9to5 Staff

Imagination Technologies today announced that six key partners will be using their next-generation PowerVR Series 6 GPU code-named Rogue. However, the company named only three partners, saying the remaining three PowerVR Series6 licensees “are yet to be announced”. The three known ones are ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments and MediaTek.

Apple is currently a licensee of Imagination’s graphics unit incorporated in the Apple-branded mobile chip alongside ARM’s Cortex-based CPU unit. Apple’s A5 chip uses Imagination’s PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU unit which delivers a ninefold performance increase compared to the A4 chip. The previous A4 chip inside iPhone 4 and iPad 1 is based around the single-core PowerVR SGX 535 GPU, which also powers the iPhone 3GS. It’s quite possible that Apple is one of the mysterious three licensees of the Rogue chip.

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Apple now sells unlocked GSM iPhone 4 in America, but AT&T and Verizon still don’t offer authorized unlocking for a fee to existing subscribers.

This article has been updated with comments from Verizon and AT&T at the bottom.

Yesterday Apple began selling unlocked GSM iPhone 4 in the US. Lacking carrier subsidies, prices are $649 for the 16GB model and a hundred more for its 32GB counterpart. Unlocked iPhones arrive without a micro-SIM card so you can use them with any supported GSM carrier worldwide and without pledging to a lengthy service contract.

It’s a life-saver when travelling abroad because you can simply pop in a local carrier’s micro-SIM to temporarily use your iPhone on their network. America isn’t the only country where unlocked iPhones are being offered. Per this support document highlighting iPhone carriers around the world, some or all carriers or authorized Apple distributors in each of the following 34 markets offer contract-free iPhones:

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Apple wrote in the official court documents pertaining to its legal spat with Samsung that its key supplier “attempts to harass us” by demanding to see unreleased iPhone and iPad devices. Samsung’s request, of course, came as a response to a federal court ruling granting Apple access to the already released Samsung smartphones and tablets that the gadget maker from California alleges infringe on its patents and copy their look and feel. Apple in court documents calls Samsung “the copyist”, author Florian Mueller writes on the FOSS Patents blog. Here’s a juicy excerpt from Apple’s filing in opposition to Samsung’s Motion to Compel the surrender of samples of the iPad 3 and iPhone 5:

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Steve Jobs books are becoming a publishing phenomenon. As Apple grows bigger and gets more influence in the world, the public is obviously eager to learn more about the black-clad, charismatic CEO of the most valuable technology company in the world. While the official biography entitled ‘iSteve: The Book of Jobs’ won’t arrive before early next year, comic book publisher Bluewater Productions figured it could jump on the bandwagon with a release of their own. Entitled ‘Steve Jobs: Co-Founder of Apple’, this comic book seeks to provide an insight into the Apple CEOs legendary drive to the top and his continuing fight to stay there. From the official blurb:

Steve Jobs is nearly as iconic as his company logo. He’s been called an innovator, risk-taker, a visionary and a genius. He’s also been called unscrupulous, an egomaniac and a corporate pirate. Both sides of this complex personality are examined in an upcoming Bluewater Productions biography comic book tracing Jobs’ life and career.

Writer Chris Schmidt penciled the 32-page comic book. And you gotta love the cover artwork, credited to DC artist Joe Phillips. ‘Steve Jobs: Co-Founder of Apple’ will be available beginning August in comic shops and bookstores and online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders, priced at just four bucks. Pre-orders on Amazon are now live. Check out another pitch from the Amazon product page:

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mZvM2i5Hag?rel=0&w=670&h=411]

At the Display Taiwan show one of the display vendors, CPT, is showing off what looks like an iPad 1 with a prototype 3D display which requires special eyewear with polarizing lenses. The Apple logo and product labels on the back are covered with stickers, but the device does resemble an iPad, as shown in the included video clip (sorry about the Android intro, folks). Not that it means anything or that NetbookNews.com has a decent track record of accurate Apple reporting.

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As noted yesterday, Apple has begun selling unlocked GSM iPhone 4 in the United States. The 16GB black model starts at $649 and the 32GB version costs a $100 more. An unlocked handset offers all of the features without a contract commitment and can be used on supported GSM networks, Apple notes:

If you don’t want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice. It arrives without a micro-SIM card, so you’ll need an active micro-SIM card from any supported GSM carrier worldwide.

Both black and white models are being offered contract-free. Wondering how the unlocked iPhone 4 works? Apple provides this explanation:

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Steve Jobs isn’t afraid to publicly admit that “good artists copy, great artists steal”. He purposefully reflected on that Picasso adage numerous times in the past, as shown in a short video snippet taken from a 1984 interview included for your reference below the fold. This very saying instantly popped into our mind when we saw the new Notification Center Apple debuted in iOS 5. As anyone knows, lock screen notifications are hardly a novelty to avid jailbreakers (or Android users). In fact, we were glad to see Apple wasn’t too proud to pull Android’s notifications. Though, of course, they can never say that Android has stolen the iOS look and feel from Apple again. But Notificaton Center via a pulldown gesture isn’t the only thing Apple borrowed from others…

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Nuance, a company behind Dragon Dictation software and cloud-based voice recognition technology that the rumor mill says will power advanced voice commands in iOS 5, today released a brand new app for your iPhone. Dubbed Dragon Remote Microphone, it turns your handset into a wireless microphone for use with their Dragon Desktop software and Dragon NaturallySpeaking for the PC (v11.5 and higher). “Instead of using the microphone that comes in the retail box, users can now opt to use their iPhone as a microphone instead“, Nuance writes in iTunes release notes.heck, you can even use it with the just updated Dragon NaturallySpeaking app to update your Facebook and Twitter accounts by speaking, how cool is that? Go ahead and grab iDragon Remote Microphone, it’s a free download from the App Store.

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ED: Woops! Sorry – this was accidentally backdated during an update!

Apple has added the new purchased section to App Store and iTunes storefront apps on iOS devices with the introduction of iOS 5 back at WWDC in June. As a result, people can re-download their purchased songs, apps and books on any iOS devices. However, for large libraries this can become a cumbersome process as the iPhone’s and iPad’s interface doesn’t lend itself too well to multiple re-downloads. In addition, each time you re-download something, you’re yanked out of the storefront app.

With iTunes 10.4, Apple has added the new Purchased section to the iTunes Store. Clicking it opens a new embedded web page inside iTunes that lets you browse your purchased music, apps and books by All items and those Not In My Library. As you can see from the below screenshots, it lists a few iPad apps I had previously downloaded and then removed from my iTunes library. Those items now have the cloud icon next to them, just like in iOS storefront apps, allowing me to re-download them one by one or hit the Download All button at the bottom to bring all of my purchases back into a local iTunes library on my computer.

Coupled with the Purchased option in App Store and iTunes storfronts on iOS devices and the ability to access your purchased Mac apps via the Purchased tab in Mac App Store (though it lacks the Download All button), this completes Apple’s initiative. No doubt many people who do not back up their computers on a regular basis will find this useful as their purchases are always there, ready to be downloaded from the cloud. Thanks, Jordan!

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Above: A top-down view of the MacBook Air’s SSD chips connected via an mSATA connection to the logic board.

Solid-state storage is all the rage these days. Tiny flash-based memory chips connected via a daughter card to the MacBook Air’s motherboard enable Apple’s ultra-thin notebook to boot and respond way faster than the flagship 27-inch iMac equipped with a hard drive. NEC Corporation, a Japanese IT company, has a new technology which promises to obsolete SSDs. Teamming up with Tohoku University, NEC has developed a chip around Content Addressable Memory (CAM) technology that can save data without power and retrieve stored bits as fast as everyday RAM chips. Per official press release:

CAM is a part of spintronics logic integrated circuit technologies that utilize the negative properties of electrons together with the spin magnetic moment. The new CAM utilizes the vertical magnetization of vertical domain wall elements in reaction to magnetic substances in order to enable data that is processing within the CAM to be stored on a circuit without using power. This contrasts to conventional technologies that required data to be stored within memory. As a result, data can be saved on circuits even when power is cut from the CAM.

A jump in performance and power consumption reduction is quite dramatic so you can image what CAM chips could mean for the Air. How dramatic? Think thousand times faster, at least…

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Philip Elmer-DeWitt relayed on the Fortune blog a survey that Piper Jaffray’s resident Apple analyst Gene Munster conducted during Apple’s annual developer conference which took place in San Francisco last week. He compared the results to a similar survey conducted in 2008, when Android wasn’t on the map yet. Speaking to 45 iOS developers attending this year’s conference (versus the twenty developers he surveyed at WWDC 2008), Munster wrote in a Monday note to clients that only seven percent of respondents write Mac apps these days. That’s a notable drop from 50 percent in 2008 and a major shift towards favoring Apple’s mobile operating system. Perhaps Apple should rename the conference as iWWDC? Go past the fold for more takeaways…

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With an IDC-estimated 18.7 iPhones shipped during the first quarter of this year, Apple files as the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor, outdone only by Nokia which moved 24.2 million smartphones in Q1 2011. Rival Reseach In Motion (13.9 million units) and Samsung (10.8 million units) placed third and fourth, respectively. As much as Apple is battling Nokia for the leading smartphone maker crown, Samsung is attacking the Finnish firm on all handset sales. The rising popularity of Samsung’s feature phones and dumb phones powered by their own operating system called Bada has helped the Korean phone maker capture the #2 slot in terms of all handset shipments globally.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-36qTeAdDMI?rel=0&w=670&h=411]

The iPhoneIslam, the people behind the Cydia tweak that have successfully enabled FaceTime on iPhone 3G, are back. Their upcoming Cydia tweak is said to enable cellular calling and texting on jailbroken iPad 3Gs. The privilege of turning your tablet into o huge phone will set you back twenty bucks. We’re guessing this nifty little program should tie nicely with Apple’s new iMessage feature in iOS 5, enabling both SMS and free iMessaging on iPads. The app is called PhoneIt-iPad and should hit the Cydia Store shortly.

via Engadget

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UISettings, first third-party widget for the iOS 5 Notification Center

Well, that didn’t take too long. The jailbreak community is obviously pleased with the new Notification Center in iOS 5 and its ability to run little web programs called widgets. Apple ships two-built in widgets, Weather and Stocks, that can be configured in Settings > Notifications and a recent proof-of-concept has taught us that developing widgets for the notification screen is technically feasible, even with the latest software development kit not officially endorsing widgets. Instead of waiting, developers of unsanctioned apps have cracked widgets for Notification Center, although you’ll need a jailbroken iOS 5 device to run them. Here is a couple of nice widgets for your consideration…

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An explosion last month inside an electronic parts polishing workshop at the iPad plant in Chengdu, China, unfortunatelly had  fatal consequences for some employees: Three were left killed and at least fifteen injured. In addition to loss of lives, which cannot (and shouldn’t) be measured with money, the explosion has had tangible effects on the fortunes of Apple’s favorite contract manufacturer, writes DigiTimes this morning:

Foxconn (Hon Hai Precision Industry) had non-consolidated revenues of NT$200.561 billion (US$6.95 billion) for May dropping 2.14 percent on month due to the impact of an explosion at its plant in Chengdu City, western China, according to the company.

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Twitter user Chronic, a credible source of Apple rumors in the past (and lately), has dispelled his own rumors of an alleged Sandy Bridge MacBook Air refresh this week. Instead, he writes on Twitter explaining that “source had mixed up part numbers”, it is unlocked iPhones that will be headed to US Apple Stores for Wednesday. Here are your part numbers: MC603 (16GB, Black) MC604 (16GB, White) MC605 (32GB, Black) MC606 (32GB, White). It isn’t clear whether those phones are actually unlocked in the traditional sense or whether they are just being sold without plan like Apple has done traditionally in the past before a major refresh.

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Another interesting discovery related to the Contacts app in iOS 5. You can now, if you want, add ‘related people’ to your contact cards. The Related People field is disabled by default so you add it first by tapping the Add Field option in the contact card editing interface. Choosing Related People at the bottom lets you pick among a dozen pre-populated labels such as mother, father, parent, brother, sister, child, friend, spouse, partner, assistant, manager and other.

You can also add a custom label if you want (i.e. frenemy or boss) or define a URL. When you pick the desired labels for a contact card, simply type in the name of a related person or hit the blue arrow button to choose from your existing contacts. This looks like a nice-to-have, but it could be way more than that. Here’s the worst case scenario…

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Who-ho, a Dubai carrier that sells the iPhone may have just kissed good-bye its chances of doing business with Apple. According to GulfNews.com, the United Arab Emirate’s wireless operator etisalat (yes, without capital “e”) has gone official today on a possible iPhone 5 launch. Here’s what their head of corporate communication said:

Yes, we are in talks with most smartphone manufacturers including Apple on the rollout of the 4G handset, iPhone 5 later this year. As the first telecom organisation to roll out the 4G network, LTE, in the Middle East, we have already started talking to them for the handsets and chipsets in them.”

Yeah, and analysts have promised us flying cars, too. Take this one with a healthy dose of skepticism. On the other hand, here we have a corporate communication chief of Apple’s valued carrier partner publicly hinting at a release time-frame of an upcoming Apple handset. Either he doesn’t have a clue what he’s talking about – in which case today will be his last day at job – or he’s just inadvertently confirmed September launch rumors .

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Media framework strings in iOS SDK have added a new 1080p video export preset

In addition to the newly discovered ability to render 1080p videos on A4-powered devices by scaling down high-definition content on-the-fly, a tipster pointed out that the iOS 5 software development kit ups the maximum resolution for video exports from 720p all the way up to 1080p. The iOS 5 media framework now rocks a new video export option: A 1920-by-1080 full HD preset. Previously, programmers calling system APIs were only able to export video content in 720p. The change has been spotted in export preset strings of AVAsset, an abstract class of AV Foundation framework which has been around since iOS 4.

Programmers use the AVAsset class to work on a detailed level with timed media assets such as videos and sounds. It lets them examine, create, edit or reencode media files, get input streams from devices, manipulate video clips during realtime capture and playback and more. It is now clear that iOS 5 enables devices such as iPhone 4, iPad 1 and 2 and fourth-generation iPod touch (all powered by the A4 chip) are now able to both decode and encode 1080p content. This completes the picture and is another indication that the rumors of an eight-megapixel camera with 1080p video capture on iPhone 5 are likely true because there is no point in iOS 5 supporting 1080p video exports if users won’t be able to acquire full-HD content on their iPhone 5.

iOS 5 can render 1080p videos (try this out by emailing yourself a short 1080p clip) and third-party apps are no longer limited to exporting video files in 720p

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Just as MuscleNerd informed the world that the iPhone-dev Team has successfully jailbroken a developer beta of iOS 5, the team two hours ago released an updated redsn0w beta tool that lets you put unsanctioned apps on your devices running a developer preview of iOS 5. Unlockers should avoid this jailbreak as they are very likely to lose their unlockable baseband if they try to install iOS 5, the team warned. Other useful things to know…

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Liz Gannes writesfor All Things D that Apple’s social integration in iOS 5 includes much more than Twitter, which was formally announced during the WWDC 2011 keynote on Monday. Look no further than contact cards in a developer version of iOS 5, Gannes writes:

The contact information page in the iOS 5 address book has a field not just for Twitter, but also offers space to add friends’ handles on Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn and Myspace. Alongside a person’s email address and phone number, an iOS user can also add links to their accounts around the Web. Then Apple auto-populates the URL for each of the services. Clicking on the account name opens up Safari to that person’s profile page.

In addition to four additional social networks, iOS 5 contact cards also include an option to add custom service by pasting a profile URL.

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