Posts tagged with "iPhone"

“Innovative, Category-Killer Experience” Key Requirement For A Cheaper iPhone

After meeting two Apple executives on Wednesday, RBC Capital Markets has revealed a set of “key takeaways” and have noted that Apple wouldn’t introduce a low-end iPhone unless the device is an “innovative, category-killer experience”. Analyst Mike Abramsky met with Apple COO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Oppenheimer and notes that the condition is Apple’s primary requirement for a low-end iPhone.

It certainly sounds like a fairly obvious statement when looking at Apple’s recent product releases but it is well worth noting after numerous reports of a ‘cheaper’ iPhone launching this year – most of which cite financial reasons and developing country markets for the introduction of such a device.

Some of the other takeaways from Abramsky’s meeting with the Apple executives includes the fact that iCloud will be ready for “significant scale” when launching this fall after Apple learnt lessons from MobileMe. He also says that despite Android’s success in recent years, Apple has maintained “sustained advantages” over their competitors and should be able to do fine despite an “expected explosion of low-priced Android smartphones”.

Concluding his notes from the meeting he agrees with Apple’s executives that the company has an “untapped global opportunity” and maintains a $500 price for Apple stock and ‘outperform’ rating for the company.

[Via AppleInsider]

150 Million Photos Uploaded on Instagram So Far

When you launch one of the world’s most popular photo service, how long does it take to reach 150 million uploads? Only nine months according to Instagram, whom launched their slam-dunk-app back in October of 2010. Instagram is celebrating this afternoon by showing off their favorite Instagram photos, and noting the success of their app thanks to the seven million users who’ve downloaded the app since its inception. That’s seven million people uploading at a rate of fifteen photos per second. Instagram’s success is well deserved: those guys got a top-notch formula down. From the Instagram team:

We’re constantly amazed by the range of photos shared on Instagram. People use Instagram to snap photos of everyday moments with friends and family and also to document significant personal moments, like weddings and honeymoons. There are Instagram photos from major events like the World Series and the Grammys, and some Instagram photos have even made the national news. Artists and celebrities have begun to give fans a unique look into their lives through photos, while brands like Burberry have started to realize the power of communicating with their followers through images.

Here’s to another 150 million.

For the post picture, we’ve re-posted the 150,000,000th photo according to Instagram from user @janefot. It’s a great pic too!

[Instagram blog via The Next Web]

iPhone and iPad Dominate Smartphone and Tablet Choices for Small and Medium Businesses

The iPhone and iPad are leading the charge in small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) for smartphones and tablets according to Intermedia. In a study by Intermedia, who handles 350,000 premium hosted Microsoft Exchange servers, Apple’s iOS devices are dominating the stats when it comes to ActiveSync activations performed by the company. The iPhone has an overwhelming 57% coverage in this bracket and the iPad has 21% as well. That leaves only about 22% for competitors such as Motorola, HTC and others. The nearest competition to the iPad’s 21% is Motorola with only 9%. See above graphic for full stats.

The graph data compares the use of ActiveSync devices in Intermedia’s clientele. ActiveSync is the syncing protocol that smartphones use to sync email and other information with Microsoft Exchange. Intermedia supports email, contact and calendar syncing for smartphones, including iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and Windows 7 phones.

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Banca: Convert Currencies Swiftly With this Beautiful iPhone App

With the US economy in flux, it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on your dollar. As world travelers we find ourselves spending a good dime overseas, and international friendships online can lead to an occasional penny dropped in each other’s PayPal bucket. As foreign currency plays a big role in today’s lifestyles and businesses — boundaries are practically absent — knowing how the USD compares to the Euro or the Australian dollar at the press of the button becomes very useful. Radiant Tap’s Banca for the iPhone isn’t just a calculator, but a currency converter (it supports all of the world’s currencies) that’s both beautiful and incredibly elegant in design.

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Forbes Profiles Comex, The iPhone Hacker Behind JailbreakMe→

Forbes Profiles Comex, The iPhone Hacker Behind JailbreakMe

Forbes has published an interesting story on comex, the 19-year old hacker and Cydia developer who has released jailbreak tools for the iPhone multiple times in the past years. Namely, the latest iteration of JailbreakMe (which relied on a vulnerability in the iOS’ PDF rendering library that Apple patched after 9 days) has been used over 2 million times to jailbreak iOS devices (including the iPad 2) running iOS 4.3.3. Last year, comex released JailbreakMe 2.0, again based on a bug in the PDF engine, which allowed users to jailbreak devices running iOS 4.

The popularity of comex (his Twitter account alone has over 172,000 followers) and the anticipation that precedes every jailbreak release had the unpleasant side effect of a leak of an early beta version of JailbreakMe 3.0, which forced comex to rush the public release fearing Apple’s upcoming fix.

Perhaps the most interesting part from Forbes’ story is this little tidbit about comex’s background:

The young hacker taught himself to code in the programming language Visual Basic at the age of nine, gleaning tricks from Web forums. “By the time I took a computer science class in high school, I already knew everything,” he says. When he found that he couldn’t save a screenshot from the Nintendo Wii video game Super Smash Brothers to his computer, he spent hours deciphering the file, and later worked on other Wii hacks, getting a feel for its obscure operating system.

“I didn’t come out of the same background as the rest of the security community,” he says. “So to them I seem to have come out of nowhere.

Whilst Apple is seemingly “borrowing” ideas from the jailbreak community to implement them in iOS 5 in a more polished way, questions remain whether the future of the iPhone has much room left for jailbreakers. The way I see it, as long as Apple won’t allow users to freely customize the experience of iOS at the same degree the Mac does, and as long as people like comex will be around, there will always be a reason – we’re not talking about the necessity – to jailbreak a device.

Read the full story over at Forbes. [image via]

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