Apple's FaceTime video-chat service may be freed from its Wi-Fi-only restrictions soon.
At least, that's according to a warning message that pops up on current iOS devices when a user shuts off 3G during a FaceTime call. The message: "Disabling 3G may end FaceTime. Are you sure you want to disable 3G?"
There's really no reason why the message should pop up since FaceTime runs only on Wi-Fi, and that has prompted some to believe that FaceTime over 3G may be coming to the next version of iOS. The message was first discovered by Romanian Web site more
After a patent dispute with Apple held up imports of some of its smartphones, HTC says its phones are beginning to trickle through U.S. Customs.
It's unknown whether the One X or Evo 4G LTE -- the first two phones put in limbo by Customs officials last week over unresolved patent infringement issues with Apple -- are among those being released. Each model must be inspected by Customs and will be released once the agency completes its inspection and approves its release, HTC said today in a statement.
"Some models have gone through inspection and been released to more
The chief executives of Apple and Samsung are expected to meet tomorrow in a San Francisco federal court to try to work out their patent dispute, according to a Reuters report.
Apple's Tim Cook and Samsung's Choi Gee-sung, as well as their general counsels, were ordered in April to attend the magistrate judge settlement conference by Judge Lucy Koh of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. After the referral was ordered, the companies said in a joint court filing that "as directed by the court, Apple and Samsung are both willing to participate" more
The minute an Apple store appears in a shopping mall -- or, say, a vast famous New York railway station -- somehow the area becomes prettier and more devastatingly young.
The Next Web reports that Apple is continually offered ludicrously favorable incentives just to be the next shiny dance partner for a city or a shopping mall.
Apparently, authorities in Grand Central Terminal and Salt Lake City didn't bother with annoying complexities as some (or any) rent or share of profit in order to encourage Cupertino to erect a little more more
For those wondering how authentic the upcoming movie about Steve Jobs played by Ashton Kutcher will be, maker Five Star Feature Films says it's going to actual locations, including Jobs' childhood home, where the first Apple computers were pieced together in the garage.
The film's production company today said it plans to begin shooting principal photography at the Los Altos, Calif., home next month, with a release of the picture to follow in late fall of this year.
The garage, which belonged to the Jobs family, was Apple's official headquarters before the company moved to a rented more
Starting today, you can trade in your current non-Sprint iPhone for the carrier's own model, and get at least $100 off when you sign a new two-year contract.
Of course, the limited-time offer also gets you Sprint's promise of capless data access for the device, and that's what Sprint hopes will be the real draw for fed-up Verizon subscribers.
Following yesterday's discovery that Apple was altering how it displayed apps, music, and other digital content with the name "jailbreak" in the title, the company appears to have relented.
Searching for "jailbreak" now shows the word in full, instead of offering "j*******k."
An Apple spokesman declined to comment on the change, which was spotted by The Next Web.
As mentioned yesterday, the issue was inconsistant. Some digital content that was named jailbreak, or that simply had the word in the title appeared unchanged, while others were not.
Apple's App Store Guidelines document makes no indication that the more
But, would this fairly significant change be worth it? If Apple breaks from the laptop norm (for example, by upgrading the 15-inch MacBook Pro's 1,440x900-pixel display to a purported 2,560x1,600 pixels), I'd have concerns about battery life, system size and weight from a potentially larger battery, and even price, as higher-resolution panels cost $100 more by some estimates. And consumers could be confused if Apple breaks a long-standing tradition of how laptop screen sizes and screen resolutions relate.
The current high-end resolution for laptops is 1,920x1,080 pixels, which we sometimes refer to as full HD or 1080p -- that's the same as Blu-ray HD video. On a 17-inch desktop-replacement laptop, it's great, and it mostly works on a 15-incher as well. The handful of 13-inch laptops with 1,920x1,080-pixel screens I've seen are hard to read. For even higher resolutions, Apple would have to have a workaround for this. The most likely way a Retina MacBook would work would be using HiDPI. My colleagues Josh Lowensohn and Brooke Crothers explain:
If Apple bumps up the resolutions on these displays and keeps them the same size, it has to treat pixels differently using a a special mode called HiDPI. The feature understands that there are more pixels, but that the scale of the display is the same. Apple added the feature to its OS X 10.7 software last year, but it isn't readily available to users. Some third-party software, including the recently-updated Air Display app for iOS have unlocked it so that users can try it out on their third-generation iPad.
Most MacBooks are already outside of the laptop resolution mainstream, with 16:10 screens on everything except the 11-inch MacBook Air, which is the company's only 16:9 laptop. As these are some of the only 16:10 laptops left, some kind of change wouldn't be surprising. more
iPhone and iPad users unhappy with their speakerphones may be treated to better sound in future models.
Apple has invented a new speakerphone system for iOS devices, according to a patent published yesterday by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. The patent application is filled with pages of the usual technical jargon.
But in a nutshell, Apple is redesigning and repositioning the traditional speaker and surrounding components to enhance the quality of the audio possible in a relatively small space. Though the patent doesn't tout any specific benefits to consumers, "the new speaker positioning could provide iOS devices with generally superior sound, even when docked," more
Lately there's been no shortage of rumors that Apple's got a smaller iPad on the way. The only problem is that we've heard this song and dance before.
Don't believe us?
CNET has rounded down just about every claim that a smaller iPad is on the way, going back to before the original iPad was announced.
It's a collection we plan to keep lovingly updated, and also one that should serve as a tasty grain of salt to take with any rumors that make their way out in the next few months.
At the start of the 21st century, there's no tech outfit more influential than Apple. CNET News' Josh Lowensohn and other reporters will attempt to make sense of the rumors, hype, products, and people that will shape the future of the company. But Apple's not the only game in town, as the established cell phone companies and others strike back against the iPhone and iPad. E-mail Josh at josh.lowensohn@cnet.com.
