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Posts tagged with "apple"

Report: Apple To Offer A Cheaper 8 GB iPhone 4 Within Weeks

Apple may be preparing to launch a revised iPhone 4 that would feature a smaller 8 GB flash drive within weeks according to a report by Reuters today. It suggests that Apple may be preparing to launch an iPhone that would be priced at a lower level to help target emerging and the pre-paid mobile markets - something which Apple has expressed interest in utilising.

Most recently Apple’s COO, Tim Cook, said that Apple wanted to do “clever things” to attack the prepaid market so that the iPhone could be “for everyone”, not “just for the rich”. The obvious question is whether this iPhone 4 is more than just the old iPhone model at a lower price point with reduced storage - as was the case with the iPhone 3GS. It could just be that Apple decides to aggresively lower the price of this iPhone model - going further than what they have done with the iPhone 3GS and 3G when they were deprecated. Alternatively it could mean a new iPhone “4S” that is cheaper but also features some minor feature additions.

Reuters doesn’t specifically put a date on when this model could be released but past trends and common sense would suggest it launches alongside the new iPhone 5. They concur with previous iPhone 5 rumors and suggest it will feature a larger screen and better camera - they also note that Hon Hai and Pegatron have been told to prepare production capacity for 45 million units.

[Via Reuters]

iOS 5 Includes An Early Warning ‘Quake Alert’ Notification For Japanese Users

As discovered by a 9to5 Mac reader, iOS 5 contains a new ‘Quake Alert’ notification option to warn Japanese users of an expected earthquake. This new notification option simply hooks into the Japanese earthquake warning system and does a similar job to what some apps on the App Store already do, just on a simpler level that doesn’t require a third party app.

As this year’s devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan tragically showed, such early warning systems are extremely important in getting just a little bit of time to prepare. Since the earthquake this year, Time has published an article that detailed the Japanese earthquake warning system:

Japan has the most advanced earthquake early-warning system in the world. A nationwide online system launched in 2007, it detects tremors, calculates an earthquake’s epicenter and sends out brief warnings from its 1,000-plus seismographs scattered throughout the country, one of the most earthquake-prone nations on the planet.

As MacRumors points out, this early warning system notification for the iPhone won’t be the first time the system has been integrated into a Japanese smartphone, with quite a number already featuring the system. Japanese users will be able to turn the ‘Quake Alert’ notification on and off from the Notification Center settings pane - although there is a warning that receiving quake alerts may impact on battery life (due to the connection to the early warning system.

[Via 9to5 Mac, MacRumors]

The Size Of Apple’s New “Spaceship” Campus in Cupertino→

The Size Of Apple’s New “Spaceship” Campus in Cupertino

Ever since Apple CEO Steve Jobs first explained to the Cupertino City Council the company’s intention to build a new “spaceship-like” campus on the area Apple bought from HP last year, Mayor Gilbert Wong said “there’s no chance” the city of Cupertino would say no to Apple’s proposed plan – Apple is the biggest taxpayer in Cupertino, and the project is admittedly impressive with a 4-story building hosting 13,000 employees, a 1,000 seat new auditorium, its own power center and a slew of modern architectural advancements built with green technologies in mind. Beautiful renderings aside, Apple even went as far as promising they would restore the area’s native vegetation by teaming up with Stanford University.

But just how big would Apple’s new headquarters be? John Martellaro over at The Mac Observer did some math based on official drawings, Google Maps and scale marks and came away with the conclusion that the whole building is big. Very big. According to Martellaro, Apple’s spaceship would cover the Pentagon with a diameter of 492 meters:

Given that comforting sanity check, I measured the diameter of the Apple spaceship as 1615 ft, plus or minus a few ft., depending on where one places the ruler. That’s a radius of 807.5 ft.

So, if one could magically fly the future Apple spaceship to Arlington, VA and hover over the Pentagon, it would just slightly cover it.

Martellaro also compared the campus’ size to a nuclear aircraft carrier and WWII battleship in an interesting image you can check out here. Progress on Apple’s proposal to the Cupertino City Council can be tracked here.

[image via Cupertino.org]

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HTC Sues Apple Over Patent Infringement

As reported by Reuters, smartphone maker HTC is suing Apple claiming infringement of three patents owned by the company. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, relates to patents allegedly infringed by Apple with its Mac computers, iPhones, iPads and “other products”. Details are scarce right now – we’re sure Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents is already looking into this – but the Taiwan-based company is seeking a ban on the infringing products in the United States, plus “triple damages for willful infringement, and other remedies”.

In July, Apple filed an ITC complaint against HTC, looking to block the sale of several HTC products infringing Apple’s patents – that was the second complaint against HTC, as Apple was apparently looking for “a second try” with stronger patents, according to Florian Mueller.

We will update this post with more news and details on HTC’s lawsuit as they become available.

MacRumors details the patents addressed by the lawsuit:

- 7,765,414: Circuit and operating method for integrated interface of PDA and wireless communication system
- 7,672,219: Multipoint-to-point communication using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
- 7,417,944: Method for orderwire modulation

Apple first sued HTC back in March, with an International Trade Commission judge finding HTC guilty of infringing on two of Apple patents in July – one of them, patent 5,946,647, said to be “fundamental” to the Android platform. HTC is however arguing they have a “strong case” against Apple’s claims, and said they will appeal the ITC ruling.

Apple Highlights Apps “Enhanced for OS X Lion”

OS X Lion has been out for less than a month, and Apple is now starting to promote apps that take advantage of some of the new features of the OS on the front page of the Mac App Store. As noted by Stephen Hackett at Forkbombr, Apple has included the “Enhanced for OS X Lion” tagline in the banners pointing to applications that have recently been updated with Lion-exclusive features such as Versions, Full-Screen, or multi-touch gestures. These banners can be seen on the front page of the Mac App Store, both in the top section (Screenflow 3.0 and Touchgrind) or in the lower part of the page, where currently there are promotional images for Fantastical, swackett x, and Scrivener. Fantastical is indeed one of the apps that has been updated in the past month with “Lion compatibility” and Lion-only gestures for navigation in the calendar view.

This is not the first time Apple has taken special interest in apps updated to take advantage of new functionalities introduced by the company in a new version of their OSes. For example, Apple went as far as creating a dedicated section for apps updated with AirPlay support soon after the release of iOS 4.2 back in November 2010. In April, Apple showcased subscription-based magazines in the App Store’s homepage. The “Enhanced for OS X Lion” tagline doesn’t have its own category just yet, but it wouldn’t be a surprise as more customers upgrade to Lion, and developers start releasing Lion-specific app updates.

With over 250 new user features and 3,000 new developer APIs, Lion is opening a whole range of possibilities for developers willing to rewrite or update their applications to trigger the new OS. Such features and APIs include the aforementioned full-screen mode and Versions support, as well as desktop notifications, In-App Purchases, new UI controls, Resume, and Auto-Save. This Fall, developers will also be able to integrate their apps with iCloud, which will allow them to store documents and data in the cloud, enabling seamless synchronization of content between devices.

In November, Apple will also start requiring developers to update their apps with Lion’s Sandboxing APIs – you can  read more about this in John Siracusa’s OS X Lion review. By highlighting apps that have already been updated for Lion, Apple is both encouraging other developers to do the same in the next few weeks, and showcasing great software for new customers that have installed Lion and are looking for new apps to try out. Apple itself updated several apps ahead of Lion’s launch to enable new functionalities exclusive to 10.7, such as Safari 5.1 – which comes pre-installed on Lion – and the iWork suite.

FlashtoHTML5 Turns YouTube In To A Flash-Free Zone On Safari

No-one really likes when their Mac’s fan decides to emulate a jet engine after you’ve been watching YouTube for a while because Flash has been running. It is particularly frustrating when you know that YouTube has been rolling out an experimental HTML5 video player that could work perfectly in Safari. Thankfully a new Safari plug-in, FlashtoHTML5, forces Safari to use that HTML5 YouTube whenever available (which is most of the time).

The plug-in from Juris Vervuurt will automatically choose the maximum video resolution available, up to 4K, although this can be manually changed. There are three minor caveats with FlashtoHTML5: this plug-in only works for Safari,  not all YouTube videos yet support the HTML5 version and subtitles and captions do not work in the HTML5 version. You can download FlashtoHTML5 for free.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

DigiTimes: Apple Ramping Up iPhone Production With The iPhone 5

A report in DigiTimes today claims to reveal new estimates of iPhone production for the rest of 2011. In their report, DigiTimes says that Apple has increased the number of orders for iPhones from 50 million units to 56 million units - roughly a 12% increase. Furthermore, they note that iPhone 5 production would represent roughly 26 million units for the rest of this year.

Looking more closely at iPhone 5 orders, DigiTimes says that Apple has revised down their third quarter (July, August and September) orders from 7 million units o 5.5-6 million units. The fourth quarter (October, November and December), however, has seen an increase in orders from 14 million to 20 million units. Production of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 would also alter between the third and fourth quarters, reducing from 20 million units to just 8 million units in the fourth quarter.

Continued production of the iPhone 4 in the fourth quarter would suggest that Apple is interested in following its recent trend of making the ‘old’ iPhone a cheaper option for those looking to purchase an iPhone. If these suggested forecast figures become reality, it would mean that Apple produces, and likely sells, 95 million iPhones (any generation) over the course of the 2011 calendar year.

[Via DigiTimes, Image via MacRumors]

Report: TSMC Begins A6 Chip Trials, Won’t Be Ready For Any iPad HD This Fall

Last month a flurry of reports suggested that Apple might release a new model of the iPad that would be targeted at ‘Pro’ users and featuring a Retina display - many dubbed it the iPad HD. That suggestion (or at least the schedule) seems less reliable today with Taiwan Economic News citing sources within the chipmaking industry that claim the A6 processor won’t be available until at least the second quarter of next year with trials of the A6 only just beginning in earnest now.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry by market shares now, has allegedly started trial production of the A6 processor in cooperation with Apple Inc., with the production design to be taped out in the first quarter of next year and scheduled to be publicly unveiled in the second quarter at the earliest, according to industry sources

As previous reports have noted, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) is producing the A6 chip, which would be the central component of the iPad ‘Pro’. The chip is said to be extremely-low powered whilst far exceeding the processing capabilities of the A4 and A5 chips because of a new 28-nanometer process and 3D stacking technologies. Darrell Etherington of GigaOm explains that this differs from the previous layered designs because “the 3D stacking tech will allow layers to be integrated vertically and horizontally into one single circuit”.

[Via GigaOm]

Apple’s Fall Media Event Scheduled For September 7?

For months there has been discussion of a Fall media event for Apple to reveal the iPhone 5 and according to a report by Kodawarisan Apple has scheduled the event for Wednesday, September 7th. The date falls in line with previous years in which the traditional iPod event was held on September 1st in 2010 and September 9th in 2009 and 2008.

MacRumors clarified with Kodawarisan that the September 7th date was not a “product of guesswork, but came from a source in the know”. They also note that Kodawarisan has had a long history of rumors (nearly a decade) but had recently been pretty quiet - with the last “sucessful” rumor arising in 2009 in whcih they correctly predicted the Mac Mini launch date.

If this date does come true and the event includes the announcement of the iPhone 5, it would differ from reports earlier this month in which AllThingsD claimed an “October surprise” for the iPhone 5 launch.

[Via MacRumors]