and launched in February this year has continued to sell poorly. Bloomberg reports from an advertising executive, John Nitti, that the newspaper is averaging just 120,000 readers a week (which includes those who are on a two-week free trial of the publication). He says the subscription numbers are less than a quarter the number that is required for the publication to make money.

When The Daily was unveiled in February, News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch said “We believe the Daily will be the model for how stories are told and consumed”. He spoke of how the publication would have the speed and versatility of new technology with the “serendipity and surprise” of newspapers - making ‘newspapers’ “viable again”.

News Corporation did reveal that more than 1 million people had downloaded the app between February and June but had declined to give out figures of actual readership. In May, News Corporation COO, Chase Carey defended the publication calling it a “work in progress”, and it being “early days”. Murdoch revealed in February that they had invested $30 million in the project, hiring over 100 staff and required a readership of 500,000 to break even.

[Bloomberg via The Guardian]

Dragon Go! Update Adds Support For Netflix, Wolfram|Alpha, Google+ And More

Back in July Nuance released a new iOS app, Dragon Go!, that we described as combining “Nuance’s top-notch voice recognition with the intelligence to do what is actually being said”. It will listen to a question or statement you make and then using the number of services it supports (from Yelp to Twitter to the iPod app), complete the task that you invoked.

Today Nuance has released an update to Dragon Go! that, in a sense, upgrades its intelligence that we described. It has improved it’s intelligence by adding support for a number of new services - meaning it can now understand more commands and actually do more things. It has added support for media services Netflix and Spotify, search engines Wolfram|Alpha and Ask.com as well as Google+.

It has also improved the Yelp experience from within the app by allowing users to access a map from within the Yelp tab. You can grab the update now, or if you haven’t yet tried Dragon Go! you can download it for free on the App Store.

iTunes Music Store Goes Live In 12 More EU Countries, iBookstore Coming To More Countries Soon

Following a report from yesterday that Apple was set to launch the iTunes Music Store in 10 more European Union countries, Apple has pressed the button and launched it in not 10 but 12 EU countries that did not have the service before. This now means that every single EU member nation now has the iTunes Music Store, with today’s countries that got the store being: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

Apple is also about to launch the iBookstore in most EU nations including: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.

These countries have now gone live in iTunes Connect, a back-end system where authors give Apple their content for distribution on the iTunes stores. Previously, authors could only sell their books on iBookstore in the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada.

[Via MacRumors, The Next Web]

Rumor: New iPhone And iPod Touch Models Appear In Apple’s Inventory

Next week’s iPhone event on October 4th is still somewhat of a mystery, with rumors going round and round in circles as to whether Apple will launch a brand new iPhone 5, a slightly upgraded iPhone “4S” or perhaps both. 9to5 Mac claims to have some information on new products that have turned up inside Apple’s internal inventory system. According to their source, there are now three new iPod touch models under the codename N81A, which 9to5 Mac speculates could represent a white variation of the device.

Since there are only new three iPod touch models - at this time – it’s likely that the black models won’t be updated. This also likely means the storage capacities will stay at their current 8GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities.

What has also appeared is two new iPhone SKUs that are marked as tweaked iPhone 4s. Codenamed N90A (the current iPhone 4 is N90), this could represent a new 8GB version. In previous iOS SDK releases there has been reference to an iPhone with the codename of N94, this has not yet appeared in the inventory. As noted below such a codename would be given to a device with vastly different features and large improvements - rather than just a new white version or a new storage capacity model.

It is very possible that the two SKUs mean black and white models, but that is unconfirmed. We don’t think Apple’s next-generation iPhone – coming next week- would be labeled as an N90A – as it includes major internal hardware upgrades that would typically constitute a new codename.

If you’d like a recap of all the iPhone 5 rumor shenanigans that have occurred over this past year, be sure to have a read of our recap of the more reputable rumors that have been shared around.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Apple Second “Coolest Brand” In The UK→

Apple Second “Coolest Brand” In The UK

According to the latest CoolBrands survey, Apple’s gadgets and computers aren’t the coolest brand among UK consumers, leaving the #1 spot to British manufacturer of luxury cars Aston Martin. The BBC reports this morning:

Stephen Cheliotis, chairman of the CoolBrands Expert Council, said: “Cool is subjective and personal. But being identified as a Cool Brand by the British public and a panel of influential opinion formers implies it is a brand that most Brits wish to own.

“Votes are based on a wide criteria of factors but these brands are clearly delivering cool in the eyes of consumers and influencers alike,” he said.

Apple’s devices are often described as elegant and “cool”, but there’s no denying Aston Martin’s James Bond cars have their very own historic charm, too. In this year’s CoolBrands index – which is voted by consumers as well as a group of “experts” in brand recognition and popularity –  BlackBerry and Google came at 6th and 7th place, respectively, with Harley-Davidson behind Apple at the 2nd spot. The full list can be viewed on CoolBrands’ website.

Permalink

Report: iTunes Music Store Coming To 10 More European Union Countries

The Rzeczpospolita newspaper of Poland is reporting that Apple is preparing to launch the iTunes Music Store in 10 more European Union countries. The newspaper does not specify an exact date for when Apple might launch the new region-specific Music Stores but their sources note it could be “at any time”, possibly as soon as this October.

The newspaper names Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic as definite countries where the iTunes Music Store will soon be launching, but the other 7 are not known. As MacRumors points out, only 12 of the 27 European Union member countries do not yet have the iTunes Music Store. This list includes: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

The iTunes Music Store is currently available in roughly two dozen countries unlike the App Store which is available in many more dozen countries (including all 27 EU nations) — mostly due to more complicated licensing issues that arise when dealing with music.

[Rzeczpospolita via MacRumors]