- Back to Home »
-
-
Simon Cowell cry - Attraction Semi Final [HD] - Britain's Got Talent 2013
Development of what was to become the iPhone began in 2004, when Apple started to gather a team of 1000 employees to work on the highly confidential "Project Purple", including Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs steered the original focus away from a tablet, like the iPad, and towards a phone. Apple created the device during a secretive collaboration with AT&T Mobility—Cingular Wireless at the time—at an estimated development cost of US$150 million over thirty months.
Apple rejected the "design by committee" approach that had yielded the Motorola ROKR E1, a largely unsuccessful collaboration with Motorola. Instead, Cingular gave Apple the liberty to develop the iPhone's hardware and software in-house and even paid Apple a fraction of its monthly service revenue (until the iPhone 3G), in exchange for four years of exclusive US sales, until 2011.
Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007, at the Macworld 2007 convention at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The two initial models, a 4 GB model priced at US$499 and an 8 GB model at US$599, went on sale in the United States on June 29, 2007, at 6:00 pm local time, while hundreds of customers lined up outside the stores nationwide. The passionate reaction to the launch of the iPhone resulted in sections of the media dubbing it the 'Jesus phone'. Following this successful release in the US, the first generation iPhone was made available in the UK, France, and Germany in November 2007, and Ireland and Austria in the spring of 2008.
Worldwide iPhone availability:
iPhone available since its original release
iPhone available since the release of iPhone 3G
Coming soon
WATCH THIS
The iPhone 4 has an aluminosilicate glass front and back with a stainless steel edge that serves as the antennas. It was at first available in black; the white version was announced, but not released until April 2011, 10 months later.
The iPhone has gained positive reviews from such critics as David Pogue and Walt Mossberg. The iPhone attracts users of all ages,and besides consumer use, the iPhone has also been adopted for business purposes.
Users of the iPhone 4 reported dropped/disconnected telephone calls when holding their phones in a certain way. This became known as antennagate.
On January 11, 2011, Verizon announced during a media event that it had reached an agreement with Apple and would begin selling a CDMA iPhone 4. Verizon said it would be available for pre-order on February 3, with a release set for February 10. In February 2011, the Verizon iPhone accounted for 4.5% of all iPhone ad impressions[vague] in the US on Millennial Media's mobile ad network.
From 2007 to 2011, Apple spent $647 million on advertising for the iPhone in the US.
On Tuesday, September 27, Apple sent invitations for a press event to be held October 4, 2011, at 10:00 am at the Cupertino Headquarters to announce details of the next generation iPhone, which turned out to be iPhone 4S. Over 1 million 4S models were sold in the first 24 hours after its release in October 2011. Due to large volumes of the iPhone being manufactured and its high selling price, Apple became the largest mobile handset vendor in the world by revenue, in 2011, surpassing long-time leader Nokia. American carrier C Spire Wireless announced that it would be carrying the iPhone 4S on October 19, 2011.
In January 2012, Apple reported its best quarterly earnings ever, with 53% of its revenue coming from the sale of 37 million iPhones, at an average selling price of nearly $660. The average selling price has remained fairly constant for most of the phone's lifespan, hovering between $622 and $660. The production price of the iPhone 4S was estimated by IHS iSuppli, in October 2011, to be $188, $207 and $245, for the 16 GB, 32 GB and 64 GB models, respectively. Labor costs are estimated at between $12.50 and $30 per unit, with workers on the iPhone assembly line making $1.78 an hour.
In February 2012, ComScore reported that 12.4% of US mobile subscribers used an iPhone. Approximately 6.4 million iPhones are active in the US alone.
WATCH THIS
LittleDog[edit]
LittleDog is a small quadruped robot developed for DARPA by Boston Dynamics for research. Unlike BigDog, which is run by Boston Dynamics, LittleDog is intended as a testbed for other institutions. Boston Dynamics maintains the robots for DARPA as a standard platform.[12][13]
RiSE is a robot that climbs vertical terrain such as walls, trees and fences, using feet with micro-claws to climb on textured surfaces. It changes posture to conform to the curvature of the climbing surface and its tail helps it balance on steep ascents. RiSE is 0.25 m long, weighs 2 kg, and travels 0.3 m/s.[14]
Each of RiSE's six legs is powered by a pair of electric motors. An onboard computer controls leg motion, manages communications, and services a variety of sensors, including joint position sensors, leg strain sensors and foot contact sensors.
Boston Dynamics developed RiSE in conjunction with researchers at University of Pennsylvania, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Lewis and Clark College. It was funded by DARPA.