Love of hate Apple products, the fact of the matter is that most people consider them to be trendy and hip products; basically products that you would love to be seen with, although we guess that might depend on which side of the fence you’re on. Anyway it seems that according to a report from Beijing, a whopping number of college students in China, about 18,000 for those who want some numbers, have taken out high-interest loans just so that they can buy iPhones and iPads in order to keep up with their other Apple-toting classmates. The report has revealed that 20,000 students have applied for student loans, and 90% of the loan takers were the ones who opted to use the money for Apple’s products.
So how much interest can these students expect? Well if you thought that your bank charges an exorbitant interest rate, you might be shocked to learn that these students are paying interest rates as high as 47% on a 12-month term! According to a student at the Wuhan University of Science and Technology, “Apple products are a common topic or a particular community in campus. I used to feel isolated while they were discussing and playing with iPhones or iPads […] I felt embarrassed even to take a look when they were in a heated discussion about a new application.” Yikes, talk about peer pressure!
The Federal Aviation Association announced back in 2011 that it would be rolling out what they call iPad Electronic Flight Bags for use in the cockpit to replace all of the flight manuals and paperwork. Finally, American Airlines is the first airline to get approval for the iPad, and they’ve given eager minds a chance to take a look at the new system.
Travel website Gadling got a sneak peek inside of an American Airlines cockpit where the iPads are just starting to roll out. The iPad Electronic Flight Bag essentially replaces 40 lbs. worth of flight manuals and other paperwork with one single iPad, as well as a HyperJuice external battery that acts as a backup battery to extend the iPad’s battery life an extra 24 hours if need be.
The iPad replaces a slew of manuals and books, including all the Jeppesen approach plates, company manuals, and operations manuals that pilots had to haul around all the time. All of that gets stuffed into an iPad, and the tablet gets attached to a mount that sits right beside the pilot for quick and easy access during a flight.
However, there’s still one manual that pilots will be required to carry around, even with the iPads, and that’s the Quick Response Handbook, which provides information on emergency procedures. However, it’s not that big of a manual, so pilots won’t see it as a big deal, especially since they’re getting rid of 40 pounds worth of paperwork already.
So far, American Airlines has approved the iPad for the Boeing 777, 737, and McDonnell Douglas MD-80, while approval for the 757 and 767 is forthcoming. iPad have to go through a series of tests from the FAA, just as rapid decompression in a hypobaric chamber, as well as testing of the iPad mounts.
If you travel with an iPad you really have no choice but to bring along its bulky wall wart for charging. But thanks to Scosche’s new CoverCharge, you can now at least leave your phone’s charging cube at home to save some space. More »
Today Apple has updated their environmental page collection and have issued a new Facilities report, showing that at this point in history, global corporate facilities inside the Apple family are at a whopping 75% renewable energy use. Apple also reports that many of their facilities are running on 100% renewable energy, including data centers in Newark, CA, Prineville, OR, and Maiden, NC. These bits and pieces are part of a report that, on the whole, shows Apple to be heading directly toward a fully renewable energy future – one we’d all like to be a part of.
According to the report released this week, Apple has increased the renewable energy use at Apple corporate facilities worldwide by 114% between fiscal 2010 and 2012. Over the last three years, Apple’s now-75% global corporate facilities using has risen rapidly from the 35% it was three years ago. One example Apple is using as a key location where they’ve made significant progress is in Maiden, North Carolina.
Above: The nation’s largest end user-owned solar photovoltaic array providing renewable energy to Apple’s data center in Maiden, North Carolina.
Apple notes that their data center in Maiden is the only data center facility of its size and type to have earned full LEED Platinum certification. According to Apple, they’ve implemented the following in their Maiden data center location for the furtherance of energy efficiency and green building:
• A chilled water storage system to improve chiller efficiency by transferring 10,400 kWh of electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours each day • Use of “free” outside air cooling through a waterside economizer operation during night and cool-weather hours, which, along with water storage, allows the chillers to be turned off more than 75 percent of the time • Extreme precision in managing cooling distribution for cold-air containment pods, with variable-speed fans controlled to exactly match air flow to server requirements from moment to moment • Power distributed at higher voltages, which increases efficiency by reducing power loss • White cool-roof design to provide maximum solar reflectivity • High-efficiency LED lighting combined with motion sensors • Real-time power monitoring and analytics during operations • Construction processes that utilized 14 percent recycled materials, diverted 93 percent of construction waste from landfills, and sourced 41 percent of purchased materials within 500 miles of the site
It would appear that Apple is moving in the right direction when it comes to environmental and “green thinking” concerns, especially when you compare the raw numbers they present. The one significant up-turn that can be seen in their fiscal 2012 report is in electricity usage by business unit, with their Corporate segment staying essentially equal to fiscal 2011 while both Data Centers and Retail Stores, moving from 138 million kWh to 217 million kWh for the former and 122 to 159 for the latter.
Apple has also reported that the commute their employees take on the way to work has continued to decrease both for worldwide employees and for intercampus employees. Apple offered a transit subsidy for U.S. employees in fiscal 2012 that offered employees up to $100 USD a month for carpooling, also offering them special carpooling parking spots as a bonus. Over 11,000 Apple employees took part in this program in 2012.
This report also shows that Apple has achieved the fabulous 100% renewable energy usage goal in the following locations: Austin, Texas; Elk Grove, California; Cork, Ireland; Munich, Germany – and most Apple facilities across Australia. Apple’s Infinite Loop location in Cupertino also, of course, runs on 100% renewable energy at this time.
Head in to our massive Apple hub right this minute to get more information on the goings-on in the Apple universe and stay tuned as the 2013 product range comes raining down over the next few months – we’ll let you in on it all from top to bottom! Also make sure you have a peek at Apple’s Environment Pages to see what they’re up to in the green universe.
This week the Autodesk crew have announced a new collection of apps for the iPad, each of them released under the title “STEAM”. This new term from Autodesk sands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. The education begins with a new Applied Mechanics app, moves on with a Visual Design app, and rolls out with a Measurement app for… well… good measure!
With the Autodesk Digital STEAM Applied Mechanics app, you’ll be using a game-based learning engine to explore energy, work, force, power, loading, and more. With this simple-to-understand set of games, students will be learning both basic principals of applied mechanics as well as simple mechanics along the way.
With the Digital STEAM Visual Design app, students will be exploring the many sides of Industrial Design as well as a more all-encompassing design. You’ll see Elements and Principals split up into basics like Space, Shape, and Color – Balance, Unity, and Proportion. This app is less of a game interface and more of a straight up reading and visual example setup.
The Digital STEAM Measurement app provides students with every single different kind of measurement involved in 2D and 3D objects, showing how their applied to each object that student may be creating or working with. This app and the Design app go hand-in-hand with the Applied Mechanics app to create a suite that’ll be expanding through the future, too!
We caught a glimpse of Google Now for the iPhone and iPad after a YouTube video was leaked last week, although it was pulled from the service once Google was made aware of the leak. Considering the leak, we know an app will soon be made available on iOS, but what exactly is holding it up from being released.
According to Google’s Eric Schmidt, the ball is completely in Apple’s court as he was asked directly if Google Now would arrive on the iPhone. Schmidt responded by saying “you’ll need to discuss that with Apple. Apple has a policy of approving or disapproving apps that are submitted into its store, and some of the apps we make they approve and some of them they don’t.” He also took a small shot at their review process as “they recently did approve Google Maps, thank goodness.” When asked to give specifics regarding the Google Now situation, Schmidt declined to comment. (more…)
A few years ago if the question as to which phone operating system a government or enterprise would choose to use were to be asked, it’s a safe bet to say that the majority would reply with Blackberry. Times has since changed and Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are starting to become favorites in such organizations, and according to the folks at Electronista, they have received word that the US Department of Defense has plans to purchase a whopping 650,000 units of iOS devices.
The order is said to take place after the government sequester, and of that 650,000 units, 120,000 units will be iPads, 100,000 will be iPad minis, another 200,000 will be the iPod touch, and the remaining 210,000 devices will be a mixture of iPhones of different generations.
The US Department of Defense was also said to have considered Blackberry 10, but apparently the need for new mobile devices is extremely urgent so testing of Blackberry 10 will have to wait for another time. To make matters worse for Blackberry who is already fighting to reclaim some market share, these new iOS devices are said to be replacements for older Blackberry devices that were used in the past. Since older Blackberry models are not compatible with Blackberry 10, they had to replace them.
Things aren’t looking so great for Blackberry, if information provided to Electronista is to be believed. Back in October, word had surfaced that the Pentagon would be taking in iOS and Android devices on top of Blackberry, which has been a staple platform for many government agencies. Last month, we reported that the Pentagon would be rolling out 100,000 of the devices by next year, but it would seem things have changed, with an order of over 650,000 iOS devices pending.
The folks over at Electronista say they have received information from “well-placed sources familiar with the matter” that the Department of Defense has a pending order for over half a million Apple devices, which will go through after the sequester ends. This follows reports that Blackberry’s BB 10 handsets were given the kibosh in an effort to reduce costs.
The sources went on to break down the numbers, stating that the order will be comprised of 200,000 iPod Touches, 100,000 iPad minis, and 120,000 iPads. For those doing the math, this leaves another 200,000+ empty slots that will be filled with “various iPhones,” meaning some government workers won’t be lucky enough to score the iPhone 5. Still, this order is being placed, the sources say, to satisfy “needs that can’t wait.”
Reportedly, the majority of these Apple devices will be sent to those on the “battlefield [and] afloat,” as well as to support commands related to both. The devices left over from that will almost exclusively stay with Pentagon personnel, and whatever remains will find homes in various other locations. The blow for Blackberry comes from another source, which stated that these Apple devices will replace almost all Blackberry devices in use that aren’t BB 10 compatible.
Remember how yesterday’s release of iOS 6.1.3 was supposed to fix a security hole that allowed one to bypass the lock screen? Well, turns out Apple’s got a bit more work to do. Today, a new lock screen sidestep was revealed by YouTube user VideosdeBarraquito, and this time around, running iOS 6.1.3 won’t do you any good. The bypass involves invoking a telephone call by voice command and then ejecting the SIM card at a specific event. After a few steps, access to a users contact list and photo gallery becomes easily accessible. The upside? If you’re genuinely concerned about your security, you can plug this hole yourself by disabling the voice dial option from the Password Lock screen within system settings. You can view the complete exploit after the break. As for Apple, looks like it’s back to the drawing board.
Today it’s come to our attention that a collection of iPhone users out there believe that Apple might, in their next iteration of iOS, decide to give the average smartphone user Android-level customization options. I couldn’t disagree more. Though it’s clear that Apple should – in an early adopter’s dream universe – need by now to bring some major changes to their mobile operating system iOS, it’s just not going to happen. With Apple, change comes only when change is needed, and if you’ve seen the cash this company makes with each new iteration of its iPhone line and think they’re in dire need of any sort of radical change, you’re out of your mind.
What Apple should do, on the other hand, is tap two markets that it’s been avoiding since the dawn of the iPhone. The first of these is the customizing developer/hacker community that so ravenously devours each new Android phone. The second is the vast group of people rather rapidly accepting the ultra-large (but not quite tablet-sized) smartphone screen.
With the amount of attention each post about Jailbreaking gets here on SlashGear compared to the chatter that comes up each time iOS is updated, an instant conclusion can be drawn: it’s much more interesting (to those that reach tech blogs) to see the iPhone broken into than it is to see Apple bring on updates and upgrades. Where it gets really interesting is when Apple’s updates appear to be the direct result of Jailbreaking – hacks take a turn, Apple takes a turn, and so on and so forth.
Would it be so very anti-Apple to release a device that they encouraged the very real – and rather giant – developer community to customize?
Or would it be releasing their hardware to those that would change the software as they saw fit that made the iPhone into a device that’s not all that different from phones made by the Android-toting competition?
Then there’s the more obvious next step for the iPhone – a larger display size. Now that Apple has cracked the illusion that the iPhone 4′s screen size was the only one that – because of the massive amount of time that went into perfecting it – was ever going to be perfect, they can move on. Apple should and will create an iPhone that’s larger that the iPhone 5′s 4-inch display size limit.
But before they do that, they’ll have the ability to make this handheld machine bring on innovations we’ve not yet seen implemented on smartphones. If the rest of the smartphone universe is the Borg, they’ve already assimilated vast amounts of the “cool” that has pushed the iPhone to the top spot and kept it there for so many years. “The iPhone and Apple do not need help surviving”
The iPhone and Apple do not need help surviving – this is no call to action for Apple – they’ve still got one massively successul smartphone line on their hands. Instead consider this a call-to-action on the part of you lovers of game-changing innovation: Apple creates products people love. If everyone on the planet made it clear to Apple that they loved iOS better on the iPad mini than they do on the iPhone 5, you’d see a smartphone right between the two rather quick.
The same goes for you Jailbreaking-loving developers out there – continue to spread the love that is community evolution in software and you might – not any time soon – see an iPhone Developer Edition in your holiday stocking. Some day!
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
Love of hate Apple products, the fact of the matter is that most people consider them to be trendy and hip products; basically products that you would love to be seen with, although we guess that might depend on which side of the fence you’re on. Anyway it seems that according to a report from Beijing, a whopping number of college students in China, about 18,000 for those who want some numbers, have taken out high-interest loans just so that they can buy iPhones and iPads in order to keep up with their other Apple-toting classmates. The report has revealed that 20,000 students have applied for student loans, and 90% of the loan takers were the ones who opted to use the money for Apple’s products.
A few years ago if the question as to which phone operating system a government or enterprise would choose to use were to be asked, it’s a safe bet to say that the majority would reply with Blackberry. Times has since changed and Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android are starting to become favorites in such organizations, and according to the folks at Electronista, they have received word that the US Department of Defense has plans to purchase a whopping 650,000 units of iOS devices.
