For a brief moment during yesterday’s keynote, Apple mentioned that along with some new LTE and battery wizardry, they were able to add support for “wideband audio” phone calls. Some tech people are calling it HD Voice, because it’s really just higher quality voicecalls.

The iPhone 5 supports HD Voice, but you’re never going to be able to use it in the U.S. right now, and you probably never will. Why? Well, there are a lot of messy technical details behind it, but here’s the simplest explanation.

With the announcement of a single piece of hardware, Apple has obsoleted thousands of iPhone accessories, almost overnight. Between the thinner, taller case and the new Lightning sync/power adapter, pretty much none of your old accessories (or any accessories you can currently buy) will fit the new iPhone.

Does it matter? Should you stop buying iPhone-specific accessories? Just how useful will these stop-gap adapters be? Find out with our iPhone 5 accessory guide.

Although Apple hasn’t directly confirmed the exact time yet, iPhone 5 preorders look set to begin tomorrow morning at 12:01AM PST, exactly… the same time iPhone 4S preorders started last year.

The iPhone 5 is slated to be Apple’s most wildly in-demand phone yet, and while Apple is attempting to balance the crush on their website by starting preorders in the middle of the night, it will, in all likelihood, still be a madhouse when Apple starts selling iPhones later tonight.

Hence this guide. We’re going to walk you through the best ways to make absolutely sure you get your iPhone 5 preordered right at the stroke of midnight and in your hands next Friday when it officially launches in the minimum amount of time, so you can go right back to sleep.

Wondering which iPhone 5 to buy? Check out our guide to finding the iPhone 5 that is right for you here.

Apple’s victory in the courtroom over Samsung last month was met with cheers from Apple fans across the world, but one of the biggest Apple fans ever absolutely hated the ruling. In an interview with Bloomberg today, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak discussed Apple’s $1 billion legal victory and said that he doesn’t agree with it.

We’ve been waiting to hear official word from Apple about when pre-orders for the iPhone 5 will begin, so we can set our alarms for tomorrow morning. Even though Cupertino has been silent on the matter so far, both Sprint and Verizon have confirmed that they will start taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5 at 12:01AM PST.

Apple’s new EarPods have been in development for three years as Apple tried to create the best earphones that fit everyone’s ear. Not only are they supposed to fit everyone’s ear better, but they’re also engineered to have better sound performance than any earphones Apple’s ever made.

The first thing you notice when you see the new EarPods is that they have a very unique shape, along with three little holes poked in them. Why are those holes there? Well, it has everything to do with speaker diaphragm movement and an airtight seal created with your ear canal.

If hand people an iPhone 4S but tell them that it’s the amazing new iPhone 5, will the believe you? Apparently the answer is yes, and they’ll even wax poetic about how its screen is bigger,  has faster performance, and is lighter, even though it’s really not.

It’s the emperor’s iPhone 5 and people absolutely can’t wait to get their hands on it even though there’s nothing different or new about it.

Source: YouTube

I started streaming the iPhone 5 keynote from Apple’s website this morning, but soon switched it off when I realized it would have looked better on VHS. Thankfully, the entire thing can now be downloaded in high-definition from the iTunes Store — for free.

Apple quietly killed off a lot of things yesterday, including Ping, the old “watch-style” iPod nano, the iPhone 3Gs and more.

When we looked at Apple.com, though, we were surprised to notice that Apple seems to have decided with this generation to kill off the Bumper Case as well. They still sell the rubber-band-style case for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, but they have opted not to stretch it to fit the iPhone 5.

Turns out, though, there’s an excellent reason why Apple didn’t update the bumper case for the iPhone 5. It no longer needs it.

Apple’s clearly very proud of Siri, and so despite its shortcomings, it’s unlikely you’ll see it disappearing anytime soon. In fact, it’s more likely that you’ll be seeing Siri a lot more in future. It seems inevitable that the voice-controlled assistant will one day come to the Mac, and when it does, there’s a chance you’ll be able to control iTunes using only your voice.

At least that’s what Apple’s latest patent filing suggests.

Apple is reportedly gearing up to bring the first double-row Genius Bar to its new Garden State Plaza store in New Jersey. The Cupertino company is planning to move the store into a larger space in the mall, and it’s said that the Genius Bar will be one area that sees the benefits of the additional space. For customers, that means more Geniuses on-site to fix your troublesome iPhone.

One of the best aspects of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S design was that, if you wanted to personalize your iPhone, you had more options than just picking out a nifty case: by just undoing two screws at the bottom of the device, you could replace the entire back panel on your iPhone.

This opened up a lot of cool options for modding your iPhone. I, for example, replaced my iPhone 4S’s white glass back panel with a Don-Draper-esque slice of teak.

I loved my wood-backed iPhone so much that I emailed the mod kit’s maker, Monolith, asking them when a similar mod would be coming out for the iPhone 5. The disapponting response? Never. The iPhone 5’s design seemingly makes it impossible.

Apple’s iPhone 5 is almost everything we expected it to be. If you’ve been following the rumor mill in recent months, it’s probably safe to assume everything you saw at yesterday’s event regarding the iPhone, you already knew. But does that make the iPhone 5 any less incredible? With its 4-inch display, A6 processor, improved cameras, and LTE connectivity, could you label iPhone 5 “disappointing” because there are no surprises?

I don’t think I could, but I’d like to hear what you think. Leave your answer below.

Nikon’s hot new D600 is the smallest (and probably cheapest) full-frame DSLR around. Launched today, it goes on sale on Tuesday 18th September (next week) for a bargain-basement $2,100. And while it’s no replacement for the amazing D700, it’s the beginning of a trend that will see all crop-sensor SLRs replaced by full-framers in a few years.

OS X Mountain Lion added some new security features to an already fairly secure operating system (not perfect, we know!). One of these features is an alert you get when you use an app that wants to access your Contact information from the Contacts app on your Mac. When you see this, you’re able to allow or deny that app access to your contacts – this is there to help make things a bit more transparent, and hopefully more secure.

Once you’ve given that access, however, that app gets tracked as one that can always access your Contacts info. If you want to change that access, today’s tip will help.

Cricket has become the iPhone 5’s first prepaid carrier after announcing today that it will be stocking Apple’s latest smartphone in “select Cricket markets” from September 28. That’s a week after the device launches on AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, but it’ll be worth the wait if you’re determined to avoid a lengthy contract.

As expected, the 8GB iPhone 4 replaced the iPhone 3GS as the most affordable iPhone following the announcement of the iPhone 5 yesterday. So what’s going to happen to the iPhone 3GS now? Well, as you may have guessed, it’s going to be killed off. Apple has reportedly confirmed that when existing stock runs out, the its third-generation smartphone will be no more.

Following the unveiling of the iPhone 5 and a new family of iPods on Wednesday, Apple has begun selling a new Lightning to Micro USB adapter for customers in Europe. As its name suggests, the adaptor allows users to charge and sync their new iOS device using a Micro USB cable — in compliance with the rules laid out by European Commission.

Apple’s hardware product lines might be clean and sparse to the point of obsession, but behind the scenes it’s another story. Take iOS 6, for example. While yesterday’s Apple keynote showed off plenty of new features, many of them are location dependent. And I’m not talking about maps here – many features are switched off outside of the U.S, and just which one’s you can use depends on the country you’re in.

Back when Apple showed off the first iOS 6 beta, there were a paltry 11 cities featured in the spectacular 3-D Flyoverfeature.

I figured a week or two back that the new maps app wouldn’t launch with such a crappy line up, and I was right. With the Gold Master (GM) version of iOS 6 released to developers yesterday, maps just got a whole lot more 3-D cities.

One of the more forgotten parts of today’s iPhone 5 keynote was the awesome iPod commercial Apple debuted, featuring the new little devices bouncing all over the place. While the iPod is certainly no longer Apple’s flagship product line, this commercial was still top-notch. If you look closely, there’s some really nice touches. My favorite part is when two iPod shuffles combine to make a new, taller nano. Pretty clever. Check out the ad after the break.

If you’re debating on which carrier to go with when you pre-order the iPhone 5 on Friday, then maybe this news will help you make a decision. Verizon has gone on the record to say that it won’t charge extra or have any specific requirements for using FaceTime over Cellular in iOS 6, while AT&T will.

Verizon will let you use FaceTime over Cellular on your current plan (including grandfathered unlimited data), but AT&T requires that you sign up for one of its new Mobile Share plans.

Apple didn’t release any side-by-side comparisons of the iPhone 5’s image quality next to the iPhone 4S, and we won’t see direct comparisons until reviews hit the web closer to the iPhone 5 launch date. However, Scott Everett noticed that Apple used a picture of Big Sur in their iPhone 5 photos gallery that was nearly identical to one he took recently with his iPhone 4S, giving us our first direct comparison of image quality.

It was only a matter of time before Ping, Apple’s failed iTunes music discovery tool, was sent to its grave. Following the released of iTunes 10.7 earlier today, Apple has revealed that Ping will be officially discontinued on September 30th.

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Ping has gained little to no traction since its release back in 2010. Apple’s webpage for Ping has also disappeared, indicating that the Cupertino company is ready to move on.

Apple has just posted a video of the jam-packed iPhone 5 press event from this morning, where Tim Cook not only announced the next iPhone, but a new iPod touch, nano, and a boatload of other software updates and accessories. It’s available now for streaming on Apple’s website. The keynote is usually made available both on iTunes as well as on YouTube within a few hours after the event, so we’ll update the post when it goes live there as well. Go watch it!

Source: Apple