Category: I-phone

According to SprintFeed, Sprint will begin locking SIM slots on the iPhone 4S beginning November 11. Contradicting claims about the locked or unlocked status of Sprint’s iPhone 4S are now effectively moot, at least according to an internal Sprint memo that SprintFeed obtained. According to the memo, “all iPhone 4S devices will have the SIM locked. The locking occurs during the activation process and is invisible to the customer.”

The memo notes that customers who bought and activated their iPhones before November 11 will not have their phones locked afterward, so early adopters are in the clear. This suggests that the Sprint iPhone did indeed have the ability to accept any SIM, but future iPhone 4S units activated on Sprint’s network will not.

Leaving the SIM unlocked would have allowed Sprint customers to insert any SIM from the carrier of their choice while travelling internationally. Instead, future Sprint customers will be locked into Sprint’s international roaming plans, just as AT&T customers have been all along. This is just the latest in a series of quite customer-hostile moves on Sprint’s part, and it means any US-based customers hoping for a truly unlocked iPhone 4S handset will have to wait until Apple releases them to the market.

[via Mac Rumors]

Sprint will begin locking iPhone 4S SIMs on November 11 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple has released three new firmware updates all at once. MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.5 “resolves an issue where a MacBook Pro being used with a power adapter may unexpectedly shut down under heavy workload if the battery charge level is near empty.” It’s not entirely clear which models of MacBook Pro are covered by this firmware update; if in doubt, check for it via Software Update.

Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.9 adds RAW image support to Aperture 3 and iPhoto ’11 for 11 new camera models.

AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule Firmware Update 7.6 addresses the most issues of all the firmware updates Apple’s released today. According to Apple, the update is for all 802.11n AirPort Express, 802.11n AirPort Extreme and Time Capsules and addresses these issues:

• An issue with performance on overlapping wireless networks
• An issue with AirPlay audio streaming
• An issue with configuring multiple entries for DNS servers

The MacBook Pro and Digital Camera RAW updates can both be found via Software Update, but the updates for AirPort devices will have to be downloaded via AirPort Utility.

MacBook Pro, AirPort Base Station and Time Capsule firmware updated originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 23:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the latest string of surveys from companies who have nothing to do with Apple or technology, MyVoucherCodes.co.uk polled 1500 respondents in the UK and found that 26% of them used their iPad about once a week. The low usage from a quarter of owners, apparently is due to the fact that half of them own a Wi-Fi only model and can’t use it for surfing the web while commuting. On the flip side, 42% of UK iPad owners surveyed said they use the device every single day, so I wouldn’t worry about the success of the iPad in the UK.

This, of course, begs the question: how often do you use your iPad? Let us know in the poll below.

View Poll

Poll: How often do you use your iPad? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We mentioned in passing that the iPhone 4S had sold out in ten minutes at the Hong Kong Apple Store, but given these pictures that have been posted online since, a statement like that doesn’t really do the launch justice. That place looks like a madhouse — thousands of people lined up to buy Apple’s new iPhone, and the police were out in force with barricades and dogs to make sure everything went smoothly. Black market salesmen were buying and selling iPhones outside the store, apparently, and leaving the queue got your picture taken and your number checked. There were even “professional queuers,” low income workers that were paid to simply stand in line and buy the phone when it became available.

The whole thing is a little shocking, actually — here in the States, waiting in line for a new game or a new iPhone is kind of a silly thing to do to show your appreciation for a new product, but in Hong Kong it is serious business apparently. I hope nobody got hurt at the launch out there, and though it seems unlikely, I also hope everyone who wanted an iPhone day got one.

[photo by M.I.C gadget]

Hong Kong line for iPhone 4S numbers in the thousands originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As first reported by AppleInsider, Apple has announced to its employees that their combined efforts have led to US$2.6 million being donated to charitable companies since the company’s “Apple Matching Gifts Program” began. That’s not a bad haul considering the program is only seven weeks old.

The program was started by Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook in September. Through the program Apple will match employee donations dollar-for-dollar — up to $10,000 per employee, per year — to any nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.

Currently the “Apple Matching Gifts Program” is only available to US employees, though Apple is expected to roll it out in other countries in the coming months.

Apple corporate matching program raises $2.6M for charities originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In 2010, the iOS 4 update all but crippled the iPhone 3G. A subsequent update fixed most of the issues, but as is inevitable in a persistently litigious culture, California resident Bianca Wofford filed a lawsuit against Apple claiming “Apple knowingly and intentionally released what it called a system software ‘upgrade’ that, in fact, made hundreds of thousands of [iPhones] ‘useless’ for their intended purpose.”

When I examined the law brief, I found it to be utterly without merit and full of tremendous errors in logic. My conclusion: “I hope that whatever judge sees this brief is smart enough to throw it out before it even makes it to court. The suit’s claims are all but impossible to prove.”

A year later, that’s exactly what has happened; Judge Anthony J. Battaglia dismissed the case because the claims made don’t fall under California’s Consumer Legal Remedy Act. Since the iOS 4 software update was offered free of charge, the judge ruled that it qualified as neither a “sale or lease” or “good or service” under the Act.

Ms. Wofford’s lawsuit sought US$5000 in damages for iPhone 3G owners, free upgrades to the iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, and $150 in credits for lost services. Since the judge has ruled her case is not covered under the Consumer Legal Remedy Act, none of those damages will be brought against Apple. Wofford has the right to appeal or amend her suit, but the case was so completely lacking in merit that it’s unlikely the appeal will move forward.

The hardest thing to believe about this case? It’s already been a whole year since we first heard about it. Time sure flies.

[via AppleInsider]

iPhone 3G lawsuit over poor iOS 4 performance tossed out of court originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon quietly released a new iPhone app last week that aims to give other bar code scanning apps a run for their money. The free app, called Flow, isn’t revolutionary in its bar code scanning capabilities. Oh, it scans bar codes just fine, but the beauty of Flow is that it does more than just bar code scanning. Flow allows the user to point their iPhone’s camera at an object, like a book, DVD, Blur-ray disc, or video game (and Nutella, apparently) and get an instantaneous augmented reality overlay of the product information right on the iPhone’s screen.

The overlay is more than just a Buy It Now link to Amazon.com. The app utilizes Amazon’s large digital media collection and allows users to instantly get audio previews of CDs they’ve scanned or video previews of DVDs, video games, and more. I used the app to successfully scan The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, the Captain America DVD, and the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine with Steve Jobs on the cover. All were found in Amazon’s huge virtual catalog instantly.

It’s no wonder Amazon released Flow now. They want to get it in the hands of as many iPhone users as possible prior to this holiday shopping season. The app works exceedingly well both in bar code scanning and photo recognition. It’s also really nice to be able to get audio and video previews of products and be able to instantly buy them on your phone. However, Flow isn’t a huge threat to other bar code scanning apps, like RedLaser, just yet. Flow obviously only shows you products on Amazon’s site, where RedLaser gives you the prices of products across multiple sites.

Brick and mortar stores like Best Buy and Target should be extremely worried about Flow and its future iterations. When Flow gets to the point that you can scan larger items like TVs or laptops (items that typically don’t have the bar code showing on the store’s display) those big box retailers could then become largely nothing more than a glorified showroom to which people go to see products, quickly scan them, and then order them at a significant discount from Amazon.

Flow is a free download.

Amazon’s Flow app is augmented reality shopping goodness originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I’m not sure if there’s something in the water that’s making manufacturers come out with a lot of new power accessories for Apple devices these days, but it seems like a lot of new products like the XtremeMac Slim 10W USB Wall Charger and others are being announced. None of the announcements really provided quite the excitement that the Twelve South PlugBug (US$34.99) did.

Why? Well, Twelve South is well-known for producing accessories for Apple products that are usually as well-designed and constructed as the goods from Cupertino. In this case, Twelve South took a rather pedestrian piece of equipment — a charger — and used the Apple adage to “Think Different” to create something that is extremely useful and attractive.

What makes the PlugBug so different? It looks a lot like an Apple iPad charger, although it is made of bright red plastic instead of white. When you plug it into the wall as-is, you can charge an iPhone or iPad with it. No big deal there. But the cool factor comes into play when you slide off the bottom of the PlugBug and slide on a charger — sans plug — from a MacBook Pro or Air. Suddenly, you’re charging two devices with one power socket.

The PlugBug is rated for 10 Watts of power and 2.1 Amps of current, perfect for charging up your iPad. With the unique design, you take the “duck head” (removable plastic piece with the plug blades) off of the MacBook charger (not included) and slide it onto the bottom of the PlugBug. Now you have a way to charge your MacBook Pro/Air and iPad/iPhone at the same time while taking up only one wall socket.

I’m often in a situation where I need to charge both an iPad and a MacBook Air at the same time, and up until now I’ve carried two AC adapters with me. If I know I’m going to be using both devices, I can now just throw one “brick” (the top of the PlugBug and the attached MacBook Air adapter) into my bag. Less weight to carry, by a few ounces, but one less item to worry about losing as well. However, you can’t use the brick inline, so the USB port isn’t available when you use the longer cord with the adapter.

As with most of the Twelve South products I’ve reviewed in the past, the PlugBug is well-made, attractively packaged, and will make any Apple fan with both an iPad and a MacBook Air or Pro very happy. You can purchase the PlugBug at the Apple Store online (and at Apple retail outlets), or from the Twelve South website.

Twelve South PlugBug: Hands-on review originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Walmart recently released an iPad app and I decided to give it a whirl. I live in a rural area where Walmart is the biggest store near me and the first place I check for electronics. Walmart doesn’t have the largest selection in the world, but it has saved me the hour drive to Best Buy on more than one occasion. With its new in-store pickup feature and an iPad app, shopping at Walmart has gotten a little easier.

The iPad app is a tablet-optimized version of Walmart’s website and does most everything the website does. You can find store information like hours of operation, phone number, services and even driving directions. You can browse products and read product reviews. The app also lets you select your local Walmart so you can see the prices and product availability at the store you choose. Bargain hunters can browse their local weekly ad and rollback savings.

Walmart wants to make it easy for registered users to shop and has added a sync feature to the app. You can login to your Walmart account on your iPad, add items to your cart or saved items lists and then view those items later from a desktop browser. If you prefer to keep shopping on the iPad, you can checkout using the app and choose to have your items shipped to your house, shipped to your local store or reserved for in-store pickup. If you don’t have a login, you lose the sync feature, but you can still checkout as a guest.

The iPad app is perfect for people who shop at Walmart. My only critique is not how the app performs, but how it looks. Keeping with Walmart colors, the app has vibrant blue and bright orange colors, especially during checkout, that are a little hard on the eyes. It’s a minor complaint and wouldn’t stop me from using the app. The Walmart app for the iPad is available for free from the App Store.

Daily iPad App: Walmart originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So far, most of the buzz on Apple’s iCloud service has been overwhelmingly positive — I haven’t seen any outages or had any issues myself so far. But it’s not all unicorns and rainbows: ReadWriteWeb has tackled one of the more problematic issues with the service so far, which is trying to hook it up to Google Calendar. iCloud syncs with iCal just fine, but apparently it doesn’t play quite so nicely with Google’s Calendar service.

Of course, this being an Apple device (and a calendar service), there are plenty of other solutions for doing what you need to do, the most basic of which would be to just log into your Google Calendar from your iPhone or iPad’s Safari browser. And I actually do have my Google Calendar synced up through iCloud on my iPad, but as the RWW post says, it’s “a fiddly process.”

Could it be easier? Yes indeed, partly because Apple and Google don’t want to work together that closely over services that they may see as competitive. Despite having this inconvenience I think iCloud is still a pretty impressive service. Hopefully future iterations of iCloud will let the various services we use connect quicker and more easily.

Google and iCloud calendars don’t play nicely together originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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China is one of Apple’s most desirable markets, due to the growing middle class and the huge population base of over 1.3 billion people. It appears that the love goes both ways, as Macs are considered to be the most desirable brands of personal computer in China.

Investment firm Morgan Stanley, in an AlphaWise survey polling 1,553 Chinese consumers this summer, found that while very few Chinese currently own Macs, many are considering a Mac for their next purchase.

Only five percent of the survey respondents currently had Apple as the manufacturer of their existing PC, but 21 percent said they’d consider a Mac. Should Chinese consumers follow through, Apple would be the second place supplier of PCs to the nation, behind China-based Lenovo.

Most of the respondents said that they want a MacBook Pro or Air, which mirrors the trend towards laptops worldwide. Apple is also dominating and will continue to rule the tablet sector — currently 65 percent of respondents said that they had an Apple tablet, and 68 percent will consider an iPad for their next tablet.

Earlier this year Morgan Stanley’s research showed that Apple is the leading smartphone brand in China, overtaking Nokia as the market leader. Almost 40 percent of respondents in that survey said they’d buy an iPhone for their next handset, which is over four times the company’s current share.

Apple the most desired PC in China originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for daily listening through iTunes, click here.

No Flash? Click here to listen.

Daily Update for November 10, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stanza was one of the first apps I downloaded when I got an iPhone. It pre-dated Amazon’s release of the Kindle iOS app and Apple’s own iBooks app, so for awhile Stanza was the best option out there for reading eBooks on an iPhone.

Not long after it released the official Kindle app, Amazon bought Stanza. What’s happened subsequently should come as no surprise; the app languished, going for as much as nine months between updates. Stanza has recently been updated for iOS 5 compatibility, but according to Macworld, Amazon has confirmed this will be Stanza’s final update.

This will be sad news for a subset of iOS users, because Stanza has always had support for a wider array of document formats and more customization options than either the Kindle app or iBooks. Amazon’s official word on the matter tries to steer Stanza users toward the Kindle app instead, but not all users will find that a suitable substitute for the flexibility Stanza provided.

Personally I haven’t used Stanza for some time; the iBookstore has vastly improved the breadth of its offerings over time, and I’ve found iBooks suitable for the majority of my e-reading needs. Stanza was the first e-reader app I used on my iPhone, though, so it’s a bit sad to see it going away.

Stanza iOS app updated, but Amazon is abandoning it originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A few weeks ago Microsoft came out with a future of productivity video proposing a very touchscreen-based future for us humans. A former human-computer interface inventor for Apple, Brett Victor, has picked apart this video in a beautifully designed “rant” on his site, essentially taking Microsoft to task for proposing a limited, iterative future in 2019 — calling it hardly a “vision” at all.

While I enjoyed the Microsoft video, and picked it apart myself for other reasons (yeah, you’re gonna get to do all this stuff is everyone is a Microsoft customer, basically), Victor makes some important points. Chief among them is summarized by this sentiment:

With an entire body at your command, do you seriously think the Future Of Interaction should be a single finger?

Microsoft seems to disavow any knowledge of our bodies and its incredible array of of sensory abilities. As Victor explains, current touchscreen tablets and smartphones are limited to an interaction he calls Pictures Under Glass. What can you do with these? Basically every interaction you have on your iPad or iPhone is simply sliding your finger around. Siri is the next step in a sense, because you’re now using your voice and ears to interact with the device. But still, most interactions are now being relegated to a finger. And Microsoft’s video shouldn’t be called a vision for that, Victor proposes, and I agree.

Just go back and read about the death of the Courier at Microsoft. Meant to feel more like a book, that is something that will engage more than just the tip of your finger. Think about real world objects that could change, think about embedded computers that never need show you some Metro-tiled interface, but rather give feedback through simple colors, or movement or even smells or sounds. Those are truly different, truly beyond what we see today, and none of it is reflected in this rather boring Microsoft video. In the end if feels more like a selling point for their Metro UI than a real vision. I would have expected better from the company who made the Kinect — one of the most fun, amazing gaming accessories I’ve ever used.

Read Brett Victor’s rant, however. He does an incredible job of explaining (through images as much as words) how we should be rethinking human-computer interaction, and how Microsoft’s video shouldn’t be a “vision” for anyone but the most staid, conservative of thinkers. Compare the intuitive leaps captured in this video with what Alan Kay managed to whip up upon seeing a tiny prototype of a flat screen display in 1968. I won’t spoil it, but it could blow your mind (let’s just say he was decades ahead of his time). With our vast imaginations, we can do better as a species to envision a more amazing future, I think.

Former Apple interface expert rants on Microsoft’s “Vision of the Future” video originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 10 Nov 2011 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS 5.0.1 firmware is now available for download. Apple has released iOS 5.0.1 for iPhone 4S, 4, 3GS, iPad 2, iPad and iPod Touch 4G/3G. You can download iOS 5.0.1 firmware for iPhone, iPad and iPod…

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