The iPhone 5 is almost upon us, and Apple has mandated that all third-party developers start submitting iPhone 5 screenshots in the App Store. Devs with new updates must include screenshots optimized for the iPhone 5’s 4-inch, 1136×640 display.

Many popular App Store apps have already been updated for the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, including the official Facebook app today. There were original concerns that developers wouldn’t have time to get their apps up to date for the iPhone 5, but it looks like updates are rolling out at a fairly rapid pace.

Since iOS 6 came out yesterday, everyone has been dog piling on the new Maps app, talking about how terrible it is (us included). There’s even an entire Tumlr dedicated to how badly it sucks. Is everyone being too hard on Apple for trying to build their own Maps platform? Or should Apple have kept Google Maps around?

What do you think? It seems like iOS Maps might be an understandable first step that will pay off for Apple big time in a couple of years, but do we really want to wait and have to use an inferior app for a few years while they try to get it right?

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and let us know what you think about Apple’s decision to make their own Maps app

One of the best new additions of iOS 6 for iPad owners is the fact that not only do we finally get the iOS 6 clock app, but it’s absolutely gorgeous… easily Apple’s most attractive app, in my opinion.

The app’s good looks aren’t going unnoticed… and that might spell bad news for Apple. Apparently, the Swiss Federal Railway Service is livid over the clock used in the new app, says they own the trademark on the design.

Motorola is looking to bring down the ban hammer on almost every Apple product out there, including every Mac OSX computer. I have no idea if Motorola is just looking to throw spaghetti at the wall or what, but they have a long list of infringements that apparently the International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate.

So, there you are, sitting on the bus, and inspiration strikes. You really want to fire off a quick tweet or status update to Facebook, but your stop is coming up fairly quick, and you really can’t miss it again. Opening up the Facebook or Twitter app will take precious seconds, ones you don’t have to spare! What’s an iOS 6-enabled person to do?

Now that Facebook is integrated along with Twitter in iOS 6, you don’t need to open either specific app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to get out that short message of genius.

A lot has been written over the last day or so about the crappy maps in iOS 6, and the fact that Apple’s new data engine doesn’t live up to its pretty new map tiles and spectacular flyover feature.

I thought exactly the same thing when I first installed a beta of iOS 6 on my iPad a month or two back. But while Apple’s maps are definitely a step back in many ways, it’s not all as bad as it seems. Not quite anyway.

But guess what? If you’re willing to use a couple extra apps until Apple fixes things, you can get everything back that you’re missing.

In case you don’t get the reference. More (real) iOS 6 Maps disasters can be found in our gallery here.

Via: The Amazing iOS 6 Maps

Last year, iPhone 4S pre-orders sold out in 22 hours before shipping dates slipped to 2-3 weeks. This year iPhone 5 pre-orders sold out in 1 hour before shipping moved to 2-3 weeks. Apple is going to sell iPhone 5s faster, and in more volume, than they’ve ever sold anything.

If you didn’t manage to secure a pre-order in time and are facing the prospect of standing in line at the Apple Store to get an iPhone 5 on launch day, you’re probably wondering how early you need to wake up and get in line. There’s not a clear formula on how it all works, and only Apple knows for sure how much stock they have, but the experience of the last five iPhone launches have given us some important information.

For those of us not obsessively checking delivery status for iPhone 5s, here is a power pack for the iPhone 4/4S that might strike your fancy—Stay Charged With The SoL Hybrid Power Pack.

I have a couple different battery packs (I’m giving an extra to a friend), but they charge the “old fashioned way” through a USB cable to the wall (or computer, but you know). A solar charger certainly has a lot of appeal. You can just leave it charging cells up and keep it topped up all day. Very cool.

iPhone-Garage.de has the first teardown pictures of the iPhone 5, if you want to see Apple’s latest engineering and design miracle at work. Their site is being absolutely hammered now, and it keeps on going down, so we’ve put some of the best images in a gallery below the fold so you can see for yourself. iFixIt will doubtlessly have a more nuanced take, but for right now, all I can say is…man, what a tightly packed phone.

It’s no secret that Apple’s new iOS Maps app has been a pretty big letdown so far. Surely Apple is working on perfecting the app and correcting a lot of erroneous data, but if you’ve already updated to iOS 6 you’re stuck with maps that have a tendency to glitch out on you, especially if you live outside the U.S.

The Amazing iOs 6 Maps is a new Tumblr account dedicated to the uglier side of Apple’s new maps app. They’ve compiled a ton of screenshots of iOS 6 Maps doing terrible things. Here’s some of the best/worst ones so far:

Got a set of those annoying lenses for your iPhone that attach via magnets? Me too. The results are great, but getting the magnets lined up to the metal donut surrounding the lens is a real pain.

And so the following news is mixed. It's bad news because it uses the same dumb attachment system, and it's good news because it's a polarizer for the iPhone. And not just any polarizer, either. This one is made by legendary filter-monger B+W.

Apple’s solar farm in North Carolina is massive. Right now it’s the size of 109 football fields, but even that isn’t enough to make their data center run on 100% renewable energy, so Apple wants to make it bigger. To increase the amount of solar energy they’re able to generate, Apple just bought 200 acres of property in Catawba County for $3 million.

The iPhone 5 pre-orders kicked off last Friday at 12:00 a.m. PST and it only took a few hours for delivery estimates to start to slip well into October. A little perspective – it took nearly a day (approximately 22 hours) for last year’s iPhone 4S pre-sale to begin to run out; the iPhone 5 did the same in about an hour.

Hopefully Apple will be able to keep up with the demand for the iPhone 5. But if not here are a few tips based on what we have learned from past iPhone releases that might help lessen headaches and improve your chances of getting your hands on an iPhone 5 this season.

PDF Expert for iPad, arguably the best and most powerful PDF editor for iOS, has been updated today to introduce new features and improvements, including support for multiple signatures, and up to five times faster syncing.

Rumors had suggested that Samsung would add Apple’s iPhone 5 to the list of devices involved in a patent infringement suit between the two companies, and it looks like that’s going to happen. The Korean company has confirmed that it expects the latest iPhone to infringe the same patents the iPhone 4S does, and that it will be adding the handset to its case after it has had time to “analyze” it.

iOS 6’s Maps is the biggest criticism of Apple’s new mobile operating system. In short, it’s clearly years behind Google Maps, which previously powered Maps in past versions of iOS. Most of the time, complaints about Apple’s new Maps accuse the latter of being under-developed and unreliable compared to Google Maps, but the Irish government has a different concern: they are worried that iOS 6 Maps will result in pilots crashing their airplanes directly into a park.

Wacom might be letting every other pen maker bring touch-sensitive styluses to the iPad first, but at least its regular dumb iPad styluses are amongst the best out there. And if you have ever hefted your Wacom Bamboo stylus and thought “This is almost perfect, but I wish it were a little stubbier,” then I have good news:

Wacom has made a stubby stylus. What’s more, it transforms into a long and slender stylus. It’s called the Bamboo Stylus Pocket.

I usually hate these fake Apple parody ads for being both smug and witless, but I laughed pretty hard at this one by Satire. Featuring a number of earnestly hipstered faux-Apple employees with names like “Joe Bloggs” and “Alan Smithee,” the video takes the Obi-Wan iPhone 20 joke that’s been going around and actually runs with it, showing exactly how Cupertino would pitch a phone the length of a yardstick.

The touted features Satire comes up with are great. Panorama photos without moving the iPhone! Scrolling without using mulitouch! Amazing reception due to having your iPhone in physical closer proximity to orbiting satellites! And so much more. The app ideas are great too. And I love the tag line: “The longest thing to happen to iPhone since iPhone.”

Source: YouTube

Back in August, we told you about a serious SMS security flaw with the iPhone that opened the door to text message spoofing. At the time, Apple told users they could protect themselves by using its iMessage service rather that traditional SMS messages, but the Cupertino company appears to have rectified the issue in iOS 6.

The iOS 6-compatible updates continue to deluge our App Store apps, and the latest is Drafts, the excellent inbox for almost everything on your iPhone or iPad. Drafts takes plain text (or Markdown text) and pipes it to any and every place you could possibly need it.

The update adds support for the new tall iPhone, as well as a whole bunch of neat iOS 6-only features. Let's take a quick look:

Editor’s Note: This review has been stickied to the top of the front page. There are likely new posts below it.

After months of testing, iOS 6 — the most recent major update to Apple’s mobile operating system — is now here. Featuring an entirely new Maps, a new Passbook app, some impressive new updates to Siri (who also comes to the iPad with this release), a great Do Not Disturb feature and a lot more, iOS 6 is a great refurbishment of the world’s best mobile OS. But all is not perfect, and in at least one way, iOS 6 might prove disappointing to people upgrading from iOS 5.

Over the last few months, we’ve been putting iOS 6 to the test on our iPhones and iPads. Here’s what we thought.

It used to be that in order to see images sent along to you in iChat, you’d open up the File Transfers window, click on the graphic, and hit the spacebar on your keyboard to see the image full size, just like you can in the Finder or Open/Save dialogs.

If you’ve migrated to Mountain Lion, however, you’ll know that iChat is no longer, and the replacement app, Messages, has a File Transfers window, but Quick Look won’t work in it any more. How do you see your images full size within the Messages app, then? Lucky you, we’re here to tell you.

After being introduced in iOS 5, keyboard shortcuts is a feature I could no longer live without on my iOS device. I use it for all kinds of things, including email addresses and usernames, so that I never have to type out the full thing 30 times a day. There is one thing the feature has been lacking, though, and that’s the ability to sync your keyboard shortcuts across all your iOS devices.

That is until now; the feature was finally added to iOS 6, which was released to the public yesterday.

After updating iPhoto for iOS on Wednesday to add iOS 6 support and a whole host of new features, Apple has shown a little love to iPhoto for Mac. Version 9.4 is available to download from the Mac App Store now, and it comes with support for the Shared Photo Streams introduced in iOS 6, Facebook comments, and more.