Apple have announced that they are severing ties with SurfaceInk, an engineering design company Apple has worked alongside for a decade. The reason for this departure is pretty basic, Apple sees SurfaceInk as a competitor, or at the very least as aiding their competitors in the nascent tablet computing market. SurfaceInk has just developed its own prototype for a tablet device and is working with companies such as HP, which is rumoured to be releasing its own webOS powered tablet device either late this year or early next year. All of this won\'t be sitting well with El Jobso of course.
The New York Times spoke with Eric Bauswell, SurfaceInk CEO, about the parting of ways:
Mr. Bauswell declined to give details of its relationship with Apple, citing client confidentiality agreements. But he said that his company was let go because of "Apple’s growing awareness of our turnkey capabilities" referring to SurfaceInk business of designing products for its clients. "I think they view our capabilities as an opportunity for competitors" he said.
Enter Rockchip to the arena with their promise of delivering a 3D enabled tablet device that requires no glasses to use. The nice thing about Rockchip design is that it is dual purpose, you can switch between 3D and 2D modes so you are not saddled with something trying to push a particular feature that you might not use, rather you get a tablet device that has 3D tech for when you feel it will be worth using.
The bad news is that the tablet is still in the prototype stage so chances are that it won't be making it onto a store shelf any time soon. However, Rockchip do have plans to build an Android powered tablet using this technology, the idea probably being that a bigger, more well known brand, will re-badge the tablet and sell it.
US Cellular CDMA-flavored version of the HTC Desire is now available for $200, making it the undisputed big dog in the regional carrier's lineup. More Device info Below!
Basic Features
- 3.7-inch WVGA Super TFT touchscreen 480 x 800
- Android 2.1 (Eclair)
- 1 GHz snapdragon processor
- 5.0 Camera/Camcorder with LED flash
- Full HTML browser with Flash lite support
- Stereo Bluetooth capable
- On screen QWERTY keypad
- Wi-Fi
Pre-Loaded Apps
- My Contacts Backup
- Tone-room Deluxe
- Your Navigator Deluxe
- Friend-stream
- Peep (Twitter)
- Footprints
- My Space
- HTC Weather
- Stocks
- QuickOffice
- Gmail
- Google Maps
- Android Market
- Google Talk
- YouTube
PRESS RELEASE
"HTC DESIRE™ SMARTPHONE AVAILABLE AT U.S. CELLULAR TODAY
Carrier Becomes First in United States to Offer the Much-Anticipated Device
CHICAGO (August 27, 2010) – The wait for the U.S. debut of the HTC Desire smartphone is finally over. U.S. Cellular began selling the popular Android-powered handsets today in stores and online at uscellular.com, becoming the first carrier to bring the popular smartphone to customers in the United States.
"The buzz for the HTC Desire has been amazing," said Edward Perez, vice president of sales and marketing operations for U.S. Cellular. "Our customers deserve great phones, and now they can be among the first to own one of the best Android-powered devices on the market."
The HTC Desire smartphone is the second of five phones that run the Android operating system joining U.S. Cellular's smartphone lineup this year. Customers welcomed the Samsung Acclaim™ last month. The Samsung Galaxy S™ will be added in October, followed by two Android-powered phones from LG.
For U.S. Cellular customers, the HTC Desire smartphone also comes with the company's industry-first, customer-focused programs, like Overage Protection and Battery Swap.
U.S. Cellular is offering the HTC Desire smartphone for $199.95 after $70 mail-in rebate with a two-year contract.
About the HTC Desire Smartphone
The HTC Desire smartphone boasts a slim, stylish design with a vivid 3.7-inch Super LCD touchscreen. Features include a five megapixel, autofocus camera with flash, integrated GPS and Wi-Fi capability. The Android TM 2.1 platform opens the door to a growing Android Marketplace ™ of more than 80,000 applications, many of them free.
HTC Desire's 1GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ processor offers a true mobile computing experience on U.S. Cellular's nationwide 3G network, allowing customers to quickly download applications and music, browse the Internet and share pictures and videos. The phone also comes preloaded with U.S. Cellular applications such as My Contacts Backup, City ID, Tone Room Deluxe and Your Navigator Deluxe. In addition, customers can easily access Google services like Gmail, Google Maps and Google Talk instant messaging, and synch their Google calendars and contacts."
Early Yesterday, the iPhone Dev Team (the guys behind the discovery of the vast majority of iPhone jailbreak methods) announced that they will not be working on a jailbreak for iOS 4.0.2.
Why? Because with iOS 4.0.2, Apple showed that they are willing to push out updates that do nothing but patch the exploits used for jailbreaking. It is by all means reasonable, especially in this case; the browser-based (and thus easily forced on unknowing users) exploit patched in 4.0.2 could be used for all sorts of nasty things beyond jailbreaking, so Apple had plenty of reasons to drop everything and patch it up.
If the cat and mouse game escalates too quickly, especially during beta FW periods, nobody but Apple benefits. For this reason, there will not be a 4.0.2/3.2.2 jailbreak specifically during the period where 4.0.2/3.2.2 is the latest public release. At best, some future 4.1x FW jailbreak *may* be compatible with 4.0.2/3.2.2 (but don’t count on that).
We all hope to get it ASAP to unlock any New iPhone4 device!
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