iPhone 5, iPad 3 may be released in October

Most of the recent rumors about the upcoming next-generation iPhone have focused on September for its release, but a new DigiTimes report is pushing it out a month to October. However, iDevice fans might be appeased if another piece of the report is true: an iPad 3 coming at the same time.

iPad's Apps Now Reaches 100,000

The iPad has reached a notable milestone: There are now over 100,000 applications made specifically for this tablet. Considering the iPad has been available for less than a year and a half and developers have only had access to the iPad's software development kit since January 2010, this is a noteworthy accomplishment.

Apple's icloud preview in WWDC 2011

We've already talked about Lion and iOS 5, Apple's other WWDC topics, and both look like worthwhile extensions of existing products, but Apple squeezed its most interesting announcement in at the end of the keynote: iCloud, its long-anticipated cloud computing service.

Apple's iOS 5 in WWDC 2011

iOS 4 is still a perfectly usable smartphone and tablet operating system today, but advances made by both Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 have made it look a little long in the tooth. With iOS 5, Apple must both keep pace with its competitors advances and outmaneuver them in other areas. 

Apple Shows its New OS X 10.7 Lion in WWDC 2011

Apple kicked of its Worldwide Developers conference this year with a keynote meant to showcase three of its biggest software undertakings at the moment: Mac OS X, iOS, and iCloud, the latter of which being its new cloud computing service.

Apple's iPad Acquires 97 Percent of U.S. Tablet Traffic

ComScore reports Apple's iPad dominates U.S. tablet traffic with 97 percent, leaving just three percent for rivals from BlackBerry, ASUS, Motorola and Samsung. An analyst said, "Without a doubt, the iPad is the device to beat in the marketplace." Except for India, newspaper sites were more likely than average to be accessed by non-computers.

Apple Launched New Update Mac OS X10.6.8

Apple released the last new update for Mac Snow Leopard with version OS X10.6.8 which comes with new security fixes in addition to many fixes Apple included in the update.

Kingston Wi-Drive Presents Wireless iPad Storage Expansion

Dozens of companies have built entire businesses supplying accessories to the iPod and iPhone. With the iPad, storage vendors are trying to get a piece of the pie by addressing the inherent storage limitations of the platform. 

Without an SD card slot, your iPad is stuck with however much storage you buy it with. Upgrading isn't possible and higher capacity models are sold at a pretty steep premium. Seagate and now Kingston are offering 802.11 enabled, battery powered external storage devices to use with the iPad or any device with a web browser (iOS or not).

Will The New Upcoming MacBook Air come in black? Seems Elegant!

We continue waiting the releasing of the new generation of the new Macbook air in the period from now till the end of next July, the rumors and expectations are still wrapped around the new release to come the latest expectation that apple will at least release Macbook air in black color.

Apple Widens Legal Complaint Against Samsung

More Samsung products are trampling on Apple's ideas, the iPhone maker said in broadening its patent suit. Apple has already accused Samsung of stealing ideas from the iPad and iPhone for Samsung's Galaxy S smartphone and Galaxy Tab tablet. Now that Apple has settled a dispute with Nokia, the two could go after Google's Android.

Apple Allows OS X Lion to Reboot Into Safari



Borrowing a tiny page from Google's Chrome OS, Apple has snuck a feature into its upcoming OS X Lion release that allows users to reboot their systems into Safari. Why would you bother doing that? In a word, security. When you elect to restart your system into Safari, you're effectively placing the Web browser into a sandbox. When it boots, your system will give any users with physical access to your machine the ability to surf the Web. But that's it. Users won't be able to access the system's files or applications.


And thanks to Lion's new auto-save and application restoration capabilities, users that slap their systems in Safari-only mode will be able to restore back to their full desktop exactly as they left it. Since Safari mode runs off of a system's recovery partition, you'll still be able to access the Web and research new methods for fixing your system should your primary partition suffer some catastrophic upset.

The comparison to Chrome OS stems from the fact that Google's operating system runs entirely Web-based: The browser is the primary method for interacting with the system. There's no underlying desktop layer to speak of.

Apple's Next-Gen MacBook Airs Are in Production

Apple has reportedly placed an order with its Asian manufacturers for 380,000 next-generation MacBook Airs, equipped with Intel's newest Sandy Bridge processors, Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in a note obtained by AppleInsider.


Kuo said 55 percent of these new models will be 11.6-inch versions, and the rest will be 13.3-inch models. In addition, Kuo said Apple has scaled back production of current models, announced back in October 2010, to 80,000.

Kuo has been saying since April that Apple will launch its next MacBook Air in June or July. At the same time, he said he expected the popular notebook would be equipped with Sandy Bridge processors and high-speed Thunderbolt transfer technology. In early May, Taiwanese newspaper DigiTimes cited sources who said the same thing. By late May, a Japanese blog reported that Apple was testing MacBook Airs with an A5 chip inside, the same chip used in the iPad 2 (though Steve Jobs has said once that Apple has no interest in building a netbook).

Om Nom Nom: Apple Leads Industry In Flash Consumption

The popularity of its iPod, iPhone, and iPad product lines have propelled Apple to the top of the charts when it comes to NAND flash consumption. iSuppli reports that the Cupertino-based company has surpassed HP (the former champ), with 2010 purchases coming in at $17.5 billion. That's a massive 79.6 percent jump from 2009, during which Apple bought just $9.7B in Flash.

 "Apple's surge to leadership in semiconductor spending in 2010 was driven by the overwhelming success of its wireless
 products, namely the iPhone and the iPad," said iSuppli analyst Wenlie Ye. "These products consume enormous quantities of NAND flash memory, which is also found in the Apple iPod. Because of this, Apple in 2010 was the world's No. 1 purchaser of NAND flash."
 Apple is already one of the top five semiconductor purchasers, but Ye noted that the company spends 60 percent of its
 semiconductor budget on wireless products as opposed to microprocessors. HP leads in that area, but Apple may surpass it in terms of microprocessor business within 2011.
 HP spends the majority of its semiconductor budget on mature markets (notebooks, desktops). The PC market grew by 14.2 percent last year--an amount that pales considering smartphone and tablet purchases rose 62 percent and 900 percent over the same period. The flip side to this, of course, is that the PC market is already enormous--the tablet industry could likely grow at 900 percent for several years running without actually challenging total PC shipments.
 iSuppli expects the tablet market to grow to 12.3 exabytes of flash capacity by 2014, driven by increasing storage densities and higher demand for tablet products. By 2014 the company expects tablets will account for up to 16 percent of all Flash. It's not clear how much of that growth is based on expectations of increased demand in the mature PC market. Falling SSD prices have made the drives popular, particularly in the notebook/netbook segment. The PC industry might not be growing at anything like the rate of the tablet business, but the sheer size of the market makes even marginal growth quite significant in real numbers.
 iSuppli goes on to imply that Apple is likely to continue gobbling up semiconductors thanks to its integrated hardware/software ecosystem. While this may be true, the other PC manufacturers each do billions of dollars in business year to year. Apple's expanding business may highlight a trend towards mobile devices, but the mainstream OEMs aren't exactly going anywhere.
 If Apple's share of the Flash market continues to expand as it has, the company's voice will have a significant affect on how Flash and future solid-state storage technologies evolve. As we've discussed previously, Flash suffers from long-term data retention issues that make it a less-than-ideal choice for long-term storage at 22nm and below. There are a number of post-Flash solid state storage concepts that might work; Apple's preference could influence the evolution of future standards.

$15 Program Tracks Stolen Mac, Nabs Alleged Thief

A thief found out the hard way not to pass laptops with tracking software. Joshua Kaufman victim uses a $ 15 program called hidden in his MacBook to collect photos of the thief. Their efforts were ignored until Kaufman began to Twitter and dissemination of history. Encouraged the police to stop Muthanna Alde-Bashi and retrieve MacBook Kaufman.
Call it digital detective in the era of high technology. MacBook for a man steals. Triggers a request for $ 15, fit pictures of the alleged thief, publishes a blog, and two months later, the relevant equipment Products / Services is recovered and the suspect is arrested by the police.

The police in Oakland, California, did not immediately into action, however. The event was a huge boom in social media.

Twitter Help

According to the blog maintained by Joshua Kaufman, whose Apple MacBook was stolen from her Oakland, California, apartment on March 21, reported the crime immediately and then began to collect photos of the person using your computer with the help of Hidden, a application that lived up to its name. Was published on his blog photos Tumblr of a man sleeping, using the computer, and driving (with a laptop Relevant Products / Services open).

But the crime was given low priority, obviously, because the value of the equipment is relatively low compared with other goods, until Kaufman began the photos than 6,000 Twitter followers after he has a solution in the location of your computer.

Tweets links to articles by Kaufman, this guy has my MacBook, it spread to journalists, including this one, and the story soon began appearing on websites and blogs. ABC News said that when its reporter for Good Morning America called the Oakland Police Department to check whether a blog was a joke or just a promotion, the police reopened the case and soon attracted the suspects arrest. Quoting police, identified the suspect as ABC Muthanna Alde-Bashi, a taxi driver 27 years of age, of Alameda.

The team recovered and returned to Kaufman, who has not revealed details about himself or comment beyond their blogs and tweets.

The story is great publicity for both UK-based Hidden offering equipment protection plans ranging from $ 15 per year by a team of $ 395 for up to 100 computers for businesses, theft recovery with relevant products / Services include assistance. It is also good publicity for Apple, which demonstrates the loyalty of its users, and to Twitter.

But however much they can teach users to protect their relevant hardware products / services, history also could provide relevant products / services as a warning to beware of thieves tracking software relevant products and services.

Cat bag?

Consultant Rob Enderle of Enderle Group, said that while a professional reference products / services burglar can remove the computer's memory, knowing that there are programs like Lo-Jack that can track, "occasional thieves are usually not known for their long attention span or an avid interest in any technology publications or news programs. "

Cyber ​​Security experts Sophos said Graham Cluely Most computers are stolen by opportunistic thieves rather tech-savvy criminals. However, if, for example, a new version of Mac OS X. Find My Mac software as standard, then the thieves may be more clued up and start off, if possible. "

Enderle said the low price of laptops has been a low priority for thieves because the secondary market is weak.

"What this means is professional thieves choose other things that are more valuable and easier to transport - jewelry, money, etc.," said Enderle. "Laptops are often stolen by opportunists, the same people who steal GPS devices. In addition, it is often the personal information (identity theft) is the most valuable part of the laptop anyway."

Would You Sell a Kidney for an iPad 2?

Kidneys: You have two of them, so why not sell one for an iPad 2? A Chinese student reportedly did just that, but is regretting the decision now that his health is worsening. The 17-year-old boy was contacted over the Internet by a broker who told him he could peddle a kidney for 22,000 Yuan (about $3,393).


"I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it," the boy told the Shanghai Daily newspaper.

The broker arranged the surgery and the boy's right kidney was removed on April 28 in Hunan Province, China. His parents had no knowledge of the procedure. When he returned to his home in neighboring Anhui Province, his mother contacted the authorities immediately. Police called the broker, but predictably, his phone had been turned off.

The surgery was performed at Chenzhou No. 198 Hospital, which Shanghai Daily said is "not qualified to perform organ transplant." The hospital also claimed it was unaware of the procedure because it had been outsourced to a private businessman.

Apple products have caused a feeding frenzy in China. The launch of the white iPhone at Beijing's flagship store even turned violent last month when an alleged scalper tried to jump the line. Since the first Apple Store opened in China about three years ago, demand for Apple products has grown exponentially in the country. In fact, out of all of Apple's retail locations, Chinese Apple Stores average both the highest traffic and the highest revenue.

When Apple reported its Q1 earnings last month, it said that quarterly revenue from China quadrupled, soaring to $2.6 billion, or about 10 percent of the company's total revenue.

The iPad 2 has been wildly popular around the world and Apple has struggled to keep up with demand. Chinese scalpers are reportedly making about $400 a day buying the device in the U.S. and sending it back to China for resale.

The kidney case is currently under investigation; there's no word as to whether the boy got his iPad.

Super Secret Software Saves a Stolen Laptop

Stolen property is not easily found. Fortunately, Joshua Kaufman put a safeguard in place in his laptop that aided police in a search for it. The software led to the arrest of Muthanna Albedashi, a 27-year-old taxi driver, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting. The app is called Hidden. It functions by tracking the laptop's movements through collecting network data and taking photos of the culprit and screenshots of the computer in use.


Kaufman's laptop was stolen on March 21. He filed a police report with the Oakland Police Deparment that same day, and he began to use Hidden to collect photos and location data. Much to his dismay, there was little progress with his case.

Two months later on May 27, he launched a web campaign, This Guy Has My MacBook, via Tumblr. He updated his tumblelog with photos taken of who he suspected stole the laptop.

One of the images shows Albedashi with his shirt off in bed. Another shows Albedashi asleep on his couch. Kaufman cross-posted his Tumblr to Twitter on May 31 and picked up thousands of hits and tweets.

With the steady increase in popularity of his campaign and calls from several media outlets, Oakland police reopened the case. On May 31, Kaufman was contacted by Officer Holly Joshi that the police were moving forward with his case.

Undercover officers contacted Albedashi's taxi company and had them arrange a pickup for the suspect. Upon arriving at the location, Albedashi was arrested and the laptop was retrieved.

Kaufman concluded his campaign with, "ARRESTED! An Oakland police officer just called me to let me know that they arrested the guy in my photos! BOOYA!"

Hidden is currently available only for Mac users for $15. Other programs for locating lost and stolen devices include LoJack and GadgetTrak.

Last month, a story on Cult of Mac related the efforts of Sean Power, a Canadian tech consultant and author, to recover his stolen MacBook Pro. He used Prey and Twitter to reclaim his laptop.

New MacBook Airs Coming in June?

So what happens when the lifespan of an Apple laptop—say, the MacBook Air—is about to reach its six-month anniversary? Rumors start flying about the next version.


A Concord Security Analyst was quoted as saying he had inside information from a manufacturing source about new MacBook Airs hitting the production lines. The Apple MacBook Air 13-inch and 11-inch models sold really well when they first launched back in October 2010. So well, in fact, that for every two MacBook Pros sold a MacBook Air was among them. That's a 1 to 2 ratio, according to the analyst. And then the new MacBook Pros arrived (Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt versions) and Air sales started tailing off by as much as 51% in the first quarter of this year.

The Airs are undeniably attractive and utterly thin, but the technology inside them is once again falling behind their MacBook Pro brethren. For instance, they're still using Intel Core 2 Duos—a three-year old processor that every other manufacturer has since abandoned in favor of Intel's Sandy Bridge architecture. An Intel Core i5 processor is at least 4 to 5 times faster than the Core 2 Duo L9400 found in the current MacBook Air 13-inch, based on PCMag's tests. A more robust graphics subsystem is also part of the Sandy Bridge package, so Apple can finally put the Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics chip to rest, like it did with the 13-inch MacBook Pro. From what we've seen, new Intel technology would also improve battery life without increasing the size of the battery.

There's also whispers of Thunderbolt, a transfer technology that's roughly 21 times the speed of USB and lives inside the mini-DisplayPort. The MacBook Airs have this Thunderbolt-less mini-DisplayPort, so injecting Thunderbolt seems like a no-brainer. Bring back the backlit keyboard, and the MacBook Airs would be the toast of the town again—or at least until the MacBook Pros get new updates. And that's what you call an Apple MacBook lifecycle.