minis

Web world bemoans loss of Opera independence

It might have been a smart strategic move for Opera Software to move to the WebKit browser engine and scrap its own Presto, but some think it's a step backward for the development of the Web overall.

"A switch to Webkit might benefit Opera. It's just not going to benefit the open Web," Mozilla's Robert O'Callahan said today in comments on his blog about Opera's Presto change-o. "This will strengthen the WebKit mobile monoculture and make it even harder for us to promote Web standards over 'coding to Webkit.'"

Browser engines … Read more

Opera embraces WebKit in browser brain transplant

Opera Software, an independent voice in the browser market since the 1990s, will dramatically change its strategy this year by adopting the WebKit browser engine used by Safari and Chrome.

The Norwegian company announced the move today and said it will show off the first fruits of the work with a WebKit-based version of its Android browser at the Mobile World Congress show in less than two weeks. But the company will move to WebKit for its desktop browser, too.

A browser engine processes the Web page instructions written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS then renders the results on screens. … Read more

Evasi0n iOS jailbreak version 1.1 pops up with bug fixes

The evasi0n jailbreak team is already out with a new version that resolves a couple of persistent glitches.

Available from the evasi0n Web site, version 1.1 fixes one problem of long reboot times for any jailbroken device, according to blog site iPodnn. It also squashes a bug that caused the default Weather app to crash.

Both fixes had been posted earlier on the Cydia app store for jailbreakers, the evasi0n team tweeted today. Users who've already jailbroken their devices can grab the fixes from Cydia rather than installing the new version of evasi0n from scratch. People trying out … Read more

iOS evasi0n jailbreak used 1.7 million times in first day

A new jailbreak that targets all of the latest iOS devices has proven a hit with the public.

Launched on Monday, the evasi0n tool is capable of jailbreaking every iOS 6 and 6.1 device on the market, including the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, the fourth-generation iPad, and the fifth-generation iPod Touch. The tool itself is considered relatively simple to use, certainly in comparison with other jailbreak methods.

As a result, evasi0n had already been used at least 800,000 times in its initial six hours, according to Jay Freeman, who runs the Cydia app store for jailbreakers. Speaking … Read more

iPad Mini Retina Display may surpass iPad 4

The iPad Mini is ripe for a Retina display -- and it's already in the works, according to the latest Asia-based gossip.

The "iPad Mini 2" will have a Retina screen boasting 324 pixels per inch (PPI), according to a Chinese language report via BrightWire.

That's based on an 7.9-inch iPad Mini with 2,048x1,536 resolution display -- which simply doubles the resolution of the current iPad Mini's 1,024x768 screen.

And that's the same resolution of the current 9.7-inch Retina iPad.

But packing all of those pixels into the Mini'… Read more

How to jailbreak any iOS 6 device, including iPhone 5

If you've been waiting to jailbreak your iPhone 5, or any device running iOS 6 and higher, today is your lucky day. A new tool called evasi0n was released just this morning.

The new tool is very simple to use -- in fact, it's easier to use than the iOS 5.1.1 jailbreak tool I covered last year. Taking far less time, and only a few steps, if you're comfortable clicking a few buttons on your computer and tapping an icon on your iOS device, you're more than prepared to use evasi0n.

A required warning, … Read more

iPad Mini wait times fall to 1 to 3 days in U.S.

Delivery estimates for the iPad Mini from the U.S. Apple store have improved from 3 to 5 days in January to 1 to 3 days.

Either demand for the iPad Mini is slowing or Apple has been able to ramp up production faster than expected. During the quarterly earnings call last month, Cook acknowledged that Apple fell short on fulfilling demand for the iPad Mini. "Customers love the Mini and we wish that we could have made more and we ended the quarter with significant backlog," he said. Apple sold 22.86 million iPads last quarter, up … Read more

iPad still top tablet but keeps shedding market share

The iPad remains the king of the tablet world, but Android rivals continue to carve off some of its market share.

Apple shipped a total of 22.9 million iPads worldwide last quarter thanks to demand for the iPad Mini and the availability of the 4th-gen iPad, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Tablet Tracker. That number was in line with IDC's forecast and showed a 48.1 percent jump in shipments over the same quarter in 2011.

But for the second consecutive quarter, Apple's share of the global tablet market fell. In the fourth quarter of 2012, … Read more

Eating your own, Microsoft style

Eat your own, or somebody else will. That's the new mantra in the device world.

Here's what Apple said this week on that topic.

In terms of cannibalization and how we think about this, I see cannibalization as a huge opportunity for us. One, our base philosophy is to never fear cannibalization. If we do, somebody else will just cannibalize it and so we never fear it. --Tim Cook.

This was said in response to an analyst's question during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call. Earlier in the call, Apple, in its prepared remarks, said that … Read more