Sprint posted its Q4 2011 earnings on Wednesday and announced it sold 1.8 million iPhones in the quarter. Forty percent of those sales were to new customers and, overall, the carrier added 1.6M net subscribers in the quarter. Sprint iPhone sales were strong, but it still trails Verizon Wireless which sold 4.3 million iPhones and AT&T which activated 7.6 million iPhones. Combined the three carriers account for about 13.7 million of Apple's 37 million iPhones it sold in the quarter.

The iPhone boosted Sprint last quarter, but it wasn't all rainbows and unicorns for the carrier. Sprint posted a US$1.3 billion loss in the quarter, some of which comes from the iPhone and some from its 4G LTE network build-out. The carrier had to absorb an undisclosed amount of money due to sales and subsidies costs associated with the iPhone.

A financial hit from the iPhone was expected by analysts. James Ratcliffe of Barclays Capital writes this about Sprint, "The financials are weak due to the amount of money they are sending to Cupertino. This year and next are going to be unattractive financially. I think people who own Sprint might be looking more toward the prospects in 2014."

[Via Bloomberg and MacStories]

Sprint Q4 2011 results: 1.8 Million iPhones Sold originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you're in the market for a new inkjet printer, you may want to take a closer look at two new offerings from Canon. Announced on Tuesday, the PIXMA MX512 and PIXMA MX432 are two wireless All-In-One injkjet printers that'll let you print, copy, scan and fax. Both printers support AirPrint, which lets you print documents, emails and photos from your iPhone and iPad.

Both the MX512 and the MX432 print at a rate of 9.7 ipm for black-and-white documents and approximately 5.5 ipm for color. The pair can print a 4" x 6" borderless photo in approximately 46 seconds. The MX512 has auto duplex printing and a dual-function panel which makes its easy for users to manage printing options and print documents directly from a media card. The MX512 and MX432 have a MSRP of US$149 and $99, respectively.

Canon introduces two new AirPrint inkjet printers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I've been waiting for this one for a while. Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a title that won accolades on the Nintendo DS last year, and it's now arrived on iOS in a universal version (that's free to download to boot). The idea is that you're a ghostly "phantom detective" who must solve his own murder. You can't directly interact with the living, but you can mess with inanimate objects in their world. So move objects around and try to change the fate of other dead people. It sounds morbid, but there's a fun sense of humor and style that keep it entertaining.

The first two chapters are free to play through, and you can buy the rest for US$9.99 total, or $4.99 in three different chapter packs. Even for the full price, that's cheaper than you'll find it for sale on the DS. There's full Game Center integration and the build is universal, which makes this one of the best ports that Capcom has ever released. It's great to see such a popular game get a decent port to the App Store. Definitely pick it up and try it out. You might find yourself compelled enough to buy the whole and finish the story.

Daily iPhone App: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective scares up some fun originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has released three EFI Firmware Updates for 2010-model Macs, including the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro. This update enables Lion Internet Recovery on those older Macs. Introduced in OS X Lion alongside the mid-2011 updates to the MacBook Air and Mac mini, Internet Recovery enables access to disk repair or OS X Lion installation options via a broadband internet connection. This is intended for use on a failed hard drive or a blank drive that's never had OS X installed on it.

Together with a series of earlier firmware updates, all Macs introduced from 2010 onward now have access to Internet Recovery features -- with just one notable exception. Even the newest Mac Pro is still excluded from the support list for Internet Recovery.

For both Mac Pro owners and those of you running Lion on a 2009 or earlier Mac, not having access to Internet Recovery isn't the end of the world. If you have a spare external drive, you can either build a recovery disk, or you can roll your own full Lion installer disk.

EFI Firmware Update brings Lion Internet Recovery to 2010-model Macs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mass Effect 2 got its own iOS game when it was released on the traditional consoles a few years ago, and since Mass Effect 3 is due out in another month or so here, you probably won't be surprised to hear that EA is again planning another iOS game tie-in for the release. This time around, though, it sounds like they're doing it a little more intelligently. The last game focused on the first companion you met in the full console game, telling a little bit about his backstory through a pretty straightforward (and honestly, kind of boring) action game. This time around, the iOS title will again be action-based, as a third-person shooter, but instead of just telling background story, it will directly affect one of the main game's elements.

Playing the iOS game will "increase a player's Galactic Readiness rating," which is an element directly used in Mass Effect 3's "Galaxy at War" system (which will also tie in to the multiplayer elements in the game). It sounds like the iOS title is more of an arcade title than a full campaign game, which means that the more you play it, the better your starting console game stats will be. EA also says that you'll be able to earn "exclusive weaponry" for the main title, so that's a nice bonus as well.

The Mass Effect tie-in game is called Mass Effect Infiltrator, and should be available for all modern iOS devices soon. It'll be interesting to see what EA does with this one -- the company has learned a lot about the iOS platform since the last tie-in title, and with anticipation for Mass Effect 3 at a fever pitch, this title should be the latest and greatest the big traditional console company can do.

Mass Effect 3 getting an iOS game originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

David Tupman, the VP of iPhone and iPod Engineering at Apple, made his exit from Cupertino at the end of last year, according to reports at 9to5Mac. Tupman, who grew up in the UK, has a background in engineering, and has been in the position ever since the introduction of the first iPod, all the way up through the release of the iPhone 4. It's unknown where Tupman is headed next -- it's rumored that he may be headed to work on Nest with another former Apple Engineer, Tony Fadell, but Nest denies those rumors.

As for Apple, it'll be fine, of course. A company doing as well as Apple will likely be able to pick up any engineers it would like, and even if not, there are quite a few candidates inside the company that could step up into the Engineering position, including the current head of iPad engineering, or the person in charge of iPod and iPhone design. Meanwhile, best of luck to Mr. Tupman -- thanks for all your hard work.

VP of iPhone and iPod Engineering David Tupman leaves Apple originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Zero1.tv has released its new VooMote Zapper (US$69.95) universal remote for iOS devices into the wild, and it's also now in your nearby Apple Store. I had an opportunity to try the new device out over the last week, and while less expensive and smaller than the VooMote One remote we mentioned at its release last last year, the Zapper still seems to have some of the same issues that many other iOS remotes have.

First, the good news. The tiny Zapper plugs into the 30-pin Universal Dock port on the bottom of your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. As such, it's able to provide the infrared transceiver on the device with more power than some of the cheap devices we've seen that plug into the headphone jack. The company boasts that the Zapper has four IR mini-blasters for range, and it really does seem to make a difference. I found that the Zapper was able to control devices easily from across a room in broad daylight, so it's definitely got the power.

The dongle comes in eight colors that match the iPad 2 Smart Covers, and it appears that there will be colored cases for iPad 2, iPhone 4/4S, and iPod touch 4th Generation. Those cases you see in the image at the top of this post? They're not available yet.

Gallery: VooMote Zapper

Now, the not-so-good news. Even after getting an update to the free VooMote Zapper app the other day, most of the devices that make up my home entertainment system were not in the library of codes. The Zapper app has one irritating habit right off the bat: it runs upside down on the iPhone so that the Zapper is always at the "top" of the screen. Want to check email? Flip your device upside-down again. The app is not universal, so if you run it on your iPad, it's either a tiny window on your device or a fuzzy 2X version of the app. VooMote is coming out with an iPad-specific TV Guide app sometime in 2012.

The way the app works is you add a room to your home, then add individual devices to that room. The list of rooms is quite extensive, but it doesn't include that staple of American homes, the "family room." I decided to use "living room" instead, although that is a completely separate room in my home that doesn't have any tech in it. Next, I started adding devices to my "living room."

Immediately I was confused. Is my Comcast / Motorola DVR considered a DVR, or is it a cable box? There are listings for both types of devices. I decided to call it a cable box. Upon choosing cable box, I found one that was named "Comcast", but the box I have wasn't listed. The Zapper app took me through a process of trying to figure out what it was by asking me if it was changing channels, bringing the volume up, etc. When it was done, I had a virtual remote on my iPhone called "Cable-Box" that looks nothing like the remote I normally use, and it has controls that make absolutely no sense for the model I'm using.

Next I added the TV. I have a Panasonic Viera 50" Plasma TV that's about five years old. The only Panasonic TVs that are listed are about fifteen units that must be quite new. Once again, I had to go through the training process to see if the app could come up with a remote that would work with my TV. Sure, it turns it on and off, changes channels, and bumps the volume up and down, but I still have to grab my old TV remote in order to change the input (HDMI1, HDMI2, etc.).

I went through the same process with everything but the Apple TV, which miraculously was already in the database. However, it didn't actually turn the Apple TV on, so my guess is that the device settings were for the first-generation device.

Sure, this is a new device and I'm sure that the code library for devices will expand in the future. But I'd bet that a lot of TUAW readers have the same opinion that I do -- when I get a "universal remote," I want it to work out of the box without needing to go through this tedious type of hit-and-miss process.

Like the Logitech Harmony One remote that I previously used, the Zapper has a way to string together commands so that you can turn on multiple devices in sequence for doing something like watching a DVD -- turn on TV, turn on DVD player, turn on audio device (home theater), etc. I didn't even try this function.

I am not going to single out just the VooMote Zapper for having this problem; just about every iOS remote control device I've tried has been lacking, and the Logitech remote described earlier was also a pain to program. I will give the VooMote Zapper a chance, and I've set up an appointment on my calendar to see if an expanded code library in a few months makes this device easier to set up and use. I certainly like the design of the little dongle.

If Apple really wants to capture the home entertainment market, it doesn't need to come to market with a new HDTV -- it just needs to figure out how to get every type of device working together seamlessly and without a lot of annoying setup. For that, I'd be willing to pay a lot of money.

VooMote Zapper universal remote for iOS: A first look and a rant originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For Mac repair shops, enterprise tech support teams, and consultants who need to wipe all data off of hard drives before selling or recycling old Macs, there's now a fast way to erase those drives without tying up a machine for a long time. WiebeTech has a new device called the Drive eRazer Ultra (US$249) that promises to make cleaning those pesky drives a fast and easy process.

WiebeTech provided a Drive eRazer Ultra to TUAW for testing and review, and the device does an amazing job of wiping all of that private or corporate information off of hard drives. In this review you'll read about what makes the Drive eRazer Ultra such a useful device.

To start off with, erasing a computer's hard drive completely usually means that you remove the drive from the computer. Sure, you can boot a computer off of an external drive and then run a utility to do the dirty work on an internal drive, but that ties up the computer for the entire time that the drive is being erased. Using a multiple-pass erase to ensure that your drive is completely unreadable can literally take days if you're using Apple's Disk Utility to do the job, and other software-based erasure methods take equally as long.

The Drive eRazer Ultra erases drives at their maximum write speed, so the job is done faster. WiebeTech says that new drives are erased at 7 GB/minute while older drives will putt along at 7 GB/minute. No computer is required -- you just remove the hard drive, then use the included cables to connect it to the Drive eRazer Ultra. The device has a rocker switch and two-line LCD display for selecting the erase mode and showing how long it will take to the erasure to complete.

Gallery: WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra

There are ten different erase specifications that are supported by the device: a quick erase that just does a single pass writing all zeroes on the drive, a custom erase that can run 1 to 99 passes overwriting with zeroes or a user-selected pattern, Secure Erase N or E that initiates a drive's built-in Secure Erase normal or enhanced function, US Department of Defense "Clear" or "Sanitize" standards, NIST special publication 800-88 "Clear" or "Purge" standards, the Canadian CSEC ITSG-06 data sanitization standard, Great Britain's HMGIS5 "Baseline" or "Enhanced" drive erasure standard, and the Australian government's DSD ISM 6.2.92 data sanitization standard.

If your job requires you to print out labels that describe the details of the erasure (for audit reasons, for example), there's a serial port for Zebra brand label printers. Those labels can then be attached to the drives or to a box or bag used for disposal of the drive.

The Drive eRazer Ultra supports 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives, 3.5" IDE/PATA drives, and other drives using optional adapters. If you're erasing a 3.5" drive, there's a metal protective plate included that you can screw onto the drive to protect the drive electronics and help dissipate heat.

For my testing, I grabbed a 160 GB Hitachi drive that had previously resided in a MacBook and that was loaded with about 100 GB of video backups. To use the Drive eRazer, you need to plug in a power brick that's about the same size and weight of the unit itself, grab the correct cable (SATA in this case), and make both power and data connections to the drive. Flipping the power switch on the box powers up the drive, and the display shows a command for doing a quick erase.

I chose to look at the drive information screens first, which provide data on the capacity of the drive, the number of bad sectors on it, the number of times that the drive has been powered on and off, the number of times the drive has been stopped and started, and an estimate of the time to do a Secure Erase (enhanced or normal).

The user interface is really quite simple to use, and it took very little time for me to set the default erase specification to "DOD Sanitize." The device warns the user that it will erase all data -- which I thought was silly since that's what the device is supposed to do -- and then estimates how long it will take to perform the erasure.

Sanitizing is "the removal of sensitive data from a system or storage device with the intent that the data can not be reconstructed by any known technique," according to Wikipedia. The DOD Sanitize specification (DOD 5220.22-M) recommends that you "Overwrite all addressable locations with a character, its complement, then a random character and verify" to sanitize information on writable media.

To complete this process, the Drive eRazer Ultra took about 2 hours and 16 minutes. As soon as that was done, I took the same drive and ran it through the "Most Secure" erase option in Disk Utility, which also complies with DOD 5220.22-M. That method took slightly over 8 hours to complete.

This isn't a device that most Mac owners are going to rush out and buy, but for those who are constantly erasing drives, the Drive eRazer Ultra can pay for itself quickly in terms of sheer convenience and time saved wiping data. For those teams and individuals, this is an indispensable device.

WiebeTech Drive eRazer Ultra provides super-secure drive wiping originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Gabe Glick over at Macstories has a proposal: Aperture for iOS. On the surface, it sounds like a pretty silly idea -- Apple's high end camera app is really made for a desktop environment, and with the hassle required to get high quality photos onto iOS devices, there really isn't a point bringing Aperture over to a platform like the iPad. But Glick, though he agrees with the naysayers to a certain extent, is willing to take the opposite position. He says that he thinks Aperture is coming to the iPad with the announcement (expected sometime this year) of the iPad 3.

So we'll let him make his case. He says the Retina Display is a big benefit, for photographers who really want to see their pictures close up and in full color. Of course, the iPad 2 doesn't have a Retina Display, but if the iPad 3 gets the same kind of high definition screen that the iPhone 4 already has, Aperture would be more likely. iCloud's photo stream would make it easy to get pictures on the mobile device, a better A6 processor would make editing RAW photos and other high end resolutions easier as well, and finally, Glick says that a "professional workhorse" app like Aperture shouldn't be automatically dismissed from the iPad. Most people would have said the same thing about iMovie and GarageBand on the iPad, and both of those have done quite well.

When you put it like that, well, sure. Obviously this is all just speculation -- we won't know that Apple is releasing an app like this until it's actually announced on stage. But I will say as well that I've been trying to make noise lately for a sort of "iCamera" -- a more professional DSLR camera made and produced by Apple -- and I've been answered most of the time with the suggestion that Apple is betting on the cameras in its mobile devices rather than a separate dedicated device. If that is true, then sure, why wouldn't we want to see better official tools to deal with photos than the current Camera app offers?

Considering Aperture for iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

While some tech pundits are bemoaning Apple's lack of ads during the Super Bowl on Sunday (the company hasn't run an ad during the big game for years), The Street's Jim Cramer is taking another view and one that is much more rooted in reality. Apple didn't need to pay for expensive Super Bowl air time, because the World Champion NY Giants provided tons of free advertising for the iPhone.

As Cramer noted, "... there was one ad that struck me as the most honest, most riveting and most compelling of all. You see, the game had just ended, and Colts great Raymond Berry ran the Giant gantlet with the Lombardi Trophy. Suddenly it seemed like every other Giant pulled out an Apple iPhone to snap pictures of the moment. One after another after another. And I said to myself, there it is, not some pet dangling a bag of chips or some headlights killing vampires or King Elton getting trapdoored. Nope, there was an ad worthy of Steve Jobs and the company he built."

Cramer went on to say "To me, the endorsement of Apple by real athletes who were not paid, especially when contrasted with the gift of the GM Corvette that Eli Manning didn't even seem to care about -- 'Eli, the keys, the keys, don't forget the keys!' -- said it all ... when everyone else is paying $3 million per commercial, Apple paid nothing and easily had the best ad of all."

To see what Cramer's talking about, just check out the YouTube video below and count the number of iPhones that you see snapping photos and shooting video of Raymond Berry and the Lombardi Trophy. Amazing...

Apple enjoys free Super Bowl advertising courtesy of NY Giants originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.