MacRumors

Last week, we noted that developers had begin incorporating support for Apple's iAd mobile advertisements into updates for their applications, with a few applications starting to show placeholder banners and test ads ahead of the program's official launch on July 1st. Right on time, iAd advertisements have begun to go live, although their presence appears to be very spotty on iAd-compatible applications at the moment with banners appearing only occasionally while at other times the apps simply show blank space in the banner location.

One iAd we've run across (in Tiptitude) is for the Nissan Leaf, a forthcoming electric car set to launch in December of this year but already receiving considerable buzz and reservation interest. The ad should be no surprise, as it was demoed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs during his keynote at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference early last month.

The ad appears as a small banner in compatible applications and carries a distinctive "iAd" mark in the lower right corner for identification purposes. Tapping the ad launches a full-screen interactive experience, and users may exit the ad at any time and return to their application by clicking the "X" button at the top left of the iAd.

As with the demonstration version shown by Jobs, Nissan's official iAd offers a video and audio intro before launching into an interactive interface where users can learn more about the Nissan Leaf and register their interest in the vehicle.

Update: Nissan and ad agency Chiat/Day have released a video overview of the new Leaf iAd.

Ten One Design, the makers of capacitive styluses such as the Pogo Sketch, have released a demo video showing pressure sensitive drawing on the iPad.

The demo uses a standard Pogo Sketch stylus and pulls additional data from the iPad's touch screen to simulate pressure differences by measuring area of contact between the stylus and the iPad itself. They also incorporated palm rejection algorithms from their Inklet product to prevent detection of extraneous touches from your palm.

Unfortunately, they utilize private frameworks to access the data. Typically, Apple does not allow App Store apps to take advantage of private frameworks as they may change over time. Ten One Design is hopeful that the public UIKit framework could be updated to allow access to the additional data. If that happens, they plan on releasing their code as a free software library so it can be included in any App Store app.

Boy Genius Report claims to have received information from an Apple source noting that the company is finally gearing up to launch its cloud-based iTunes initiative, a program that will also included wireless syncing for devices.

We have been told iTunes will be getting a huge cloud capability that many people have been asking for (and logically thought would happen sooner or later). These new capabilities are broken down into three groups:

1. Streaming music and movies from Apple's servers to your computers, devices, etc.
2. Streaming music and movies from your home computers to your other computers, remote devices, etc.
3. Wireless iTunes syncing with devices

The report claims that Apple's cloud-based streaming service will allow "pretty much any" Apple device with Wi-Fi capabilities to stream purchased content stored on Apple's servers. Home-based streaming is expected to work in a similar fashion, allowing users to access content stored on other devices as is supported in a limited fashion for some devices today. Apple CEO Steve Jobs addressed the topic of syncing media to the cloud at the All Things Digital conference last month, noting that the company is "working on it".

As for wireless syncing, which Jobs also recently promised "someday", the report claims that apps purchased on iOS devices will immediately sync back to the devices' host computers, with syncing of calendars, notes, and contact also supported as can be accomplished by MobileMe syncing today.

Finally, the source adds in a brief hardware claim, pointing to Apple's traditional iPod-focused media event, usually held in September, as a venue for the introduction of at least "two new devices with camera/camcorder capabilities". It is unknown what exactly the source is referring to, although Apple's iPod touch is widely expected to gain camera functionality after having the feature appear in prototypes of the current generation of the device but be axed from the final released design. Apple's iPod nano also currently sports video camera capabilities, albeit at a relatively low resolution.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been busy in recent days responding to customers emails, many of which have been addressing signal issues on the company's new iPhone 4. Boy Genius Report shares a new conversation between Jobs and a customer on the issue containing several interesting aspects.

First, it appears that contact was initiated by an Apple engineer who reached out to the customer after seeing a YouTube video regarding the issue posted by the customer. The engineer reportedly informed the customer that Apple does not consider it a problem and asked him not to post any additional videos.

The customer followed up with an email expressing frustration at the situation and sent a copy to Jobs, who responded, "No, you are getting all worked up over a few days of rumors. Calm down." With the customer arguing that the situation is much more than just rumors, Jobs again replied, claiming that the customer is "most likely in an area with very low signal strength."

Unappeased, the increasingly agitated customer continued to press the issue by claiming that the entire country must have low signal strength. Not willing to give up the fight, however, Jobs replied yet again to claim that the customer "may be working from bad data" and reiterate his earlier suggestion that customers should "stay tuned." Jobs also noted that Apple is "working on it", although it remains unclear exactly how the company is planning to address the issue.

Jobs also sent one final message, encouraging the customer to "retire, relax, enjoy your family. It is just a phone. Not worth it."

Update: The final quote was actual written by "Tom" rather than Steve Jobs, according to an update by Boy Genius Report.

Additionally, AppleInsider reports that it had also been approached by the customer regarding the story, with the customer requesting an unspecified amount of money for the rights to publish it.

Update 2: Apple PR says fake emails.

Amongst the emails that Steve Jobs has been responding to, he also responded to an inquiry by a MacRumors reader Siva about future of Blu-ray on the Mac. While Blu-ray has been a long requested feature for Macs, Apple has described Blu-ray licensing as bag of hurt and hasn't made any moves to incorporate the drives into their desktop Macs.

That seems unlikely to change in the near future if Steve Jobs' recent email replies are any guide. Siva emailed Jobs about being disappointed that the recently revised Mac mini didn't include a Blu-ray drive. To this, Steve Jobs replied:

Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD - like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats.

Siva responded that even though this may be true in the long run, he argued the medium term benefits were substantial, including high density backups and high quality video. He also argued that high-end video formats have had a much higher uptake and points out the lack of DRM was in part what made MP3 take off. Jobs' final response, however, offered little hope:

No, free, instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue.

I think you may be wrong - we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.

One of the key features of iPhone 4 is its ability to record high-definition video in 720p. Users have found, however, that getting the HD video off of the device requires connecting it to a computer for download. While Apple offers users simple options for sharing videos directly from the iPhone via email or MMS, or by uploading the videos to MobileMe or YouTube, those mechanisms result in compression of the files, losing significantly quality in the process.

MacDailyNews reports that one of its readers emailed Apple CEO Steve Jobs to ask about this issue and express disappointment at the inability to directly upload HD content to the web while on the go. In an email reply, Jobs notes that the ability to upload HD content over the air is coming "in the future".

You can upload them via a Mac or PC today. Over the air in the future.

Sent from my iPhone

While Jobs gives no timeframe for when we might see such a feature, it does give users looking for this capability some hope for the future. HD video uploads via 3G would obviously place a greater strain on carriers' networks and also eat further into customers' data limits. For that reason it might make sense for Apple to either roll out the feature as a Wi-Fi-only at first, and perhaps offering it via 3G further down the road with user-selectable options for varying export quality.

As it has done on a monthly basis for the past several years, AdMob today released a new Mobile Metrics Report for May 2010. The report highlights worldwide trends in mobile requests to its ad network from over 23,000 mobile websites and applications.

This month's report shows continued strength for the iPhone and other iOS devices during the lead-up to the iPhone 4 launch just last week. Google, AdMob's parent company, is making strong inroads with its Android operating system, however, growing rapidly from a negligible share of the mobile ad request market only a year ago to approximately 25% today.

Android's overall strength, however, results from its inclusion on a wide variety of smartphones from a variety of manufacturers. That is in contrast to Apple, which offers essentially only a single iPhone that currently leads the pack by a wide margin with nearly 40% of worldwide ad requests compared to only 6.8% for the second-place Motorola Droid.

AdMob's data also offers an interesting glimpse into the geographic distribution of Apple's "iOS" family of devices. Among the interesting pieces of data included in the report is a note that fewer than half of all iOS devices are located in North America, with 43% residing in the United States and 5% in Canada. When it comes to the iPad specifically, however, the U.S. sees a full 58% of the devices, an unsurprising result given that Apple is still working to roll the device out to its international markets.

In comparing iOS and Android devices, the report shows that Android is rapidly approaching the iPhone's ad request share in the U.S., with 11.2 million unique iPhones registering there during May while 8.5 million Android devices appeared on the company's network. As many have argued, however, Apple's iPod touch and iPad also contribute significantly to the "iOS ecosystem" and, while not true smartphones, should be counted in some way as important players in the mobile web and application market. Adding in iPod touch and iPad data boosts iOS devices to 19.3 million in the U.S., giving iOS a 2-to-1 advantage over Android. Worldwide, the data leans even more strongly in Apple's favor as Android has yet to catch on significantly in most international markets, with iOS devices out-numbering Android devices 3.5-to-1 on a global basis.

With today's release AdMob also noted that its monthly metrics reports will be going on hiatus for at least the next several months as the company looks to rethink the best way of sharing information on the rapidly-growing mobile market with the public.

As noted by Engadget, Apple has been busy posting job listings for engineers to work on design and testing of antennas for the company's iPhone and iPad. While Apple typically posts a number of new job listings each day, the fact that the company has posted a total of eight antenna-related positions over the past two weeks naturally leads to speculation that it is beefing up its staff to investigate and deal with signal issues being experienced by iPhone 4 users.

The eight job listings comprise three separate job titles, with the most relevant being three "Antenna Engineer - iPad/iPhone" positions. The three listings, all posted on June 23rd, are looking for individuals with a high level of qualification including 10+ years of experience in RF technology and a preference for PhD-level training.

Responsibilities: Define and implement antenna system architecture to optimize the radiation performance for wireless portable devices. The candidate should be able to design antennas suitable for wireless handheld devices with excellent radiation performance, including TRP, TIS, SAR, and EMC. Work closely with other RF and antenna design engineers, mechanical and industrial designers, and EMC engineers to integrate the antenna design in our products.

Also posted on June 23rd were two listings for "iPhone OTA Wireless Systems Engineer" to focus on validation of antenna radiation performance. And just one week earlier, the company posted three listings for " RF Systems Validation Engineer iPhone" positions also focused on testing the iPhone's RF systems, noting that "as we add more and more capabilities to the iPhone, testing the radios becomes more and more complex."

It is unclear exactly what role these new hires might play in addressing the current issues, as it typically takes some time for a hiring process to run its course and new employees to arrive and get up to speed. The job listings could suggest, however, that the company is looking to bring on additional hands to work on designs and testing for future models as some of the unit's staff is absorbed in addressing issues with the current model.

UBM TechInisghts recently performed a teardown of the iPhone 4 and discovered that Apple may have originally planned on including a gyroscope in the iPad first. After examining the iPhone 4 motherboard, they found that the iPad also had an empty slot that accommodate a gyroscope chip (see above).

...UBM TechInsights, has found that the iPhone's 3-axis digital gyroscope is likely slated for the next generation iPad as well. TechInsights senior analyst Steve Bitton said there's an almost-perfect spot (4mm x 4mm); the exact size of the MEMS gyro) for it, located right beside the iPad's accelerometer.

For whatever reason, Apple must have abandoned the plans in the final shipping version of the iPad, though it's reasonable to believe that a gyroscope could make it into the next revision.

This differences between gyroscopes and accelerometers is detailed in this (rather dry) video:

The iPod Touch is the other likely device to get a gyroscope in the near future. The iPod Touch is expected to be revised in September. While there have been no rumors about the content of the update, the iPod Touch is likely to receive many of the improvements found in the iPhone 4.

Anandtech has managed to provide a detailed analysis of the iPhone 4's potential antenna signal issue. Their analysis may shed some light on people's experiences with the iPhone 4 and the drop-off in signal when the device is being held in hand.

The issue has generated a lot of press since the iPhone 4 launch due to a variety of user reports on the issue. Apple has maintained that a certain amount of signal loss is normal when mobile phones are held in hand. In a leaked support note, they have also insisted that the iPhone 4 antenna performance is better than that of the iPhone 3GS. Based on Anandtech's analysis, it appears Apple is correct in this statement, though with some caveats.

First, Anandtech managed to hack together a way for the iPhone 4 to report actual signal strength instead of the usual 5 bar signal strength scale. As has been noted by many, this 5 bar scale can be a poor representation of the actual signal strength. As seen above, nearly 40% of the range of possible signal levels is reported as 5 bars. Because of this broad range, there could be a huge difference in actual signal strength despite the same "5 bars" being displayed.

They then ran several tests comparing the signal degradation from holding the iPhone 4 in hand in various positions:

As it turns out, the iPhone 4 does have a significantly greater drop-off in signal strength in all positions as compared to the iPhone 3GS which preceded it. Perhaps the most notable difference is in the "Holding Naturally" position which could theoretically "bottom out" a 4 bar signal or bring the low-end of the 5 bar signals down to 1 bar. Holding the iPhone 4 tightly, of course, accentuates the problem. All phones do exhibit the same behavior, though the iPhone 4's external antenna presumably exaggerates the effect.

However, Anandtech points out that in their testing they found the iPhone 4 antenna is indeed improved over the 3GS -- adding validity to Apple's previous statements. In their testing, Anandtech found that at very low signal strengths (down to -113), the iPhone 4 would hold onto calls far better than the iPhone 3GS.

It's amazing really to experience the difference in sensitivity the iPhone 4 brings compared to the 3GS, and issues from holding the phone aside, reception is absolutely definitely improved. I felt like I was going places no iPhone had ever gone before. There's no doubt in my mind this iPhone gets the best cellular reception yet, even though measured signal is lower than the 3GS.

All in all, the findings may help to explain some seemingly discrepant statements and observations. While the iPhone 4 is likely to perform better at the same signal level as the iPhone 3GS, the signal of the iPhone 4 may be more greatly reduced by attenuation when being held in the same position. This could explain all but the most extreme issues depicted. In the end, Anandtech also suggests using a case may be best move and that with a bumper case, the iPhone 4 has the same attenuation performance as other other smartphones.

Earlier this evening, MacRumors forum member jav6454 related his story of how his iPhone 4 signal issues had resolved. Essentially, while at the Apple Store for a tech support issue related to his iPhone 4, his SIM card was removed for a period of time and then reinserted. He subsequently found that his reception had improved:

I went on my merry way, but realized something now. No matter what position I held my iPhone 4 in, the signal never decreased. I held it the many ways I know the signal issue pops and nothing. No bar loss, no signal loss, no call drop. NOTHING. So there you have it.

I am theorizing that moving the SIM card had something to do with the signal issue, because the only thing I have done to my iPhone 4 differently is take out and reinsert the SIM card. Other than that no other changes to it. No setting change, no software change no nothing. Just reinsertion of the SIM card.

To prove his theory he asked others to try it themselves. As people investigated, some thought that SIM contact with the SIM tray might be causing the issue.

A few people have isolated their SIMs from the tray with electrical tape or even by cutting the SIM on the opposite side. The results have been mixed. A few users have reported full resolution of the signal drops, but at least an equal number have reported no change at all. Here's an example of a positive response:

I just tried this. My sim contacts were under the edge of the tray too. I cut a piece of electrical tape to exactly cover only where the gold contacts of the sim touched the tray. I went back to the exact location in my house where I had 1 signal bar. I now have 3 signal bars. Unreal, I can't believe this did anything. Tested before and after with a bumper on the phone. I'll keep an eye on the performance outside the house tomorrow. I don't want to jump to conclusions that this helped my iPhone reception without more data. Looks promising so far though!

At this point the results are too varied to come to any single conclusion, but we thought it was of enough interest to post and follow along the results. Of interest, if the SIM card is somehow responsible, it would also explain why individuals getting replacement units are unlikely to have seen an improvement, as the SIM card is usually transferred to the replacement phone as well. Alternatively, some are speculating that those that are seeing improvements are simply due to the iPhone's network systems resetting and simply connecting to a different tower or band that maybe be less susceptible to the issue. In fact, at least one user's issue has returned after initially improving.

The full discussion thread is here.

Boy Genius Report claims to have received a copy of Apple's internal training documentation for assisting its AppleCare staff with handling customer complaints regarding iPhone 4 signal issues.

The document instructs AppleCare representatives to work with the customer to diagnose the problem, but that issues appearing when the iPhone 4 is held at the lower left corner or the iPhone 3GS is held at the bottom right side should be addressed by either holding the phone differently or using a case or bumper.

Clearly Apple is taking the position that nothing is wrong with the antenna, although that's not surprising since most companies will never willingly admit their flagship product is potentially suffering from an unfixable flaw. But does anyone else find it interesting, if not troubling, that there is no mention of an impending software fix?

Apple's guidelines also push the "positioning statements" to be used by representatives, claiming that the iPhone 4 has better overall antenna performance than the iPhone 3GS and that almost any mobile phone will experience similar issues. Finally, representatives are instructed not to promise free bumpers to customers experiencing the issue, although a number of users have already reported receiving bumpers from Apple as a means of addressing the signal issues.

Bloomberg briefly reports that multiple sources are claiming that the iPhone will launch on Verizon in January of next year, marking the end of AT&T's exclusivity for the device in the United States.

Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will start selling Apple Inc.'s iPhone next year, ending AT&T Inc.'s exclusive hold on the smartphone in the U.S., two people familiar with the plans said.

The device will be available to customers in January, according to the people, who declined to be named because the information isn't public.

Verizon and Apple representatives either declined to comment on the reports or did not return requests for comment.

Verizon has long been a popular topic for rumors regarding expanded iPhone partnerships in the United States. One recent report had suggested that a Verizon iPhone could make an appearance as soon as November, but most observers have been expecting a 2011 launch on the carrier.