iPad (2021)

VooMoteZapper is a universal remote control for iOS devices created by a company called Zero1.tv, and it is now available at the online Apple Store.

The app-enabled accessory does away with multiple remote control apps for individual consumer electronics products, replacing them with a single software solution for home device management. At about the size of a paperclip, this product connects to the 30-pin dock connector and does not need batteries to work nor do you have to pair it.

The remote can control an HD TV, DVD player, home theater, and almost all your A/V equipment. The gizmo works with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 5, and an accompanying app supports gestures. It also features an edit mode, and it packs one-touch room control and other features. The VooMoteZapper is $69.95 at the online Apple Store, and it is available in a variety of refreshing colors including red, green, blue, pink, and gray. Spec sheet is available below.

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Apple Store inside of a Best Buy

Apple and Walmart subsidiary Sam’s Club are in early discussions to widen their already existing partnership. Sam’s Club currently sells Apple’s iPhone, iPad, and iPod lines within its large retail chain, but the two corporate giants are looking to take their business relationship to the next level. According to sources, Apple is considering an expansion of its Apple Store-in-store program to the 47 United States retail warehouse chain.

Sources said Apple is looking to expand its program beyond Best Buy and Target in the United States, and Sam’s Club is one of the retail chains that Apple is in early discussions with. An Apple-store-in-store typically consists of a mini-Apple Store type setup within a larger store. For example, the store-in-stores in Best Buy consist of Apple-like displays and a large table with all of Apple’s products as typically seen in standalone Apple Stores.

Sam’s Club and Apple are not only in early discussions for the Apple store-in-store program, but a backup plan is also being discussed. This plan consists of Sam’s Club simply selling Apple’s Macs, but without the Apple Store features. Since the discussions are still early, sources could not comment on a timeframe for such partnerships, but we know the store-in-stores will likely not be coming soon—or at all if the discussions fall flat. While Sam’s Club is said to be considered, it is unknown if its parent company Walmart is, too.

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Software giant Microsoft will release in the second quarter a high-profile productivity tool for Android-toting business professionals. Accompanying Microsoft’s CRM Dynamics 2012 platform update is a preview guide that specifically mentions Android support, as noted by ZDnet. The document also includes a screenshot depicting Dynamics CRM mobile client for iPad (as seen on the right). In addition to native clients for Android devices and iPads/iPhones running iOS 5.x, Dynamics CRM will also be available on devices powered by Microsoft’s Windows Phone software.

As opposed to a web client that comes with significant limitations, the mobile client comes with all the bells and whistles so it should be Godsend for road warriors. Many businesses rely upon Dynamics CRM to manage their interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. Dynamics CRM mobile client will be priced at $30 a month per seat versus rival Salesforce’s mobile client which starts at $65 a month per seat.

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Update: 8PM ET: Apple has updated the store and all 3G devices are again available.

Just this morning Apple was dealt a patent blow by a German court that ruled Apple’s 3G products outside of the iPhone 4S were in violation of Motorola patents. The “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” (FRAND) nature of the patents means Apple should be able to purchase licensing rights to those patents at market rates (i.e. what Nokia, Samsung, and others pay). According to Apple, Motorola has not offered those types of terms.

Fast forward to a few minutes ago: Apple stated the 3G devices in question would be back on sale “shortly”…

Slashgear reported:

Apple has been granted a suspension of the German injunction against 3G-enabled iOS devices, with the iPad WiFi + 3G, iPhone 4 and other gadgets back on sale through the company’s online store. ”All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly” the company told us in a statement. “Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

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From 9to5Toys.com:

MacMall is offering 9to5 readers an additional 3% off of their already lowest prices on Mac Minis and iMacs this month yielding the lowest prices you’ll find anywhere (by as much as $50) with free shipping via this link.  The 3% is deducted at checkout and MacMall doesn’t charge tax in most states.

All discounts, including higher end models listed below:

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Avid, the makers of the music industry’s leading DAW called “Pro Tools”, just dropped an iPad version of its pro-sumer Final Cut Pro competitor known as “Avid Studio.” Although the latest Final Cut Pro X update brought multicam editing, broadcast monitoring, and many of the features pro users demanded be re-implemented, the Avid Studio iPad app shows why Apple should and most likely will release FCPX for iPad.

The app is available from the App Store now for $4.99, significantly less than the desktop version that retails for $169.99, but the app will increase to $8 after an initial 30-day introductory period. The Avid Studio app is the company’s first video editing suite for iPad and aims to provide most of the features offered through the desktop version.

Users will get the familiar timeline and storyboard, but new gestures will allow them to pinch and squeeze to scale images and videos, and arrange edits on the timeline for picture-in-picture effects. Users of the desktop software will also appreciate the Precision Trimmer, Razor Blade tool for on the fly cuts, and the ability to export projects easily to Avid Studio on the desktop. Projects can be uploaded to iCloud, and finished projects can be shared to YouTube, Facebook, and by email from within the app. Unlike the desktop version, there is no Flash export option.

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Japanese blog Macotakara has a satisfying accuracy score in the Apple rumor business, and it was widely quoted earlier this month on a claim that Apple’s contract manufacturers Foxconn Electronics and Pegatron Technology issued orders to begin assembly of next-generation iPads for an early-March launch. Today, Macotakara reported that Apple would announce the iPad 3 in a media event due in March— ahead of the launch.

Previously, the blog claimed that a special Apple event to announce a new iPad was due in February and that the device was meant to go on sale the following month. Weirdly enough, Macotakara also said it heard from sources from Apple’s supply chain that the company will indeed hold an event this month, which was described as “strange.”

According to MacRumors’ Arnold Kim who contacted the author of the Macotakara report, “The February event would not be a product event.”

UPDATE: The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple disputed the story, saying Apple will not hold an event in February (he’s been right on these things before):

This is not going to happen, according to my sources. Apple will not hold an event in February, unusual or otherwise. That’s it.

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[slideshow]

Following reports earlier this month from Bloomberg that iPad 3 production kicked off in anticipation of a March launch, BGR today claimed a source is in possession of an iPad 3 prototype that has provided more information on the device.

A source claiming to be in possession of an iPad 3 prototype provided BGR with images containing details about Apple’s highly anticipated third-generation tablet. From the data in the photos, which contain the output from an iPad 3 using a development and debug tool called iBoot, we can infer plenty of information about the upcoming iPad 3.

BGR claimed the debug reports from the iPad 3 prototype in question have model numbers J1 and J2 (iPad3,1 and iPad3,2), with one being the only Wi-Fi model and the other an LTE/CDMA/GSM combo “for all carriers.” This echoes 9to5Mac‘s findings from last year.

The reports also provided confirmation of an A6 processor (model number S5L8945X) that most have expected Apple to include in the device.  We first broke news of a Quad-core chip in the iPad 3 via code snippets in iOS 5.1B software.

According to the BGR report, the processor will be a quad-core variant, “making the upcoming iPad 3 the fastest iOS device ever.”

We’ve seen previous mentions of the Samsung S5L8945X in iOS 5 dumps from the iPhone 4S:

So, while nothing in the report is new, the means by which these were found, reportedly from a prototype iPad 3, seem to confirm previous findings.

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Apple and Foxconn are continuing to work on bringing that $12.5 billion iPad plant in Brazil online (there have been no iPads “Made in Brazil” seen yet, unlike iPhones). Meanwhile, the country’s Secretary of Planning and Development of the State of São Paulo Julio Semeghini revealed today that Apple’s favorite contract manufacturer will build up to five factories in Brazil with a thousand employees each.

According to a local report by Folha.com, Foxconn of Taiwan (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,) will leverage the additional plants to build notebooks and PCs, electronic components, connectors, batteries and precision machine elements. The plants should be located in Jundiai; São Paulo and business negotiations will resume when the Chinese New Year wraps up, according to the secretary.

The development could indicate plans to assemble an even greater portion of Apple products in Brazil, not just iPads and iPhones. Even so, poor machine-translated text suggested the secretary said, “The parts produced here will also help in the assembly of Apple products,” as “the company starts to import kits for assembly in Brazil iPad and iPhone.”

UPDATE: A Foxconn representative refuted the story, dismissing it as “pure speculation” amid what appears to be a power struggle over the Taiwanese firm’s billions of dollars in potential greenfield investments in the country. Foxconn, which already operates six plants in Brazil, wouldn’t acknowledge that iPhone or iPad production is taking place in any of the existing facilities.

UPDATE: Reader MarckOliver has submitted the following translation:

Parts produced in Brazil will aid in assemble of Apple products, said the Secretary. For now the company will import those kits from China to assemble in Brazil.

Reader Renato Selman concurs, telling us that while Foxconn will just assemble Apple gear using imported parts, “in the future Foxconn will use other components produced in Brazil”.

[vodpod id=Video.16028592&w=425&h=350&fv=pid%3DA15fgfffkgihmohhnil053%26amp%3B]
Thousands apply for jobs at Foxconn factories in China.

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Forrester Research today published an interesting and extensive analysis (via CNET) based on a large-scale poll of 10,000 information workers from North America and Western Europe, including 3,350 higher-ups that make purchasing decisions. The report, titled “Apple Infiltrates The Enterprise And Reshapes The Markets For Personal Devices At Work,” found out that 21 percent use one or more Apple devices (the figure includes gear they had brought in).

Nearly half of businesses, or 46 percent, now issue Macs to their workers. That is up by more than half in two years (36 and 30 percent in 2010 and 2009, respectively). Moreover, hardware decision makers envision a 52 increase in Mac adoption in their companies this year. Out of those firms that issue Macs, a healthy 7 percent of all personal computers issued are Macs. The report said Macs in enterprise plus Microsoft’s poor mobile offering both signal that “Windows’ dominance is at an end.”  This sounds a lot like Forrester’s take on the post-PC era.

As for iPads and iPhones, 27 and 37 percent of companies officially support Apple’s tablet and phone, respectively. Things get even more interesting as 31 percent consider supporting the iPad in 2012 (55 percent for the iPhone). Microsoft cannot be too happy with this survey. So, who exactly gets to use Apple gear? Your bosses, that’s who! More information is available below.

Click for larger

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Apple’s iPad maintained its market lead throughout fourth quarter of last year even though it lost some ground compared to the previous quarter due to an influx of Android-based tablets. In fact, Amazon’s dirt-cheap Kindle Fire device that costs just $199 saved the day for Android slates, really. This is the gist of the latest survey by research firm Strategy Analytics that was released this morning.

Global tablet shipments reached 26.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011— up 150 percent from 10.7 million from the year-ago quarter. Global tablet shipments hit 66.9 million units throughout 2011— a 260 percent increase from just 18.6 million units in 2010. Looking at how tablet vendors performed throughout Q4 2011, the survey recorded a 39.1 percent share for tablets powered by Android. Even though it is a record for tablets driven by Google’s software, Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the holiday quarter for a healthy 57.6 percent share. This left the remaining 3 percent for tablets outside the Android/iOS tablet duopoly, with Microsoft-driven devices holding onto 1 percent share of the market.

This compares to a Strategy Analytics’ survey for the September 2011 quarter that depicted a 27 percent share for Android tablets in Q3 2011 (up from 2.3 percent in Q3 2010) and 67 percent for iPad (down from 96 percent in Q3 2010). Android tablets are clearly picking up steam, largely based on the success of Amazon’s device that launched Oct. 15, 2011. Still, the iPad is expected to remain king of the hill as analysts expect its lead to maintain throughout 2012.

Strategy Analytics Research Director Peter King opined:

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Apple just announced its Q1 2012 earnings in a press release a few minutes ago, which revealed very impressive numbers from the company. Apple revealed it sold a whopping 37 million iPhones during the holiday quarter, which now gives the company the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer spot —back from Samsung, who previously held the title. Earlier this month, Samsung gave estimates of 35 million phones sold during the holiday quarter. This means Apple beat the company by 2 million.

Check out the full announcement and the live blog coming up in a few minutes for more record setting figures from Apple.

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Chart via

Apple had another blowout quarter this holiday and set records across the board.  iPhones, which many estimated optimistically at 30 million, leapt to over 37 million to create the biggest quarter ever.  iPads crossed 15 million for the first time, and even Apple’s venerable Mac line crossed 5 million units for the first time (likely helped by the popular MacBook Air lineup). iPods, if you needed a downside, were off by 20-percent —which is not terrible, because Apple did not upgrade most of the iPods available last Christmas.

Apple recorded revenues of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share.

(Click to enlarge)

“We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

“We are very happy to have generated over $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the December quarter,” said Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO. “Looking ahead to the second fiscal quarter of 2012, which will span 13 weeks, we expect revenue of about $32.5 billion and we expect diluted earnings per share of about $8.50.”

The full press release follows, and do not forget the live blog coming shortly.

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Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Apple cofounder and former CEO Steve Jobs, is among the attendees of the State of the Union address scheduled for 9 p.m. tonight (live stream here). According to the official guest list, the White House invited Powell Jobs, along with other distinguished individuals, to attend the State of the Union address, including billionaire Warren Buffett’s secretary Debbie Bosanek, cancer survivor Adam Rapp, and Mark Kelly, former astronaut and husband of outgoing Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The news becomes interesting knowing the White House usually invites people that have something to do with a proposal or initiative the President will outline in the address. Powell Jobs may have been invited for her focus on education, the arts and women’s human rights.

Vanguard has it that Obama will welcome Powell Jobs to his State of the Union address out of respect for her late husband. According to the White House, Powell Jobs will watch Obama’s speech from First Lady Michelle Obama’s box in the House of Representatives. In December of last year, Obama gave Jobs’ widow a seat on the White House Council for Community Solutions. Chaired by former Gates Foundation CEO Patty Stonesifer, the body advises the President on job creation and social issues. eBay CEO John Donahoe and singer Jon Bon Jovi are also among the members.

Powell Jobs’ ties in education could also prove key, as education is allegedly one of key focus areas of tonight’s State of the Union address. Let’s not forget that Apple held an education-focused media event last week, debuting digital textbooks on the iPad priced at $14.99 or less and a free tool that lets anyone create and publish digital textbooks to iBookstore. In just three days, more than 350,000 copies of digital textbooks were downloaded from the store. Oh, and Obama is an avid fan of Apple’s tablet.

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With the growing sales of Apple’s mobile devices and the ever-increasing popularity of smartphones (analysts projected 30+ million iPhones for today’s holiday quarter earnings call), it is no surprise that the Mac-maker is rising up the chip-purchasing ladder. According to research firm Gartner, Apple is now the world’s largest buyer of silicon parts, spending an astounding $17 billion on semiconductors in 2011 and accounting for a 5.7 percent share of total silicon buying.

That’s a 34.6 percent increase over 2010— enough to jump two spots ahead of rivals Samsung and the world’s leading computer maker Hewlett-Packard (soon to be displaced by Apple). Apple’s rise stems of strong sales of iPads, iPhones and its popular MacBook Air ultra-portable notebook family. Samsung ranked second with $16.7 billion worth of semiconductors in 2011, a 5.5 percent share. Computer makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell and cell phone giant Nokia round up the list of top five chip buyers with $16.7 billion, $9.8 billion and $9 billion worth of silicon parts, respectively.

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On Friday, the Chronic-Dev team (along with a few other contributors) released “Absinthe,” the long-awaited free unteathered jailbreak tool for the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. Today, the team updated us with a few interesting statistics. The shocker is that 1 million people jailbroke their A5 device in under three days.

The Chronic-Dev team were able to get such exact numbers thanks to statistics from Cydia, the popular app marketplace that comes bundled with the jailbreak. The team was able to specifically pin-point how many installs were on each device: 491,325 on an iPhone 4S; 308,967 on an iPad 2; and, 152,940 on an iPad 2 that had been previously jailbroken (iOS 4). These are certainly impressive numbers.

Like always, the Chronic-Dev team reminds you not upgrade off of 5.0.1 if you intend to keep the jailbreak. Did you jailbreak your A5 device this weekend?  If you did not, make sure to check out the tutorial after the break:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TrCK0ya097Q]

We have seen Siri clones in the Android Market trying to pass themselves off as the real thing, and some Siri alternatives making their way to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Evi, on the other hand, might actually be the first true Siri competitor/alternative for Android and non-iPhone 4S iOS users.

Available on the App Store for 99 cents and free to Android users on the Android Market, Evi is the work of True Knowledge and its “core semantic search technology” better known as The True Knowledge Answer Engine. The 99-cent price tag on iOS is apparently to cover the cost of using Nuance voice recognition (the same voice recognition tech as Siri), which is not used in the Android version.

The app’s iTunes page explained Evi is capable of returning local data for the United Kingdom (along with the United States), which has been a complaint from U.K. Siri users since the iPhone 4S launch. According to TechCrunch, the app uses “an ontology of tens of thousands of classes into which” every possible user command can be recognized. True Knowledge said the app contains “almost a billion ‘facts’ (machine understandable bits of knowledge)” with the ability to infer trillions if necessary. It also reportedly uses all the expected sources, such as local results from Yelp, third-party websites, traditional web searches, and APIs.

While as of yet Evi is incapable of integrating with Calendar and Reminders like Siri, TechCrunch pointed out it sometimes provides more accurate and useful results for certain types of questions. Siri requests to search the web for an answer when users ask certain questions, such as “How do I make apple pie?” Evi, however, would provide a list of recipes with relevant links to that specific question. TechCrunch highlighted another example where Evi excels:

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According to Global Equities Research (via AllThingsD), the new inexpensive digital textbooks Apple launched last Thursday at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City was downloaded over 350,000 times in just three days. iBooks Author, a new free of charge Mac tool to author iBooks Textbooks, saw 90,000 downloads in the same period. This data is not official and is derived from the investment firm’s proprietary tracking system that monitors Apple’s iBook sales.

Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry said the numbers could be deciphered as “a recipe for Apple’s success in the textbook industry.” Apple’s new digital textbooks are priced at $14.99 or less and are available from several launch partners, including Pearson, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and DK Publishing.

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Pew Research published some incredibly impressive tablet sales data over the weekend.  From December to January, tablet ownership almost doubled.

While both the Nook Color and the Kindle Fire were included as tablets (not eReaders) and were hot this holiday season, the iPad is still by far the most popular tablet out there and likely the lion’s share of the 19 percent of American households which now own a tablet.  That translates to many iPads under the Christmas tree.

Tablet ownership increased for certain segments of the population more than others did…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rX-2XmZXRLw]

Although Apple and Google signed a deal to extend the use of Google Maps in iOS, the Cupertino, Calif.-headquartered Company has not overhauled the iOS mapping experience (yet). For those who grew tired of waiting, a company called UpNext partnered with Verizon Wireless on a cool mapping project that brings 3D awesomeness to your iPad and Android tablets. The app is called ‘UpNext HD Maps” and it covers the entire United States, sporting over 20 enhanced 3D cities.

These include New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, Washington DC, and Austin, with more cities coming soon. Other features include local search and discovery, venue reviews; deal finder, the ability to visualize your social and location graphs with Foursquare and pre-cached offline mode. You can see it in action in the clip above. Head over to the App Store and grab your free copy now.

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UPDATE: If you’re getting the “Error establishing a database connection” when launching the jailbreak tool, hacker PlanetBeing tweeted a simple workaround solution: Go to Settings and enable VPN under Network.

According to hacker p0sixninja, the jailbreak community just posted an untethered jailbreak solution for A5-driven devices running iOS 5.0 or iOS 5.0.1. The software is a long expected follow-up to an untethered iOS 5.0.1 exploit for non-A5 devices, released last December. According to a blog post, the new jailbreak is called “Absinthe A5,” and it was not exactly a walk in the park.

The updated greenpois0n tool is now available for download here. It’s Mac-only, but Windows version is “coming soon”. The application lets iPad 2 and iPhone 4S owners finally jailbreak their device without the need to tether it to a computer upon each reboot. This jailbreak can be used with both iPhone 4S running iOS 5.0 build 9A334 and iOS 5.0.1 (builds 9A405 and 9A406) and iPad 2 running iOS 5.0.1 build 9A405.

Video tutorial is right below…

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