Month: February 2013

Apple hires OLED expert from LG Display

Amidst growing rumors of Apple working on a larger-screened iPhone and a full-sized TV set, comes news today that the Cupertino company has hired a high-profile executive to join its prestigious Display group.

His name is Dr. Jeung Jil Lee, and he's a former senior OLED (organic light-emitting diode) expert from LG Display. The hiring reignites speculation that Apple is considering using the display tech in its products...

iPhone sales quadruple in India, but gap remains

When it comes to Apple's push to enter emerging markets like China, India's huge pool of consumers has largely been overlooked. Indeed, one of that country's leading newspapers charged Apple has "ignored" India, until recently.

From adopting the Indian rupee in the App Store to including local musicians in iTunes, the company has increased sales by up to 400 percent in four months. However, Apple still faces a large gap: only ten percent of India's residents own a smartphone and rival Samsung is the clear leader, researchers say...

Apple now a lone holdout in the e-book price fixing suit

Last September, three of the nation’s top five book publishers settled with The United States Justice Department (DOJ) over alleged collusion in the pricing of e-books, despite Apple crying foul and accusing Amazon of assisting the government's agenda. Following DOJ's deal with HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette, Penguin followed suite in December 2012 and today DOJ announced that Macmillan has stricken a similar settlement with Uncle Sam, leaving Apple as a lone holdout in the suit...

Springtomize 2 updated with iPhone 5 support and several bug fixes

When the evasi0n website went live Monday morning, I wasted no time jailbreaking my iPhone 5. I had convinced myself that I didn't miss my tweaks very much, but as soon as I was able to, I started downloading them.

The first one I grabbed—and it's one of only a few I have installed—is Filippo Bigarella's Springtomize 2. It's probably one of the most full-featured tweaks available, and it just got updated with full support for the iPhone 5...

Pod2g: iOS 6.1.1 beta does not fix latest jailbreak

This is pretty interesting. Pod2g just announced that the new iOS 6.1.1 beta that Apple seeded to developers yesterday does not actually patch the exploits used in the latest jailbreak.

The beta came just a week after Apple rolled out iOS 6.1 to the public, and two days after the release of evasi0n, so it was assumed that the two were related. But that may not be the case...

Ultrasn0w updated for iOS 6.1

Between the rise of third party vendors and the recent change in DMCA policy, the need for iPhone software unlocks is steadily dwindling. But that doesn't mean that the method is obsolete, as there are still many people out there with older iPhones.

And if you happen to be one of those people, you'll be happy to know that MuscleNerd has confirmed that Ultrasn0w was quietly updated this week to support iOS 6.1. So if you're on an eligible device and baseband, you can unlock on the new firmware...

Siri programmed to control an entire house

It seems like it's been a while since we've seen any good SiriProxy hacks. If you recall, setting up Siri proxy servers to program Apple's digital assistant to execute custom commands was all the rage last year. But the movement has since quieted down.

There's a new video out, though, of a guy using Siri and a Rasberry Pi-based SiriProxy server to control almost everything in his house that may rekindle interest in the community. Watch him control his thermostat and TV, open his garage and more...

New iPad 5 mockups look just about right…

If the rumors pan out, the fifth-generation iPad should have an all-new design that borrows heavily from the iPad mini, down to the skinnier side bezels, a thin-film touchscreen tech and a much thinner profile. Based on a purportedly leaked iPad 5 backplate, MacRumors has commissioned graphics artists over at CiccareseDesign to create a nice batch of renders depicting how the device should stack up against the iPad 4, iPad mini and the iPhone 5 in terms of the size and industrial design...

Source Saver automatically backs up your additional Cydia repos

Don't you hate it when you restore your iPhone and all the progress you've made getting your tweaks just right gets wiped away? There are packages on Cydia that make it easy to directly backup your tweaks, but workarounds like PKGBackup can cause issues, especially if you wind up automatically installing software that is no longer compatible with your device.

Source Saver gives you an intermediate solution with fewer risks. With the press of a button, Source Saver will backup the repos you've added to Cydia. This way you won't have to manually add Ryan Petrich's beta repository to Cydia, or dig through sites to find the address for the DosPad repo...

Apple updates Airport Utility for iOS with new features and improvements

Good news this afternoon for those of you who own AirPort base stations—that includes the AirPort Express, Extreme, and Time Capsule—Apple has released updates for both the Mac and iOS versions of its AirPort Utility.

The app allows you to set up and manage all of your AirPort devices, and today it gets some much needed improvements and a few new features including the ability to add WPS-capable Wi-Fi printers to your network...

Apple responds to recent calls for it to return cash to shareholders

Apple has just issued a statement regarding its commitment to return some of its extremely large—now more than $130 billion— cash pile to shareholders, saying that the company and its Board of Directors are in "active discussions" on what to do with its money.

The comment follows a press release sent to Apple investors this morning by Greenlight Capital, a major Apple shareholder, calling for the Cupertino-based iPhone maker to stop 'hoarding its cash,' and start returning some of it to its large base of stock holders...

Apple’s ‘disappointing’ holiday quarter compared to other companies

When Apple announced the results for its 2012 holiday quarter, the reaction from Wall Street was extremely negative. Despite selling a record 48 million iPhones, and recording a record $54.5 billion in revenue, the company's stock dropped more than 10% following the news.

A lot of folks have tried to explain the phenomenon—investors are worried about its slowing growth, or its ability to handle stronger competition from the likes of Google and Samsung. But the truth is, Apple is performing better than it ever has, and better than everyone else...