Apparently, the iOS hacking community is not working for the weekend, judging by the two days it took to crack Apple’s latest beta wide open. iOS 5 Beta 6 was released on last Saturday, and finally it’s jailbroken. Maybe hackers do have some life after all. Available today, the Sn0wbreeze 2.8 Beta 6 unlock tool can now give those of you with developer credentials jailbreak access to iOS 5 beta 6. From the looks of this release, the hack works on most iOS devices with the sole exception of the iPad 2 as usual. Hit the source link below if you really must have your i-device loaded with developer version iOS and jailbreaked, but do proceed with caution.
Well, the Wall Street Journal’s headline certainly isn’t going to surprise you — Apple Developing New iPad – that have been a safe assumption since the iPad 2 was announced. Rumors are circulating though that is painting an increasingly convincing picture of a Retina Display-equipped slate shipping in early 2012.
Reports are in that suppliers have already received Q4 orders for parts that may eventually find their way into Apple’s next tablet. Can we say for certain that the iPad 3 will hit shelves in Q1 of next year sporting a 2048 x 1536 screen? ‘No’ is a more realistic answer, but it’s starting to look more and more likely than last year.
It’s clear that Apple is very much dominant in the international market, but the same cannot be said in China where counterfeit products and cheap knockoffs are everywhere, or is it?
According to the Financial Times, Apple’s third quarter China sales outstripped Lenovo’s $2.8 billion first quarter results, racking up a commanding $3.8 billion lead in the PC maker’s own backyard. Lenovo’s CEO, Yang Yuanqing, was quick to dismiss the ‘apples to oranges’ financial comparison, citing his company’s inability to compete in the mobile phone segment, and continued strong focus on personal computing.
For what it’s worth, Lenovo does separate out both Hong Kong and Taiwan sales from its mainland report, putting the company on unequal footing with Cupertino which includes the two markets in its total Chinese earnings.
Still, Lenovo has plenty of reason to keep its chin up. It does, after all, have that dominating 31.7 percent market share to lord over Mr. Steve Jobs.
Earlier this year, Verizon CEO Dan Mead all but confirmed that an LTE Apple device would be making its way to Verizon. Eventually. And no 2011 Apple rumor spattering would be complete without at least a casual mention of the high-speed 4G network. Now, BGR claims to have received an internal iOS test build from a major carrier, revealing a property list file for LTE. This of course doesn’t guarantee that Apple will be shipping an LTE iPhone flavour later this year, but that it at least remains a possibility. Still, an October iPhone launch would fall nicely in line with recent confirmation that AT&T will be releasing an LTE smartphone in “late 2011,” and 4G compatibility could definitely explain Cupertino’s holdup in announcing the iPhone 4′s successor. So, will you be flying through the wireless web at lightning-fast speed later this year? Hopefully we need not wait much longer to find out.
Signs point to a September 7 event for Apple to show off its new iPhone offerings. The past few months have been filled with rumors of what the next big Apple product will be like, even though Apple’s kept a tight lid on things.
French site Nowhere Else made a neat looking video recapping some of the rumors thus far. They come with concept renders as well as a probability rating. Of course, nothing is truly 100 percent until Steve Jobs says so on stage, but there are some safe bets, such as the A5 chip.
It’s a bit ironic that Apple’s consumer devices such as the iPhone and the iPad are such hot items in China that there is a considerable grey market import for the devices. After all, such products are made in China, only to be shipped out and later to be smuggled back in. The motivation behind the smuggling is to take advantage of the lower prices and taxes elsewhere.
Chinese authorities have put a stop to one of the more inventive smuggling rackets between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Smugglers made a zip line that stretched from the 21st floor of a Hong Kong apartment that extended 300 meters over the Sha Tau Kok River.
Through the use of a crossbow to create the zip line and bags attached to hooks, iPads and iPhones could make the cross-border trip in 2 minutes.
It all came to an end when authorities acted on their surveillance efforts and arrested six individuals, and seized 50 iPad 2s and 50 iPhone 4s, which worth about three hundred thousand yuan (US$46,583).
Got a pair of Macs laying around, but don’t want to shell out for two Apple Cinema Displays? We don’t blame you because that’s silly, considering each will cost you about MYR 3,099. A little company called Kanex has a solution for you though, the SnapX. SnapX is, at its heart, simply a port switcher that lets you connect two DisplayPort-equipped Macs to a single Cinema Display. Something like a KVM switcher, but for Macs.
But it’s not that simple, as the glossy MYR200 adapter does have a few neat extra features, like USB pass through for firing up the iSight camera and a clip for securing it to the base of the monitor. The SnapX is available for pre-order now and starts shipping to Apple devotees in September.
Apple clearly considers its new App Store-based distribution model one of the biggest advances in Lion, and to the company’s credit, we found the whole thing to be quite painless. But physical media devotees needn’t worry too much — the company quietly announced at launch that the latest version of OS X will also be available on a USB key, for the lofty price of $69 — which, incidentally, still requires Snow Leopard, unlike what has been previously reported. Word hit today that the company has finally issued the flash drive version of the software, information gleaned from an internal document reportedly leaked by AppleCare. We have it on good authority, however, that the drives mentioned in the document are not, in fact, the aforementioned sticks. Rather, the “recovery media” discussed is actually a restoration tool for AppleCare employees, used to fix faulty systems. It seems that the App Store-impaired will still have to wait until later this month to get their hands on the $70 Apple dongle.
Gmail for mobile was looking a little tired around the eyes, so Google went ahead and gave the ol’ web app a cosmetic lift, just in time for the ‘Back to school’ event eh? The update, announced on the Gmail blog, packs a hat trick’s worth of tweaks aimed squarely at iOS and QNX (read: BB PlayBook) users. Email messages can now be manually refreshed with a top-down pull and release — a feature similar to Twitter’s own drag-down approach. The team also added a bit of finesse to inbox navigation with new sliding transitions, and even beefed up the graphical interface, taking full advantage of that Retina Display.
It, as they say, is on. Google’s Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, made an appearance on the company’s official blog today with a post not-so-subtly-titled “When patents attack Android,” which directly addresses what he calls a “hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.”
Drummond then goes on to cite a number of examples of this “organized campaign” from those trying to “strangle” Android, including Apple and Microsoft teaming up to buy Novell and Nortel’s old patents “to make sure Google didn’t get them,” Microsoft seeking $15 licensing fees for each Android device, and lawsuits against the likes of Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung.
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