Eric Slivka
Eric is the Editor-in-Chief of MacRumors and has been writing for the site since 2008.
An avid swimmer and former biophysicist, Eric has been using Apple products for over 35 years and has been interviewed for pieces by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, CNBC, and other publications.
Eric's current primary role involves day-to-day oversight of the editorial operations at MacRumors, but he also contributes occasional news and review articles while handling various other duties related to the site's operation.
An avid swimmer and former biophysicist, Eric has been using Apple products for over 35 years and has been interviewed for pieces by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Reuters, BBC, CNBC, and other publications.
Eric's current primary role involves day-to-day oversight of the editorial operations at MacRumors, but he also contributes occasional news and review articles while handling various other duties related to the site's operation.
Eric Slivka's Articles
iBooks 1.2.1 Detects Some Jailbreaks, Disables iBookstore Purchases in Response
Social Apples details a change employed in an update to Apple's iBooks application released last week that detects whether a device has been jailbroken using one of several tools, and if the device has been found to be jailbroken, refuses to open content purchased from Apple's iBookstore. Since using the greenpois0n jailbreak, I have been unable to open some of my iBooks that I rightfully...
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AT&T Airs New Ad Pushing $49 iPhone 3GS
In yet another attempt to differentiate its own iPhone offerings from those of Verizon, AT&T has begun airing a new television commercial promoting the 8 GB iPhone 3GS and its recently-lowered $49 price tag. The iPhone 3GS from AT&T. The phone that changed everything. But think about it - how can you make one of the most amazing phones the world has ever seen more amazing? Make it $49. Yep,...
Apple Customer Survey Suggests Interest in 3G-Enabled MacBook Air
AppleInsider reports that a customer survey from Apple gauging user satisfaction with the company's new MacBook Air contains several questions related to 3G connectivity, suggesting that Apple may be considering adding the feature as a built-in option on future models. Perhaps most telling are a number of questions in the survey related to 3G data use and connectivity. The MacBook Air comes with ...
AT&T Increases Tethering Data Plan Limit to 4 GB
Following through on its announcement from earlier this month that it would bump monthly data limits for customers on its DataPro + Tethering plan from 2 GB to 4 GB, AT&T has now sent out text messages to customers confirming that the change has been made.
AT&T's DataPro plan offers customers 2 GB of mobile data for $25 per month. The carrier had offered the ability for customers to tether...
Deutsche Telekom Expecting NFC-Enabled iPhone This Year
With rumors suggesting that Apple may add near field communication (NFC) capabilities to the fifth-generation iPhone to enable mobile payments, observers have been looking for additional signs of the such an addition.
According to Phone Scoop, Deutsche Telekom today gave a presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona outlining its adoption of NFC technology for mobile payments, and...
Apple Debuts App Store Subscriptions
Apple today announced the debut of subscriptions for the App Store, opening the door for developers offering a wide range of content, including magazines, newspapers, music, and video, to use the same recurring billing mechanism introduced earlier this month with The Daily. Subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will be sold using the same App Store billing system that has been used to...
Apple Testing Three iPhone 5 Prototypes, One With Slide-Out Keyboard?
Keyboard Buddy Case for iPhone 4
Taiwanese site Apple.pro reports (via AppleInsider) that Apple has been testing three separate prototypes for the fifth-generation iPhone, including one with a slide-out keyboard. There are three iPhone5 prototype
one is a sliding cover which
Is the introduction of the keyboard after the side coverOther prototypes are said to be similar to the iPhone 4 except ...
Free Access to 'The Daily' Extended to February 28th as Wait for iOS 4.3 Continues
As noted by Macerkopf.de [Google translation], free access to the new iPad news publication The Daily has been extended beyond the original two-week trial period, pushing the free access window out to February 28th. The change comes as we continue to await the public release of iOS 4.3, which will bring support for the in-app recurring subscriptions to be used by The Daily.
With its February...
Apple Set to Become Samsung's Biggest Customer With $7.8 Billion in Contracts
Dow Jones Newswires briefly reports on an article from the Korea Economic Daily claiming that Apple is set to sign contracts that would see Samsung providing $7.8 billion in parts for Apple's mobile devices this year, making Apple the Korean company's largest customer. The paper also said that Samsung will supply Apple with liquid crystal displays, mobile application processors and NAND flash...
MobileMe Revamp to Focus on Streaming Data From Individual Machines, Not Cloud?
The Loop's Jim Dalrymple offers his thoughts on the rumored forthcoming MobileMe overhaul, sharing his belief that rather than utilizing a true "cloud-based" strategy in which Apple hosts all of a user's data on its own servers and sends it to devices as needed, MobileMe will instead become the "brains" of a service that taps the user's own home computer for hosting the content. Is Apple going to...
Smaller iPhone to Eliminate Storage, Rely on Cloud-Based Content?
Following up on recent reports of a smaller, cheaper iPhone, Cult of Mac claims that Apple will cut costs on the smaller iPhone in large part by drastically slashing the on-board memory of the device and relying on cloud-based content delivery. Apple decided to lose some of the memory, which is by far the most expensive component of the iPhone (up to one-quarter of the devices cost, according to ...
MacBook Pro Refresh Seeing Only Minor Delays Due to Intel Problems?
Much has been made of Intel's issues with a design error on its new Cougar Point chip used with its Sandy Bridge processors and whether the company's need to produce revised hardware will delay a highly-anticipated refresh of Apple's MacBook Pro lineup.
But a new report from AppleInsider suggests that any delays appear to be minor, on the order of two weeks for machines already in production. ...
Verizon iPhone Already Representing 3% of U.S. iPhone Traffic as AT&T Hands Out 1000 Free Minutes
While lines for the public launch of the Verizon iPhone were generally short yesterday, the device had already been making its way into customers' hands through a pre-order program for existing Verizon customers, and many have been wondering just how strong sales of the new device have been.
Mobile ad firm Chitika today announced that it has put together a live tracker showing the relative...
Apple Acquiring iOS Developer to Revamp Notification System?
Cult of Mac reports that Apple is planning to revamp its system for providing notifications within iOS, looking to address one of the areas of perceived weakness compared to other platforms such as Android and webOS. Apple's pop-up notification system for new text messages, voicemails and the like has often been criticized as one of the weakest parts of the iOS. Notifications are intrusive,...
Sony Hoping to Pull Music From iTunes Store If 'Music Unlimited' Service Succeeds
According to The Age, Sony is looking to its new "Music Unlimited" streaming service not only as an opportunity to grab a piece of the digital music pie but also in hopes of one day being able to pull its music from Apple's iTunes Store entirely. If Music Unlimited becomes popular it will provide a credible alternative to iTunes for music publishers, including Sony Music Entertainment, which...
Nokia and Microsoft Team Up in Smartphone Battle
Making official what has been widely expected for days, Nokia and Microsoft have announced that the two companies are teaming up in the smartphone market, with Nokia embracing Windows Phone as its "primary smartphone strategy" while contributing its own expertise to further development of the platform. While the specific details of the deal are being worked out, here's a quick summary of what we ...
Apple Doubling Production of Certain 'Hot-Selling' Notebook Models?
In a brief report on declining shipments in Taiwan's notebook manufacturing segment, DigiTimes claims that Apple and Samsung are the only major notebook companies increasing production over the year ago quarter, with the notebook industry as a whole reportedly targeting flat production compared with the year-ago quarter and down 5-10% from last quarter.
Apple is seen as one of the biggest...
Apple Seeds Mac OS X 10.6.7 Build 10J855 to Developers
As noted by AppleInsider, Apple has seeded a fourth beta version of Mac OS X 10.6.7 to developers for testing purposes. The new version, termed Build 10J855, comes just over a week after the previous seed and reportedly carries no documented known issues.
Apple continues to ask developers to focus their testing on Mac App Store, AirPort, Bonjour, SMB, and Graphics Drivers, while the update...
Apple Planning Smaller iPhone Priced at $200 Without Contract
Bloomberg reports that Apple is planning to develop new models of the iPhone, including one that would be both smaller and cheaper than that current model, to aid the company in its battle against Android in the smartphone market. Apple Inc. is working on new versions of the iPhone that are aimed at slowing the advance of competing handsets based on Google Inc.'s Android software, according to...
Apple Reduces Build Cost of CDMA iPhone With Design Tweaks
Research firm IHS iSuppli today announced that it has completed its full teardown of the CDMA iPhone that launched on Verizon this week, estimating that the device carries a bill of materials cost of about $171.35, or approximately 9% less than the original iPhone 4. Despite having nearly the same functionality and a similar bill of materials (BOM) as the previous model, the new code division...
