Daily Interesting iPhone News

The 8 million iPhones that Apple sold in China last quarter are a lot like exotic pets: They’re cute and they make great gifts for rich young men to give to their girlfriends. But outside of their native ecosystem, their survival prospects don’t look very good.

Read more www.wired.com

A small Vancouver company is behind an interactive comic book app related to super-hero movie The Avengers that has already topped one million downloads and is on track to hit two million in the first week of its release.

Vancouver’s Loud Crow Interactive, a 10-person start-up company, partnered with Marvel Custom to create a comic app telling the story of super hero Iron Man, to mark the launch of Marvel’s movie The Avengers, which opened Friday.

Read more www.vancouversun.com

BEIJING: A teenage high-school student in China sold his kidney for an illicit transplant operation and used the proceeds to buy an Apple iPhone and iPad, state press said on Friday.

The 17-year-old boy, who was paid 22,000 yuan ($3,500), was recruited from an online chatroom and is now suffering from kidney failure and in deteriorating health, the Xinhua news agency said.

Read more timesofindia.indiatimes.com

The Chinese environmental group that will be auditing Apple’s Chinese factories has praised Apple for arranging the audit. The group had previously criticised Apple for not co-operating on efforts to rein in pollution at its suppliers. The Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs and other Chinese environmental groups had also criticised Apple for allegedly failing to stop the environmental damage caused by its suppliers in China. Now the group has praised Apple for becoming “more transparent”.

Read more www.computerworld.com.sg

An anonymous undercover reporter for Al Jazeera has captured the Syrian uprising in a first-of-its-kind-documentary — recorded on an iPhone. The 25 minute documentary, “Syria: Songs of Defiance,” aired on Al Jazeera’s show People & Power earlier this month.

Read more mashable.com

Today is World Backup Day, a holiday that celebrates the task we all know we should be doing, but one that’s way too easy to ignore — until your hard drive starts to grind or your phone decides to go for a swim. Lucky for you, World Backup Day falls on a Saturday this year. You’ve got the time. Now let’s back up that data.

Read more www.lifehacker.com.au

A quickly rising demand for touch screen devices will trickle down to a equally fast increasing demand for touch controller integrated circuits (ICs) and triple that market within five years, IHS estimates.

Read more www.tomshardware.com

Apple Inc’s Tim Cook, on his first trip to China as the chief executive officer, has visited an iPhone production plant run by the Foxconn Technology Group, which is being accused of improper labor practices.

Read more www.chicagotribune.com

Nationwide Australian flight tracking is available for the first time for general aviation and commercial airline flights through FlightAware.com. The flight tracking and data service is offering the information free to its Australian users.

Read more www.aero-news.net

Apple is moving away from Google. In a string of pearls kind of approach, Apple has first moved away from Google Maps service in its latest iPhoto for iOS release. Now if the recent news is true, Apple would be kissing Google’s search engine goodbye in China.

Read more www.techwireasia.com

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook met with Beijing’s mayor on Monday, and called for increased cooperation with China’s capital city along with market expansion, according to a report from Chinese state-run press.

Read more www.computerworld.com.sg

Over-the-air incremental updates was one of the major features introduced in iOS 5. iOS 5.1 released couple of weeks back was the second OTA update to be released by Apple. Even though iOS 5.1 didn’t include any major new feature and jailbreakers were warned to stay away from it, David Smith - developer of Audiobooks app (App Store link) reports that quite a large percentage of users have already upgraded to iOS 5.1.

Read more www.iphonehacks.com

Early on the morning of March 16, Wong Tat joined a line of about 100 people waiting for the launch of the new iPad in a chilly rain outside an Apple store on the outskirts of San Francisco.
When the doors opened, he was among the first to buy his quota of two iPads - the maximum Apple Inc allows per person.

Read more ibnlive.in.com

True to its mission of helping Filipinos get the most out of Apple products, Power Mac Center (PMC), a chain of reliable retail shops and service provider of Apple products and premium accessories in the country, recently held its very first series of seminar workshops on what is probably the most sophisticated and convenient of all cloud storage and cloud computing services today – the iCloud by Apple.

Read more dateline.ph

NTT Docomo, Japan’s biggest carrier, announced yesterday that it had reached two million subscribers on its LTE service Xi. Xi launched in December 2010, and within its first year it had already achieved approximately one million subscribers.

Read more www.zdnet.com

Popular iPad social reader Flipboard is now available in China, and the developers have launched an iPhone version especially built for this market. While the new app allows users to read and share stories via the socially-aware app, Flipboard likewise enables worldwide users to view content from popular Chinese social networks like Sina Weibo and Renren.

Read more www.techwireasia.com

It was only a matter of time. An unsanctioned Android store has been spotted in China sporting the trademark robot logo, but it’s selling iPhones.

According to the Isidor’s Fugue blog, the random shop has popped up in Zuhai city, Guangdong province – the same district where Apple is currently tussling with Asian monitor company Proview over the trademark rights to the iPad name.

Read more www.theregister.co.uk

Brusque with a 2-day-old stubble and a cigarette dangling from his lip, Zhao Xin is the last guy you’d want waiting on you at the Apple store Genius Bar. But if you need to get your hands on a genuine iPhone immediately, Zhao is your man.

Read more www.businessinsider.com

Siri, Apple Inc.‘s voice-activated assistant for the iPhone 4S, may have trouble learning Japanese, an Apple enthusiast site has reported.

AppleInsider.com cited a video on YouTube showing Siri can understand basic commands but has trouble processing “more advanced requests.”

Read more www.gmanetwork.com

Today Apple announced the availability of iOS 5.1 for most of the world and, in a couple of weeks, Japan (which will finally get Siri). While there are few significant changes, there are minor but notable updates.

Read more www.lifehacker.com.au