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Many reports indicate that Apple will finally unveiling their newly renovated 5th Avenue Apple NYC store – the Glass Cube on Friday, November 4th. For preparing, Apple will temporarily close its flagship Fifth Ave retail store in New York on Thursday evening.

Apple began work on the $6.6 million renovation back in June. Since then, the 5th Avenue Store has been surrounded by barriers and the store has remained open as the construction has continued. The redesign involves replacing the cube’s 90 glass panels with only 15 larger ones. The new design is rendered artistically above.

In September, the company began slowly removing the temporary structure surrounding the cube. Workers began taking off the white covering along the bottom section of the cube on Thursday in preparation for the unveiling.

The store opened in May 2006 and has since become a popular destination for tourists.

A November 4th unveiling falls in line with the original permits which estimated “early November” as a possible completion date. If the grand unveiling is indeed taking place this Friday, we expect Apple will make an announcement this week to inform the press.

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In spite of its problems on batteries, Apple yesterday announced that the hot selling smart phone – iPhone 4s will be available in Hong Kong, South Korea and 13 additional countries on next Friday, November 11. The 13 additional countries are Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala,  Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal and Romania. Now, the new smart phone from Apple will be available in countries in Asia, Central America and Europe.

Customers will be able to pre-order iPhone 4S beginning on this Friday, November 4. But the price of the new iPhone 4s isn’t published on Hong Kong Apple’s official website.

Below is the original press from Apple.

“Pre-Orders Begin November 4

CUPERTINO, California—November 1, 2011—Apple® today announced that iPhone® 4S, the most amazing iPhone yet, will be available in Hong Kong, South Korea and 13 additional countries on Friday, November 11. Customers will be able to pre-order iPhone 4S beginning on Friday, November 4.*

iPhone 4S is packed with incredible new features including Apple’s dual-core A5 chip for blazing fast performance and stunning graphics; an all new camera with advanced optics; full 1080p HD resolution video recording; and Siri™, an intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking.

Beginning Friday, November 11, iPhone 4S will be available in Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania and South Korea. iPhone 4S is available today in 29 countries around the world and will be available in more than 70 countries by the end of the year.

iPhone 4S comes in either black or white for a suggested retail price of $199 (US) for the 16GB model, $299 (US) for the 32GB model and $399 (US) for the new 64GB model.** iPhone 4S is sold through the Apple Online Store, Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. iPhone 4 is available for just $99 (US) and iPhone 3GS is available for free with a two year contract from participating carriers.

*Pre-orders not available in Albania, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malta, Montenegro and Panama.

**Qualified customers only. Requires a new two year rate plan, sold separately.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.”

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News from cultofmac.com indicates that, iPad 2 (as iPad 3 hasn’t been launched yet, those there are always rumors about its release date) triumph over world peace on holiday wish list.

As 2011 Christmas approaches, few days ago, an app developer from U.K. hold a poll to check what gifts people would like to receive on the coming Christmas. The result is shocking but also reasonable. The shocking point is that iPad  2 is ranked secondly over world peace, which was the first on last year’s wish list; why would I say that’s reasonable? Because while you can certainly wish for world peace, no one can really just box it up and put it under your tree.

Here is the wish list from the survey:

1.       One million pounds

2.       iPad 2

3.       World Peace

4.       Be Famous

5.       Cosmetic surgery

6.       Sports Car

7.       Mansion

8.       Meet a celebrity

9.       Start own business

10.      Own a designer wardrobe

And just comparing the wish list for last Christmas from CEA (Consumer Electronics Association):

1. Peace/Happiness

2. Notebook/Laptop

3. iPad

4. Clothes

5. eReader

6. Car/Motorcycle

7. Family Together

8. Good Health

9.Video Game System

10.Money

By the way, my Christmas wish is to go to Tibet for a travel . What’s your Christmas wish?

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After the rush of snapping up Steve Jobs’ bigraphy in bookstores around the world from Monday, now, the biography has finally become available on iBooks and Kindle.

The book is an authorized biography by Walter Isaacson that has received positive reviews as many facts have leaked in the days before its official release.  Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years – as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

Refer to how this biograhpy came to be, here are some original words from Steve Jobs, “In order to mask my emotion, I asked the one question that was still puzzling me: Why had he been so eager, during close to 50 interviews and conversations over the course of two years, to open up so much for a book when he was usually so private? “I wanted my kids to know me,” he said. “I wasn’t always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did.”

If you haven’t got a hardcopy of the biography, maybe you can also buy it from iBooks or Kindle. But for me, I would like to get a hardcopy.

By the way, you can also see the interview video of Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson was interviewed for 60 minutes.

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Though it’s a bit late, but I have to say: Happy Birthday, iPod!

Tenth years passed after it was released on Oct, 23rd, 2001 by Steve Jobs on the press conference in Apple’s headquarter – Cupertino, California. While the iPod was not the first MP3 player, it was the first to catch on among the masses, the first version of the device offering space for 1,000 songs and 10 hours of battery life in a gadget that could fit in your pocket.

“it’s a nice feature for Macintosh users, but to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn’t make any difference.” Maybe this is a great drawback for the first generation iPod, so, about nine months after releasing the first iPod, Apple made a few minor updates and released the second-gen-ipod on July 17th, 2002. The biggest addition was the ability for Windows PC users to use the iPod with Musicmatch Jukebox software. iTunes was launched this year to make it convenient for iPod users to purchase and download their favorite songs.

The iPod itself has changed over the years. And it’s also very popular with many people, now, there are four patterns, iPod Shuffle, Nano, Touch and Classic.

iPod is not just a music player that changed the way people listen to music, it’s also a watershed to Apple. If the iPod failed, Apple would have remained a boutique computer maker prized by designers and schools but able to be safely ignored by the tech world at large. Instead, the iPod proved to be a powerful wedge. To date, Apple has sold more than 300 million iPods.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

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As a vital competitor to Facebook in Social Network Service, Google+ caught people’s eye since it was launched months ago. People who wanted to use this new-released social network were asked to join Google+ with an invitation. Once, this restriction limited the users to Google+, so some experts predicted that Google+ maybe another Google’s losing product like Buzz.

Premature to say.

According to a report Experian Hitwise, visits to Google Plus increased by 1269% last week after Google open the access to it. And the site received 15 million U.S. visits, up from 1.1 million the week before.

According to Paul Allen’s estimates, which have been on track in the past, Google Plus currently has around 43 million users. Even this number is too common to mention comparing with Facebook’s users, which already reach up to 750 million in this July. But it ranked from 54th to 8th in the Social Networking and Forums category from Experian Hitwise.

For Google, this is really a good performance that more and more people join Google Plus’s circles.  And it’s a trend, isn’t it?

At last, may I ask you a question, have you joined Google+? If yes, you can add me into your circles, and this is my Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/?hl=en

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According to a report issued by UBS Investment Research recently, Apple’s smartphone – iPhone users shows their strong loyalty to this product, the retention rate is up to 89 percent, beats other smartphones and outdistances the second one, HTC, which only has a retention rate of  39 percent.

RIM is in the third place, with a retention rate of 33 percent; the following is Samsung with 28 percent; Motorola is successive with a retention rate of 25 percent and Nokia is ranked in the last of the top six, with one percent lower than Motorola, 24 percent.

From the report, we can see that, Android as a whole has a planned retention rate of about 55%, indicating that a  number of current users of Android handsets do intend to stick with Andorid, Google’s mobile platform, while some are planning to switch manufacturer, up to 31% of surveyed Android users report intending to switch to the iPhone for their next device, with over 50% of the total “switchers” planning to move to Apple from another manufacturer as only about 10% of switchers are moving away from Apple.

At last, I want to ask a question: What smartphone are you using? And if it’s not iPhone, will you switch to iPhone when the rumors abouth iPhone 5 is spreading out widely world-widely? Or to be a strong-loyalty user sticking on the former OEM?

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To capture the surge in demand from China and other neighboring regions and areas,  Apple Inc. is preparing to open its first store in Hong Kong this month. It’s said that the first Apple Store will be opend on September 24th, located in Hong Kong’s International Financial Center Mall with two-story, spanning 20,000 square feet.

Businessweek writes that this is the fifth store in China and the other shops have so far generated $8.8 billion in revenue in the past three quarters, or 11 percent of Apple’s total. The company has long depended on resellers in the area to support and sell Apple hardware and this store will create a more central location for Macheads to get their fix.

According to Ming Pao report, Apple may also open another two stores in Hong Kong, one in the Lee Gardens at Causeway Bay and one in Tsim Sha Tsui’s Canton Road. But it didn’t cite anyone or say when. And if this will become ture in future, it will absolutely stimulate the local tourism industry. As  the price of Apple products, including taxes, are cheaper in Hong Kong, the iPad 2 is an example, so, more and more poeple in the Mainlad will prefer to purchase a cheaper iPad or iPhone in Hong Kong when they are on a tour of Hong Kong’s view.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the opening of Hong Kong’s first Apple store and do hope it can be launched on time. Don’t you?

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A rumor is about that  iPhone 5 will be available for pre-order in the first week of October in Best Buy. The leaked document provided to Boy Genius Report generates this rumor.

BGR points to an internal memo:

“Thanks to a leaked document from a Best Buy source, we have discovered that Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile stores are anticipating taking preorders for the iPhone 5 starting in the first week of October. What’s a tad bit more interesting, however, is the mention (and further anticipation) that Sprint will be carrying the iPhone 5 at launch.”

Best Buy also indicates, of course, that dates may chnage.

At the same time, ThisIsMyNext reports that Best Buy is also expecting a new “Apple Fixture Installation” on Friday, Oct 21st.

“To be clear, this isn’t a run-of-the-mill installation for the big box — our tipster tells us that the request that a manager be on-hand at 6AM is out of the ordinary (they usually show up at 7AM for inventory), and that a similar arrangement was scheduled for the iPhone 4 launch.”

Even there are many rumors on iPhone 5’s release day, but Apple Official doesn’t have any statement yet about when is the exact release day. All we can do is to wait for the fifth-generation with patience. What do you think?

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According to Google’s official blog, Google launches offline service for Gmail yesterday.

Google announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011 and they talked about bringing offline access to their web apps. After a long time’s hard work, now they take the first step. Gmail can be accessed offline yesterday, and the offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out in the coming weeks, which allow you to seamlessly switch between on- and offline modes.

“Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page.”

And when the Google Calendar and Docs really go live, you’ll find the offline can be prodcutive, too, as you can view events from Google Calendar and read documents and spreadsheets with Google Docs even you’re offline. It’s a pity that offline editing isn’t available yet, though Google has promised to make it real.

How abouth other browsers? Google plans to offer those offline service once they support the functionality in future.

Have you tried Gmail offline yet? Give it a try and tell me what you think?

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