All posts tagged Apple

iOS Apps to Require Explicit Permission to Access Address Book Data

By | February 16, 2012 | Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhone | No comments

Last week a controversy came to surface pinpointing a popular iOS app “Path” uploading user Address Book data to their servers without them knowing. Next web reports that U.S. Congressmen Henry Waxman and G.K. Butterfield have now weighed on in the issue, sending a letter to Apple requesting information on the company’s data collection policies it imposes on App Store developers. In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the legislators state:

This incident raises questions about whether Apple’s iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts.

Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD and promised to address the issue with the new update of iOS.

Apps that collect or transmit a user’s contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines,” Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told AllThingsD. “We’re working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release.

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Apple Reduces iAd Minimum Buy-In Fee Once Again

By | February 15, 2012 | Apple | No comments

Apple has reduced minimum Buy-In fee once again in the wake of luring more advertisers on their network. When iAd was launched back in July 201o, the minimum buy-in fee was 1 million dollars.

Later on the fee was dropped to $500k and then $300k for a package. Yet again Apple has cut it’s minimum buy-in fee down to $100k according to a report from AdAge. Macrumors reports that in addition to the reduced minimum spend, Apple is increasing the cut that developers receive from iAds running within their apps from 60% to 70%. The extra money is expected to cover lower ad rates and encourage developers to include iAds within their applications.

AdAge  reports: Apple is also planning to change the way it charges for ads, which irked some advertisers and agencies. Since it launched in 2010, Apple has charged advertisers twice: a fixed rate for every 1,000 ad impressions plus an additional fee every time a user clicked on the ad. Apple will now only charge the cost-per-thousand rate.

Apple recently hired former Adobe executive Todd Teresi to head up the iAds team after Andy Miller pastured to join a venture capital firm.

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Apple Share Price Reaches $500 per Share

By | February 13, 2012 | Apple | No comments

At the start of market today morning Apple has surpassed important $500 per share mark. Thanks to Apple strong and record breaking Q4 results. Apple is now worth more than $469 billion, making it the most valuable public company in the world by a significant margin.Exxon Mobil was the most valuable public company whose worth is approximately $400 billion.

Macrumors reports: Apple is a long way from claiming the “most valuable publicly traded company ever” title. Among many others, Microsoft had a peak market cap of $642 billion during the dot-com boom in September 2000. That company is now worth just over $250 billion. With the reversal of fortunes, Apple is in fact now worth more than Google ($199 billion) and Microsoft ($256 billion) — Apple’s two biggest competitors — combined.

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Siri to Support Russian, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese

By | February 9, 2012 | Apple, iPhone | No comments

Siri is Apple’s voice powered assistant which is launched in October last year and is exclusive to iPhone 4S. Siri is one of the biggest differentiating factor when it comes to buy iPhone. Siri at the moment supports English (USA, UK, Australia), French and German. The official Siri FAQ from the onset made it clear that in 2012: “Siri will support additional languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish.”

However it is noted that support for new languages will be limited at launch and only Mandarin Chinese will be available leaving other dialects in the country. New languages support are expected to appear as soon as next month.

Some of Apple’s job openings also indicated that Apple is working to take Siri forward bringing in new capabilities including Siri API for developers so it can be used with third party apps other than Apple. Siri is giving other companies a boost as well. Siri accounts for nearly 25% of  Wolfram Alpha queries.

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Apple Topped Davis Brand Capital Top 25 List Ousted IBM

By | February 8, 2012 | Apple | No comments

Apple the company who gave iPhone, iPad and iPod to the world has topped the Davis Brand top 25 list in 2011 for the first time. Apple surpassed IBM who had come in first in the previous two years.

“The annual 2011 Davis Brand Capital 25 ranking evaluates companies’ abilities to manage and balance the five key intangible categories that comprise brand capital: brand value; competitive performance; innovation strength; company culture; and social impact,”

The company said in a press release.

“The ranking does not aim to place a financial value on the brand capital of the companies. Rather, the list reveals the comparative strength and breadth of the companies’ brand capital.”

Below is a complete list of Top 25 in the Davis Brand Capital Top 25:

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Why Siri is Exclusive to iPhone 4S

By | February 7, 2012 | Apple, iPhone | No comments

One of the main selling points of iPhone 4S over iPhone 4 is Siri apart from better graphics and processing power. Well there is no apparent reason why Siri is iPhone 4S exclusive, folks at appleinsider have done some digging.

“Audience” a third party noise reduction circuitry exist in iPhone 4/4S but the one found in iPhone 4S has a noise reduction technology that works in a similar way human brain works.

Audience’s noise reduction chip works similarly to how the human brain processes audio. By sampling audio from multiple sources (the iPhone’s main microphone and the noise-cancelling mic), the Audience chip is able to filter out background noise and deliver only the user’s voice, just like how your brain filters out noise in a crowded room to focus on a person talking to you. The newer noise reduction circuitry in the A5 chip is better at “far-field” noise reduction than the circuits in the iPhone 4. Essentially, the iPhone 4S can achieve the same or better noise reduction when held at arm’s length that the iPhone 4 gets when held directly in front of a user’s mouth.

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Product Marketing Engineer Bob Borchers Recalls Jobs Obsession with iPhone

By | February 6, 2012 | Apple, iPhone | No comments

Bob Borchers, product marketing engineer, was part of the team when first iPhone was released back in 2007. While speaking to students at  California school he talked about thought processes in development while making first iPhone.

Borchers says that Steve Jobs didn’t have a specific device in mind, but instead gave the team a mission: create a phone that people would love so much that they’d never leave the house without it. Borchers believes that Apple has been so wildly successful with the iPhone because the company focused on fundamentals — breaking the rules, but in an exceptionally well manner; paying attention to details; and making people focus on the relationship they have with their device. Jobs wanted the phone to be revolutionary, the best iPod the company had ever designed, and allow users to access the internet easily from a pocket-sized device.

He also says that first iPhone had a plastic touchscreen but Steve was concerned about the scratches the device is gonna get because people carry keys and other stuff in their pocket. Job’s obsession to every detail has made this phone a scratch-resistant display right from the start.

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MAC OS X Lion 10.7.3 Update has Broken “App Submission” in Xcode 4.2.1 through Organizer

By | February 5, 2012 | Apple, MAC | No comments

 

Apple recently released an update to it’s OS X Lion software bringing it to 10.7.3. We heard from several sources about bugs surrounding CUI issues and the crashing of applications. We have found one which is critical to developers if they are planning to submit their apps to Apple for release on App Store.

Users are getting error messages like

“warning: iPad: Icon-72.png: icon dimensions (0 x 0) don’t meet the size requirements. The icon file must be 72×72 pixels, in .png for”

“warning: iPhone: Icon.png: icon dimensions (0 x 0) don’t meet the size requirements. The icon file must be 57×57 pixels, in .png format”

or both if your application is universal.

There is a workaround for this problem. Rather than submitting Apps through Organizer in XCode download new Application Loader and submit Apps manually till Apple fixes the bug.

UPDATE:

A user contacted Macscandal about another potential problem while syncing iPhone over wifi since the new update 10.7.3 applied to Macbook. According to user iTunes loses iPhone 4S in the devices list and trying to initiate the connection from the phone end will take forever. iPhone was plugged in when new update was applied however it seems very unlikely that this has caused any problem.

IDC Reports: Apple Reaches World’s Third Largest Phone Maker Spot

By | February 3, 2012 | Apple | No comments

Apple has passed LG to become the third largest phone maker in the world. Apple reported strong profits in the Q1 2012 (Q4 2011 Sales) press conference which helped Apple to climb up the chart quickly.

Nokia and Samsung remained the top 2 phone vendors thanks to their low end phones. Nokia’s figures are down by 7.9% as compare to previous quarter whereas Samsung figures rose by 17.6%.

Apple has got 6.0% of the total market share by just selling their three phones iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S and Apple market share rose almost 100% as compare to previous quarter (Q3) 2011.

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Apple Updates OS X Lion 10.7.3 with Safari 5.1.3 and Wi-Fi bug fix

By | February 2, 2012 | Apple, MAC | 1 Comment

Apple releases next iteration of OS X Lion with 10.7.3 update. Safari will be updated to 5.1.3 and among others the most notable is WI-fi bug. My Macbook has had this issue several times and it occurs while waking the OS from sleep. we hope that this issue has been addressed in this release.

The OS X Lion v10.7.3 Update includes:

  • Add Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian language support
  • Address issues when using smart cards to log into OS X
  • Address compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing
  • Address an issue printing Microsoft Word documents that use markup
  • Address a graphics performance issue after sleep on some earlier iMacs that use ATI graphics
  • Resolve a Wi-Fi connection issue when waking from sleep
  • Address an issue that may prevent Safari from opening before joining a wireless network
  • Fix a potential issue authenticating to an SMB DFS share
  • Include RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras

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