The iPhone location tracking saga took yet another twist today, with South Korea’s communications regulatory body ordering Apple Korea to pay three million won (about $2,828) for collecting personal information without authorization. The fine certainly won’t break Cupertino’s bank, but it does set a precedent, marking the first time that a regulator has taken Apple to task over the issue. A few weeks ago, a Korean court ordered the company to pay about $1,000 in compensation to an individual who brought action against Apple, as part of a case that is expected to blossom into a larger, class-action suit. Kim Hyung-suk, the lawyer spearheading the campaign, told Reuters that he’s looking to file the lawsuit “by next week.” Apple’s Korean unit, meanwhile, is still claiming innocence, with spokesman Steve Park saying: “Apple is not tracking the location of your iPhone. Apple has never done so and has no plans to ever do so.” Park, however, would not say whether the company will agree to pay the fine.

SOURCE via Yahoo!News

Iomega is offering up a solution with the fairly elegant Mac Companion Hard Drive, a two or three terabyte external drive designed with Apple computers in mind that adds a high-powered charging port for your peripherals. The drive also packs additional USB and FireWire ports, plus a set of four LEDs, which let you know how full it is with a glance. What a shame that the new Thunderbolt port isn’t included thought. The drives are available via Apple at $195 and $295, for 2TB and 3TB, respectively.

SOURCE via Iomega

Apple has now updated its iCloud.com with a new official login page that’s built onto a virtual machined aluminum unibody badge. Those of you rocking iOS 5 or 10.7.2 and who’ve also created an iCloud account are probably already busy frolicking through email, editing contacts and slinging calendar events all from the comfort of your browser. A screenshot from MacRumors also shows the addition of an iWork section, which we’d surmise means the previously siloed iWork beta now has a new place to call home.

And if you’re wondering how much it’ll cost you to claim more than those 5GB that Apple’s tossing in gratis, the folks over at Electronista have confirmed that an extra 10GB will cost $20 per year, while an extra 20GB runs $40 / year and an extra 50GB will demand $100 per annum.

SOURCE via Mac Rumors

The boy in the picture above might look messed up with his untidy hairs and shaves. Even his voice seemed rather laid back when being interviewed by Forbes. But what’s so special about him? Well, he’s Nicholas Allegra, also known as Comex. Still not sure who that is? Well, He’s the hackdom Harry Potter to Apple’s Ye-Who-Shall-Not-Jailbreak-Our-Wares, and Forbes managed to sniff him out for a little bold-faced exposé.

The 19-year old hero of the iOS community got his self-taught start with Visual Basic when he was still in nine. After graduating through a venerable online forum education, the precocious coding lad set his smarts to homebrew Wii development, and the rest is JailbreakMe history.

The self-described Apple fanboy admits his background is atyipcal of the cybersecurity industry, but with a former National Security Agency analyst praising his work as years ahead of his time, and calling his jailbreaking code as sophisticated as the virus used to attack Israel’s nuclear plant, we don’t think he should worry. For all the trouble his code has caused Cupertino, Allegra’s not trying to be the embedded thorn in Jobs’ side. Rather, the iPhone hacker claims “it’s just about the challenge” and plans to keep on keeping ol’ Steve on his billion dollar toes.

SOURCE via Forbes

Well, the numbers are in and Q2′s proved to be a mixed bag for the mobile market. According to IDC, cellphone makers shipped a total of 365.4 million units last quarter, a year-over-year increase of 11.3 percent. Nokia, while still the world’s largest handset maker, suffered a significant blow, with shipments dropping from 111.1 million in Q2 2010 to 88.5 million; the company’s market share was similarly down, hitting 24.2 percent, compared to last year’s 33.8 percent. LG Electronics was the only other manufacturer to see a loss, with shipments dropping to 24.8 million from 30.6 million in 2010. Apple managed to maintain its recently acquired number four spot, with iPhone shipments hitting 20.3 million, up year-over-year from 8.4 million. RIM was conspicuously missing from the top five lineup, while ZTE landed the number five position. In news that shouldn’t surprise anyone with a pulse, the feature phone market saw a decline this year, surprisingly its first since Q3 2009.

SOURCE via All Things D

The wonders of iPlayer on the iPad are no longer Brits-only. As of today, iPad users in 11 other countries across Europe can subscribe to the service for €7 per month or €50 per year. That equates to $10 — just about living up to BBC’s promised maximum price. The subscription grants access to a wealth of TV classics, like Fawlty Towers and Only Fools & Horses, as well as unwitting comedies like EastEnders. Of course, the highly acclaim Top Gear is also available, for those who like cars and middle-aged men in pointy shoes with lame jokes. The app will allow for downloading as well as streaming, and marks a “pilot phase” for the service, which should hopefully reach the former colonial outpost of America before too long.

Nielsen’s just released a study confirming what some other studies have already concluded — that Android devices account for the single largest swath of smartphone users in the US, with 39 percent OS share as of the second quarter.

That compares with 28 percent for iOS, although Apple still reigns as the country’s top-selling device maker. Simply put, that’s a reflection of the fact that Apple is the only outfit churning out iOS devices, whereas a bevy of companies led by HTC, Motorola, and Samsung have helped make Android the dominant OS in the states. And let’s not forget about RIM, another hardware / software shop, which still commands a 20 percent chunk of the market. Rounding out the list, Windows Phone and Windows Mobile account for nine percent, largely thanks to sales of HTC handsets, while webOS and Symbian each eked out two percent.

Then again it’s worth noting that Nielsen based its results on a sample of roughly 20,000 people — all of whom are postpaid subscribers.

SOURCE via Nielsen

HTC’s CFO Winston Yung appears ready to make a deal with market rival and patent nemesis Apple. The Taiwanese company has had some rather harsh words for the Cupertino crew, and it hasn’t seemed any more conciliatory after getting slapped by the ITC. That may be starting to change, as Yung told Bloomberg, “we [Apple and HTC] have to sit down and figure it out.” He went on to say that the house that Sense built was open to discussions with Jobs and co. but did not venture to guess what a final agreement might look like. Of course, it’s worth pointing out that this is absolutely standard practice, and we’d expect nothing less.

SOURCE via Bloomberg

The Lion has been released for nearly a week now, but you guys are only getting the plain vanilla 10.7 version. However, developers have been pushed forward with a new 10.7.2 update of the Lion. This update doesn’t bring any bug fixes or anything to the operating system overall, but what does it do? Well, this pending second update (build 11C26) is required for testing the operating system with iCloud — a feature notably absent in the public version of the OS released last week. The new System Preferences iCloud module enables granular management of select features, letting you choose which accounts and services to sync. Full iCloud support is coming in the fall with the release of iOS 5, so it’s probably safe to assume that Apple plans to patch some of those bugs in the meantime.

SOURCE via Apple Insider

When Apple snatched up Siri back in April, we wonder what exactly Cupertino was planning for the voice controlled virtual assistant. Well, the answer, according to a new leak, is unsurprisingly obvious: iOS integration.

A screenshot leaked to 9to5Mac flaunts an “Assistant” feature presumably built into a firmware update. To back up the screenshot, the aforesaid site dove into the iOS SDK and uncovered code describing Siri-like use of the iPhone’s location, contact list, and song metadata. The code also outlined a “speaker” feature, opening a door for further Nuance integration in Apple products.

Sounds awesome? Sure does, but take it with a pint of salt, as 9to5′s source says the assistant feature only just went into testing, and may not be ready in time for Apple’s next iPhone. Hit the source link to see the code and conjecture for yourself.

SOURCE via 9to5mac