Flexible displays have tickled our imaginations for years. And before the end of 2012, we’ll finally see companies employing flexible displays in their products. But while the possibilities are tantalizing, don’t let your imagination run wild. The earliest iterations of flexible displays won’t be very bendy, and they won’t appear in Apple hardware as some news outlets have recently speculated.

In early March, Samsung announced it would be mass-producing its flexible OLED displays, like the one seen above, by the end of this year. Now flash-forward to this Monday: According to a report from the Korea Times, Samsung is seeing “huge” orders for this display, and Apple is “likely” to be one of the major players.

Such a display could be useful in a number of applications, such as in a device with a gently curved screen. Ultimately, the display could even be deployed in a flexible, bendable phone or tablet. But that’s probably not on the horizon — especially Apple’s horizon — anytime soon.

“It’s completely impossible to see any Apple product with flexible AMOLED this year,” Jennifer Colegrove, NPD DisplaySearch’s vice president of emerging display technology, told Wired. “However, I do believe Apple display engineers are constantly looking into new technology to put into their products, and OLED is one of the technologies they are looking at.”

Samsung’s flexible OLED display certainly has some advantages over current display tech. For one, it’s basically unbreakable because it doesn’t use glass, but rather a type of plastic called polyamide.

“This type of flexible display will be very thin, lightweight, rugged, and unbreakable,” Colegrove said. All of these qualities are very attractive features for a future iOS device. And that’s important: Apple wouldn’t adopt trendy, gimmicky tech just for gimmick’s sake.

“Apple is very function oriented. They figure out the function, then make it appealing and useful,” said Frank Gillett, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “Other companies may take a flexible display, and just make it curvy just because it’s interesting.” Sounds like what we’ve seen with the deployment of 3D technology in smartphones.

Currently, devices like the Nokia Lumia 800 appear to have a slightly curved display, but the display itself isn’t bent. Rather, the glass on the top of the display tapers to a curve.

Gillett said bendable displays could ultimately be used in devices that roll up like a newspaper — ideal for reducing the physical footprint of any mobile device. But that’s just the far-out, sci-fi-inspired application of flexible display technology. A truly bendable device “would be an engineering nightmare because the more people flex it, the more you’d wear the components inside it,” Gillett said.

Colegrove concurs: “The challenge to making a display rollable or bendable is durability.” Indeed, there are a lot of parts inside a display — substrates, electrodes — and after a few thousand bends, they just might not function anymore.

So why even use a flexible display in the first place? Gillett points out that if this technology is more energy-efficient than current types of displays, a manufacturer may not be interested in flexibility at all, and simply use the screens because they save on battery life.

Colegrove said there are two reasons why Samsung’s flexible OLED is attractive to device manufacturers. First, the display is thin, lightweight and difficult to break — this offers immediate design benefits. Second, any type of new, novel technology offers marketing benefits. You can hear the commercial spiel now: “We have the first flexible AMOLED display devices in human history!”

“I think it’s highly possible that the display will be used in a flat formfactor, or in a slightly curved shape,” Colegrove said. And while the display itself might be curved, its shape would be fixed — a user won’t be able to freely bend it or roll it up like a newspaper (or at least not this year).

It’s also worth noting that Samsung is talking about relatively modest production runs of the new flexible technology — 960,000 OLED sheets according to the Korea Times. This level of output simply isn’t enough to accommodate the production demands for Apple gear, which, for devices like the iPhone, can reach into the hundreds of millions.

Nonetheless, Gillett and Colegrove expect flexible display technology to hit the consumer market on a relatively small scale before the year’s end. E-readers should be the first devices to include flexible e-paper displays. They’ll remain flat in shape, but provide all the ruggedness manufacturers look for, Colegrove said. As for Samsung’s flexible OLED technology, it will appear in phones in 2012, and possibly in tablets next year.

And if you’re looking to find a flexible display in an iDevice, you’ll probably have to wait until the 2013-2014 time frame, says Colgrove — with truly bendy iDevices appearing in 2015 at the earliest.

via Wired

Wikipedia: wired definition: reinforced by wire (as for strength). →

This one goes out to all the Bonds in the world. RunCore, a Chinese company specializing in the production of solid state drives, has cooked up a SATA II solution that should satisfy even the most guarded of privacy fanatics. Living up to its grandiose InVincible moniker, this aptly-named SSD’s built to endure extreme temperatures ranging from -45 to 95 degrees Celsius (or -49 to 203 degrees Fahrenheit), read / write data at speeds up to 240Mbps / 140Mbps and protect your 1s and 0s from prying, less-than-reputable eyes. How so? Well, the drive’s actual pièce de espionnite aiguë (that’s fancy for paranoiac fail safe) incorporates a dual-button scheme for clearing away data. Users, much like Neo in ye ‘ole Matrix, will have two colored choices to make: select the green button for “intelligent elimination” (aka overwriting of data) or opt for the “less subtle method” offered by the red button which applies a current to the NAND flash memory for actual physical destruction of your data. So, whether you’re a high-ranking government official, a spy unlike us or just someone who can’t help but look over his / her shoulder, rest assured your secrets can now be safely disposed of. Jump past the break to check out the outfit’s informational video and its woefully out of sync audio track.

via Engadget

Today’s entry goes by the name of Nostalgio, and while sounding like a fictitious character from a Shakespearian play, also makes for a pretty decent photo framing/collaging app for iOS. It’s conceptually simple, and offers an inviting and clean user interface through which you can quickly create, edit and inevitably share your framed images.

When you open the app, you can opt to include up to four images in the finished article, and if, for example, you select four, Nostalgio will randomly choose four images from your Camera Roll and place them in a frame. While such apps usually offer a blank canvas at this stage, the idea of putting images in without asking can actually help to speed up the process, and you never know – the luck of the draw may actually land the perfect combination.

Once you’ve decided which images you would like to include in your collage, you can then edit them thoroughly by tapping on them. Nostalgio allows you to rotate, cross-process the coloring, go monochrome (a common tactic nowadays, it would seem), and crop your images to perfect the final arrangement.

Once everything has been assembled, you are given the option to modify the border, although unfortunately, this is an area where the app falls short. There are just five to choose from, and beside the basic black and white fillers, there’s also a torn paper border, a “drawn-on” border, and another which looks somewhat like the graffiti tool found in Microsoft Paint (yeah, it’s that bad).

It’s free for a limited time only, so if you’re part of the growing legion of image-editing experts, then it’s certainly worth checking out, although personally, I would sooner recommend PicFrame – a similar iOS app which does a much better job.

Download Nostalgio for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch [iTunes link]

via Redmond Pie

Over the last few months a number of iOS apps have hit the App Store that implement a folding view-type effect that developers have used in a number of different instances throughout their apps. That exact effect appears to be the basis of a new lock screen concept that designer Anton Kudin on Dribbble, and he believes that it should replace Apple’s existing and traditional Slide to Unlock feature. Kudin, who is an interface and web designer, has taken to the popular designers paradise of Dribbble to share his idea with the pixel loving world.

The creation of iOS concepts is nothing new, after all we have seen a number of designers produce ideas ranging from what they believe the new iPhone should look like as well as a touchscreen, folding and rotating iMac. However, this fold-to-unlock lock screen concept is the one which could actually have a place in the real world if properly implemented by Apple, and I for once, would love to see it introduced, either officially or as a Cydia installation for jailbroken devices.

As beautiful as this concept lock screen looks, the designer does concede that he actually got the idea from a fellow designer who had produced a similar concept for Android devices. From a technical and user experience point of view, there isn’t really any reason why something like this couldn’t be very successful in a mobile device, after all, handsets like the Galaxy S II unlock by simply swiping the screen out of view. The addition of the folding screen would add a very attractive piece of polish to it.

Unfortunately, with Apple using their traditional slide-to-unlock method in all iPhones to date, as well as the iPod touch and iPad, and not that long ago, actively pursued a legal case against a manufacturer which they believed was infringing on their patent surrounding the method, it seems very unlikely we will see it change any time soon. I will continue to dare and dream, and if there are any jailbreak tweak developers reading this, I dare you to create a package like this.

via AppAdvice

The project, called AppleSeed, allows select people – and we don’t know how they are chosen – to test out very early and exclusive access to new releases of software for testing. New versions of OS X are ripe for this kind of testing, and that particular group of people may have been given a little clue as to what direct Apple is taking with its next big cat.

In an email to those on the Appleseed program, Apple has requested that users inform the company of their latest hardware configuration to enable “exclusive seeds” of new software, with Mountain Lion being mentioned by name

The email goes on to suggest that hardware specific bug fixes, and indeed exclusive features, could be in Mountain Lion’s future.

We are preparing for possible hardware specific software updates on OS X Mountain Lion.  These contain hardware-specific bug fixes or even special features! In order to make sure you can participate in these exclusive seeds, we need your most up-to-date machine configuration information.

The most obvious suggestion for something that could require hardware specific support is the much rumored Retina display that is expected to come to the next line of MacBook Pro notebooks. If Apple is wishing to begin testing of its ability to roll out versions of Mountain Lion that are tailored to the hardware it will run on, then Retina Display devices could be the reason.

Apple’s Mac App Store is the driving force that, without which, this idea of hardware specific software would be impossible to follow through on. Now, Apple will be able to potentially tailor a Mac App Store download to choose the correct installation options and files based on the device that is being used.

We have been testing Mountain Lion since its initial developer release and we have had mixed results. While some have found that the operating system is perfectly stable for the most part, others have had nothing but problems. It is all part of testing an operating system before its official release, of course, but the signs are certainly promising that Mountain Lion will be another step towards making OS X even better.

via 9to5Mac

While he did receive a lot of criticism for his comments made on Twitter, it’s important to note that he has done a great deal for the jailbreak community. Italian blog iSpazio recently got the chance to sit down and talk to i0n1c about his passion for hacking, jailbreaking and much more. Head inside for the full interview:

How did you acquire this passion for technology and when you started to hack something?

I had my computer when I was about eight years and I broke up a week later as I was about tweaking some settings that I should not change. My parents did not want to lose time in games, so instead I learned to program and I was very interested in working on low-level things. But I think I was sixteen when I started to realize how many beautiful things can be achieved by modifying the code of other people. I think I could inserirmi earlier in the game, but I never had any kind of Internet access and / or e-mail up to seventeen / eighteen years’.

For most of our users, you’re famous thanks to jailbreak iPhone OS 4.3.X and recently the technique has not been issued to jailbreak iPhone OS 5.1 and 5.1.1: how to address the issue of security of IOS?

Addressing the safety of IOS is how to deal with any matter of safety, with the difference that is much more challenging the safety or PHP web application that was my previous field of research. The other difference is that hacking the iPhone and search for materials for the jailbreak gets you in touch with the actual consumer, directly benefiting your business and this is very different from other fields safely. Most of the time you’re dealing only with applications developers do not like to see problems in their code, or administrators who need to upgrade to the latest version of a piece of software. I assume that there are many fields in the internal security of the consumer actually ever heard the name or nickname of a person involved in finding vulnerabilities or exploits that have written the same. Having done both experiences, I would prefer a developer angry that a “jailbreaker” angry.

We heard that you release the jailbreak iPhone OS 5.1 and iPhone OS 5.1.1 because, for many users, jailbreak means piracy: is there a way to lock it?

Whatever you have heard about why I’m releasing the jailbreak is very probably wrong. The “jailbreak community” tends to take random tweet and spread rumors and conspiracy theories around these. For example, I get a huge number of requests via email or twitter every day from people willing to pay to get the jailbreak because they heard that I sell. I never said I’d sold my jailbreak, I have only discussed the fact that, while developers do all the work for free there are a lot ‘of people who collect a lot of money with every new jailbreak:

• The programmers who create programs for Cydia;
• The editors of the jailbreak guides and sites of IOS (including advertising);
• Those who do pay to make a jailbreak (theoretically free), or use the public exploits for malicious purposes, or conduct studies of devices jailbrekkati and then sell the data in their analyzes and, ultimately, people who use the ‘ bootrom exploit to create expensive software for government agencies.

I may have forgotten others who earn the jailbreak, but I think he made the idea. The people in the “jailbreak community” does not seem to understand that from my point of view, to spend months of work to perfect a jailbreak and then release it for free is a waste of time. And of course they get upset when I say this because they fear that pod2g to persuade him to use his time to something more important.

Speaking of piracy. I’m pretty sure it would be possible to make a jailbreak which would block the most common ways to install pirated applications on devices. But there is no way to prevent the pirates to prevent them from doing the reverse of the jailbreak and change: it may take him a little ‘, because all the jailbreak iPhone OS require low-level code in the kernel that can do all the dirty tricks but eventually find the way. Maybe not fast enough until Apple does not close the vulnerabilities and “kill” actually jailbreak. The game would not be worth the candle. Why should someone like pod2g MuscleNerd or spend days or weeks to write code like that, knowing it would last only a few days.

If users do today jailbreak only for purposes related to piracy, do you think there are still some who do it to have complete control of your iPhone?

Obviously there are people who perform the jailbreak because they want total control of your iPhone, the need to install the latest tweak in Cydia and other reasons. But each of these groups have too much self-esteem of himself. The vast majority of people always have things to jailbrekkato pirated or for unlocking your phone: anyone who denies this claim is delusional. When you look at people jailbroken iPhone, you’ll see that many apps installed on your device, and Apple is lucky if they have paid for each program.

And yes, there is also a group of people who claim to download the applications and then buy them because there is no other way to try before you buy. Personally I think Apple could solve this legitimate request by offering users the opportunity to do so.

For me it does not matter because the jailbreak is done, has no influence in my decision not to lose months of work to let people do what they want.

The May 8 came out about your book on hacking IOS: why did you feel the need to write this text?

Well, every time a field is developed and collect as much material for a specific topic, at some point, the logical consequence is to write a book.Of course nowadays you can find lots of information on the internet but these are often scattered throughout the network and sometimes, the important facts have not yet been made public. So the idea of ​​creating a book and collect all information at one point only allows someone new in this field to make their way more easily. So in the long term, this book will allow many people to get hacking IOS quickly. However, the iDevices are an easy target to attack and therefore require years of experience to “possess”.

The problem with the “jailbreak community” at this point is that they do not understand that, in the long run, this book could bring new people into the scene of the jailbreak and most people do not understand. They believe that Apple will help to stop the jailbreak or consider it an attempt to make money from this community. This type of response shows how little they understand what is going on: first of all, anyone who writes a book about a topic of technology will tell you the few gains made (especially not if there are six authors for a book) and the other false belief is that Apple uses a couple of silly elephants who work on the safety of IOS. In fact, people who work for Apple for safety in IOS are quite skilled and have better debugging tools that our community can never have.

The reason they do not close the loophole used by the jailbreak days after a reason is purely political in nature: it seems that Apple quickly closes the loopholes that jeopardize your safety. Other than that, keep these vulnerabilities open for a while ‘because each device sold, is a device sold.Looking at the “jailbreak community” can collect information about functions that customers might want, which in the long term could lead to an increase in their earnings. I do not think Apple is so worried about piracy because of jailbrekkati devices, because they know that there is a maximum of money you can squeeze out of a person.

What do you think about the iCommunity? Do you think that is populated with users from pirated or people who, for example, will often send threatening messages?

Pirates are everywhere and I’m not interested. If you lose sleep because of them, then good luck to your survival in this world.

I think the “jailbreak community” is suffering from something far worse: it is “contaminated” by leeches who do not consider other people’s work and the effort needed to create some things. Believe they have the right to take whatever you see, and if you do not get enough tears, or “owning” the developers of the iPhone jailbreak and unlock for that they should produce in all eternity or wordlessly. You realize how delusional people are like that when you get messages such as: “Without us you are nothing, we follow you on Twitter and we’ve made it famous,” and then there are messages like, ‘Take him to follow a lesson. ”

Every time I see these posts I hope for mankind that these people are not convinced of what they say. People do not become famous because it has thousands of followers on Twitter, but it’s the other way: that is, are those people to have created something that the masses have enjoyed and gained followers. It’s up to you whether you consider yourself famous because few people know your name. I do not think it can be considered a famous until you come recognized on the street and you have to hide from the paparazzi. In any case, the amount of Twitter followers is only a concern to me, because it is directly linked to the number of people who have to manually lock.

How you deal with these people every day? That is, not everyone can tolerate such a situation for long. For example, I remember that because of this, held his geohot jailbreak iPhone OS 4.X From Twitter see at least some of your supporters for your hard work?

I do not think it has anything to do with “bear such a situation” at the beginning come irritated and can not believe the amount of anger and demands from the people but once it goes beyond the initial shock, just keep doing what want. I can understand when he held geohot jailbreak iPhone OS 4.X due to these people, because they get this type of reaction is a warning that I reallizare they are not worthy of your work, issued free of charge. In any case geohot and the Chronic Dev Team are / were also collecting donations, so they got enough to go ahead.

I also think part of this whole thing is caused by some of the jailbreak developers who write post where he said it was their intention to work day and night to release the new “change” to users. This blatant lie is the kind of statement that the crowd would love it, when in fact the work is done when there is time and mood to do it. Either way, tell people the truth will only create antipathy toward you and most likely, this would amount to less donations.

We finished with the interview! Thanks for your time: you please say something to our users?

Oh I think I said everything I wanted to say for now: I’ll wait to be inundated by the next wave of criticism.

via iPhone Developers

MAC VERSION

If you’ve jailbroken or unlocked your iPhone, iPod, or iPad before you’re probably used to the usual procedure. You usually have to download the iOS IPSW firmware file in order to continue with the jailbreaking of your iDevice.

ipswDownloader by developer Vitaly Parovishnik makes this process a whole lot easier. The program not only downloads the IPSW firmware file for you, but also displays whether the firmware you’ve selected can be jailbroken and unlocked, along with the size of the IPSW and the tools needed to jailbreak the firmware.

This is a must-have application for all of our readers that are new to the jailbreak/unlock scene, and also for those of you that consider yourself iPhone experts. For upgrading to the newest jailbreak, this is definitely a nice utility to have at your fingertips.

Sadly, ipswDownloader is only available for Mac OS X. You can download the app for free here.

via iDownloadBlog

WINDOWS VERSION

We told you a couple of days ago about a handy little app that allows users to download iOS firmware files direct from the web, as well as listing what apps are required in order to jailbreak and unlock each one. The only issue was ipswDownloader was OS X only. Thanks to one individual, that’s no-longer the case.

A coder named Ryan Burke has ported the ever-useful ipswDownloader to Windows – available for free here – though unfortunately the jailbreak information hasn’t made the port over.

If you make use of this app please do consider donating – it’s we need to help these developers to keep working on apps like this for us!

ipswDownloader_v15  for Windows

via Redmond Pie

It will be one of the clinching features of the upcoming iOS 6, according to the report on the matter, and having included Google’s iteration since the release of the first iPhone back in 2007, the new version will step things up quite a few notches – offering a stunning 3D mode. Having purchased Placebase, C3 Technologies, and Poly9, the technologies and softwares of each company will be utilized to bring what’s billed to be a unique and captivating experience.

In the months leading up to iOS 5, Tim Cook’s company extended its agreement to continue Maps development on iOS, but with these latest revelations, it seems that deal is set to cease later this year, when the next iPhone – along with a possible scaled-down iPad – is revealed to the world.

Although the app will look and feel different throughout – right down to a new design for the icon – the centerpiece will be the 3D mode. By tapping a 3D button located in an easy-to-find location, users will be able to view streets and buildings and landscapes in a full-on Maps experience.

Having acquired C3 Technologies back in October, it’s been public record for a while that there would be 3D mapping in a future release. C3 is one of the most advanced providers of 3D mapping solutions, offering unmatched precision of 3D models which integrate seamlessly with 2D maps, satellite images, street-level photography as well as user-generated images

We fully expect iOS 6 to be revealed at WWDC ’12, although as already mentioned, it won’t be released until an accompanying device has been readied. Aside from the new Maps, there’s little else to report on at the moment, and although the home screen hasn’t really changed a great deal since the beginning of iOS, it isn’t thought Apple will go grandiose with Android-esque widgets this time around.

via Redmond Pie

All the A4-based devices can be downgraded swiftly at this point in time, and the whole process is a piece of cake. The only major requirement being; you must have your SHSH blobs+APTicket saved in a safe place, either locally on your PC or Mac, or on Cydia.

The iPhone 4S, the iPad 2 and the new 3rd-gen iPad have been out of the downgrading scene for quite a while, courtesy their “secure” hardware. But, the latest release of Redsn0w changes all that, and allows the average Joe to downgrade their devices smoothly, without even requiring iTunes.

At this point however, it’s worth noting that the iPhone 4S can be downgraded all the way to iOS 5.0 from 5.1.1, same goes for the iPad 2, which means that you can essentially use Absinthe to untether jailbreak both iPhone 4S and iPad 2 on 5.0.1, but the new 3rd-gen iPad can’t be downgraded beyond iOS 5.1, since it is the version of iOS it originally shipped with. This, combined with A5X processor in iPad 3 means that you unfortunately cant jailbreak it as yet. And like I mentioned before, if you have SHSH blobs saved for the version of iOS you want to downgrade to for your device, only then the downgrade process is possible.

Before we begin, let’s go through the things you’ll need for the whole process:

• An iPhone 4S, iPad 2 or a 3rd-gen iPad whose SHSH blobs are saved on Cydia, or locally.
• The latest version of Redsn0w [Windows/Mac]
• 30-pin USB connector cable.

Note:

• If you don’t have your blobs saved for the version of iOS you want to downgrade to, then following the this guide won’t do you any good. Having your SHSH blobs saved is a key requirement for the whole downgrade process to take place, otherwise it’s a no-go. If you ever launched Cydia on iPhone 4S or iPad 2 while Apple was still signing iOS 5.0.1, then Cydia server could have them automatically saved for you.
• Due to the way this method works, it first upgrades your device to the latest firmware version available, which in turn upgrades the baseband too. Therefore all iPhone unlockers are advised to stay away from this downgrade method.
• This Redsn0w version is designed to downgrade A5+ devices only, for A4 and below devices, use the older versions of Redsn0w.

All set? Let’s begin:

Step 1: Launch the new Redsn0w 0.9.11b1 (Windows / Mac).

Step 2: Connect your iOS device to your PC or Mac using the 30-pin USB cable.

Step 3: Now, click on Extras.

Step 4: You will be taken to a new screen, now click on Even More.

Step 5: Click on Restore.

Step 6: You should now see three different options on the screen; IPSW, Local and Remote. Click on IPSW, and point Redsn0w to the firmware file to which you want to downgrade to. Redsn0w will then ask you for the stock iOS 5.1.1 firmware.

Step 7a: If you have your blobs saved locally, then simply click on Local and point Redsn0w to the .plist file containing the SHSH blobs for your device. Move on to Step 7b if you don’t have your blobs saved locally.

Step 7b: Click on Remote if your blobs are saved on Cydia. Redsn0w should automatically put your device into Recovery mode to fetch the necessary files from Cydia’s servers.

Step 8: Click Next.

Step 9: At this point, Redsn0w will automatically stitch the SHSH blobs to the IPSW firmware file which you provided, and then it will automatically restore to it. Sit back, the process might take a while depending on your PC or Mac.

Step 10: That’s it, you’re done.

The whole purpose of downgrading is to roll back to the version of iOS which can be easily jailbroken untethered using existing tools. In the case of the iPhone 4S and iPad 2, both said devices can be jailbroken using Absinthe, you can follow the complete step-by-step guide posted here on how to do so.

The new 3rd-gen iPad can’t be jailbroken at the moment, but if you’re lucky enough to save your SHSH blobs + APTicket for iOS 5.1, then we recommend that you downgrade and wait for an untethered jailbreak to come out, and avoid any further iOS updates unless we give you the green light ourselves.

If you have an A4-based iOS device, then simply follow this guide on how to downgrade from iOS 5.1.1 to 5.1, 5.0.1 and 5.0, and this one to JB the said devices.

via Redmond Pie