While most inventions depicted in Apple's patents don't usually end up in consumer products, they do provide an interesting look into the company's R&D labs. Some are particularly entertaining when they fall in line with persistent rumors.
Such is the case with the new "Configurable Remote Control" patent, discovered this morning by PatentlyApple. The invention shows a method of using your iPhone as a self-programming universal TV remote...
Apple's annual pilgrimage for developers - the World Wide Developers Conference traditionally held in San Francisco's Moscone West - is approaching fast, but club Cupertino is still mum on exact dates.
As Moscone West gets booked months in advance, a quick trip to their online event calendar shows a five-day slot for a "corporate meeting" on Levels 1-3 scheduled to run between June 11-15. This is likely your WWDC 2012 date.
Apple's conference typically takes place mid-June and there's no other corporate meeting set for July. However, plenty of unused slots are still available for the month of July so take this one with a grain of salt as Apple could still book the venue some time in July rather than June...
Tapping IDC data, Bloomberg says Apple's iPhone last year outsold Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphone in Canada, where the embattled BlackBerry maker is headquartered. The numbers say Apple shipped 2.85 million iPhones in Canada last year versus 2.08 million BlackBerrys.
Compare this to 2010 when the BlackBerry topped the iPhone by half a million. It gets even better as "this is down from 2008 when RIM out shipped Apple almost five to one", the publication noted.
Espoo, Finland-headquartered Nokia is officially opposing Apple's requirement for an emerging mobile industry standard basically calling for a miniaturized SIM module roughly a third smaller than the Micro SIM used with the iPhone 4/4S. A proposal put forth by Motorola, RIM and Nokia has some technical advantages over the Apple-backed nano SIM that requires a “drawer” to protect it.
As a result, cell phones would need to be re-engineered with this in mind. Nokia says its variant of the Nano SIM doesn't require a tray and is even smaller than Apple's. Both camps have tabled proposals to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). With 92 votes, Nokia is the largest ETSI voting body, so no wonder Apple has filed multiple membership applications in order to increase its voting power.
Nokia has explained its stance in a lengthy statement issued to The Verge just this morning...
The interest surrounding the iPad overheating meme isn't vaning. Quite the contrary, folks are eager to get to the bottom of this thing. As we hold our breath for today's definite findings of "a battery of tests" conducted by Consumer Reports, a display expert sheds more light on how an improved LED backlighting system on the iPad's Retina display contributes to Heatgate and, specifically, the tablet's run time.
You've already seen heat maps which prove that the new A5X chip with its jumbo-sized quad-core GPU is the biggest heater in the new iPad. That said, its souped up LED backlighting is actually the No. 1 factor leading up to a faster battery drain and is partly to blame for the gizmo's five-degree Celsius temperature increase...
AppleInsider is reporting today that it has obtained a research note from Barclays, an investment firm, that contains some interesting information regarding Apple's next iPhone.
The note states that Apple is moving along with development of its next iPhone, and is now in the process of reviewing components submitted by suppliers for use in the new handset...
Image courtesy of GSM Arena
There's an awful lot of hoopla around the new iPad overheating. People are getting spooked by heat maps and that screenshot of standard iOS prompt saying "the iPad needs to cool down" average users rarely see. It goes without saying that the press immediately jumped on the opportunity to exploit the story in order to keep those eyeballs glued to the screen.
And with Consumer Reports now throwing its credibility behind Heatgate, it's easy to walk away under the impression that the new iPad comes with a major hardware flaw. Now, If you ever held a PS Vita, you can attest it runs a lot hotter than the iPad.
Still, it's hard to escape the notion the story is gaining traction because it's about the world's most powerful technology corporation that just released the third iteration of its category-defining gizmo everyone wants (it's selling like hotcakes). Yes, the new iPad is a bit toastier than its predecessor - full five degrees Celsius to be precise.
How exactly is this a big deal, you ask. Here's why the new iPad gets hotter, why it doesn't matter and how it's being blown out of proportion...
In wake of numerous reports on the poor working conditions at some of the factories in its supply chain, Apple erected a new section of its website entitled "Supplier Responsibility."
The page includes a number of resources, including monthly reports showing the company's progress. And according to the latest update, working conditions are already improving...
With over a billion wireless subscribers, China is certainly one of the most sought-after mobile markets. Heck, China Mobile (the world's largest carrier) alone has over 650 million customers.
Now it looks like that market just got even more valuable. According to Flurry, a mobile analytics company, China is now the world's fastest growing smart device market as well...
A pair of reports from Asian trade publication DigiTimes appeared this morning, asserting Apple's iPhone orders from contract manufacturer Pegatron are on the rise while the company is also looking to source more touch panel modules from Wintek in the following quarter. According to the first story sourced from market watchers, "Apple continues to raise its iPhone orders to Pegatron as well as placing orders for new iPad".
Pegatron, whose plants are up for inspection by the Fair Labor Association, reportedly found itself under fire over Asustek Zenbook orders, according to a story by Chinese-language Commercial Times (Google translation).
You may also recall that Pegatron is rumored to be keeping its fingers crossed to land manufacturing orders for the so-called iPad mini that the usually credible Wall Street Journal raved about.
When Apple was designing the iPhone 4, the company had adopted the smaller Micro SIM format for space constraints. Smaller in size compared to the standard Mini SIMs, Micro SIMs do the exact same job while using less space. But with mobile devices getting even slimmer these days, even Micro SIMs waste too much valuable space inside thin mobile gadgets.
Apple thinks smaller is better so last summer the company submitted a new requirement to the European Telecoms Standards Body for the use of even smaller SIM cards in mobile phones (AT&T followed suit). But the battle over the upcoming Nano SIM standard has put Apple once again on a collision course with its rivals in the smartphone space, namely the opposing group led by Android maker Google and joined by the ailing BlackBerry maker Research In Motion and Nokia of Finland, reports the Financial Times (subscription required)...
Apparently Japanese support wasn't the only Siri-related enhancement Apple included in its recently-released software update. It looks like iOS 5.1 also brought deeper Yelp integration to the digital assistant.
Siri has always returned Yelp-rated businesses on a number of queries, but tapping those results haven't always taken you straight to the Yelp application. Well, now it does...