News - page 2078

No matter how harmless this whole iPhone tracking feature may be, some people still aren’t happy about it. While many of us have brushed it off and chosen to ignore what seems like something blown way out of proportion, others have decided to take things a little more seriously.

Now dubbed ‘Locationgate’, the issue has been the subject of class-action lawsuits and government investigations. But surely if users are really concerned about their iPhone tracking their every move, they can just turn location services off, right? Wrong.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that even with location services disabled on the iPhone, the device continues to collect and store users’ location data with the help of cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots. This isn’t a dirty little secret, however; this is well within the rights of every cell phone maker. But what’s interesting, is that Apple seems to lie about it.

The iPhone LocationGate scandal continues to escalate.

Senator Al Franken has summoned Apple and Google to appear before a Senate judiciary hearing on mobile privacy in May.

We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!

Ok, so all jokes aside, it’s no secret that many of us here at CoM are fans of Leo Laporte and his immensely popular all-things-Apple show Macbreak Weekly.

Well, in a moment of questionable judgement, Leo invited me on Macbreak to talk all things Apple for two whole hours, and I humbly accepted.

If you could use a dose of live Apple news and entertaining banter tomorrow between the hours of 11am and 1pm Pacific time, please tune in: https://live.twit.tv.

If you haven’t had a good laugh today, you should check out this video that’s been circulating of “Steve Jobs” rehearsing his iPhone 5 introduction keynote.

It’s absolutely hilarious to me that anyone would think this video is real, especially after hearing Steve say the iPhone 5 is going to have its own version of smell-o-vision. I also didn’t realize Steve Jobs sounded a lot like George W. Bush, but he does in this video.

The best part though is when Steve decides it’s time to suit up in his “go-time” sneakers, does a quick in-place foot shuffle, then compares the airy weight of his newly donned sneakers to the lightness of the new iPhone 5.

[via Tuaw]

One feature that people have been asking for (for MobileSafari) is the ability to download files without relying on a third-party application. Well, there’s a jailbreak tweak for that, more appropriately named “Safari Download Manager”. It’s available in Cydia for $5, and does just what the name suggests. Not only does it work for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but it also works with the iPad.

Now this is cute – and it likely won’t last. Society6 studio Burb is offering a Steve Jobs in Carbonite case for the iPhone. Very touching. Keep your iDevice clean and snug with the essence of Apple retained.

Available for iPhone 4 and 3G/3Gs, $35. Act fast, Apple’s next Cease & Desist is likely on the way…

[via TUAW]

The next revision of Apple’s MacBook Pro lineup will boast a brand new case design for the first time since the aluminum unibody models were introduced in 2008. The current lineup of MacBook Pros – which was recently refreshed earlier this year to introduce a Thunderbolt port, Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, and new GPUs – will be the last revision before an all-new design.

A source for MacRumors has provided “reliable confirmation” that a redesign is currently in the works, however, there are currently no details on what the new MacBook Pro will look like:

Unfortunately, we have no specifics on what the next MacBook Pro might look like, though many have previously speculated that Apple will take cues from the MacBook Air line.

I’m sure previous speculation won’t be far off either. Apple’s latest MacBook Air has proven to be a huge success and at its unveiling back in October 2010, Steve Jobs hailed the device the “future of notebooks.”

My guess is that the next MacBook Pro will be at least thinner and lighter, with SSD storage and better battery life. If we’re really lucky we’ll get one of those Retina displays everyone’s talking about.

When the new MacBook Airs shipped with Snow Leopard on USB disk drives, many of us hoped that the days of DVD-based operating system installs were behind us. Optical media is pretty much dead, after all, largely thanks to Apple’s successful push into digital delivery with their iTunes service. Sure, you need to ship operating systems physically somehow… but as more and more of us jettison our DVD drives, USB is just a heck of a lot more ubiquitous.

It doesn’t look like OS X 10.7 Lion will be the first Apple operating system to ship exclusively on USB drive, though. A listing for Lion has just popped up on German’s Amazon website, and it’s for a DVD, not a thumb drive. My guess is that users will have a choice at retail — how else to satisfy the need to upgrade of MacBook Air users like me? — but still, it’s a tad disappointing. Maybe Apple’s waiting to go all-in on flash media OS installs until it can be done through Thunderbolt?

[via AppleBitch]

If you’re on iOS 4.3.2 and fancy taking a joyride on another company’s network besides the one you are indentured to, good news: the iPhone Dev Team has released Ultrasnow 1.2.2, which will allow you to unlock iOS 4.3.2 on both the iPhone 4 and on the iPhone 3GS.

If you’re on the 3GS, you’ll need to be both jailbroken and on the 06.15.00 baseband, which is easy enough to do… *cough*.

Once accomplished and rocking either an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 3GS with baseband 06.15.00 restored, you’ll need to preserve the old baseband and grab Ultrasnow through Cydia. The process is a bit complicated, and sometimes results in test participant implosion, so follow this tutorial for a walkthrough on getting through the carrier unlock process safely.

In a typically terse email to a concerned iPhone customer, Apple CEO Steve Jobs thundered down some authoritative wisdom about the so-called iPhone LocationGate scandal: Apple isn’t tracking anyone, and if you think that Android isn’t tracking you, think again.

Apple has increased its supply commitments by more than a third to $11 billion – a record – during the March quarter, according to an SEC filing. The jump from $7.9 billion usually spent in that three-month period indicates the Cupertino, Calif. company is pulling out all stops to ensure it meets demand for the iPad 2 and expected iPhone 5.

“We believe the increase is attributable to procurement ahead of a tight supply environment and expected shipment increases in June (iPad) and September (iPad + iPhone),” Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty told investors.

Last month, President Obama almost smacked some goofus upside the head for insinuating he couldn’t get an iPad. “I’m the President of the United States. You think I’ve got a – you think I’ve got to go borrow somebody’s computer?” he said.

It was a perfect little moment of presidential sass, and the only way it could have been more perfect is if Obama had called his interlocutor a jive turkey before actually smashing him over the head with his iPad. However, questions abounded, including what flavor of iPad Obama favored: a first-gen model or the iPad 2?

Well, here’s your answer, courtesy of the White House’s Flickr account. The president owns an iPad 2 and what appears to be an unassuming gray polyurethane smart cover… a wise choice on the President’s part, given how prone to picking up Marmite and beer stains the leather covers are.

But one great, eternal question remains: does the president use the iPad 2 WiFi-only model, or the iPad 2 3G? Update: As a reader points out, it’s an iPad 2 3G!

[via TUAW]

We’ve been following the roll-out of iPads in schools, now principals are getting them too.

Much like city councilors, the administrators are using tax dollars for iPads to reduce paper and, to some extent, paperwork.

Case in point: in Salisbury, North Carolina, all seven principals in the district are using them to perform teacher evaluations, classroom walkthroughs and assessments, calendars . The highly totable tablet allows them to patrol the halls and take notes, potentially making them more present and active in school affairs.

The rationale seems sound, until you read this:

“I walked through rooms showing my iPad off to students, taking pictures and having conversations with kids about how technology makes learning more fun,” Nancy Barkemeyer principal of West Rowan Middle school said. “Having a new ‘toy’ helped me make connections with some kids.”

Still, aside from trying to impress the cool kids (do we ever stop trying?), it might be good that school principals get up to speed, tech-wise.

What do you think about spending tax dollars for administrator iPads?

Via Salisbury Post

Tablets are set to create 17 percent of all wireless data demand by 2020. Already, the media-saavy tablet category creates five times as much data traffic as the average smartphone. The tablet’s demand on the network is growing at 30 percent per year, according to Goldman Sachs.

As an illustration, the Cisco Global Mobile Date Forecast says the average data traffic in 2010 per tablet was around 405MB each month. By comparison, a smartphone generates 79MB of data traffic each month.

A new jailbreak tweak that’s just hit Cydia enhances your Tweetbot experience by introducing a ‘now playing’ feature – enabling you to tweet the music you’re currently listening to at the tap of a button.

The simple hack adds a new button to the window in which you compose your tweets – and one tap will insert the artist and the name of the song you’re listening to, in addition to the ‘#nowplaying’ hash tag.

While there are other third-party Twitter clients that support this feature straight from the App Store, there aren’t many to choose from. And if you’ve already fallen in love with Tweetbot, this tweak is a great add-on. It’s free to download – all you have to do is search for ‘Now Playing for Tweetbot‘ within Cydia.

We loved the Tweetbot app from Tapbots in our review, and this extra little bit of functionality makes it even greater for music lovers. It’s also another great example of the way in which applications can be improved with minor jailbreak tweaks.

[via iPhone Download Blog]

High resolution artwork discovered in the latest build of Mac OS X Lion has generated rumors that Apple could be planning to bring a Retina display to the Mac. Preview 2 of Lion, which was released in late March, features icons in sizes up to 1024×1024, and a desktop background at a resolution of 3200×3200.

The new Lion wallpaper was discovered at the beginning of April by OSXDaily, and was noted for its ultra-high resolution which no Apple display has ever supported. The new icons – which are double the size of the current 512×512 Mac OS X icons – were discovered over the weekend by MacMagazine.com.br.

Considering there is currently no need for icons or wallpapers of this size, these discoveries would suggest Apple is working on bringing a better display to the Mac. MacRumors notes that Apple has built-in Support for HiDPI display modes in Lion:

Taking cues from iOS, Apple has reportedly built in support for what it calls “HiDPI display modes”. These HiDPI modes allow developers to supply 2x-enlarged images to support double-high resolution displays. Like the iPhone 4’s Retina Display, this means that user interface elements will remain the same size, but everything will be twice the resolution and therefore twice as detailed.

While a Retina display Mac would be pretty neat, I would much prefer one in my iPad first.

After 86 hours of downtime, the man behind Cydia has confirmed that the app is finally back online following an issue with Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service. In a message posted to Twitter on Sunday night, Jay Freeman – better known as Saurik – wrote:

After 86 hours offline, Cydia is finally back! I’m eating some celebratory cake, and am looking forward to a night with >1.5 hours of sleep!

The downtime limited Cydia’s functionality for all users, and meant purchasing packages, using the Theme Centre, and managing Cydia accounts was near impossible.

Though some users may have had some success with accessing these services more recently, there were still intermittent periods of downtime as Amazon’s EC2 service slowly came back online.

All issues seem to have been completely ironed out now and Cydia is fully functioning for all. Hooray!

[via iPhone Download Blog]

Pictures taken by a source at Best Buy reveal that the retailer’s inventory database is currently listing an April 27th launch date for the elusive white iPhone 4. The device featured in the pictures is the GSM model – which supports the AT&T network – though it is expected that the CDMA model designed for Verizon will launch on the same day.

One report over the weekend claims that 16GB and 32GB models of the white iPhone 4 have already been shipped to Best Buy stores located throughout the U.S. – with around 10 16GB models on order for each store. Inventory numbers for the 32GB are currently unconfirmed.

The entire Internet is aflame, at least by. The standards of your average Saturday night, on word that Boy Genius Report has gotten ahold of a strange pre-production white iPhone 4 loaded up with admin and field-testing apps and running quite nicely on T-Mobile 3G. That’s quite newsworthy, as no shipping iPhone supports the obscure 1700 MHz AWS band that T-Mo rolls in the U.S.

There are many number of ways of faking this — I still find it hard to believe that you wouldn’t take some serious pictures of the hardware in search of differences from the existing iPhone 4 if you actually had it in your hands — but the various software screens are fairly convincing, including a number of apps I’ve heard are used in testing, but that mere mortals like us never see.

On the one hand, it makes sense for Apple to expand it’s reach to as many standards as possible now, especially since AT&T will likely own T-Mobile unless anti-trust regulators hold up the acquisition. On the other hand, the intent of that deal is to convert all of T-Mo’s towers to LTE fairly rapidly. It’s interesting.

Have a look through the gallery and let us know what you think — I’m actually most skeptical of Apple Connect. Would Apple really copy pattern unlock from Android?

Mowing the lawn is the outdoor equivalent to vacuuming your carpet: it has to be done regularly, and most people put it off. But now you don’t need a riding mower with dual-cupholders to impress the neighbors while being slovenly. Husqvarna has just introduced an iPhone app for remote deployment of their Automower robotic lawnmowers with GPS Communication Units.

The Automower works by following a thin wire laid on or under the grass. Using SMS Text Messaging, you can display the location of your mower on 
Google Maps, tell your machine when to start and stop, return for a charge, or check current operating status. There’s also a GPS Theft Tracking feature in case your mower ventures too far away under somebody else’s control. Would that be called Find My Lawnmower?

Doing yardwork from the couch gets my vote! Or it would, if I had a lawn…

[via TG Daily]

Apple may be prototyping an iPhone 5 with a tapered design, a larger 3.7-inch screen and a gesture-sensitive Home Button.

This is according to the ex-Engadget crew at the new “This my Next” website, who whipped up the mockup above to illustrate the various rumors they’re hearing.

• New design: Apple is testing several prototypes (we all know this) and one of the leading candidates for the iPhone 5 is thinner than the current iPhone 4 and looks “more like the iPod touch.” It has a teardrop shape – thinner at the bottom than the top, like the new MacBook Air.
• Gesture-sensitive Home Button: The Home Button will be bigger and will understand a gestures. “Our sources say that gestures are definitely coming in a future version of iOS,” says
• Larger screen: the screen will go up to 3.7-inches, not 4-inches as rumored. It will keep the current resolution, dropping pixel density goes from 326 to 312, but will still be a Retina Display (it’s still above 300ppi).
• No Bezel: Screen will be edge-to-edge, occupying the entire front of the iPhone. That means no bezel (or almost no bezel).
• Hidden earpiece & mouthpiece: The earpiece and sensors are behind the screen itself.
• Inductive charging: It may or may not have wireless inductive charging. Crystal ball is cloudy.
• NFC: Likewise it may or may not have NFC.
• Global radio chips: It’ll be based on Qualcomm’s dual GSM/CDMA Gobi chipset, which means it’ll work on a ton of GSM and CDMA networks worldwide, most importantly in China.

Joshua Topolsky warns, however, that none of this is set in stone: “Keep in mind that this info isn’t fact — we’re getting lots of threads from lots of places and trying to make sense of the noise. The versions of devices our sources are seeing could be design prototypes and not production-ready phones. Still, there are strong indications that Apple will surprise a public that’s expecting a bump more along the lines of the 3G to 3GS — and this is some insight into where those designs might be headed.”

Looks like the white iPhone 4 is just about to be released.

One customer in the UK was able to buy a 16GB white iPhone 4 from Vodaphone, and an internal memo from BelCompany in the Netherlands says the near-mythical handset is being released next week — Wednesday, April 27th.

In addition, retailers in Europe are getting supplies of the iPhone with “do not open until April 27” stickers, says 9to5Mac.

It is not clear, however, if that is the worldwide launch for the white iPhone 4. But it certainly looks like it.

Apple has a great recycling program, but they are not the only company to offer such a program. Both RadioShack and Best Buy offer their own recycling programs. I thought it might be nice to share some information about these alternative programs with you on Earth Day.

The reason I’m mentioning this is due to the fact that I often hear from readers that aren’t close to an Apple Store. They often tell me that they may not even have a store in their city or state. Ouch.

Country living might be restful, but I’m glad that I live in a big city since Houston has six Apple Stores accessible to everyone living in Houston or the surrounding areas. Fortunately, some of you without such good access to Apple Stores just might have access to a RadioShack or a Best Buy. So let’s take a look at what they have to offer.

Well, crud. I knew the day was coming when my beloved 11-inch MacBook Air would become obsolete, but I hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. It appears those hopes are dashed: Apple will reportedly refresh the MacBook Air line in June, replacing the current Mini DisplayPort with their new 10Gbps bi-directional Thunderbolt I/O port.

I like to imagine that Bulletproof started out as a pitch by Mobigame to develop an official, first-person game based upon the Matrix trilogy.

“Okay, dudes, get this: here you are, and you’re Neo, and there’s like five agents in front of you, shooting at point blank range, and then you stop time, and then you start punching the bullets right out of the air, and OH MY GOD IT’LL BE AWESOME.”

“Pass,” says Warner Bros. But no problem: you just change the background, slap some vaguely Soviet guard hats on the agents, and sell the whole game to Amnesty International, pitching it as a way to raise awareness of human rights violations around the world.

Now that’s business savvy.