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iPhone 5 Component Costs Estimated to Begin at $199


IHS iSuppli has released its estimate of the component costs involved in building the iPhone 5, performing a virtual teardown based on information revealed by Apple and industry knowledge. The estimate, which does not include numerous other costs involved in product development, manufacturing, and sales, such as research and development, software, patent licenses, marketing, and distribution expenditures, pegs the component cost of the entry-level 16 GB iPhone 5 at $199.
The new iPhone 5 carries a bill of materials (BOM) of $199.00 for the low-end model with 16Gbytes of NAND flash memory, according to a preliminary virtual teardown conducted by the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service. When the $8.00 manufacturing cost is added in, the cost to produce the iPhone 5 rises to $207.00. For the 32Gbyte version of the iPhone 5, the BOM cost increases to $209.00, while 64Gbyte version is estimated at $230.00, as presented in the table below.




The estimated $199 bill of materials (BOM) for the 16 GB model is slightly higher than the firm's $188 estimate for the iPhone 4S at that device's launch last year, but a halving of flash storage prices over the past year means that Apple's margins improve as capacity increases. While the 32 GB and 64 GB models of the iPhone 4S carried BOMs of $207 and $245 respectively, those estimates move to $209 and $230 for the iPhone 5.
While the price of some components, such as NAND flash, has fallen during the past year, the iPhone 5’s overall BOM has increased mainly because its display and wireless subsystems are more expensive compared to the iPhone 4S.”
Compared to the iPhone 4S, flash storage pricing declined by roughly $10 on the entry-level iPhone 5, but that decrease was more than offset by a $7 increase in display costs to $44 due to the adoption of in-cell touch sensors and a $10 increase in wireless costs with the move to Qualcomm's latest LTE-compatible chips. At the 64 GB level, a $37 decrease in flash memory compared to the iPhone 4S is able to overcome the other increases to lower Apple's overall estimated costs for the device.

Apple Releases OS X 10.8.2 with Facebook Integration and Game Center


Alongside today's launch of iOS 6, Apple has also released OS X 10.8.2 to the public. The update is currently available via the Software Update functionality in the Mac App Store.


The update includes a number of enhancements, most notably Facebook integration and Game Center. It also includes support for several features integrating with iOS 6, such as Passbook passes and iMessage/FaceTime access via phone number.
This update is recommended for all OS X Mountain Lion users, and includes new features and fixes:

Facebook

- Single sign on for Facebook
- Adds Facebook as an option when sharing links and photos
- See Facebook friends' contact information and profile pictures in Contacts
- Facebook notifications now appear in Notification Center

Game Center

- Share scores to Facebook, Twitter, Mail, or Messages
- Facebook friends are included in Game Center friend recommendations
- Added Facebook "Like" button for games
- Challenge friends to beat your score or achievement

Other new features

- Adds Power Nap support for MacBook Air (Late 2010)
- iMessages sent to your phone number now appear in Messages on your Mac
- You can now add passes to Passbook (on your iPhone or iPod touch) from Safari and Mail on your Mac
- FaceTime can now receive calls sent to your phone number
- New shared Reminders lists
- New sort options allow you to sort notes by title, the date you edited them, and when you created them
- Dictation now supports additional languages: Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Korean, Canadian English, Canadian French, and Italian
- Dictionary app now includes a French definition dictionary
- Sina Weibo profile photos can now be added to Contacts
Direct downloads available through Apple's site include:

- OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.2 (665.48 MB)
- OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.2 (Combo) (665.39 MB)

Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 Updated for MacBook Pro Retina Display


Microsoft today announced the release of Office for Mac 2011 version 14.2.4, which brings support for the Retina display on the new MacBook Pro released in June.
We’re happy to announce that Office for Mac 2011 (version 14.2.4) now supports Retina display for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Text everywhere is incredibly crisp and all key areas of the interface are now sharper than ever. We hope you enjoy this fantastic software experience!

Beyond Retina display support, the update also brings a number of other enhancements for Outlook, including calendar event reminders, Mountain Lion compatibility for signatures, and fixes for several other issues.

Roundup of iOS 6 Launch Day News and Reviews



It's been a busy day with today's launch of iOS 6 and associated news, so we thought we take the opportunity to provide a roundup of today's stories to help those who might have missed something get caught up.

With the public release of iOS 6, a number of reviews have hit the Internet summarizing the new features and enhancements. Apple has of course detailed many of the changes at both its Worldwide Developers Conference in June and its iPhone 5 media event earlier this month, and Apple's broad-reaching developer program has had access to builds for a number of months, but for many people the public launch is their first time getting their hands on the new operating system. A few of the interesting iOS 6 reviews we've seen so far include:

- iMore
Compared to previous versions of iOS, and compared to competing platforms, iOS 6 doesn't have the same level of customer facing pizazz this year. Sure, there's Do Not Disturb and the new Privacy features, FaceTime over 3G, Siri for iPad and iPod touch, VIP mail, Panorama photos, Safari image uploads, single-app-mode, and a few other enhancements, but making a new Maps app was a huge amount of work for Apple. Likewise, positioning Siri and Passbook for the future compromised Apple's ability to deliver in the present.
- Macworld
There are still gaps, to be sure, but it seems like there are fewer every year. And Apple is meanwhile trying to plant more flags with forward-looking features like Passbook. Whether it’ll take its rightful place on the Home screen with Mail and Safari, or end up consigned to the dust heap of history like Ping, it’s clear that Apple is not resting on its laurels, with iOS 6.

Simply put, there’s no reason not to update to iOS 6, and plenty of reasons for you to jump onboard.
- The Next Web
Overall, iOS 6 is very good, with some nice touches throughout that ease pain points and refine the experience. And Passbook has the potential to be wonderfully useful. But the question marks of Maps and the App Store are big ones, integral to the ability to recommend iOS as the best platform for a smartphone purchase down the line. These are challenges that Apple will hopefully meet, but we’ll see.
In addition to the iOS 6 launch, Apple pushed out a number of other software updates for both iOS and Mac, including the following:

- Apple Releases OS X 10.8.2 with Facebook Integration and Game Center
- Apple Releases OS X 10.7.5 with Gatekeeper
- Apple Releases MacBook Pro Retina EFI Update 1.0
- 'Cards' Gains iPad Compatibility and Multi-Photo Layouts
- Apple Updates Find My Friends with Friend Location Notifications
- Apple Updates iOS iLife Apps: iPhoto, GarageBand, and iMovie

We've highlight some of the new features in separate articles:

- iOS 6: Guided Access, Also for Kids and Kiosks
- iOS 6 Brings Panoramic Camera to iPhone 4S
- Passbook Enabled-Apps Start Arriving on App Store

Our iOS 6 forums are incredibly busy with questions and comments about the latest release. Finally, MacStories has posted a nice bullet-point list of lesser-known tidbits and features found in iOS 6. We've highlighted some we found most interesting here:

- "Settings > General > About > Advertising: this is new and you can limit ad tracking by toggling the off/on button"
- "When using Safari for iPhone in landscape, you get a full screen button."
- "You can now set an alarm with a song and not just a tone."
- "Updating apps doesn’t require a password anymore."

Mainstream apps optimized for iPhone 5 & iOS 6


If you want to take full advantage of iOS 6 and the new iPhone 5′s extra screen real estate, you will want to pick up some of the apps and updates below, which are specifically optimized for the device’s bigger screen size and latest OS. We will continue to update the list as more updates that are notable pop up.

Tweetbot version 2.5.0:

Support for iOS 6 and iPhone 5

Readability version 1.2.1:

- updated for iOS 6 and iPhone 5
- iOS 5.0 or higher is now required
- improved scrolling prevents accidental panel swipes
- unified navigation menu (added in version 1.2)
- bug fixes

Temple Run version 1.6: In addition to iPhone support, Temple Run also gets new social sharing features to celebrate hitting 100 million downloads:

- Bigger screen size for iPhone 5
- New social sharing feature. Now share your scores via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
- Lots of bug fixes

iTranslate Voice version 1.3:

-Support for the bigger iPhone 5 display
-iOS6 compatibility
-Some minor Bugfixes

- Works with Siri on iOS 6

For the iPhone 5:
- New “Great Tables” search feature makes it easier to find top restaurants with tables available tonight.
- New maps display lets you look at a restaurant list two different ways. Tap the map area to see your the restaurants on a map, and tap the pins to see available tables. To go back to the list, simply scroll the map up.
- Updated design makes the most of the bigger screen on the iPhone 5.

TED version 1.8.2:

-Compatibility with iOS 6 and iPhone 5; improved speed and stability.

Hipmunk Flight & Hotel Search version 2.5.2:

-iPhone 5 support, Compatibility improvements for future iOS software

Real Piano version 2.1.3:

-Supports 4-inch retina display on iPhone 5

Pocket version 4.2:

New:
☆ Tumblr users can now select which blog (or blogs) to post to
☆ Compatibility with iOS 6 and iPhone 5

Our 33rd favorite reading app was also updated with iPhone 5 support:

- iOS 6 bugfixes
- iPhone 5 compatibility
- New Open-Dyslexic font to increase legibility for readers with dyslexia.

Moving From iPhoto To Dropbox

I like iPhoto on the Mac. The app’s interface sports Apple’s proverbial attention to polish and details, the Faces feature is nice, and I like the possibility to visualize photos on a map, just as I find Photo Stream very convenient for my blogging workflow. However, I realized that I don’t want to depend on iPhoto to store the photos that, twenty years from now, I’ll look back to as memories. I need my photos — moments captured as .jpeg files — to be photos, not a database. And at the same time, I need to be able to access them now from any device I have without having to worry about sync, apps, formats, and corrupted entries. I have decided to move all my photos from iPhoto to Dropbox.

This is something I have been thinking about for the past year. Do I want my photos to be stored inside someone else’s app? And if not, why not do the same for any other media I store on my computer? Should I also ditch Rdio and go back to neatly organized .mp3 files in the Finder?

I have come to the conclusion that photos are irreplaceable. Decades from now, I’ll probably be able to find a 2Pac record somewhere online or in a record store (will those still exist?). But not so with photos. If something — anything — happens to my photos, they’ll be gone forever. There won’t be anyone able to give me my memories back. Just as I do for text files — the words I write — I have chosen to store my photos — the things I experience — as .jpeg files, a format that should still be around for the foreseeable future.

I tried Adobe Revel, but it was just a fancier faux solution to my problem. I still ended up with a closed database, albeit one that could sync across devices (unlike Apple’s iPhoto). Too, besides data preservation, I also give much importance to the instant access and accessibility aspect. iPhoto for iOS is a nightmare of navigation, and Adobe Revel is slow in fetching photos on 3G. I want to be able to open my photos in seconds no matter the device I’m using. Doing so with Dropbox is easy considering the decent nature of the official app, and the plethora of Dropbox-enabled “file managers” currently available on iOS.

To migrate from iPhoto to Dropbox, I followed SimplicityBliss’ suggestion and used Phoshare to export image files from iPhoto’s library to the Finder. iPhoto comes with an Export function, but it appears it’s not capable of correctly exporting image metadata — those bits of data that contain extra information such as location, capturing device, etc. To preserve this information — and make sure other apps like Preview could access it as well — I installed ExifTool, a package that allows OS X to write and read Exif metadata from a variety of image formats.

Once installed, I selected my iPhoto library in Phoshare, chose an Export Folder in the Files tab (I also checked “export originals”), and selected metadata as you can see in the screenshot below. I didn’t ask Phoshare to do any particular renaming for my files, as I prefer another solution — Hazel.
In the Finder, I ended up with a folder full of photos. Now, as I asked on Twitter, I needed a way to filter iOS screenshots (saved into the iPhoto library by Photo Stream) from actual photos, as I have no interest in keeping screenshots I used for reviews around for the next years. While many simply said to use Hazel to remove .png files from my library (screenshots are saved in that format), I actually wanted a deeper degree of accuracy in doing so. It turns out, hidden into its “Other” parameters, Hazel has options to check for an image “pixel height” and “pixel width”.
I created rules for screenshots from the iPhone and iPad both in portrait and landscape, and set Hazel to move matched files to the Trash. Within seconds, I had my photo library free of unnecessary screenshots.

At this point, I needed to properly organize my files in folders. I find Hazel to be the best solution for batch processing of multiple files, as it has a “sort into subfolder” action that can be assigned a parameter for naming the subfolder it creates. First, I wanted my photos to be organized by year, so I created a rule that, through the “date created” parameter, would take the input files (I use “Kind is Image” in Hazel, and optionally double-check for files with “jpg” extension) and move them into a folder called, for instance, “2012″.

Then, I chose a file naming scheme for my photos. This is up to your own preference, but here’s what I chose:

As you can see, photos are renamed with Year, Date, Time, and Location. The Location parameter is particularly interesting, as thanks to ExifTool I can fetch the Latitude and Longitude (again, you’ll have to look for these values under “Other”). With these, I can always manually look up a photo’s location on Google Maps, or, if I’m really that nerdy, set up a script to fetch the coordinates between brackets. My photos’ filenames aren’t exactly easy to read, but this is how I like them.

You’re free to change the naming to whatever you want — just keep in mind that Hazel has a lot of stuff hidden inside “Other”. Pro tip: you can edit patterns by right-clicking on them.
After renaming my photos, I wanted to further sort them into subfolders organized by month. To make sure those subfolders would have a readable name but still be sorted properly, I set the folder’s file name to month number – month name.

Treehouse Web And iOS Development Courses [Ends Today]

You know by now, because I’ve been posting here a good bit, that I’m an educator as well as an author and writer. This means that anything to do with learning catches my eye—especially courses to help people learn new skills. Today we have a deal from Treehouse to get a month of their Gold Plan for $25 so you can learn to code, well, a lot of different things. This is awesome, of course, but what caught my eye about Treehouse is a very cool bonus:
Closed captioning. This wouldn’t have even pinged on my radar if it wasn’t for an email I received from a reader not long ago. Let me tell you about it.

You know that I have great affection for video courses like Treehouse. I love the ease of being able to learn when it suits you. Can’t sleep and feel like learning more about Objective C to work on that iOS app, not a problem—your teacher is always awake online. Now here’s the rub, and the gist of the email I received, what if you’re hearing impaired or English isn’t your first language?

Ah ah! You see the challenge don’t you?

Not long ago I received an email from a reader asking if one of the video courses I wrote about here had subtitles. I had no idea. I mean why couldn’t they? I don’t think that the particular course I wrote about then had them, but Treehouse does. When I was reading up on Treehouse that very feature caught my eye—all the videos have subtitles! So if English isn’t your first language (or you didn’t quite catch what the instructor said) or you are hearing impaired you can follow along with what the instructor is saying!

Oh, wondering what is covered in these courses? Yes, well, I that would be helpful, wouldn’t it?

These courses from Treehouse cover web design, web development, and iOS app creation. Three sets of skills that are always in high demand I find. Again, these are video-based courses (which you know are the kind I favor, unless you come to one of my classes in person that is) so you can fast forward, rewind, skip back, re-watch, and re-watch again until you get it. Since it is back to school time, how about you go back to school yourself and pick up a few more skills? If you’ve read this far, you’ve been thinking about it, so what’s stopping you?

Apple Needs To Add These Useful Features To Spotlight In iOS 7

I can’t remember the last time I really used Spotlight on iOS. I guess it’s cool. It brings up some pertinent stuff that you search for, but it’s not really a precise tool you can use with pinpoint accuracy, so most of the time it just gets neglected on most iPhones.
My fingers haven’t really been aching for a iOS Spotlight overhaul, but after watching this concept video by Cody Sanfilippo, I’m starting to believe there are a lot of great possibilities Apple needs to explore by heavily integrating apps into Spotlight. Just watch the concept video below to see all the cool things Apple could do to make Spotlight in iOS 7 truly amazing.

Shipping Estimates for New iPhone 5 Pre-Orders Through Apple Slip to 3-4 Weeks

The iPhone 5 does not officially launch until Friday, but pre-orders are clearly continuing to roll in through Apple's online store as the company has now bumped shipping estimates for new pre-orders to 3-4 weeks. Apple sold out of its launch day pre-order stock in just about an hour last Friday, with shipping estimates quickly moving to two weeks and then drifting to 2-3 weeks, where they have been for the past few days. 


The new 3-4 week estimates are in place in the United States, Canada, and Australia, while several other launch markets including the United Kingdom, France, and Germany remain at 2-3 weeks for the time being. Accounting for shipping time, the new estimates suggest that those placing orders today may not receive their devices until mid-October. 

Not only are Apple's lengthening shipping estimates coming before the first round of launches in nine countries this Friday, but the new pre-orders are being pushed well past Apple's second round of launches set to take place in 22 more countries and on additional carriers in some of the first-round markets on September 28. Apple will undoubtedly be reserving some stock for launch availability in the new countries and is of course holding stock for in-store sales beginning this Friday as it rolls out availability, but online orders are now seeing even more substantial delays for the popular device that saw two million pre-orders in just the first 24 hours of availability.

iPhone 5 Javascript Benchmarks Over Twice as Fast

AnandTech publishes the first SunSpider Javascript benchmarks for the iPhone 5. SunSpider measures Javascript performance which runs in web browsers. 


Smaller numbers are better, so the final score of 914.7ms is better than all of the other devices on the chart and is the fastest SunSpider test they've ever recorded for a smartphone. The iPhone 5 is two and a half times as fast as the iPhone 4S (2250ms) and notably faster than the Samsung Galaxy S III (1442.9-1824.9ms). 

Javascript is used as a measure of web browser performance, but the final score can be impacted by both the processor as well as the particular Javascript implementation on the device. Javascript is a common area of optimization due to its common usage on websites and may have been improved in iOS 6 which ships with the iPhone 5. AnandTech notesthat the superior performance is likely a reflection of the Apple A6's improved memory subsystem.