Apple

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Patently Apple did what it does and dug up a patent related to building 3D avatars:

Earlier today we introduced Apple’s 3D Avatar App which covered a basic overview of the new application in the works. Now a second patent application has surfaced and it actually shows that the app is already running on an iPad! We have the screenshot to prove it. The new patent application focuses on how the app will work with color palettes and more. The big news however is that the new 3D Avatar App is in its final stages of development and that’s very cool. Evidently phase-one of the application is geared for the younger crowd, but other editions could be in the works as discussed in our first report today.

This could be for GameCenter or a number of other areas where you would want to create an online personality.

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We knew the Fair Labor Association would publish the initial findings of its investigation into Apple’s Foxconn facilities, and now the report is officially available through the organization’s website. The full report released today and is here. The press release outlining the investigation is below. According to the recommendations, Foxconn committed to “bring its factories into full compliance with Chinese legal limits and FLA standards on working hours by July 2013.”

The last we heard from the FLA about its audits into Apple’s Foxconn facilities was that it found “tons of issues.” Apple became the first technology company accepted as a member into the organization after controversies surrounding working conditions in Apple’s supply chains abroad became mainstream. As for what the FLA found in its audits of the three Foxconn facilities, here is an excerpt from the report:

FLA’s investigation found that within the last 12 months, all three factories exceeded both the FLA Code standard of 60 hours per week (regular plus overtime) and the Chinese legal limits of 40 hours per week and 36 hours maximum overtime per month. During peak production periods, the average number of hours worked per week exceeded 60 hours per worker. There were periods in which some employees worked more than seven days in a row without the required 24 hours off.

The FLA said Foxconn’s commitment will “reduce working hours to legal limits while protecting pay, improve health and safety conditions, establish a genuine voice for workers, and will monitor on an ongoing basis to verify compliance.” This will lead to a maximum 49-hour workweek, including overtime for employees and a decrease in monthly overtime from 80 hours to 36 hours. While we reported some workers were unhappy with working fewer hours, Foxconn also committed to a compensation package for workers with reduced overtime:

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The man in the interview above with RT is photographer Doug Menuez. He spent three years capturing Steve Jobs after the legendary chief executive officer was forced out of Apple in 1985 and began work at NeXT computer. In the interview, Menuez gave first-hand accounts of how Jobs worked with engineers and his team at NeXT, and he spent an almost four-year period photographing Jobs and the company. Menuez did not keep in contact with Jobs following those years, but thousands of his pictures currently reside in Stanford’s Apple Collection archives.

Menuez told RT how the project to photograph Jobs initially began:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=R92jQtQuhuA]

With the Intel CPU news today, a 9to5Mac commenter posted the above fake commercial in our comments.

The joint mechanism is obviously a fake, but  it would not be out of the realm of possibility to see a 360-degree hinge on the next generation of MacBooks coupled with a touch display —especially because Apple has taken the Mac OS in the same direction as iOS during the last few years.

More usability is made available in the MacBook with a 360-degree hinge, but it also creates less need for an iPad, which does not bode well for this concept.

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We are sure the Lumia 900 launch will be great for AT&T, but the carrier might be setting expectations a little high:

“At all levels, this is a notch above anything we’ve ever done,” AT&T device head Jeff Bradley said in an interview with CNET, noting that includes the launch of the iPhone.

Sure, Microsoft and AT&T will be throwing a lot of cash at this launch, and pricing their “Hero” device at $100 with plan certainly is aggressive, but does anyone really this launch will overshadow the 1 million-unit weekend of the iPhone 4S launch that AT&T itself said:
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Ending Saturday, StackSocial offers the $30 The TuneUp Bundle which offers to “Cleanup your iTunes Music Collection. Automagically.” The TuneUp Bundle (Lifetime License) includes:

• Clean — Accurately fixes mislabeled or missing song information (like “Track 01” or “Unknown Artist”) using cutting-edge waveform recognition

• Cover Art — Scans your entire music collection in seconds and automagically™ fills in missing album artwork

• DeDuper— Intelligently finds and removes duplicate music files from your music library using waveform recognition

• Tuniverse — Delivers music videos, artist bios, concert alerts, social network integration and more

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjgeG_fbxus&feature=youtu.be&hd=1]

Ending today, MacUpdate has one of the best bundles we have ever seen on a wide-ranging set of Mac software. You are breaking even with the VMware Fusion 4 headliner, but there are great apps up and down the lineup including Drive Genius disk utility, PDFPen 5 PDF editor, Snapheal photo editing, Forklift FTP/Finder Utility, Typinator 5. These are all great apps….
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Apple today told developers that it was adding two new price tiers for high end apps at the $124.99 and $174.99 price points giving developers new price points from which to sell their apps.

Click to enlarge – new price points at Tier 63 and Tier 69

We’re not exactly sure why Apple made the move but there you go…

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A ton of recent rumors all but confirm Apple plans to enter the TV market with a full-fledged Apple-branded HDTV, but today a patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office details an advancement of high refresh rate LCD technology known as “fringe field switching.” As described by PatentlyApple, Apple’s patent offers advancements in the technology that would allow FFS for use with large screen HDTVs. The report noted, “Previous versions of FSS couldn’t accommodate such large displays.” PatentlyApple explained:

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The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is seeking to have Apple drop the “4G” from the advertising/website of its new iPad products with cell modems…

The ACCC alleges that Apple’s recent promotion of the new “iPad with WiFi + 4G” is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product “iPad with WiFi + 4G” can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, when this is not the case.

Optus and Telstra do not use the compatible LTE radio frequencies as Apple’s iPad; therefore, new iPads are not compatible with the LTE 4G networks in Australia. Both mobile carriers already dropped the “4G” naming on the new iPad on their websites. However, Apple does display “iPad +4G” on the Apple.com.au website.

The speed that the iPad gets in Australia is pretty solid…

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Importantly, Apple has the subtext:

The iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G model can roam worldwide on fast GSM/UMTS networks, including HSPA, HSPA+, and DC-HSDPA. When you travel internationally, you can use a micro-SIM card from a local carrier. You can also connect to the 4G LTE networks of AT&T in the U.S. and Bell, Rogers, and Telus in Canada.

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More importantly, it does not look like Australians play high and fast with marketing terms like “4G” as we do here in the United States, which now describes HSPA+ on AT&T iPhone 4S’s.
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Earlier today, we noted that PC World tested the new iPad against some Android tablets for heating during use and found it to be on the high-end but not always the hottest.

Wired did its own tests and found the new iPad to be middle of the road…

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We already knew from Apple’s 10-K report in October that the company planned to spend approximately $900 million on retail stores during 2012. The investment would account for the opening of roughly 40 new locations throughout the year. At least some of that investment will be going toward three new stores in Germany, one in the northwest region of Spain, and others in Australia and France’s Burgundy wine region.

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There are two interesting pieces of information this morning on the new iPad.

If used solely as an LTE MiFi, AnandTech got a mind-numbing 25.3 hours of Verizon LTE hotspotting out of the new iPad. That is equal to about five to seven MiFis.

Now for the killer. If you have an iPad on Verizon’s LTE network and use it as a personal hotspot (not currently possible on the AT&T version), it will last you roughly 25.3 hours on a single charge. Obviously that’s with the display turned off, but with a 42.5Wh battery driving Qualcomm’s MDM9600 you get tons of life out of the new iPad as a personal hotspot.

By my calculations, that means you could download 182GB of data at 2MB/sec on LTE through a single charge or over 18 times Verizon’s highest data plan in a single day.

In addition, PCWorld tested the heat on the new iPad and compared it to the ASUS Eee Transformer Prime and Samsung Galaxy Tab under the same conditions. Without the charger plugged in, the new iPad was actually cooler than the Samsung Galaxy Tab—even with a bigger battery after playing a game for an hour.

The point is that the new iPad runs only slightly hotter than high-end Android tablets and only when charging. The cool champion is still the iPad 2 when playing graphic intensive games.

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Reports are surfacing in China that claim Apple plans to integrate Baidu into iOS next month as the country’s possible default search function.

According to Chinese news website Sina Tech (machine-translation):

Sina Technology News on March 26 morning news, according to informed sources, Apple iOS operating system next month will be formally introduced Baidu search, Baidu and Apple between cooperation component in the China region.

Google’s Susan Creighton revealed last fall that two-thirds of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company’s mobile search comes from Apple iOS devices.

Meanwhile, recent speculation claims Apple is moving to an in-house Mapping solution that would replace Google Maps. The firm also recently removed its publish to YouTube option in QuickTime for Mountain lion. If these latest rumors deem true, Apple’s move to Baidu would further indicate a significant effort to reduce Google’s presence in iOS.

With that said, the move to Baidu might be more than a snub to Google. As SearchEngineLand noted, Baidu holds 80 percent of the search market in China, and it would make sense for the Chinese to carry the same search on their mobile devices as they have on their desktop.

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Skype for iPad got a Retina update this morning, meaning its icons and menus will not show pixelated fonts that will harm your new iPad Retina sensibilities. Unfortunately, the new iPad’s front-facing camera is still VGA, and we are pretty sure Skype is not pulling 2048-by-1500 pixel video feeds though your LTE connection just yet.

Still, it is exciting to see Skype updating for anything within months of release.

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We are hearing additional little tidbits about the new iPad’s battery and its ability to charge beyond 100 percent. CNBC’s John Fortt reports Apple has stated that charging beyond 100 percent could somehow “harm the longevity of the battery.”

Apple is saying when it reads 100% the battery indicator reads 100%. It’s actually full enough to give you the kind of performance that they promise in their marketing. That’s ten hours of all-day battery life. They say if you charge it more than that, you could harm the longevity of the battery. So they say this isn’t just an issue with the new iPad. It was an issue with the previous ones well but this battery is 70% bigger so you’re more likely to notice it.

This would be extremely odd, so we are skeptical and looking for clarification on the issue. We already observed the new iPad continues charging for an hour beyond its 100 percent and noted you get longer battery-use if you let the iPad stay on those extra 60 minutes.

But are those extra minutes coming at a cost? It would be surprising if Apple wanted people to pull the plug on the new iPad when it hits 100 percent (especially because it now requires an overnight charge to fill it up).

Apple says nothing about this on its iPad battery usage/optimization page.

Charge Cycles (Charge cycles vary by use, environment, settings, configuration, and many other factors.)

A properly maintained iPad battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 1000 full charge and discharge cycles. You may choose to replace your battery when it no longer holds sufficient charge to meet your needs.

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(Screenshot of The Lorax from Trailers App – Click to enlarge to full size)

Apple updated its Movie Trailers.app today to Retina graphics, which you will immediately notice bring videos to a higher 1080P quality.

iTunes Move Trailers 1.1 is now designed for the spectacular Retina display on the all-new iPad.

This would have been a good app to showcase when launching the Retina display. Either way, the video quality is impressive to the point that it makes the app addictive.

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Apple is unlikely to ever do such a thing (among other things, it would kill its pricing matrix), but sometimes I wish my iPhone or iPad had a built-in MicroSD card slot for easy access to lots of cheap storage. The 16GB cards routinely sell for $10 and new cards go as high as 64GB. However, it is not just about the storage being inexpensive and extremely portable. The SD cards easily swap with Macs, PCs, Cameras, photo frames, video players, Blu-ray players, and other phones.

You can currently connect MicroSD cards with the unwieldy iPad Apple Digital AV Adapter (this) and a Micro to SD Card adapter, but what say you? Should Apple build a MicroSD card slot into upcoming iOS devices?

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Reports from the Wall Street Journal last October revealed Sprint’s Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse convinced the company’s board to take on a staggering commitment of approximately $20 billion to purchase 30.5 million iPhones over four years. At the time, Hesse said Sprint “would likely lose money on the deal until 2014. ″ He also claimed not having the iPhone was “the No. 1 reason customers leave or switch.” In an interview with Mobile World Live (via BGR), Hesse defended the decision and claimed, among other things, that iPhone users are “more profitable than the average smartphone customer.”

“ Subsidies are heavy for the iPhone. This is the reason why a high percentage of new customers is important… But iPhone customers have a lower level of churn and they actually use less data on average than a high-end 4G Android device. So from a cost point of view and a customer lifetime value perspective. They’re more profitable than the average smartphone customer.”

Hesse went on to claim that Sprint was “pulling a lot of customers” from AT&T and Verizon during the fourth quarter by noting four out of every 10 iPhones the carrier sold were new customers. According to Hesse, that is around double the rate of the other carriers.

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While it is no secret that LTE devices are capable of burning through data quicker than their 3G counterparts burn, several reports claim many new iPad users are concerned about how quickly they are reaching their data cap. In some cases, users reported reaching their 2GB monthly cap within hours of just streaming video. According to a new report from The Wall Street Journalthatprofiled several disgruntled AT&T and Verizon customers, Apple’s “promise of superfast wireless connections collides with the reality of what those services cost.”

Doing some math that any consumer could: LTE speeds often hit 2 Megabytes/second. You would hit 2GB in 1000 seconds—or under 17 minutes.

One man profiled in the story, Brandon Wells, went through 2GB of his Verizon plan streaming March Madness college basketball games to his new iPad. WSJreports:

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This is an interesting little paragraph from Wired’s profile of Linus Torvalds, the founder of Open Source Linux OS:

Torvalds has never met Bill Gates, but around 2000, when he was still working at Transmeta, he met Steve Jobs. Jobs invited him to Apple’s Cupertino campus and tried to hire him. “Unix for the biggest user base: that was the pitch,” says Torvalds. The condition: He’d have to drop Linux development. “He wanted me to work at Apple doing non-Linux things,” he said. That was a non-starter for Torvalds. Besides, he hated Mac OS’s Mach kernel.

Linux is now the core of many operating systems, such as Android, Chrome WebOS, and a few others. If Apple hired Torvalds in 2000, Linux might not have made it to 2012.

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CNET spoke with DisplayMate’s Raymond Soneira who offered a few reasons why the new iPad is a bit “toastier”…

1. Twice the LEDs: That means more heat coming from more LEDs. This is especially a problem at full brightness.
2. 2.5X the power needed: The brightness efficiency is lower, because the new iPad has more pixels (which means more transistors) compared to the iPad 2. More pixels and transistors take up more space, meaning less opportunity for light to pass. “So they basically have to blast light through the LCD to make it come out.” Soneira adds: “I measured the LED power at maximum brightness–it’s two and a half times greater than on the iPad 2.”
3. Battery generates more juice: The battery has to push out more power. This makes the battery warmer.
4. Traditional LCD technology: Sharp’s power-efficient IGZO technology was not ready for the new iPad, which forced Apple to use traditional —and less power efficient— amorphous silicon tech. [To be fair, the older iPads also used this tech. Perhaps Apple was hoping to go 100-percent IGZO to offset the above].

The biggest heater in the new iPad is the new processor that has four graphics cores. If you look at the heat maps Consumer Reports and Tweakers did, the center of the heat is right where that A5X sits on the left side of the device.

As a bonus, do not forget those hot and schweaty Qualcomm LTE chips that bring the “faster than home broadband” goodness directly to your 4G iPads.

With all the above said, it is a minor miracle Apple managed to keep temperatures within 10 degrees to 15 degrees of the earlier versions.

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