Megadeveloper (and master merchandiser) Rovio has released the first gameplay video for its new Bad Piggies game that was first revealed earlier this month. The game, which takes place in the Angry Birds universe, has the player creating and controlling vehicles and aircraft for the now-lovable pigs as they travel through the world stealing more eggs.
Rovio made more than $100 million in revenue last year through game sales and, perhaps more importantly, extensive merchandising. The company hopes that Bad Piggies can expand the Angry Birds world and open up a new universe of games and merchandise -- much like how, as TechCrunch pointed out, Super Mario Brothers has turned into a massive string of successful racing and party games.
Bad Piggies will arrive on iPhone, iPad, and the Mac on September 27th.
According to reports on the MacRumors Forums and on Twitter, Apple's iMessage SMS-replacement service is currently experiencing some sort of system outage.
Users are experiencing difficulties with delayed messages, messages completely failing to send, as well as read receipt notification errors. The problem is intermittent and not universal, but given the high-profile that Apple places on the service -- it's enabled by default on every iOS device -- any sort of outage is going to affect many users.
We've emailed Apple for comment and a timeline for a resolution, but have yet to hear back.
Update: iMessage appears to be working again for many.
Following Apple's announcement earlier today that it took two million iPhone 5 pre-orders in the first 24 hours of availability, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has published a new research note predicting that Apple will achieve sales in the range of 6-10 million units for the opening weekend, with the mid-range number of 8 million units being used for modeling purposes. Munster bases his predictions on the strong pre-order numbers and comparisons to last year's performance for the iPhone 4S.
Given the 2 million pre-orders, we remain confident that Apple can deliver 8 million (range of 6-10 million) iPhones in the launch weekend. The reason we are confident in the 8 million is two-fold. First, initial 24 hour pre-orders for the iPhone 5 were up 100% y/y from the iPhone 4S. Last year, pre-orders accounted for 25% of total weekend launch unit sales. Assuming the same initial pre-order/retail distribution, the pre-order total would suggest 8 million launch units.
Last year, Apple reported that first-day pre-orders for the iPhone 4S "topped one million", with that number translating into over four million units sold in the opening weekend of actual sales.
Munster notes that with Apple's fourth fiscal quarter of 2012 coming to a close at the end of September and the company already quoting shipping estimates of 2-3 weeks for new iPhone 5 pre-orders, some of the launch weekend total may actually bleed over into the following quarter, as Apple recognizes revenue once orders ship to customers.
According to The Verge, Google is acquiring Nik Software, the developer behind a number of different photography applications. Their biggest app, however, is Snapseed -- an Instagram-like iOS photography app that was named Apple's 2011 iPad App of the Year.
Snapseed has more than 9 million users on the iPhone and iPad, and the company is working on a version for Android devices as well. From Nik's blog post announcing the acquisition:
We are pleased to announce that Google has acquired Nik Software. For nearly 17 years, we’ve been guided by our motto, “photography first”, as we worked to build world class digital image editing tools. We’ve always aspired to share our passion for photography with everyone, and with Google’s support we hope to be able to help many millions more people create awesome pictures.
We’re incredibly grateful for all of your support and hope you’ll join us on the next phase of our journey as part of Google.
All our best!
The Nik Software Team
Snapseed is available on the iPhone and iPad as a universal app for $4.99, and on the Mac for $19.99.
Back in late June, we reported that some early purchasers of Apple's Retina MacBook Pro were experiencing image persistence or "ghosting" issues in which remnants of previously-displayed windows remain visible on the screen for sometime afterward.
Apple was reportedly replacing the affected machines and DisplayMate's Ray Soneira had indicated that it was likely to be an early production issue, but three months later users are still complaining about the issue. Extensive threads in the MacRumors forums and at Apple Support Communities have been tracking the issue, which preferentially affects displays manufactured by LG. Displays manufactured by Samsung do not generally appear to be suffering from the problem.
Example of image persistence after just 10 minutes on screen
Several of the affected users report being on their third or fourth machine and still receiving units that are affected by the issue. But even as Apple is replacing machines showing image persistence, the company has posted a new support document stating that the phenomenon is normal on the in-plane switching (IPS) displays used in the Retina MacBook Pro and other products.
On an IPS display, when an image such as a login window is left on screen for a long period of time, you may temporarily see a faint remnant of the image even after a new image replaces it. This is referred to as "persistence," "image retention," or "ghosting." This is normal behavior for an IPS display, and the faint image will disappear over time.
You can prevent image persistence by using the display sleep feature to turn off the display when it is not in use. You can also use a screen saver to make sure that a static image isn't on the display for long periods of time. Both of these features are on by default in Mac OS X, but you can adjust the settings as needed.
As noted in our forum thread users can paste the following command into Terminal in order to determine the manufacturer of their displays:
Model numbers beginning with "LP" indicate an LG display while model number beginning with "LSN" correspond to Samsung displays. A number of those affected by the issue indicate that it was not necessarily noticeable at first but has seemed to worsen over time, and a checkerboard image posted to our forums can be used to help assess the severity of the problem. Users with significant issues should, however, be able to easily see the image persistence when moving any window away from a contrasting background after even just a few minutes on the screen.
Following today's announcement by AT&T sharing word that the iPhone 5 has broken pre-order sales records at the carrier, Apple has issued a press release noting that it too saw record-breaking pre-orders of over two million units in the first 24 hours of availability. The performance breaks last year's record of one million iPhone 4S units pre-ordered on the first day of availability.
“iPhone 5 pre-orders have shattered the previous record held by iPhone 4S and the customer response to iPhone 5 has been phenomenal,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPhone 5 is the best iPhone yet, the most beautiful product we’ve ever made, and we hope customers love it as much as we do.”
The iPhone 5 will be available beginning this Friday, September 21. The first pre-orders have begun shipping from China, but delivery companies will be coordinating to hold the shipments until Friday. Customers who did not pre-order the device have also begun lining up at a few Apple retail stores ahead of Friday's launch, although most of those seen so far are lining up for promotional purposes.
Apple noted on Friday that it was "blown away" by demand for the iPhone 5, and today AT&T tells MacRumors that the iPhone 5 broke sales records over the weekend. AT&T customers ordered more iPhone 5 models than any previous iPhone, breaking records both for first day preorders and for the whole weekend.
AT&T set a sales record with iPhone 5 over the weekend, making it the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever offered. Customers ordered more iPhones from AT&T than any previous model, both on its first day of preorders and over the weekend.
It has become tradition for Apple to "sell out" of iPhones during its pre-order period. It did so for the iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4, and the iPhone 4S, and now the iPhone 5.
In June 2010, Apple announced that it took 600,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4, a number that was "far higher" than the company anticipated and one that resulted in server issues for both Apple and its carrier partners. In October 2011, Apple had a much smoother pre-order process, taking 1,000,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4S.
If Apple follows its usual protocol, the company should announce pre-order numbers in a press release later today.
Over the weekend, several readers have let us know that iPhone 5 orders have begun shipping from China. It's common for Apple to spread out shipments for the week prior to the launch with special instructions to couriers to hold deliveries at local warehouses until the target date. In this case, the iPhone 5 is set to be delivered to customers on September 21st.
Those who are impatient to receive their tracking number from Apple, may be able to determine it from the UPS website. TSX posts how to obtain your UPS tracking number. The same technique may work for Fed-Ex as well. Apple uses both carriers for iPhone deliveries.
Our iPhone forums are buzzing with activity amongst those waiting for their deliveries. Several discussion threads are active tracking activity and movement of deliveries. Several are listed here:
Readers are even decoding serial numbers to find when their iPhone 5 was manufactured. The earliest recorded manufacture date is the week of August 5-11. Those who ordered from Apple.com can see their iPhone 5's serial number in Apple's Support Profile page.
Meanwhile, Fortune has posted that the line has already begun at New York City's 5th Avenue Apple store. The line, however, currently consists of those there for promotional/paid purposes rather than personal purchases.
John Poole of PrimateLabs let us know that the first iPhone 5 benchmark has hit Geekbench.
The results show an iPhone5,2 device running iOS 6 with a Dual-Core 1.02GHz ARMv7 processor and 1GB of RAM.
The total Geekbench 2 score comes in at 1601. Poole notes that the average score for the iPhone 4S is 629 and the average score for the iPad 3 is 766. A comparison chart of previous iOS devices can be viewed at Geekbench. The numbers seem to validate Apple's claim that the A6 processor is twice as fast as the A5 and any previous iOS device. This one score also places the iPhone 5 ahead of the average scores of all Android phones on Geekbench. The full Geekbench results further breakdown processor, memory and bandwidth performance.
The A6 also appears to be clocked higher than the A5 at 1GHz (the iPhone 4S A5 ran at 800Mhz). The 1GB of RAM was previously confirmed by part number markings on the A6 processor itself.
Poole acknowledges that any pre-release results on Geekbench have a chance of being faked, but he seems to believe that these results are legitimate. The iPhone 5 will be available to the general public on September 21st.
CNet and Businessinsider have published a new print ad that Samsung will be running in national newspapers tomorrow.
And so Samsung is greeting the arrival of the iPhone 5 with an ad that will run tomorrow in certain national and local newspapers (how modern). It is not a flattering ad. It suggests that the iPhone 5 isn't even good enough to be, well, a copy of the Galaxy S3.
The ad is titled "It doesn't take a genius." which serves as a dig against Apple Retail's genius bars. The rest of the ad shows the iPhone 5 alongside the Samsung Galaxy S III and lists a number of system specifications as well as features. The list is obviously heavily weighted towards Samsung where many of their software features are preferentially listed. At the end is the line "The Next Big Thing Is Already Here".
Apple and Samsung have been competing head to head in the smartphone market and in the courtroom. Apple won a massive victory in their U.S. patent trial against Samsung with a $1.05 billion verdict.
Apple announced the iPhone 5 on Wednesday. The new iPhone contains several improvements including the use of a new A6 processor from Apple. While it's been widely speculated that Apple would boost the RAM in the new iPhone, we haven't seen much in the way of confirmation.
The iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 both contain 512MB of RAM for developers to work with. Running out of RAM can cause some performance issues as existing applications or documents may have to be purged from memory from time to time.
iFans first posted confirmation that the iPhone 5 has 1GB of ram based on the part numbers listed on the A6 chip itself. After some investigation with Kyle Wiens from iFixit, we've been able to confirm their findings as well, using Samsung's own product guides.
The chart above comes from Samsung's 2012 Product Solutions Guide (PDF) which lists part numbers of various memory parts they have for sale. The iPhone 5's A6 part number lines up with the family of 8 Gigabit mobile DRAMs which translates into 1GB of RAM. The A5 part family is also listed and accurately shows 512MB of RAM (4 Gigabit).
As part of their iPhone 5 announcement, Apple revealed that the new iPhone is powered by a new "A6" processor from Apple. The A6 is said to have twice the CPU power and twice the GPU power of the previous generation Apple A5 processor. Beyond that, however, Apple offered few other details about the nature of the processor. For example, it's not clear how many cores the processor has or what the clock speed is.
Early speculation had led some to conclude that that the A6 was based on the yet-to-be-seen Cortex A15 ARM processor design. The Cortex A15 is licensable processor design from ARM that promises significantly faster performance than the existing Cortex A9 design which is what Apple uses in their A5 processor (iPhone 4S).
Anandtech now reveals, however, that the A6 is a custom Apple design:
The A6 is the first Apple SoC to use its own ARMv7 based processor design. The CPU core(s) aren't based on a vanilla A9 or A15 design from ARM IP, but instead are something of Apple's own creation.
Anandtech explains that Apple is one of a few ARM architecture licensees, which allows them to create their own custom ARM processor designs.
While Anadtech goes into the finer details, the ultimate benefit for Apple is the ability to tune their chips towards their own specific goals. In particular, Apple's design goals prioritize both power and performance while the generally licensable Cortex A15 design was reportedly targeted at server configurations.
Rumor has it that the original design goal for ARM's Cortex A15 was servers, and it's only through big.LITTLE (or other clever techniques) that the A15 would be suitable for smartphones. Given Apple's intense focus on power consumption, skipping the A15 would make sense but performance still had to improve.
Apple seems to finally be benefiting from some previous company acquisitions including P.A. Semi and Intrinsity, both chip design companies. The ability to tune their CPU designs specifically for their products could serve as a competitive advantage over other companies that are reliant on the licensable designs provided by ARM. Apple's previous processor designs have been based on these more traditional designs, so this represents Apple's first departure into a more custom design approach.
An Apple spokesperson said the company was "blown away" by the response to the iPhone 5, according to a statement obtained by The Loop.
"Pre-orders for iPhone 5 have been incredible," said Apple spokeswoman, Natalie Kerris. "We’ve been completely blown away by the customer response."
The iPhone 5's initial shipment sold out within hours of going on sale early this morning, with shipping estimates slipping to 2-3 weeks by this afternoon. The iPhone 5 goes on sale next Friday.
Apple has sent an emailed apology to customer affected by the recent iCloud outage that took down email for a small fraction of users for several days. Apple claimed the outage only affected 1.1% of iCloud users.
We apologize for the mail service interruption you recently experienced. Your mail service has been restored and all emails sent during this service interruption have been delivered to your account.
Our customers are very important to us and we are working hard to ensure you have the best experience with iCloud.
We appreciate your patience.
-iCloud Team
Apple has not disclosed any plans to offer a service credit or refund to affected users, though compensation is slightly more tricky because the base iCloud service is now free.
Mac Otakara reports that Apple's new Lightning dock connector is capable of hosting USB peripheral devices, meaning that Apple could potentially allow users to connect devices such as keyboard and other accessories directly to their Lightning-equipped mobile products.
Apple's Lightning to USB cable
Even if the report is true, however, it would require that Apple build device support for such functionality on top of the Lightning compatibility in order to allow accessory manufacturers to tap into the USB capabilities. Such functionality is also not new with Lightning, as Apple's iPad Camera Connection Kit has long provided an adapter that allows uses to connect not only camera but also a number of other peripherals to their iPads.
Apple's iPad Camera Connection Kit with USB-based camera adapter at left
Consequently, we hesitate to give too much importance to this claim, as Apple has long had the ability to support some USB-based peripherals via the original 30-pin dock connector but has elected not to make extensive use of the compatibility and the may take a similar stance with Lightning.
We've been following Apple's work at its Maiden, North Carolina data center for quite some time, and early last month we saw some good aerial photos showing ongoing work at the site including the installation of a major solar farm to help meet Apple's renewable energy goals for the center.
GigaOM now shares some new video stills shot from the air by WCNC-TV showing that installation at the massive solar farm is nearly complete with the 100-acre site now filled with row after row of ground-mounted solar panels.
The solar farm is just one of two being developed Apple to support the data center, with the one captured on film located directly across the street from the center and the other located a few miles away. Together, the two similarly-sized solar farms will provide roughly 40 megawatts of power, with an on-site fuel cell facility providing an additional 5 megawatts.
Regulatory documents indicate that Apple plans to complete installation at the solar farm across the street from its data center by November 1, with operation set to commence by December 21. While solar panel installation appears to already be nearly complete, it is unclear if Apple is ahead of schedule on the project, as there is undoubtedly additional infrastructure work that will be required before the solar farm becomes operational.
Following some criticism from environmental group Greenpeace that overstated Apple's reliance on dirty energy sources for its data center power, Apple went public with plans to power all of its data center with 100% renewable energy. Beyond the North Carolina data center, Apple operates a smaller center in Newark, California near its headquarters and is in the process of developing new centers in Oregon and Nevada.
As noted by iPhoneinCanada.ca soon after pre-orders for the iPhone 5 went live earlier today, Apple's online store in several countries appeared to be noting that the company's Lightning to 30-pin Adapter would be included with customers' orders free of charge. The disclosure came in the form of an option to add an "additional" adapter as an accessory.
Your iPhone includes a Lightning to 30-pin Adapter for connecting 30-pin accessories to devices featuring the Lightning connector. Purchase this additional adapter to have a second adapter for your home or office.
Customers were only presented with the option to add the cable-equipped adapter and not the direct-plug adapter, and Apple's "What's in the box" documentation did not list the adapter as included, leading to considerable customer confusion.
After initially reporting on the inclusion of the free adapter, The Next Web followed up by asking Apple's online sales representatives about the issue. According to sales staff, the listing was an error in the Apple online store, and the adapter is not being included standard with iPhone orders. Apple has also removed listing from its store pages and no longer mentions the adapter's inclusion.
Apple's adapters are available for standalone purchase at $29 for the direct-plug version and $39 for the cable version, but they will not ship until next month.
Update 12:26 PM: Apple has issued a statement to The Loop confirming that the adapter is not included with the iPhone 5.
“The Lightning to 30-pin adapter does not come in the box with iPhone 5. It is sold separately,” Apple spokesperson, Natalie Harrison, told The Loop. “However, the Lightning to USB cable does come with iPhone 5 for connection to AC chargers and other devices.”
While Apple's shipping estimates on iPhone 5 pre-orders quickly slipped to two weeks just an hour after the online store reopened earlier, the company's U.S. carrier partners have seen their supplies holding up a bit better with continued estimates of delivery on launch day on September 21.
That appears to be changing now, as Verizon is the first of the three major U.S. carriers to see its shipping estimates slip with new pre-orders now estimated to arrive on September 26.
AT&T and Sprint are still citing September 21 availability, but it appears that customers may want to move quickly if they wish to obtain the iPhone 5 on launch day without waiting in line at retail stores.
Update 9:15 AM: While AT&T's site continues to cite delivery on September 21 for new pre-orders, a number of customers are reporting that their confirmation emails are quoting shipment in 14-21 business days.
Update 9:55 AM: AT&T's site is now quoting the 14-21 business day shipping estimate previously reported by some customers.
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