iOS devices refer to any of Apple’s hardware that runs the iOS mobile operating system which include iPhones, iPads, and iPods. Historically, Apple releases a new iOS version once a year, the current version is iOS 10. Here is the complete list of iOS 10 compatible devices.
iLounge claims that the expected MobileMe revamp will be launching ahead of WWDC, sometime next month (April). The new MobileMe is said to be free is may be a major departure from the current version of MobileMe as the current version is said to be phased out in a year.
In addition, the source was told that Apple will be supporting the existing version of MobileMe for the next year, suggesting that the new version will be quite different from the existing service; the extra year of support would likely cover those who recently paid for a full year of MobileMe, prior to Apple removing any method through which a user could pay for the service.
Apple is expected to hold an iOS 5 event sometime in April and this would be a perfect time to also unveil the new MobileMe. The new service is said to be more cloud-based with a “locker” that stores your media. The service will potentially even connect to your iTunes library to provide streaming to iOS devices from the cloud. Expand Expanding Close
As the debate over whether Apple will put an NFC chip inside iPhone 5 continues, a new report hints at interesting possible uses that go beyond contactless payments. Specifically, an iPhone 5 with this chip could double as a portable login system allowing you to run your purchased Mac App Store applications on a guest Mac system as well as access, edit and save your documents remotely via the MobileMe cloud, an unnamed insider told Leander Kahney in an exclusive Cult of Mac story:
According to our source, who asked not to be named, 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. But if the user opens an app, it is downloaded temporarily to the computer for use. When the NFC connection is broken, the apps are deleted and the computer returns to its previous state.
Image is a third-party “metal” back sticker for iPhone 4, not an image of the iPhone 5
A source from Foxconn who we believe to be reliable has provided us with some information about Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone. Most of the information lines up with past reports but we have also learned a few new details. Most notably is that the iPhone 5 has already been seen at Foxconn and is soon going into the normal mass production stages. In terms of design, the iPhone 5 is said to look fairly similar to the iPhone 4 except for two very important differences: materials and screen size.
The iPhone 5 will keep a relatively similar size and shape as the iPhone 4 but Apple has decided to move away from the back-glass enclosure found on the fourth-generation device and move to something similar to the back of the first-generation iPhone from 2007. Although some reports claim the iPhone 5 will adopt a curved metal back, our source says models have been floating around with a flat metal back. The material of this metal is unspecified. Our brains say aluminum but our hearts wonder if this could be Liquid Metal.
You can’t always be there at bedtime to read your kids their evening stories. However, Nursery Rhymes with StoryTime let’s you read them their favorite stories remotely using an iPhone. While it doesn’t replace being there, it is a nice stopgap and a great idea. The artwork on these stories is top notch.
I see this as being fantastic for parents that are split up or even parents that travel often. Perhaps v2 could have a little FaceTime window.
iSuppli’s research and in-depth iPad 2 tear down has revealed that vital iPad 2 parts like the thin battery, display glass, and electronic compass may be directly sourced from Japanese plants. The earthquake and tsunami in Japan has caused many manufacturing plants to temporarily stop work and it is possible, that if certain iPad 2 parts are in fact from Japan, that some iPad 2 parts may be in tight supply.
The IHS iSuppli teardown analysis of the iPad 2 so far has been able to identify five parts sourced from Japanese suppliers: NAND flash from Toshiba Corp., dynamic random access memory (DRAM) made by Elpida Memory Inc., an electronic compass from AKM Semiconductor, the touch screen overlay glass likely from Asahi Glass Co. and the system battery from Apple Japan Inc. There potentially are other components from Japan in the iPad 2, however, the teardown analysis process cannot always identify all components’ countries of origin.
These potential supply issues obviously in no way connect to the short supply of iPad 2s on launch day and in the days since launch. The issue does come at the point in which Apple is trying to build as many iPad 2s as possible in order to meet “amazing” demand for the product.
Toshiba, an Apple supplier for flash storage, temporarily suspended NAND flash production in their Japanese plants. Apple obtaining flash storage drives for their iOS devices and other products like the MacBook Air is not as big of a deal as the iPad 2s battery, glass, and compass as the storage technology is also sourced from other other nations by other suppliers, notably Samsung.
iOS 4.3 brought enhanced AirPlay, a speedier Safari, iTunes Home Sharing, and more to iOS device users, but it appears that iOS 4.3 has brought another thing, a seemingly negative one: subpar battery life. A number of readers have written in to less us know that since upgrading to iOS 4.3 their battery life has been “drastically” worse. One report to us claims random battery life drops in 15-20% increments.
Installed iOS 4.3 on my iPhone 4 and also have it on my iPad 2 and I am noticing drastic battery loss. Sometimes will even randomly drop 15-20%.
This battery life bug in iOS 4.3 could come as a natural bug in the operating system, or could be related to some of the new features present in the latest system upgrade. It is possible that the faster rendering in iOS Safari uses more processing power, furthermore battery life. Another possibility could be the new Ping push notification feature, which runs in the background.
A number of users are reporting in Apple’s official support discussion forums that their devices are, too, experiencing battery life that is subpar to their experience in earlier versions of iOS:
As if today’s pay wall announcement from the New York Times Company wasn’t enough, the news broke that an iPad-exclusive newspaper, The Daily, will begin charging for access next week. Unlike the Times’ entry-level $15 a month subscription for reading online articles on smartphones, the privilege of enjoying The Daily on your iPad costs just 99 cents per week, or forty bucks per year. Rupert Murdoch’s digital-only newspaper is slated to launch in Western Europe by summer, The Guardian reports. The exact release depends on when Apple’s new iOS subscription service becomes available in the country.
In January, Bloomberg claimed the next-generation iPhone will include NFC (near-field-communication) technology with a “wave-to-pay” system. This last week The Indepedent shot down these claims saying that if NFC appears at all, it won’t be until 2012 alongside the sixth-generation iPhone.
Now, Elizabeth Woyke from Forbes is claiming (via SAI) that according to an Apple employee, the iPhone 5 will in fact feature NFC capabilities.
Just met with an entrepreneur who says the iPhone 5 *will* have NFC…according to his friend, who works at Apple. Huh.
At this point it’s difficult to pinpoint which rumors are true and which are false with so many differences flying around the rumor mill lately. If it means anything Elizabeth Woyke was a bit spotty on her Best Buy gives iPads to all employees post. An NFC capable iPhone also popped up in a T-Mobile presentation slide.
Today, J.D. Power and Associates announced that Apple’s iPhone is once again the smartphone that customers are most satisfied with. This is the fifth consecutive year in which Apple has attained the award and the iPhone earned a score of 795/1000.
Even though this is 5 points shy of Apple’s 800/1000 score from 2010, Apple still came out over competitors Motorola (763) and HTC (762). The J.D. Power survey judges the following categories:
Operation (30%); physical design (30%); features (20%); and battery function (20%). For smartphones, the key factors are: ease of operation (26%); operating system (24%); physical design (23%); features (19%); and battery function (8%).
According to the survey results, the iPhone performs “particularly well” in physical design, ease of use, and the operating system (iOS). Apple’s latest iPhone – iPhone 4 – has been the site of much controversy, mostly having to due with antenna issues.
Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone – “iPhone 5” in June, for a June/July launch, with faster internals and a similar design to the iPhone 4.
Apple has issued a statement to The Register confirming reports and rumors stating that iOS web apps and embedded web views in iOS applications are throttled and run twice as slow as Safari.
iOS 4.3 includes a new “nitro” web processing engine, which promises to run java script twice as fast as earlier versions of iOS Safari. According to Apple’s iOS feature page:
As you surf the web, your fingers will love the responsiveness of the new Nitro JavaScript engine powering Safari. It runs JavaScript up to twice as fast as in iOS 4.2.2Which means you get more speed behind each page load. And sites with lots of interactive features can appear on your screen even faster.
The only affected users would be users of third-party web browsers that utilize the web engine that Apple provides to developers in Xcode. Full-screen web applications that launch from the iOS homescreen are, of course, affected as well.
We presume that Apple has left out asynchronous mode of execution and other HTML5 goodies, too.
Apple spokesperson Trudy Miller confirms:
The embedded web viewer does not take advantage of Safari’s web performance optimizations.
Apple does not provide a reason as to why this is the case but here is our speculation from the other day:
Of course, Apple has a vested interest in native apps due to a 30 percent cut they take from sales. I’ve argued nearly two years ago that the web is the ultimate app store and it’s true that many native apps are easily replicated with HTML/CSS, especially the stuff like news readers, social networking clients and more. Also important, web apps run on any device with a standards-complaint browser whereas their native counterparts lock you into a specific mobile platform.
Last night, an update to Angry Birds HD dropped on iPad with fifteen new levels, a new golden egg and a “feature” that has immediately angered loyal fans – adverts. No, not the unobtrusive types of an AdMob or AdSense variety seen in some apps. In Angry Birds HD, a “news section” – a nicer word for advertisements – hits gamers in the face upon reaching the pause screen.
It pitches the official merchandise, forcing gamers to wait for the promotional animation to finish, thus hindering their ability to restart the level and resume the game as quickly as possible. The move backfired as agitated fans began posting despicable comments in iTunes reviews. Here’s what one avid fan wrote:
According to a Blaze study stemming from 45,000 Android and iOS tests, the Android browser on average loads web pages 52 percent faster than mobile Safari. The results are inconclusive, however, because it’s unclear whether Blaze’s measurements take into account the new Nitro JavaScript engine that comes with iOS 4.3. The report was completed before this complaint was made public and Blaze is arguing that the lack of Nitro boost can “slightly” skew the results given that “JavaScript only accounts for a small percentage of the total load time.”
3G and GPS are supposedly the only notable differences between WiFi and 3G models of iPad 2. Alas, the WiFi model records higher-quality audio than its 3G counterpart. Mind you, it’s a design deficiency rather than a feature. iLounge did some testing and discovered that WiFi units evidently record better-sounding audio.
An unknown portion of the latest MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge processors and high-speed Thunderbolt connection appears to be affected by an issue where the computer has trouble maintaining connection with iOS devices, even with the latest iTunes 10.2.1 installed. And if more than 215 posts in a thread on Apple’s Discussion forums are an indication, numerous 2011 MacBook Pros are plagued with this issue.
From what we’ve hearing, it’s a software issue easily patched with an upcoming software update (10.6.7). Here’s what the affected owners are saying.
Apple has rolled out three new iPhone commercials that introduce an interesting twist to the formula. Rather than stick with the familiar “There’s an app for that” catchphrase, the new commercials take the opposite angle. Expand Expanding Close
‘It’s not a good party unless you run out of beer,’ says TWC in regards to the loss of channels in the iPad app today. They deny outages are being caused by programmers who could have pulled their content even though some are reportedly upset.
Our engineering team is working as hard as they can to put a fix in place and get everything up and running as soon as they can. For the time being, the app is running with only 15 channels. We have found that by temporarily reducing the number of available channels, we can ease strain on the authentication process. This will enable us to offer at least some sort of an experience to our customers while we get a fix in place. We’ll add the other 17 channels back in as soon as we can fix the underlying issue, and we’ll be adding more channels in future iterations of the app as well.
If you are offering cable content on the iPad, you better buy more than a few kegs.
Life is definitely good in the land of iPad. In 2016, sales of Apple’s tablet should top more than a hundred million units annually and half a billion units cumulatively. It’s projected to grab the biggest chunk of an estimated 60 million slates in this year, another indication that 2011 and 2012 will be the years of iPad. This notion is shared by analyst Jennifer Colegrove who says tablet PCs are “the fastest growing application for touch screens.”
A simple armchair analysis suggests cumulative iPad shipments nearing a whooping half a billion units by the end of 2016. Yes, five years is too long a time for crystal ball peering, but even the most outspoken naysayers coming out of the woodwork should acknowledge the iPad’s enormous potential for Apple’s fortunes.
The Pusetic brothers, the brains behind the stupendously addictive platform jumper Doodle Jump that has amassed ten million paid downloads, have just released a brand new game that introduces an interesting twist to the original formula. It’s called Doodle Jump: Hop the Movie and is available free for the iPhone and iPad.
Mobile games developer Gameloft is launching Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Shadow Vanguard for the iPhone tomorrow and to mark the occasion they’ve put together a pretty awesome interactive trailer that lets you play the embassy level by clicking on the hotspots to choose between several possible directions. It’s kinda cool, reminds me of those laserdisc games from the 80s, such as Dragon’s Lair, which has been ported to both the iPhone and iPad. Note that the above clip works on PCs and Macs, but those watching the trailer on their iDevice won’t be able to interact with it. The official site has more information about this promising looking release.
Alibaba, the source of many accurate iPad 2 cases, is now seeing some purported “iPhone 5” cases in their listings. The case sellers could easily name the listings whatever they want, but coupled with similar cases from Hard Macwe think they could have some credibility.
These cases show a nearly identical design to the iPhone 4 with camera and LED flash holes on the back of the case, openings on the top for the earphone jack and sleep/wake button, and an opening on the device’s side for the SIM slot. Case manufacturers tend to not leave those ports open in cases.
Adding to these cases are purported engineering images from last week. These images, from a sometimes accurate chinese iPhone parts reseller, also depict an iPhone 4 design, but with a larger display and edge-to-edge glass.
As you know, Apple has finally brought wireless tethering functionality with iOS 4.3. Called Personal Hotspot, it allows you to share your iPhone’s 3G cellular data connection with other devices over its WiFi connection. It’s one less reason to fork an additional $130 for a 3G iPad even though some people are willing to pay the premium for its GPS features. Well, guess what, your WiFi-only iPad inherits GPS positioning capabilities when you tether the tablet to an iPhone via the Personal Hotspot feature.
We’ve seen a lot of parts allegedly pertaining to the mythical white iPhone 4 leaked by third-party service technicians and parts makers, but never from Apple. According to our reader Aaron who sent this in, he was greeted with the white iPhone 4 graphics when checking the status of his DIY repair request on Apple’s support website. He writes:
The maker of the widely popular game Doodle Jump, Lima Sky, has announced that the app has surpassed the 10 million download mark since its April 2009 App Store debut. The folks behind this success story are in the middle of producing an iPad-specific version of game with “brand new content.”
After such incredible first two years, it is safe to say Doodle Jump has exceeded even our wildest imaginations,” says Igor Pusenjak, founder of Lima Sky. “We are looking forward to bringing even more amazing content to millions of Doodle Jump fans around the world.
Perhaps the most exciting news from Lima Sky’s announcement is that Doodle Jump is coming to the Microsoft Xbox Kinect. Lima Sky is yet to announce the logistics of that or a launch time frame, but it does sound exciting. Full press release (via Joystiq) is after the break.
