After rolling out its LTE network in 15 markets last year, AT&T takes one more step forward by adding 11 new cities to the grid:
AT&T took a big step toward expanding its high-speed LTE network, announcing on Thursday that it has added 11 more areas, including Los Angeles, the New York Metro Area and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Also getting the service are Austin; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Orlando; Phoenix; Raleigh, N.C.; and San Diego, Calif.
Where's my iPhone LTE, Apple?
Tim Cook is starting 2012 off right with an upcoming pay day of over $96,000,000:
Of all the Silicon Valley executives who have a vesting event scheduled for the first quarter of 2012, the one who stands to reap the most is Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook, the study found.
Mr. Cook has portions of two restricted-stock-unit grants—including one he received for filling in for Steve Jobs when the co-founder was on medical leave—vesting in the first quarter. As of Apple's closing stock price on Dec 30, those vesting shares of Mr. Cook's were worth $96.2 million, according to the study.
Verizon has reported a record-breaking number of iPhone sold during the fourth quarter of 2011:
Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile carrier, sold 4.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, more than doubling from the third quarter, said Fran Shammo, finance chief of the company’s parent.
The iPhone sales will narrow gross margins at the wireless business by 500 to 600 basis points, Shammo, chief financial officer of Verizon Communications, said today at a Citigroup Inc. event in San Francisco. U.S. carriers sell smartphones such as the iPhone to subscribers at a loss to get them to sign up for contracts that typically run for two years.
Comparatively, carrier sold 2 million iPhones during the previous quarter.
Apple reportedly hired Adobe executive Todd Teresi to run the iAds business unit, which had been ran by Eddie Cue since August, when Andy Miller stepped down to join a VC firm:
Apple has poached Adobe executive Todd Teresi to run its iAds program, Adam Satariano at Bloomberg reports.
According to LinkedIn, Teresi is a VP and GM of Media Solutions at Adobe. Prior to that he was Chief Revenue Officer at Quantcast. (Before that, he was SVP at Yahoo.)
We wish him good luck. Given the moderate success of iAds, he'll certainly need it.
Taiwanese publication Digitimes is reporting again today that Apple is planning two iPad models, with the low-end version starting at only $299. Both iPads will reportedly boast the new A6 processor and will be differentiated by their screen resolutions.
Sources from Apple's supply chain have claimed that there will be two versions of the new iPad, one targeting the high-end segment and the other the mid-range. Digitimes Research believe the two new iPad models will both be equipped the A6 processor with high-end model coming with a high resolution panel (2048x1536) and the mid-tier model featuring the same grade of panel as iPad 2 (1024x768).
In my opinion, it makes more sense for Apple to drop the price of the current iPad 2 to $299 and introduce the next-generation model at $499. The idea of Apple releasing two new iPads at once seems a little ridiculous.
AllThingsD reports that Apple is planning a media event sometimes this month in New York. Apparently, this event will not be related to the upcoming iPad 3 or even the rumored Apple television.
That leaves some kind of advertising or even publishing announcement, which might be the case, since Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue is reportedly involved.
Cue is in charge of a large swath of Apple’s media units, including the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, as well as iAd and its iCloud services.
What do you think it's going to be about?
iOS hacker pod2g has posted a very enlightening synopsis of how he was able to pull off his 5.0.1 untethered exploit. Citing Apple's blocking of the exploit methods used prior to iOS 5, he details the alternative methods used for the 5.0.1 untethered exploit and subsequent jailbreaks.
Apple has fixed all previous known ways of executing unsigned binaries in iOS 5.0. Corona does it another way.
Thus, for Corona, I searched for a way to start unsigned code at boot without using the Mach-O loader. That's why I looked for vulnerabilities in existing Apple binaries that I could call using standard launchd plist mechanisms.
For those of you interested in the low-level workings of the latest untethered jailbreak to hit iOS 5 devices, we highly recommend you check out pod2g's analysis on his blog.
The patent wars that Apple and leading Android device makers are fighting is costing a lot of money in legal fees for everyone. Intellectual property expert Kevin Rivette speculates on how Apple could stop wasting money on attorney fees, and start cashing in from Android:
Tim Cook, who took over in August when Jobs announced he would be unable to come back as CEO, has many other ways to take advantage of the company’s patent portfolio. The company could probably collect as much as $10 in royalties for every device sold, more than the amount analysts speculate Microsoft (MSFT) receives from Samsung and HTC, which use its mobile technology, said Rivette at 3LP.
Not a bad idea, except when we know that Steve Jobs swore to go on a "thermonuclear war" with Google instead of settling. There's a new boss at Apple, though...
Yes, you read that title right! According to Manuals.ws:
The Argentinian Government have took some measures to reduce the inflation level and strengthen the Pesos / US dollar currency parity. One of them was to block the sales of certain electronics temporary, among them iPhone and BlackBerry phones.
In order to continue to sell iPhone smartphones, Apple and BlackBerry must build plants in Argentina, a move that companies like Nokia, Samsung, Motorola and LG already made.
If you get passed the bad English of this quote, you'll still get the message. Apparently, this has been going on for over a year.
According to Chinese publication People Daily, the iPhone 4S has gained the necessary approvals from local authorities to sell the iPhone 4S in China:
After obtaining the network entry permit from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China (MIIT), the iPhone 4S received China Compulsory Certification (3C) for electronic products on Dec. 22, meaning that it has met all the requirements for coming into markets of China.
According to latest information from iPhone distributors, the iPhone 4S is expected to hit the market at the beginning of January 2012.
If that holds true, the iPhone 4S will be available in the country before Chinese new year.
Dieter Bohn of The Verge has an amazing walkthrough of how iOS has evolved since its release in 2007. The post takes a detailed look at the key iOS features and releases that Apple introduced throughout the years.
During the original iPhone announcement, Apple touted that it ran on the same Unix core as Mac OS X and that it used many of the same tools. However, it was clear even then that while there may be some shared elements between OS X and this new phone OS, it was a different-enough beast to warrant its own branding. When the original iPhone launched, the OS was called "iPhone OS" and it kept that name for four years, only changing to iOS with the release of iOS 4 in June of 2010. For the sake of simplicity (and because it's a much-less awkward phrase), I'm going to indulge in a little revisionist history here and refer to all versions of the operating system as "iOS" in this piece.
Head on over to The Verge to read about the history of iOS. It's amazing to see how far the platform has come.
Apple has continued to lose ground to Google in online advertising after the launch of iAd. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple is trying to make its iAd platform more attractive to potential advertisers.
Having originally asked marketers to commit to spend at least $1 million—an amount later dropped to $500,000—Apple is now discussing ad deals with a minimum commitment of just $400,000, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Apple has also introduced more flexibility to a pricing structure that had befuddled advertisers, ad executives say. Instead of charging marketers every time a user taps on an ad—a policy which often led to ad budgets quickly being exhausted—Apple is willing to put a cap on what it charges for the taps, according to the person. Advertisers pay $10 every time an ad is viewed a thousand times and $2 every time it is tapped on.
This new pricing structure will hopefully give iAd a fighting chance against Google's AdMob service.