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Posts tagged with "apple"

Legal Disclaimer In iOS 5 Further Hints At Apple Mapping Service

Tipped off by a reader, MacRumors has found that the legal disclaimers in iOS 5 contain new references to a number of third party companies that provide various mapping services. The disclaimers come under a new section called “Map Data” that is not present in previous disclaimers and is completely separate to the section which deals in the disclaimer which deals with licenses used by Google for its mapping service that is used by Apple in the Maps app.

Today’s discovery comes after a number of other revelations, together they form what seems to be the suggestion that Apple is looking (or potentially actively working on) its own mapping solution that could replace Google Maps on iOS. Some of those clues include its acquisition of mapping companies Placebase and Poly9 and its recruitment of employees with navigation software expertise. The location log debacle also revealed that Apple was “collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database”.

MacRumors had a look into all the companies newly listed in the legal disclaimer and gave a quick description of each of them (included below). Noting two companies in particular that suggest Apple may be developing its own maps service. Urban Mapping provides some extensive additional data such as a wide range of demographic information that can be layed on top of traditional data. Waze, however, is experienced in developing crowd-sourced traffic data - it also has a popular app in the App Store now which demonstrates a lot of their services.

  • CoreLogic offers Parcel data which marks boundaries for of properties to provide positional accuracy in location-based solutions.
  • Getchee provides location and market data on China, India and Southeast Asia.
  • Increment P Corp provides location and traffic data for Japan.
  • Localeze provides local business listings.
  • MapData Sciences Pty Ltd. Inc provides mapping data for Australia and New Zealand.
  • DMTI provides postal code data for Canada.
  • TomTom offers global TeleAtlas mapping data which is also licensed by Google for their map solution.
  • Urban Mapping provides in-depth neighborhood data such as crime, demographics, school performance, economic indicators and more.
  • Waze offers real-time maps and traffic information based on crowd sourced data.

Whilst this doesn’t provide concrete proof of whether Apple is working on its own mapping service, we are fairly sure it (if it exists) will not be launching with iOS 5. This is likely related to the fact that Google recently renewed its agreement with Apple to provide Google Maps to iOS.

Jump the break to see some screenshots of the new legal disclaimer which features these new companies.

[Via MacRumors]

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Firefox 4 Will Not Receive Any Security Updates, Firefox 5 Is The Only Supported Version

In line with its more rapid release schedule, Firefox 5 was released just three months after Firefox 4, which had arrived earlier this year. According to the Mozilla Security Leader, Daniel Veditz, it also means that Firefox 4 will no longer be receiving any more updates, including any for potential security issues.

Several people have repeatedly said in public places (newsgroups, planning meeting, Monday meeting; could not find a blog or wiki page) that Firefox 5 will be the security update to Firefox 4, and that there will be no 4.0.2

Effectively this means that if you use Firefox, you are expected to be running the latest major version; otherwise you will face safety risks with using a browser that will no longer be receiving security patches. With this kind of a strategy, Mozilla has taken more than just the rapid release schedule from Google Chrome; it is also following the Chrome idea of only supporting the latest releases.

In some ways it does make sense, both Firefox 6 and Firefox 7 are expected to arrive this year. Supporting older versions would become very difficult whilst wasting resources that could be going into developing new features.

[Via Digitizor]

In The UK, 65% Of Connected Apps Run On iOS

Various smartphone OS market share data typically covers the US market, but a report out today by the industry body GSMA has investigated the UK market. The organisation collaborated with comScore to create a ‘connected apps’ index, measuring the usage of apps that had data access. It used that data to calculate what smartphone OS was used most frequently on an operator’s network. At 65% of the smartphone market, iOS takes the lions-share share of the market whilst Android came in second, accounting for 31%. But the rest of the smartphone operating systems, including BlackBerry, Windows, Palm and Symbian took just 3% of the survey.

You see iPhone is hugely over-indexing in terms of connected app usage, Android is doing pretty well, but Symbian – 23.6% of active smartphones but a mere 1% of connected app users

Painting a virtual picture of the UK market using these statistics shows developers that there are a potential of 5.7 million iPhone owners, 2.7 million Android owners but only 119,000 Symbian users. With that snapshot of the UK market it paints a rather depressing picture for those who are developing for anything other than iOS or Android.

[Via The Guardian]

Bloomberg: Next iPhone To Feature A5 Processor And 8 Megapixel Camera

According to Bloomberg, which has decided to enter into the iPhone 5 rumor mill, the next iPhone will feature a more powerful chip and a more advanced camera. Their report of the iPhone 5 including the A5 chip corroborates what is largely expected – it is the chip that is currently included in the iPad 2.

The report also claims that the “more advanced camera” will feature an 8-megapixel sensor, something that Sony’s Howard Stringer had said earlier this year. It’s an increase from what is currently used in the iPhone 4, which is a 5-megapixel camera. Similarly there have been previous reports have an 8-megapixel camera throughout this year.

The next iPhone will, according to this Bloomberg report, be similar in design to the current iPhone 4. It comes after yesterdays report from BGR which backed up an article from This is my next earlier this year which claimed the iPhone 5 would feature an all new design.

Bloomberg’s sources, not identified, also claim that Apple is trialling a new iPad that includes a higher resolution display – one that would be similar to the Retina display in the iPhone 4. Apparently the display will have roughly one-third more resolution than the current iPad and also have increased touch responsiveness.

The report ends with a somewhat bizarre suggestion that Apple is “working to finish a cheaper version of the iPhone” that would be targeted to developing countries. Bloomberg says that it would use similar chips to what is included in the current iPhone 4 but would be smaller in size.

[Via Bloomberg]

Court Denies Samsung Request To See iPhone 5 and iPad 3, Lodsys Asks For Extension To Reply To Apple’s Motion

You may recall that in the current legal battle between Apple and Samsung, Samsung had demanded Apple hand over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 (or the newest prototypes). Samsung claimed, when it demanded these products, that it was equal to Apple’s claim to getting early access to Samsung products (although they had been previously revealed and put on pre-order). Apple amended its complaint with Samsung last Thursday and after reviewing that, Judge Lucy Koh yesterday made her decision regarding Samsung’s request for early access to the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 and denied it.

As FOSS Patents explains, the reasoning Judge Koh effectively gave was that “Apple’s request for expedited discovery was far more justified and far less prejudicial”. Going into more depth on this, Apple had required early access to Samsung products because it needed to evaluate whether or not to include them in their complaint. In addition, Samsung’s products were already circulating and details were known about them, unlike the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 which have not been revealed in any manner.

The judge made a lot of effort in her 11-page order to explain that Samsung is entitled to “parity” but its motion was overreaching in this case.

However, it wasn’t all good news for Apple, with the Judge potentially suggesting that Apple’s request for a preliminary injunction on certain Samsung products may be delayed or denied.

Instead, it may be necessary for the court to evaluate such a motion against the background of the iPhone 5 (as far as any Samsung phones are concerned) and the iPad 3 (as far as any Samsung tablet computers are concerned), whenever Apple is in a position to present those products.

In other (related) news, Lodsys has asked for a two-month extension to respond to Apple’s motion to intervene. They had been required to respond by next Monday (June 27) by they’re asking the court for a two-month extension until August 27 to respond. Although it will effectively delay proceedings, Lodsys claims that it is “not for purposes of delay” and furthermore states that they have conferred with Apple’s counsels – who apparently do not oppose the extension.

The request does have to be approved by the court, but the court can choose a length less than requested, say just one month instead of two. Despite this, Lodsys is continuing to issue patent infringements to various developers, with a large number of Android developers receiving notices yesterday.

[Via FOSS Patents (1) (2)]

Apple Set To Renovate Retail Stores In Hawaii And Miami

Over the past few months a couple of Apple retail stores have begun to go under renovation, including the flagship Fifth Avenue Store in New York. Two reports today are saying that the Hawaii Ala Moana store and the Miami Lincoln Road store are set to undergo renovations sometime in the near future.

ifoAppleStore is reporting that the Hawaii store, whilst it is being renovated, will be moved to a temporary location just a few doors down. That temporary store will open sometime this week but will be much smaller than the current store – which is already quite busy. It isn’t known what the exact renovation plans are but the expected cost is $250,000.

Meanwhile MacNN notes that Apple recently had to retract a proposal to demolish their Lincoln Road Apple Store and move into another nearby building after the Historic Preservation Board rejected Apple’s plans. The Historic Preservation board had wanted the new building to match more closely to the architecture of the surrounding region as well as being smaller. It’s unlikely that this means Apple will give up on Miami renovation plans, instead they will probably rethink their design plans or find a more appropriate location.

[ifoAppleStore and MacNN via TUAW]

Report: Apple Demands Suppliers To Reduce Costs For iPhone And iPad Components

According to reports in today’s Economic Daily News, Apple has demanded cuts in supplier’s quotes for various components that are vital to the production of the iPhone and iPad. The paper has reported that Apple is putting significant pressure on the suppliers of PCBs, optical components, battery modules and touch panels to cut costs by 10% in the second quarter of 2011.

Apple is using the increased business it brings to the suppliers as a bargaining chip to get a 10% cut in costs. In particular the growing popularity of the iPad has meant that analysts are expecting a 70% growth in the second quarter, a significant windfall for Apple’s suppliers.

With a new iPhone expected sometime later this year and continued growth because of the iPad, Apple is expected to continue to demand cuts both in this quarter and on an ongoing basis.

[Via DigiTimes]

iPhone 4 Becomes The Most Popular Camera On Flickr

Sometime in the past few days, the iPhone 4 became the most popularly used camera on Flickr – two months after TechCrunch noted that it was poised to take the top spot. The Nikon D90 now holds the second spot, although its share of users has remained constant whilst the iPhone 4 has surged to the front. The next three spots are taken up by various Canon EOS line cameras including the 5D Mark II, Digital Rebel XSi and Rebel T1i.

In terms of smartphones the iPhone 4 took the lead a long time ago but it continues to extend its lead. It is followed by the iPhone 3G, 3GS and then the HTC Evo 4G. Surprisingly the iPod Touch rounds out the top smartphone cameras at number 5.

The iPhone 4 becoming the most popular camera in the Flickr community comes after the iPhone 3G held the top spot for just over a year. It lost the top spot earlier this year as it saw a significant reduction in users as the iPhone 4 surged in popularity (just see the above graph and the drop-off in 3G users).

[Via @espiekermann]

Firefox 5 Launches Today, Downloads Already Available

After a number of months in Aurora and Beta testing, the public release of Firefox 5 is expected to come sometime today, but ahead of schedule the downloads are already available now for all platforms.

Although the Firefox page has not yet been updated, notable new features in Firefox 5 include improved support for HTML5, MathML, XHR, more support for CSS animation, a ‘do not track’ option in the privacy pane and general speed and perfomance gains. There is also improved sync support, better add-on updates and improved spell checking for many languages.

You can download Firefox 5 here for Mac, Windows or Linux.

Update - Federico Viticci 5 PM GMT +1: Mozilla has announced the official release of Firefox 5, the first browser to enable the “Do not track” feature on multiple platforms. A full list of detailed changes to the browser can be viewed here.

The latest version of Firefox includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements that make it easier to discover and use all of the innovative features in Firefox. This release adds support for more modern Web technologies that make it easier for developers to build amazing Firefox Add-ons, Web applications and websites.

Here’s a direct link to Firefox 5.0 for Mac.