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Posts tagged with "apple"

Reports Suggest Apple Won’t Include NFC Technology In The iPhone 5

An article today by The Independent (a UK publication) has suggested that the previously rumored inclusion of Near Field Communication technology in the iPhone and iPad will not be coming this year. The technology is perceived to become a new way for consumers to pay for goods and services and it was hoped by many in the retail industry that Apple could set the standard by adding the technology to the iPhone.

It appears however, according to several sources in UK mobile operators, that Apple had decided against the inclusion of NFC technology in the next version of the iPhone. One source told The Independent “The new iPhone will not have NFC, Apple told the operators it was concerned by the lack of a clear standard across the industry.”

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Donate To Red Cross for Japan Through iTunes

As noted by 9to5mac, Apple has enabled an option in the iTunes Store to donate to the American Red Cross for the Japan relief fund. If you want to make your donation to the earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, you can by visiting this page and choosing to donate $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 or $200. Everything happens through the iTunes account you already have – a clever move to make donations easy and just a click away for iTunes users.

100% of your donation will go to the American Red Cross, which is set to provide food, shelter and assistance to the victims of the earthquake and tsunami.

Apple Could Sell 600,000 iPad 2’s This Weekend, Double The Original’s Launch Sales

Speaking with several industry analysts, Bloomberg has reported that Apple could sell 600,000 units as it debuts this weekend. One such analyst, Brian Marshall from Gleacher & Co predicts more than 500,000 sales which would be close to double the original iPad’s 300,000 sales in 24 hours. Apple released its iPad 2 for purchase on its online store in the early hours of today and already orders are backlogged for 2-3 weeks, whilst Apple’s 236 US retail stores and select others will also offer the iPad 2 from 5PM today. Meanwhile many other countries will get the iPad 2 later this month on March 25th.

The original iPad had massive success in sales, becoming the fastest selling product by revenue, reaping in $2 billion within three months, a feat that took the iPhone more than a year to achieve. Tim Bajarin said that “Apple has such a huge lead, competitors are going to be chasing Apple for many years” referring also to the fact that Apple’s competitors are only now releasing their first generation tablets in the coming months.

[Via Bloomberg]

Alleged iPhone 5 Design Documents Show Bigger Screen

Update 2: To keep the display of the iPhone one that qualifies as a “Retina Display” whilst increasing the physical size and not the number of pixels, Apple could increase the display up to a size of 3.845-inches (diagonal) before it drops below 300 pixels per inch which as Steve Jobs explained in the iPhone 4 keynote, was the required PPI specification so that the human eye cannot differentiate between individual pixels when looking at a display around 10 or 12 inches away. (Thanks @ianharrier)

Update: MacRumors forum member, ‘Bartboy919’ did some clever comparison on those images to the current iPhone 4 and it seems as though the form factor is exactly the same which would suggest something around a 3.7-inch display rather than the current 3.5-inch display.

In a new purported leak of the iPhone 5’s design, iDealsChina claims to have gotten a hold of engineering diagrams of the iPhone 5, which show a nearly identical design to the iPhone 4 with the exception of a larger screen, potentially one that is 4 inches. The screen seems to take up a larger portion of the front face of the phone and the bezel on the sides of the display is much thinner.

Whilst there are a number of purported leaks of design documents for upcoming Apple device releases, iDealsChina has previously leaked accurate design renderings of the fourth generation iPod Nano and they have also previously claimed to have posted a photo of the iPhone 5’s bezel which correspond with these drawings. Whilst this doesn’t confirm these designs are accurate it does decrease the likelihood that these are fake. Jump the break for another picture of the drawings.

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Apple Sets Up Temporary Store in Austin for SXSW

The SXSW 2011 conference kicks off in Austin tomorrow, and the iPad 2 debuts in Apple Stores and authorized retails chains tomorrow at 5PM. Over the past weeks, I’ve read several blog posts and tweets from people attending SXSW this year unsure whether or not they should pull off the conference to stay home and buy an iPad 2, go to Austin and spend hours in line at the nearest Apple Store (thus missing SXSW events) or just go to Austin without getting an iPad 2. See, SXSW is a rather huge event where startups launch and geeks from all over the U.S. meet and the launch of the iPad 2 right in the middle of it could be a deal-breaker for many. Most of all because once you see some people at the conference with an iPad 2, if you’re an Apple geek you’re going to want one.

Apple thought about these issues as well, and in order to sell a truckloads of iPads to SXSW attendees they decided to set up a temporary store in downtown Austin. The plan came together quickly last Monday, when an Apple executive confirmed they wanted to set up a pop-up store for two weeks in the Scarbrough Building on Congress Avenue.

On Wednesday, construction workers were busy retrofitting the 5,000-square-foot space in the building, at Congress and West Sixth Street, that Apple will lease for two weeks. Black vinyl sheeting covered the windows fronting Congress.

The store will be ready tomorrow and we guess they’ll be selling a lot of iPads to people attending SXSW. That’s just a clever more and, although it won’t stay there for long, we’re sure the store in Austin will be a great experience for all those at SXSW willing to get their hands on the latest gadget from Cupertino. If you have photos of the new store, the Tips box in the sidebar is just a click away. [via Statesman]

Why Do Movie Trailers Debut on Apple.com?→

Why Do Movie Trailers Debut on Apple.com?

If you’ve ever wondered why so many movie trailers become available on Apple’s website and not anywhere else, the answer is provided on Quora by a former Apple employee. It’s got Star Wars in it:

It started as a showcase for QuickTime, at the time of first launch we only had a handful of trailers and one or two studios. It was really the Phantom Menace trailer that put apple.com/trailers into the spotlight. Lucasfilm had posted a rather crappy trailer on their site, the team at Apple was appalled. Through DNS records, the web team at Apple managed to contact the Star Wars web team and set up a meeting. That single trailer showcased QuickTime’s quality over RealVideo by leaps and bounds, and quickly surpassed over 1 million downloads to become the most popular web video of the internet in that time.

He also mentions the Akamai distribution technology (a little startup at the time) made the difference when talking to movie executives and showing them the speed and reliability of Apple’s network. Plus, the webpage design is also pretty sweet these days. [via]

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iPad Becomes More Enterprise Friendly With VMWare View

In what is definitely a big win for the iPad in the Enterprise world, the fairly ubiquitous VMWare has released a new iPad app named VMWare View. The iPad app allows users to access and use virtual desktops from a company’s VMWare servers.

VMWare joins Citrix another fairly ubiquitious company that offers enterprise virtualisation services in offering a similar iPad app. As Robert Scoble notes (and you can watch him talk with some of the VMWare executives after the break) these virtualisation apps will become more usable and functional with the iPad 2’s external display function, cameras and speed increase.

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Australian Government Wants To Classify Mobile Games

The Australian Government has today revealed that it plans to enforce a classification of review of any mobile games (and possibly apps) that are referred to the Australian Classification Board after a complaint. Any app referred for review would have to receive a rating of MA15+ or lower to remain on sale legally in Australia.

The Government has said that if the proposal goes through it would force Apple and Google to comply by removing any app that is banned by the Classification Board as well as ensuring that any app that has gone through classification would have its classification displayed for consumers to see.

Currently there is ambiguity over classifying new online content including mobile apps for the iPhone or for Google’s Android OS in Australia with some suggesting that technically every game should be classified, an impossible feat with the number of apps in the App Store alone. The new proposal by the Home Affairs Minister would only require classification of game apps that the Classification Board receive complaints about and the Minister believes that there would be “very, very few games” that would be refused classification (banned).

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Instaprint Could Well Be The Coolest Use Of Instagram’s API Yet

Just like the launch of Instagram itself, the Instagram API has enjoyed some substantial success with a number of cool web apps that have utilized it. But none of those really matter much at all once you see Instaprint, its not a webapp but an actual printer that can print any Instagram photo onto Polaroid-esque paper for those tagged at a certain location or with a specific hashtag.

Right now Instaprint has set up a demo box at SXSW and plans to eventually offer to rent the printers out, which sounds great for big events or promotional campaigns that want to utilise social media in a new and unique way. You can try it out right now by tagging any Instagram photo with the hashtag #Instaprint and see it being printed live in the Ustream video after the break (although as of writing it wasn’t live).

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