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Posts tagged with "apple"

New Apple Patent: Flat USB & FireWire Cables with LEDs

Of all the designs and inventions Apple patents and trademarks every week, some are really interesting and provide good indication of things to come in Macs and iOS devices. Whilst we’ve recently seen several complex patents detailing social functionalities and smart location features coming to iOS, image editing capabilities for iPhones and a “safe deposit box” for cloud storage, a new patent design uncovered by Patently Apple last week seems to provide a simple solution to a minor, yet annoying problem: cables.

Apple sells a variety of cables on its online store: these cables are usually meant to connect Mac computers to external peripherals like monitors and hard drives, or to devices like iPhones and iPads. From HDMI connectors and FireWire 400 or 800 cables to most standard USB ones and 30-pin dock connectors (the ones that also come bundled with a new iOS device), these cables have one thing in common: they’re not flat. They tangle, they’re difficult to put away and carry around, they’ll very likely break over time as you twist them and, overall, simply use them. This happens because the standard cable circuitry used in the tech industry includes one or more wires placed within a non-conductive enclosure that result in a circular connector – the cable. The problem with a circular cable is that sometimes it’s meant to be used in a specific orientation, and if the cable bends in the opposite way (example: when you tangle it to put it away) the internal wires or external enclosure could break. Read more

iPad 2 Launch in Czech Republic Delayed By One Month, Could Apple Be Delaying International Launch?

As 9to5 Mac learned from a Czech reader, the Czech Republic Apple wesbsite is now displaying the launch date of the iPad 2 as “V prodeji od 25 dubna” which translates to “Available from April 25” as opposed to the previously publicized launch date of March 25 for the Czech Republic.

At this point no other country that was on the keynote list of first international countries to receive the iPad 2 has had the launch delayed (apart from Japan). At this point the one month delay for the Czech Republic could be as simple as some delay in regulatory approval in that country for the iPad 2 or perhaps the first sign that Apple is delaying the international launch or scaling back the number of countries recieving the first round of iPad 2’s.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

NFC Technology In iPhones Could Also Enable Remote Computing

According to a source of Cult of Mac, Apple is planning to use Near Field Communication (NFC) not just as a method for retail payment services but also to turn an iPhone into a pseudo-ID tag for remote login. According to Cult of Mac:

…when a NFC-equipped iPhone is paired with a guest machine, part of the user’s profile includes the apps they’ve purchased through the Mac App Store. The icons for their apps appear on the remote Mac, but aren’t downloaded, our source said.

Once the guest machine is logged into; users would be able to open any of their apps, which would download on demand, although presumably only those from the Mac App Store. Documents too could be accessed and synced using MobileMe from anywhere using this remote login system and once a user leaves, the Mac would wipe any documents and applications.

As MacRumors points out, it is similar to the once promised feature of ‘Home on iPod’ that would have allowed OS X Panther users to sync their Home directory on to an iPod for easy document storage regardless of where you were. Cult of Mac claims that this new feature is currently being developed in OS X Lion but their source stresses that it isn’t guaranteed to become public.

[Via Cult of Mac]

Market Share Research Reveals That The Swiss Love Their Macs

The Pingdom blog did a little statistical research using Statcounter to figure out which countries had the highest percentage of Macs and found that Switzerland topped that list with 17.61% market share. Meanwhile Luxembourg, USA, and Iceland were also countries with high Mac market share, all above 15%.

The UK was notably missing from the top 10 whilst as a region, Asia only had an average of 1.61% of market share – a very low figure, but one Apple is likely trying to increase with a recent push into that market with its retail stores. As for the region with the lowest Mac market share, Asia comes close but it is in fact South America, which has only 1.08% market share of Macs.

[Via TUAW]

AT&T Cracking Down On Unauthorised Tethering

Update: In the email AT&T do explicitly sate that if users do not contact AT&T or stop tethering, they will “automatically enroll you into DataPro 4GB after March 27, 2011”, if the user stops then no change will occur. It would seem that to be automatically upgrading/changing users contract plans, AT&T should have a fairly fool-proof method of checking which users are tethering compared to those just using large amounts of data.

Numerous AT&T users who use MyWi, a jailbreak tweak that allows you to enable tethering without a subscription, yesterday began receiving text messages and emails from AT&T reminding the users that to use your phone for tethering requires a subscription to an AT&T tethering plan.

The notices for most began with a text message that said:

AT&T Free Msg: Did you know tethering your Smartphone to a computer requires a tethering plan? Pls call 888-860-6789 for details or visit att.com/dataplans.

Following this text message many users also received an email (included after the break) which told the user that to “take advantage of [tethering], we require that in addition to a data plan, you also have a tethering plan.” The email also said if the user wishes to continue tethering to sign up to a tethering plan – but did not specify any consequences for continuing to use MyWi without purchasing such a plan.

At this point it is unclear how AT&T knows which users to issue the notices, the presumption is that the notices are going out to any user that uses a large amount of data (some are saying more than 10GB) and are not subscribed to a tethering plan.

Read more

Report Finds Mac App Store Is Dominated By Paid Apps

According to a market research report by Distimo, Apple’s Mac App Store is adding applications at a less frequent rate than the iOS App Store and a much larger of those in the Mac App Store are paid apps. The report tracked data from a variety of ‘app stores ‘ from the iOS App Store, Android Market, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and more as well as the Mac App Store – which was the only ‘app store’ for computers it tracked.

As the above graph demonstrates, the Mac App Store is very small in comparison to the other App Stores surveyed at this point in time, however more interestingly is that a whopping 88% of apps in the Mac App Store are paid apps, leaving only a slither of 12% being free. Prices are also on average much higher with the average selling price of a paid app in the top 300 applications being $11.21 on the Mac App Store whilst only being $4.19 for the iPad and $1.57 on the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store.

Read more

Kickstarter Project - Hanfree: A Handsfree iPad Stand

We’re spotlighting yet another Kickstarter project. Why? Because we love to see handy, unique creations come to life. This one is an iPad accessory called the Hanfree. It makes the iPad handsfree, thus the name, for anytime you’re in bed, sitting down on your couch, in the kitchen using a cooking app, or anywhere you can find a place to use it; all without holding the device on your lap or in your hands.

Video after break. Read more

The New York Times Will Use Apple’s iOS Subscriptions

With the June 30 deadline approaching for publishers willing to implement recurring subscriptions in their iOS apps, Apple just got the first big name on board with the new iTunes subscription system: the New York Times will comply to Apple’s terms and offer in-app subscriptions by June 30 to give iPhone and iPad users to subscribe to the NYT with the one-click option touted by Apple.

As reported by All Things Digital, the New York Times decided to play Apple’s game rather than pull their iOS apps from the App Store. The New York Times will give 30% of revenue from subscriptions away to Apple, and give up on customers’ data as Apple’s subscriptions are based on opt-in sharing of personal info with the publisher. Read more

2011 MacBook Pro Users Having Issues With iTunes Home Sharing

A support thread in Apple’s Discussion forums is abuzz with 2011 MacBook Pro owners having issues with iTunes Home Sharing. The users are having issues connecting to certain iOS devices as well as having devices disconnect and display error messages.

The user who started the discussion thread; ‘themacbear’, reported that his new 17 inch MacBook Pro initially seemed to work fine using Home Sharing with his Apple TV. However later on in the day “…although the Apple TV could see the name of my iTunes library, it wouldn’t connect to it, or sometimes, would report that “There are no movies in this library”. I tried every solution I could think of, but no dice.” He went to an Apple Store, which managed to replicate the issue on a different MacBook Pro, but couldn’t resolve the problem and consequently gave ‘themacbear’ a full refund. Others too have contacted Apple through their retail stores and via phone support but so far there is no fix for the problem.

Apple recently beefed up its Home Sharing features with iOS 4.3 and iTunes 10.2 and it could be that the issues these users are facing are related to these updates. Furthermore there are also some users with older Mac’s also having similar issues, although this seems to be a more isolated group of users.

[Via AppleInsider]