While enroute to Sydney, Australia, passengers aboard Regional Express flight ZL319 were given a fright as an iPhone 4 “started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke accompanied by a red glow.” A flight attendant extinguished the phone and fortunately no one were harmed.

Apple recently announced a recall for the first generation iPod nano, citing “in very rare cases, the battery in the iPod nano (1st generation) may overheat and pose a safety risk.” While rare, a defective battery does have the potential to cause electronic devices to overheat and catch fire. Judging by the age of the iPhone 4, I feel it is safe to assume this is most likely an isolated incident.

From the Regional Express Press Release:

MEDIA RELEASE

MOBILE PHONE SELF COMBUSTION

iPhone 4 Fire

Regional Express

Regional Express (Rex) flight ZL319 operating from Lismore to Sydney today had an occurrence after landing, when a passenger’s mobile phone started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow.

In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the Flight Attendant carried out recovery actions immediately and the red glow was extinguished successfully.

All passengers and crew on board were unharmed.

The matter has been reported to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) as well as the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for investigation and directions.

The mobile phone in question appears to be an Apple iPhone (see picture below) and has been handed over to ATSB for analysis.

Regional Express (Rex) is Australia’s largest independent regional airline operating a fleet of more than 40 Saab 340 aircraft on some 1,300 weekly flights to 36 destinations throughout New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland. The Rex Group comprises Regional Express, air freight and charter operator Pel-Air Aviation and Dubbo- based regional airline Air Link, as well as the pilot academy Australian Airline Pilot Academy.

[Via BGR]

Falling in line with the positive news regarding Kindle Fire sales, iPad 2 also received a significant bump in sales on Black Friday. From AllThingsD:

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster surveyed a few Apple stores on Black Friday and found that iPad sales per hour were 68 percent higher than they were a year ago. On average, the stores Munster visited sold about 14.8 iPads per hour, up from 8.8 iPads per hour last year, more than enough to support the analyst’s projection of 13.5 million iPads sold in the December quarter.

Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore’s analysis is similar to Gene Munster’s, leading him to believe that iPad 2 sales are tracking in line with his estimate of 14 million iPad sales for the December quarter.

Last week, Craig Mundie—Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer—told Forbes that he was not impressed with Siri, claiming that Microsoft has shipped similar technology in Windows Phone—via TellMe—for more than a year. He agreed with the reporter that much of Siri’s hype is “good marketing”, and that “Microsoft has had a similar capability in Windows Phones for, you know, more than a year.” From the interview:

Both the iPhone and Windows Phones have shipped with speech-to-text converters for years, and were able to handle predefined voice commands. What sets Siri apart from previous attempts is its ability to understand natural spoken language.

TechAU decided to test Craig Mundie’s claims that Siri is no different from TellMe outside of marketing. What their demonstration shows us is more than Siri’s ability to understand natural language, but also how it excels at speech-to-text conversions:

Out of four requests, Microsoft TellMe was not able to correctly convert the speech-to-text once, whereas Siri performed flawlessly.

From Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Flash piece posted April, 2010:

Flash was created during the PC era – for PCs and mice. Flash is a successful business for Adobe, and we can understand why they want to push it beyond PCs. But the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards – all areas where Flash falls short.

[…]

New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

It appears Adobe has finally realized what Apple was saying all along, and I am happy to see them creating tools to aid in creating great HTML5 content.

Apple has released version 2 of their Apple Store app for the iPhone. In addition to additional international support, the updated app brings new features like tracking your purchases and personal pickup, allowing you to purchase via the app and pick up at your local store.

The one new feature that caught my eye was EasyPay, which allows you to pay for your in-store purchase with your iPhone, negating the need to seek out an Apple Store employee. The only catch: you’ll need an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S.

Release Notes:

• Personal Pickup: Buy in the app and choose to pick up your order at any Apple Retail Store. Most in-stock orders are available for pickup within an hour. (U.S. only)
• EasyPay: Purchase select accessories in store quickly by scanning the barcode and completing your transaction right in the app. (U.S. only, requires iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S)
• Track your stuff: View the status of current and previous orders from the order status section in the More tab.
• Additional international support (Canada, China).
• Requires iOS 4.2 or higher

Update: Engadget has posted a hands-on video demo of EasyPay, Apple’s in-store self-checkout feature. I have embedded the video below for your convenience: