USA Air Force approved purchase of 18,000 iPads

Article published by Bloomberg says the U.S. Air Force completed contract of 9.36 million dollars for the purchase of approximately 18,000 iPad 2.

The AirMobility Command announced the contract with the company Executive Technology Inc, which will undertake the purchase of equipment. The move comes after a similar initiative of the U.S. civil aviation for which we have mentioned in an earlier publication. Essentially, the iPad will replace traditional flight bags for pilots with electronic tools.

Aircrews fly nonstop worldwide missions and require access to flight publications both on and off the aircraft, throughout all phases of flight. The so-called electronic flight bags will help crews operate more effectively and safely, and support the Pentagon's efficiency goals.

The Air Force will buy iPad 2 version of the 32GB Wi-Fi. The price reaches $599, but the Air Force took off to buy 18.000 songs to $520.

Initially, the Air Force will receive 63 iPad 2 which will be subjected to appropriate testing to proceed and purchase the remaining devices.

iPad 3, iOS 6.0 Retina display

Several times a year, the site publishes some ArsTechnica server logs most of its visitors 'vip', including some Apple employees obviously in love magazine articles online. These days, the site has been visited 346 times a toy located in Cupertino, which has a resolution of 2048 by 1536. Would it be an iPad 3? So far nothing certain after all, but ... the machine works well in iOS, and in a version 6.0! Therefore, there is every reason to think that it is the tablet of the third generation of the Apple.

While there is evidence that the iPad 3 will be launched iOS 5.1, the major upgrade of IOS 6.0 should not point the tip of his nose for many months ... Unless Apple makes a demonstration of some new features coming in the event of 7 March, as was the case last year, months before the launch of iOS 5!

It is true that a small update software in addition to the release of the iPad 3 and the new Apple TV would be great ...

Source : 9to5Mac

Apple Most Admired Company in the world of the year 2012

For the fifth consecutive year, Apple has just finished in first place of the most admired companies in the world. Unlike the classification of earlier this week, this time, respondents numbered 3855 (executives, business managers and financial analysts).

The year 2012 promises to be particularly rich in new side of Apple (iPhone 5, iPad 3, new MacBook, etc..), It's a safe bet that Apple keeps this up the first one yet right time. Note that Google is in second place and Amazon - definitely in great shape - appropriates the bronze medal.

Source : Fortune

Appstore apps cheaper than Android Market apps

Popular applications 2.5 times cheaper on the App Store than the Android Market!

iOS apps cost an average price that Android apps cost. Indeed, the finding is not new, just today we have more data to substantiate this fact. A recent study by Canalys, which calculated the cost of 100 paid applications the most "popular" in the AppStore and Android Market, the whole is the sum of $ 147 at Apple, and $ 373.37 at Google. Thus, iPhone applications involved in this study are 2.5 times cheaper than their counterparts on Android.

According to Canalys, which allows the App Store to offer cheaper applications is the strong competition that prevails. However if publishers cut prices, they make up by offering in-app content, exclusives iOS. As for Android users, micro-payments have not their favors, the coup base prices are higher ...

Source : TechFortune

A trip to the iFactory : Special Report

The factories where they produced the iPhone and iPad are closed to the 8 keys and this is not news to anyone. But first, a television network was allowed to enter the production line of China's Foxconn (whose client, among other companies, Apple) to know what happens there. And we come to the conclusion that the iPhone is nearly all done by hand.

The special report "A trip to the iFactory" spent last night on ABC in the United States. The program Nightline showed details of the production line of Apple products and how the lives of factory workers at Foxconn are produced where the iPhone and the iPad.

Here's a video with part of the documentary:

In the documentary, interesting data. For example, one finds that the iPhone is for 141 people to get ready, the iPad, by 325 and takes 5 days to complete. Each worker receives $ 1.78 per hour worked and still must pay his own lunch, which costs $ 0.70. Good cheap lunch there, huh?

Workers who have a dormitory at the factory, pay $ 17.50 per month for "rent." It is important to note that the reference costs that we have here in the West (and especially in Brazil) is completely different than it has in China, where everything is cheaper.

A technician said that the working conditions there improved greatly after Apple pushed Foxconn. Formerly it was even worse.

He never spoke much of the working conditions in China / Taiwan and now with Apple. The success of Apple's products draw the attention of the media, who always ignored the atrocities that happened with the workers of the giant Asian country (which, incidentally, has grown into what is today thanks to semi-slavery of his people). But with Apple producing its devices there, now all they are concerned about them.

At least now the world is concerned with the Chinese.

To watch the episode in full (in English), there is the ABC's website, but can only be viewed with a U.S. IP.

App Store reaches 25 billion downloads

Apple has posted the Friday night event a page on its website to promote an upcoming course. Indeed, the App Store will soon add up its 25 billionth download, a figure more than prodigious. All App Store, no matter the country, are of course concerned with this figure.

Thus, to thank us, Apple is setting up a contest: who will be behind the 25 billionth download will win a gift card App Store worth 10,000 dollars. Enough to buy more movies, TV shows, games, applications and other music without wondering if it will stay on the credit card.

California company offers another way to acquire this gift. On its website, it is possible to complete a form to be drawn among other participants. No purchase or download is required for this step. Although we are not behind this "contest" we wish you good luck!

Apple iDevices 2011 sales passed Mac in 30 years

In 2011, Apple sold more iPods, iPhone and iPad it has passed the Mac in 30 years. If 122 million ended up on a Mac desktop since the inception of the brand, these are 156 million iDevice which were sold,  just over the year 2011!

 Here is the graph which shows the amazing progress:

Several explanations justify such figures. First, the prices of Macs and those of iDevice. The price of a Mac has always been high (remember the Apple II in 5000 dollars!), While today an iPod Touch costs a whopping 199 euros ... Another explanation of the Apple mobile devices are much more oriented than the general public were and still are Apple computers. Certainly, Apple pierces more in this sector, but the hegemony of Windows PC is far from over ...

Thus, at the time of the coming integration still further iOS in OS X, all figures are therefore not surprising.

Source Asymco

iPhone siri name meaning

Just to clarify, Siri Inc. is the company that Apple acquired in April of 2010 [1]. Siri Inc. developed Siri, a personal assistant application that was available for awhile on Apple's App Store before the acquisition [2]. After integrating it into the 4S, Apple retained its original name rather than rebrand it.

I haven't found any concrete information on the origin of the name Siri pertaining to Siri Inc. other than what I just learned about Siri being a spinoff of SRI from Brian Roemmele's answer. "Siri" may've just been a casual way they referred to SRI internally.

An underlying meaning of the word may have also been a factor in their decision. Googling I found a couple meanings of 'Siri':

• The name Siri is of Scandinavian origin and the meaning of Siri is "beautiful victory".  [3]
• 'Siri' in the South-Indian language Tamil means 'to smile'. (courtesy of Praveen Rajaretnam's comment below)
• [Siri is] an object-oriented constraint language using a single abstraction mechanism developed by Bruce Horn of CMU in 1991. Siri is a conceptual blend of BETA and Bertrand. It is similar to Kaleidoscope. [4]

The fact that Siri was unveiled to the world with the iPhone4S may also have had some weight in the decision to retain the Siri name. i.e. There's the iPhone 4, then there's the iPhone4S - which would people most commonly associate with Apple's brilliant new Siri voice recognition assistant?

iCloud has 100 million users

In his speech at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, Tim Cook said it had 100 million users benefiting daily icloud, the online storage service. Three weeks ago, Apple had 85 million subscribers to its service, an increase of 15 million users of its service in the clouds.

Apple's CEO reiterated what he said about Apple's strategy, namely "iCloud is the strategy of the next decade." A strategy that starts strong with 100 million users in just three months.

Apple 8 inch iPad Mini

Apple may be working on a new 8inch iPad model, despite Steve Jobs' objections last year prior to his passing. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Apple does in fact already have an 8 inch iPad in the planning and demo stages. They are apparently showing their prototypes to several partners within Apple's parts and third party supply chains according to an unnamed insider's intel.
This sparks the rumors of the iPad Mini again, which is going to pack the same type of resolution as the iPad 2, simply on a smaller screen size. The fact that Apple is working with suppliers however does not suggest that the iPad Mini is ready for mass production, or even that Apple will launch the device. As WSJ also reports, this is typical trial run strategy for any Apple device considered for development, but may not ever enter into the hands of the public.

Source - Wall Street Journal

iOS against Android: Apple continues to lead in the pros

A recent study by Good Technology, iPhone and iPad represent 70% of smartphones and tablets in business. Professionals clearly have a strong attraction to the forbidden fruit! These figures do, however, that the company Good Technology and should not be strictly generalized to the entire sector, even though other recent studies have reached the same conclusion.

Anyway, in the third quarter of 2011, 71% of the company Good Technology has enabled terminals of the firm at the apple, a result up 3% from the previous quarter. Meanwhile, the activations of smartphones and tablets Android (Google) is decreased by 32% to 29%.

The reason for this sudden surge? The release of the iPhone 4S course! As explained by Good Technology "The release of the iPhone 4S mid-October has accelerated the activation of IOS devices." Thus the last of the apple smartphone alone accounts for 31% of all activations in the quarter.

Side shelves, Apple products are even more present. The iPad, and iPad 2 represent 94% of activations in late 2011. Note that the mass market level, the situation is quite different since the year 2011, Android beat Apple in the smartphone industry in the U.S. and Europe.

Full report of iPad 3 release

According iMore, Apple will introduce to the press new iPad 3 Wednesday, March 7. The site reports this information from "sources have been reliable in the past." Presumably this is the same that was right on the iPhone 4S at the date of availability / pre-orders. He also mentioned a Retina display - almost certain today to view the evidence - a resolution of 2048 × 1536 with a processor Apple A6 plausible and the arrival of 4G LTE. Plausible because it is not the first time it is mentioned for inclusion in the next Apple tablet.

Indeed, there is a problem today with this technology: it is limited in the world. In France alone, for example, operators offer to date of 3G + and it does not go beyond. If we take the United States, but it is certainly not all cities are concerned, far from it. So would it be a good idea to integrate it today? Would it not be wiser to wait for the iPhone 5 so that the deployment is done on a larger scale? Nobody really the answer, except for Apple that the dice are thrown for a long time.

Actually, this date of March 7 holds up. Why? For two reasons. The first is the link with AllThingsD's announcement last week. The little brother of the Wall Street Journal is often knowledgeable in all matters affecting the keynotes, so he recounted an announcement in early March. The second concerns now Jim Dalrymple's Loop. The man of many relations at Apple has confirmed the rumor with a "Yep". He often uses this process (to Steve Jobs) to confirm the statements of other sites to rumors.

Finally, go on March 7. Apple should start sending invitation cards to the very end of February or early March.

Which crash more iOS or Android Apps?

iPhone and iPad apps have always been considered to be much more polished than Android apps by most users. Apple’s strict style guide and closed App Store create a similar feel among apps, while Google’s Android Market is open for all.

In a new report from crash report analytics company Crittercism, the company says that iOS apps crash more than Android apps, despite what you might think. In their report, Crittercism found that iOS apps tend to crash three times more than Android apps. But why?
Crittercism studied a total of 214 million different app launches between the months of November and December.  A total of 162 million iOS apps crashed, while 52 million Android apps crashed.
Interestingly, doing their research a month after the iOS 5 launch might have not been as inductive of real results. Typically with new OS launches, it takes a while for developers to get their apps to the point where they are more stable. iOS 5 and 5.0.1 made up for 33% of crashed apps on the iOS platform.

The newest iOS could have contributed to the large amount of crashes, and it would certainly be interesting to see how many crashes there are after a few months of iOS 5 on the market.
How is your overall experience been with apps after upgrading to iOS? Are you still seeing an abundance of crashes?

Most sold tablets

iPad made up 57% of tablets shipments!

New figures released today by Research firm Strategy Analytics suggest that Apple’s iPad is still very much the top tablet for most, with Android’s share growing thanks to a newcomer to the scene.
Releasing figures based on worldwide shipments of tablets during the fourth quarter of 2011, Strategy Analytics shared that 26.8 million tablets were shipped during the quarter, a 150% increase over the same period the year prior.
Apple’s iPad saw 15.4 million units shipped during the fourth quarter of 2011, with Android sitting second with 10.5 million shipments…

The reason for Android’s upturn in fortunes is being attributed to the release of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, even though Apple’s CEO Tim Cook recently said that he felt the newcomer had made no impact on the iPad’s sales.
When compared to the same period of 2010, the iPad saw a fall in its share of tablet shipments, with Android seing growth. While well worth noting, the stat does not necessarily mean a swing is on the card. Strategy Analytics’ numbers have come under scrutiny before thanks to the fact they are based on shipments rather than actual sales. While we do not know if Android tablets are sitting un-sold on store shelves, we do know that Apple is currently selling iPads hand over fist.

Remember folks, you can make numbers say whatever you want!