Why Apple Shouldn’t Kill Off The 17-Inch MacBook Pro

While I often ignore the senseless rumors that come from the tomfoolery of tech “analysts”, this latest one claiming that Apple plans to discontinue the 17″ MacBook Pro comes from Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with KGI Securities who has gotten some things right about Apple products in the past. Kuo believes that this discontinuation will come as a result of Apple’s convergence of the Apple’s Air and Pro notebook lineups. In Q1 of 2012, Apple sold roughly 3.1 million notebooks. Out of that figure, nearly half of those were of the 13-inch MacBook Pro. Kuo has a bleak estimation of the 17-inch Pro sales figure, however, stating that only 50,000 were sold in that quarter.

But what could be the reason behind these low sales? Well, not only is is a pretty costly notebook – ranging from around $2400 for the base model to upwards of $4000, depending on how you configure it – but it is also huge. Most people seek to purchase a laptop for reasons of portability, and 17″ laptops are closer to being classed as an ultraportable all-in-one desktop than a laptop. It is for these two reasons that the 17″ pro appeals mainly to niche buyers; people in professions that require performance laptops and that type of screen estate while on the go. And this is exactly why Apple shouldn’t kill it off, despite diminished sales in contrast to the other laptops, which appeal more to consumers.

Like I said, the 17″ Pro primarily appeals to niche buyers – graphics designers, video production guys, artists, or simply people who do want big and powerful laptops – shouldn’t be exiled by the company. Sure, many consumers are able to live in the “post-PC” era. That is, most of the tasks that they perform on computers can be done either on tablets such as the iPad, or something that’s relatively not powerful such as the Air. However, content creators are still living in a world where the powerful computer is very much a necessity. And many content creators do turn to Apple for their computing needs; in aforementioned industries such as graphics design and video production, Macs are highly used and touted.

Nevertheless, this is still a rumor coming from yet another hit-or-miss analyst. But, judging the complete lack of updates when it comes to Apple’s other content-creator oriented line, the Mac Pro, this wouldn’t be all too surprising.

Source : Redmond Pie

How To Use Saved SAM Activation Ticket To Unlock Your iPhone

Apple has reacted quickly to rectify the issue with their activation servers that allowed iPhoneowners to unlock their devices, anyone who didn’t get involved when the process was first announced will unfortunately be left with an iPhone restricted to a single carrier. However, if you are one of the enterprising few who jumped into action right away, then read on to see just what you can do with those saved activation tickets.
For those who jumped onto the SAM unlock bandwagon at an early stage and managed to backup their activation tickets, it is possible to restore the tickets and use them to unlock the iPhone again, something that will be extremely useful in case the user needs to restore the device for one reason or another.

It is worth noting that you will need a jailbroken device to carry out the process, and your Lockdown folder should be backed up, to a cloud based location such as SkyDrive, Dropbox (recommended) orGoogle Drive. This is something that should have been done immediately after finishing the SAM unlock process. If all of this seems familiar, then take a look below to see how you can restore your activation ticket in order to unlock again after a firmware restore.


Step 1: Locate the SIM card that was used during the initial unlock process. This is the unofficial SIM card, not the SIM that was provided by the official network.

Step 2: Open up the iFile app on your iPhone and use it to navigate to the /var/root/Librarydirectory. If you don’t have iFile installed, it is available as a package from within Cydia with a free limited feature trial.


Step 3: When you are in the directory mentioned above, select the ‘Edit‘ button in the top right hand corner of the iFile user interface. When the directory is in edit mode, select the Lockdown folder.

Step 4: With the Lockdown folder selected, press the zip button to create a compressed file backup of the Lockdown folder. Once the zip file has been created, make sure to name it something that will distinguish it and is rememberable.

Step 5: Scroll to the bottom of the current directory and make sure that your zip file has been created and is available. If it is, then delete the entire Lockdown folder using the trashcan icon.

Step 6: Bring up your Dropbox folders and locate the Lockdown folder that contains the valid activation ticket, created by the unofficial SIM card that was used during the unlock process. Open up the recently created zip file using the iFile app once again and select the ‘Unarchiver‘ option.

Step 7: The contents of the zip file will now be extracted and dumped into the default directory, which in most instances is the Documents folder.

Step 8: Once again, select ‘Edit‘ in the top right hand corner of the iFile user interface before selecting Lockdown, and press the clipboard icon which would in turn copy the Lockdown folder. Tap the ‘Done‘ button.

Step 9: Still in iFile, navigate to /var/root/Library and select ‘Edit‘. Select the clipboard icon and then tap ‘Paste‘ before tapping the ‘Done’ button.


Step 10: If you still have the SAMPrefs package installed on the device, then navigate to/User/Library/Preferences and search for SAM. When found, make sure to delete thecom.bingner.sam.plist file if you can find it (it may not exist in some cases). The purpose of this is to make sure that everything goes smoothly without any conflicts.


Step 11: Turn the device off, making sure that it is powered down entirely.


Step 12: Turn the iPhone back on and wait until it loads all the way to the home screen. After the device gains a network connection, it should be with the carrier of the unofficial SIM card.
So there you have it. The steps themselves may seem in-depth or complex to new users, however, this is something that shouldn’t really need to be done unless the device has been restored and even then it should only take a few minutes if followed correctly.


(via iDownloadBlog)

Source : Redmond Pie

Scalado Album For Android Is The Best Image Gallery Alternative With A Slick UI

Scalado Album is a new way to check out your photos and saved images for Android smartphones, and it is causing something of a stir on the Google Play Store.
One of the arguments that is always leveled at the Android platform is the distinct lack of apps, or usually, the lack of quality apps. Whilst it is true that the average Android smartphone user does not have access to the same level of app volume as his iPhone packing counterpart, there are still some absolute gems to be found on Google’s own app store. Even if they do insist on calling it something crazy like ‘Google Play.’






One such app is Scalado Album which, from the company’s own YouTube video, seems to look like and indeed act like, one of those iOS apps that we keep hearing so much about.
That is, the app has a certain design aesthetic and interactive nous that is often sadly lacking from the average Android solution that has given the platform’s developers such a poor rep.

So, Scalado Album wins on the looks front, but what does it actually offer?
Simply, Scalado Album is a viewer for all your photos. Sickeningly quick, the app lets you do all the usual things such as pan and zoom using taps and pinches, and it does it all nice and quickly with minimal input lag. If you’ve ever used some other image viewing apps, then you’ll know why this is important.





Images can be viewed in a selection of ways, not just as one big collection of thumbnails. Photos can be grouped by location, for example, which means that all the images from that party will all be kept together, as will photos that are taken at any event. Images can also be filtered by those that are nearby, which is obviously a riff on the aforementioned location feature. There’s a map view which feeds all this, too, and photos can also be sorted by month taken.






Scalado Album costs $0.99 and is available to download via the Google Play Store right now. It hasn’t been around long, but the download stats and reviews suggest that its developer, Scalado, may be on to something here.

Download Scalado Album for Android [Google Play link]



Source : Redmond Pie

Samsung Trumps Nokia For The First Time In Number Of Mobile Devices Sold, Takes The Number One Spot

Although Nokia have been going through a rather difficult spell in recent years, they have still been managing to cling on to the top spot when it comes to global sales of cellphones – until now. According to new research conducted by a number of analytics firms, Samsung have ousted Nokia from the top of the leader board.





The reports, conducted by IHS iSuppli and Strategy Analytics show that the Finnish handset makerhas been unable to cling for dear life on the top spot and has finally been knocked from the perch by Samsung due to Nokia’s poor sales performances of recent times.
In the first quarter of 2012, Nokia’s market share dropped down to a low of 22.5% while Samsung raced into the lead by holding a 25.4% of the global mobile market. In the same period, Apple were sitting with a 9.5% hold, which may not seem like a great deal but considering the company only produces the iPhone, this is quite some achievement.

One of the main reasons for Nokia’s fall from the top of the cellular grace was down to the company’s low-end device sales in emerging markets dropping off, something that they were unable to offset with the sales of their top-end devices like the new Lumia range of smartphones. Neil Mawston, who operates as the Executive Director of Strategy Analytics, reminisced about Nokia’s current issues and their golden years:

Nokia’s volumes were squeezed at both ends, as low-end feature phoneshipments in emerging markets stalled and high-end Microsoft Lumia smartphones were unable to offset the rapid decline of Nokia’s legacy Symbian business. Nokia was the world’s largest handset vendor between 1998 and 2011, for 14 years, before finally yielding top position to rival Samsung this quarter.

Although the statistics refer to sales of all mobile phones, the main focus of the market is currently centered around top-end smartphones, sales of which suffered in the first quarter of 2012 across all major manufacturers. As the table below from IHS shows, Apple suffered a 5% decline is sales with Samsung experiencing a change of 11% during the same period. Nokia’s woes continued as their shipments of smartphones dropped by eight million units in the first quarter.

We have been used to seeing extraordinary boom in this market, but at the minute consumers are showing a reluctance in the marketplace with overall handset sales growing by a relatively small 3.3%. One of the firms involved in the research predicts that smartphone sales will be the only ones to increase in the next twelve months, growing by an estimated 35% while sales of standard handsets will decline.

(via SlashGear)








Source : Redmond Pie

This App For iPhone Lets You Make Free Voice Calls Via Bluetooth

Did you know that Bluetooth is the Anglicized version of the name given to Kind Harald I of Denmark who was well-known for uniting various tribes in Denmark into one single Kingdom? Not exactly relevant to the iBluetooth Call app, but still it’s worth knowing that our technology names are steeped in history.

So, the iBluetooth Call jailbreak app that is currently running at version 1.3 is something which I would describe as a “novelty” which allows users to connect to other jailbroken devices through Bluetooth for the purpose of initiating local voice chats that are passed between the wireless technology. By calling this app a novelty, I don’t want to deter from the fact that it is actually a fairly decent idea and a very good implementation, it is just that it doesn’t really provide any real-life benefits due to the limitations of Bluetooth.

To make effective use of this app, a number of people in a group need to install it upon their jailbroken device and invoke a chat session by connecting their devices through the supplied app. Anyone who intends to use iBluetooth Call will obviously need to have a device with Bluetooth capabilities as well as a built-in microphone. Considering the app is compatible with iOS 3.0 and above, hence there is a possibility that users of the old second-gen iPod touch could install this tweak and join the Bluetooth voice convo party. In other words, a device running iOS 3.0 and above, tagged along with a built-in microphone (or a wired headset with a microphone) is all what it needs to kick off this app.

The idea of being able to talk in a small group through Bluetooth is quite an attractive one, and as the developer points out, it could be a nice little thing to use in a small party or with friends. However, in real-world situations, the connectivity limitations of the Bluetooth technology make this a tweak of form and novelty over mass function.

iBluetooth Call is available as a free of charge download from the BigBoss repository and is compatible with Bluetooth enabled devices which are running iOS 3.0 and above, and have a built-in microphone or an attached compatible headset.

Source : Redmond Pie