Hasta La Gadget!

Apple threw quite the wireless party by introducing PC Free and iCloud at yesterday’s WWDC keynote, but it seems that the engineers in Cupertino may have even more tricks up their sleeve. Judging by a recently filed patent application, the company’s hoping to add charging to its list of cord-cutting services. Specifically, the patent describes building a NFMR (near-field magnetic resolution) power supply directly into your iMac so it can charge your iPhone, iPad, or even peripherals — such as a keyboard or mouse, when equipped with a special antenna — without the assistance of your ol’ trusty charging cords or batteries. Sporting a somewhat mature iMac that’s operating sans NFMR? Pop a special USB dongle in that bad boy and presto, you’re good to go. The patent points out that the range is limited to one meter, though there may be ways to install repeaters in peripherals to extend that distance further. Of course, patents won’t guarantee we’ll be grabbing the scissors to cut our cords anytime soon, but at least we won’t have to rely on these things for the rest of eternity.

Filed under: Wireless

Apple patent app sheds light on wireless charging dreams, NFMR love affair originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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See those Cydia and iSSH icons? How about the Reminders and Newstand apps, see those? What you’re looking at is the harmonious coexistence of hacks and Apple’s virgin iOS 5 beta release running on a 4th generation iPod touch. In other words, MuscleNerd and Co are letting us know that iOS 5 presents few surprises so far when its comes to closing the existing holes exploited by the tethered limera1n jailbreak.

Update: It’s worth mentioning that limera1n is a bootrom exploit that Apple can’t patch on the iPod touch through firmware alone. The real test of the Dev Team’s wits will be an untethered jailbreak for the iPad 2.

iOS 5 jailbroken originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iOS 5 won’t be ready for the masses until this Fall, but lucky developers — and eager tech bloggers — are able to get in on the action right now. We just got done downloading the 730MB BETA, and have decided to turn our iPhone 4 and iPad 2 into guinea pigs for all the newness. Apple says that there are over 200 new features baked into the updated OS, and we’ve run through the biggies from Notification Center to Twitter to that oh-so-convenient split keyboard for you — all you need to do is click after the break.

Continue reading Apple iOS 5 hands-on preview

Apple iOS 5 hands-on preview originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Today, Steve Jobs revealed a great many things, but the biggest bombshell was this — Apple’s iCloud, which promises to sync all your content, automatically, even wirelessly, to Apple’s new server farms… for free. All that processing power in the picture above can’t have been cheap, and multiplied by the entirety of those data centers… well, let’s just say it’s a heck of a promise and we’ve got somewhat mixed feelings about how it’ll play out. Hit the break to see what we thought of Apple’s play for cloud storage.

Continue reading Editorial: Engadget on iCloud and iTunes Match

Editorial: Engadget on iCloud and iTunes Match originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All photos: Jim Merithew/Wired.com