Free iPhone

An academic paper written by a former Apple intern who now serves as a Core OS engineer at the company has revealed that it was working on a secret experiment to port Mac OS X Snow Leopard to the ARM architecture.

The rumors surrounding an Apple’s iTV television don’t seem to be slowing down, and now a report has come out suggesting that two of Canada’s top telecommunications companies, Rogers and Bell, are in talks to provide content for the still-unannounced, unreleased device.

“They’re not closed to doing it with one [company] or doing it with two,” said one source who is familiar with the talks. “They’re looking for a partner. They’re looking for someone with wireless and broadband capabilities.”

According to The Globe and Mail all three companies declined to comment on the matter, as expected. However, a second source claimed that both Rogers and Bell have the Apple television in their labs for testing.

The Globe and Mail also reported on iPhone and iPad based controls, Siri integration, and even Xbox Kinect-style remote gesture keyboards, though the sourcing of that information read more like analyst musings/wishful thinking than solid leaks.

Our living rooms are still a major battleground, with everyone from Apple to Google to Microsoft to Sony vying for the “third screen”, a connected television, to add to the desktop/laptop and phone/tablet experience. However, no one has yet taken a decisive lead.

Steve Jobs famously said in his biography that he “cracked the television interface”, and doing for television what the iPhone did for phones and the iPad for tablets would no doubt be welcome by many consumers who can’t find the shows they want, when they want, on who-knows which box and with what remote any more. However, providing content for an Apple television, especially network programming, sports, and live events, is a huge challenge in a industry run by a multitude of regional cable monopolies.

The iPad has overcome some of this via apps that function like channels — different television networks like ABC, studios like Sony, and sports leagues like MLB all have dedicated apps, some free, some requiring subscription, some requiring proof of existing cable service.

Apple’s current Apple TV set top box, instead of apps, has built-in partner channels including MLB, but no App Store and no way for users to pick and choose which ones they want.

If Apple is, in fact, working on content deals with the likes of Rogers, it sounds like that same partner channel approach might be where we’re headed for the Apple television. That’s great for content, but not for selection.

Source – The Globe and Mail

Was Apple investigating the idea of Mac OS X iPads, or MacBook Airs running on ARM chipsets?

In 2010, Apple’s Platform Technologies Group (a subdivision of the CoreOS department) spent some time working on a project to port the Mac OS X Darwin kernel to the ARMv5 chipset architecture — the same family of chipsets that currently powers iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.

Here’s a snippet from the project, titled Porting Darwin to the MV88F6281, subtitled ARMing the Snow Leopard:

The goal of this project is to get Darwin into a workable state on the MV88F6281 processor so that other teams can continue their work on this platform. The project has three major milestones:

Getting the buildsystem into shape, so that it can build the kernel and kexts. Building and booting the kernel into single user mode. Booting the system into multi-user mode.

The project was only made public several months ago. While iOS also uses the Darwin kernel, this project involved Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and was left for the CoreOS teams to continue. Since Mac OX X 10.7 Lion has since shipped, as have newer generations of iPad and MacBook Air, without any sign of MAC OS X on ARM, it’s unknown if this project is still ongoing or has since been put on the shelf. However, the author of the paper is now a full-time employee at Apple, working as a CoreOS Engineer.

While some might find the idea of a Mac OS X iPad intriguing, Tablet PC, which put full Microsoft Windows on a tablet, never gained any traction in the market. It, like Mac OS X, was simply not designed for a multitouch user interface.

Microsoft, to their credit, is currently working on Windows 8, which will have both a Windows Phone-like Metro user interface optimized for tablets, and a more traditional Windows 7-like interface for desktops and laptops.

Instead of making MacBook Airs with ARM processors, Apple decided to take iOS software “Back to the Mac” instead with OS X 10.7 Lion.

Given Apple’s preference for simplicity, and the huge sales they’ve achieved with iPad, it seems unlikely they’d deviate from their current strategy. Indeed, there has been more speculation of late that Apple would continue to move iOS towards the Mac, as opposed to moving the Mac to ARM.

However, Mac OS X once ran on Power PC chips, yet Apple had it secretly running on Intel chips at the same time. It only makes sense for a company as forward thinking as Apple to have ARM-compatible builds of OS X in the development labs.

SO while neither an OS X tablet nor an ARM MacBook Air seem likely, it’s interesting to see further evidence of Apple keeping the Mac platform nimble.

UPDATE: For those curious about the group, kernel, and chipset referenced above, here are the descriptions from the project introduction:

About the Platform Technologies Group

As it was described by a manager: “We do the plumbing, if we do our jobs right, you never see it.”. The Platform Technologies Group, a subdivision of the Core OS department, works on the embedded platforms that Apple maintains. Here, platforms are brought up and the embedded kernel and lower level support for the platforms is maintained.

What is Darwin?

Darwin is the lower half of the Mac OSX operating system. It includes the XNU kernel which is based on the Mach microkernel, and the userland.

What is the MV88F6281?

The MV88F6281 is an ARMv5te compatible processor from Marvell. It is based on their custom Sheeva core, which is designed to be like the ARM926EJ-S core from ARM. It has all the features youʼd expect from a modern CPU, including several high speed SERDES lanes, a Harvard L1 cache, and 128kb of unified L2 cache.

Source: Delfte University of Technology

A new report claims Canadian telecoms Rogers and Bell Canada have an early version of a much-rumored Apple television set in their labs and are in negotiations with the company to enter into a partnership for the device.

Late last year, Motorola Mobility requested Apple pay a potential royalty of 2.25% on its iPhone sales in recently unsealed litigation from last year. The royalty would amount to more than $1 billion in 2011 alone, though there is no indication which specific iPhone models would be covered by the license nor if it would be retroactive to the initial launch of the iPhone in 2007. The patents appear to be covered under the FRAND standard, which requires patents to be licensed for "fair, reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms". The 2.25% request that Motorola offered was in response to a demand for a FRAND pricing offer from Apple. Florian Mueller, writing about the issue, offers some additional insight: I assume this relates to Apple's sales and to all of MMI's standard-essential patents, though the context is only one patent (the one over which Motorola has already forced Apple, temporarily, to remove certain products from its German online store. Assuming in Motorola's favor that this was a license to all standard-essential wireless patents, the amount still appears excessive to me given how many companies hold patents on such standards and what royalty rate this would lead to in the aggregate.A quote in the Wall Street Journal from the chief executive of the Epicenter IP group, which helps companies license patents, noted that "there is no debate that Motorola was the inventor of the mobile phone" and its patents could be broad and necessary for a phone maker. This is only one more step in the long and drawn-out patent battle between the two companies, but the licensing rate for patents is typically a closely held competitive secret. The 2.25% rate would be a significant amount of money, given the tremendous sales Apple is generating from its iPhone business.

A lot of us has been noticed that every picture captured for iPhone is always a fixed time shot on 9:41 but that's why ? Much of us are asking why and they don't have any idea for that. In this post we will explain why and give an answer for that question but after the jump.


Now former Apple exec Borcher claims he can solve the mystery as to why Apple iPhone ads always show the time 9:41. According to Borcher, 9:41 is the time when Apple launched the iPhone.if you ever see an Apple ad, print or TV, you look at the time and it’s always going to be 9:41 and 9:41 is when we launched the iPhone.While that might be true,there could be more to the story.Apple VP Scott Forstall when asked about the 9:41 mystery, he explained it along the line of Borcher’s, but with more interesting details. Forstall says that the 9:41 reference is Apple trying to set the time on its images during product launches presentations to match that on the audiences’ watches.We design the (product launch) keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly.And if you noticed, the time on the iPad is always 9:41. To that,Forstall says:Yeah! And for the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are – the secret of the magic time.                                                                                                                              via

Georgia, Seth, and Rene talk about copy-cat apps, iMovie vs. Avid, Launch Center, Jailbreak apps for iOS 5, as well as cases with stands, iPhone guns, and glowing Apple logo mods. This is Apps & Accessories Live!

Subscription information coming soon! Right now you can enjoy Apps & Accessories Live in the iPhone & iPad Live fees! Meta February is fitness month at iMore and Mobile Nations! [iPad 3 giveaway!] Don’t forget we give away a ton of stuff! App News Apple removes copy-cat apps from the App Store, doesn’t address larger issues iMovie vs Avid Studio: iPad video editing app shootout Readdle Remarks brings note-taking and PDF annotating in one to iPad Book Palette for Mac offers 10 beautiful templates for iBooks Author iMore app picks of the week for February 4, 2012 [Giveaway] Jailbreak Apps BiteSMS vs Messages+ for iOS 5: which should you use? LockInfo vs IntelliscreenX for iOS 5 jailbreak: which should you use? Hands-on with Zephyr for the iPhone and iPod Touch [Jailbreak Apps] Launch Center Launch Center puts Messages, Facebook, Twitter, a flashlight, more in your iPhone Notification Center Accessory News Xappr Gun turns your iPhone into an FPS dream machine! Ten One Design announces Pogo Sketch Plus capacitive stylus for iPhone and iPad Hands on with the Jot Touch, a pressure sensitive stylus by Adonit Incipio SILICRYLIC case with kickstand for iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 vs. Case-Mate Pop! Case with Stand for iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 iPhone Mods iFixit Thirsty Bag for iPhone, iPad review iFixit iPhone transparent rear panel mod kit review Hands on with the glowing Apple logo mod for iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S Hosts Georgia (@GeorgiaTiPb) Seth Clifford (@sethclifford) Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) Credits

You can reach all of us on Twitter [@iMore](http://twitter.com/imore), or you can email us at , or leave a comment on the website when the show goes live.

We’re here every Sunday night at 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, 2am GMT, and our companion show — iPhone and iPad Live! — is at the same time, on the same channel, on Wednesday nights — www.iMore.com/live

For all our podcasts — audio and video — including iPhone and iPad Live, ZENandTECH and Superfunctional, Iterate and Girls Gone Gadget and more… see MobileNations.com/shows

If you haven’t already please subscribe to all our shows in iTunes and leave a rating. It helps people find the show and means a lot to us!

Thanks to the iMore Accessory Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Apple has recently filed for international trademark protections of "macroscalar," its name for various patented optimizations for efficiently executing code on a processor, suggesting it plans to begin commercially promoting its differentiating technology.

AssistantExtensions is a jailbreak app for iPhone 4S that greatly enhances what you can do with Apple’s Siri virtual assistant, including voice activation, app launching, translation, and more. Developers can even add their own, custom commands via a new plug-in architecture. That means, unlike the limited built-in functionality Apple provides, many more powerful, and interesting, commands become available.

AssistantExtensions bundles a number of commands together, including the ability to send tweets from Siri, and an interesting “chat mode” where Siri loads additional content so she/he can better have a conversation with you (though the server load must be heavy as it frequently experiences time outs).

For even more functionality, AssistantExtensions lets developers create custom commands and tasks using Siri. You can already use AssistantExtensions to access SBSettings to quickly toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane mode, etc. Hopefully more and more jailbreak developers start integrating support.

Out of the box, you can use Siri to activate SBSettings toggles or launch apps without even touching your iPhone — a great way to increase efficiency when using Siri. The only issues we’ve noticed with AssistantExtensions are random conflicts with SiriToggles, although other users have seen mixed reports.

Free – Cydia Link

If you’re looking for even more jailbreak utilities, here are the best jailbreak applications for iOS 5.

If you’re looking to get started with jailbreak, here are your go-to resources.

How to jailbreak guides Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes General jailbreak and unlock help forums

Apple's iPhone lineup dominated smartphone sales during the holiday 2011 quarter, with the iPhone 4S, iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS taking the top three spots, respectively, in total U.S. sales.