Yet another picture of the front panel destined for Apple’s next-generation iPhone has surfaced online via Chinese technology blog MyDrivers. Like the others we’ve seen, this one reportedly sports a 4-inch display, along with in-cell touch technology that makes the panel thinner than its predecessors. However, the panel in this image looks no different to an iPhone 4S panel to me.

An issue with Apple’s App Store and Mac App Store is causing newly-updated Mac and iOS apps to become nonfunctional. Users are reporting that after updating certain apps, they no longer load, but simply crash at the startup screen. It is advised that users avoid updating any of their software until the issue is fixed.

Apple and Samsung already narrowed the field of their California-based lawsuits against each other back in May of this year, pending a July 30 trial. Late yesterday, however, both parties filed a joint statement about narrowing the complaint field further in response to Judge Lucy Koh’s request they do so.

This makes perfect sense, especially when she already restricted their court time back in June. As Florian Mueller (FOSSPatents) points out, each of the large number of intellectual property (IP) arguments is already fairly complex. Trying to argue a ton of them at once would be unmanageable.

Here’s an easy one. At some point or another we all need to take a screenshot. It’s just inevitable. Error message, funny photo, epic DM fail, something…we need to do it. Heck I do it on a near daily basis. Now, do you really think any self-respecting Mac user would just use the default screenshot tools built into OS X?

Nope. We all use something a step up better. Now it’s your turn with today’s freebie!—Free Onde Screen Capture App for Mac – Cult of Mac Deals. Get it while it lasts!

Following the start of EA’s iOS sale yesterday, which has seen popular titles like FIFA 12, Dead Space, and Need for Speed reduced to just $0.99, other iOS developers are now throwing their hats into the ring. We got a list of titles from Sega, Capcom, Warner Bros. and more that are now on sale for July 4. Come and get ’em while they’re cheap.

Following yesterday’s report from Bloomberg that revealed Apple plans to release the long-awaited iPad mini this September, a new report from The Wall Street Journal has this morning added even further credence to those claims.

According to “people familiar with the matter,” Apple’s suppliers are preparing for mass production of a new iPad with a display smaller than 8 inches, which is expected to begin in September.

A U.K. judge has ruled in favor of HTC over claims that the Taiwanese smartphone vendor infringes four of Apple’s patents for touchscreen technology, including its famous slide-to-unlock feature. Judge Christopher Floyd decided that HTC’s smartphones are not guilty of infringement, and that three of Apple’s four patents are invalid.

Back in May, shortly after Research in Motion’s BlackBerry 10 unveiling, iOS developer Mario Hros announced that he was working on bringing the operating system’s nifty predictive keyboard to our iOS devices with a tweak called Octopus Keyboard. It’s a little over a month late, but Octopus Keyboard is now available to download from Cydia.

Just five days after submitting its complain to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Apple has been granted ownership of the iPad3.com domain name. The address was reportedly transferred to Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, a legal firm that has represented Apple in the past, within the last 24 hours.

After all the back and forth-ing going on between Apple, Samsung, Google, and the US District Court lately, it’s hardly a surprise that the Nexus phone has undergone some changes on the Google Play website’s “Devices” sales page.

The target of Apple’s successful request to ban US sales of was taken down earlier this evening from the Play site, as reported on 9 to 5 Mac, and is currently back, but only as a “Coming Soon” item.

Adding more fuel to the ‘iPad Mini’ fire, a new report from Bloomberg says that Apple is planning to launch a cheaper 7-inch iPad in October. The device will feature a non-Retina 1024×768 display. In theory, the third-gen iPad would still serve as Apple’s premium tablet with a Retina display and faster internals, and the 7-inch iPad would be priced around $200 to compete with tablets like the Kindle Fire and Google Nexus 7.

Author Malcolm Gladwell made some waves when he said that history would remember Microsoft’s Bill Gates more fondly than it would Steve Jobs. The remark was founded on Gates’ philanthropic bent of late, and was meant to praise Gates more than villify Jobs.

Yesterday, talk-show host Charlie Rose posted an interview with Bill Gates. The interview is an hour long, and touches on a lot of issues, including technology, as we would suppose. When Rose brought up the comments of Gladwell, though, Gates showed more class than most.

Apple won a preliminary injunction against US sales of the Galaxy Nexus phone last week. Today, Samsung was denied a stay on the ban by Judge Lucy Koh, the main judge in the current case brought to court against Samsung’s smartphone as well as its Galaxy Tab.

It may not matter as much, however, as Google and Samsung have readied a patch to address the specific grievance, according to a post on The Verge.

“The Mac is still growing, and I think it could still grow, but I strongly believe that the tablet market will surpass the unit sales of the PC market.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook said that at a Goldman Sachs conference several months ago. Cook has been one the industry’s most vocal proponent of tablets as the future of modern computing, and recent statistics support his argument. According to new data, traditional notebook computers will take a backseat to tablets in four years. By 2016, tablet shipments are estimated to surpass notebook shipments.

There’s no question that the iPad is incredibly popular and revolutionary. As the device continues to become part of our daily lives, we’re beginning to see the iPad take hold in schools, workplaces, and our homes. What’s the most common task performed on an iPad(or other tablet)?

According to research firm Gartner, the most frequent task is checking email.

In a new report, Gartner used survey data from consumers in the U.S., U.K. and Australia that was recorded in a diary-style format at the end of last year. Email was the most common task performed on a tablet but a more interesting observation from Gartner is that people are largely using tablets as a way to replace tasks that previously involved printed and paper in one form or another.

The report stopped well short of saying we’re going to become a paperless society in the near future, but it did identify some interesting trends.

You may occasionally wonder why Apple allows so much crap into the App Store. Despite there being thousands of excellent apps, hundreds of thousands of apps in the App Store’s 600,000+ catalog are worthless pieces or junk and/or knockoffs. Apps often slip into the store that should have never been allowed in the first place, and Apple has to pull the offending app after everyone else takes notice.

Apple employs a small group of people to approve each app that is submitted to the App Store. Mike Lee, a former senior engineer at Apple, has shed some light on what life is like for the people who guard the gateway to the largest and most vibrant app ecosystem in existence.

Apple has traditionally been opposed to putting a touchscreen on any of its products, leaving touch capabilities to only iOS powered devices. This hasn’t stopped the third party market though, as you can now buy an accessory that supposedly turns your iMac into a full, touch enabled computer.

SeedCode has announced a new and very impressive template/add-on for FileMaker Pro 12 and FileMaker Go that let’s FileMaker developers build real-time instant message style chats into FileMaker database systems. The new template, dubbed FMChat is built entirely using FileMaker 12, which means that no additional backend system is needed to use it.

FMChat is particularly impressive in that it allows chat participants to interact with each other and with database content. It’s even designed with automation in mind. Chat sessions can be used to trigger scripts and automated actions. Potential actions appear as links in the chat transcript. The template can be used in a number of different ways but some examples include approving purchase orders, accepting event invitations, and closing help desk cases.

The brand-spanking new Google Nexus 7 is arguably the biggest non-Apple tablet announcement since Amazon debuted the Kindle Fire. With a starting price of $200, the Nexus 7 isn’t really intended to be an iPad killer, although Google wouldn’t mind cutting out a piece of Apple’s pie.

The guys at iFixit recently tore down the Google Nexus 7, and their findings revealed that a one millimeter difference in thickness makes Google’s tablet infinitely more repairable than Apple’s iPad.

IT industry group CompTIA has announced the agenda for its upcoming Breakaway Conference that runs from July 30 though August 2 in Las Vegas. CompTIA will be offering a two-day/three-session training on mobile devices in the business and enterprise environments during the event.

The training, which CompTIA refers to as CompTIA Executive Certificate in Mobility (Foundations) Course 1, 2, and 3, will focus on three distinct areas – a session on the shift to a mobile workforce and the challenges that this poses for businesses, a session on locking down mobile devices using mobile management solutions, and a session on mobile app development.

Over the years, Apple has increasingly put more and more moisture sensors inside their laptops: little stickers that tell Apple Geniuses when a device has been exposed to liquid, useful for denying you warranty coverage for the iPhone you dropped in the toilet, or the MacBook you spilled a beer on top of.

No surprise, then, that the Retina MacBook Pro has moisture sensors inside the chassis, but what is more surprising is how many it has: ten in total, two more than the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

I suppose it makes sense: the Retina MacBook Pro is an expensive piece of kit, and Apple doesn’t want to have to replace any more than they need to. You may want to watch out for your drool hitting the keyboard when you first check out that Retina display, though: Apple’s not going to fix that.

Source: Hardmac

With GarageBand for the iPad, Apple has brought an inexpensive, very powerful music recording studio right to your favorite mobile device. This fantastic $5 app lets anyone with an iPad create, record and enjoy making music, even if they have little experience with recording software or musical instruments.

With a killer beat in place, it’s time to add the second (mostly unsung) hero of modern music: the bass. Whether your tastes run to big, fat and bottom-heavy or quick, snappy and distorted, GarageBand has you covered. With GarageBand for iPad, you can create bass tracks that sound incredibly good with very little knowledge or expertise.

Let’s take a look at the simplest way to do that: Smart Bass.

All great photographers know how to light well. And step one of good lighting is getting your flash off the top of your DLSR, where it sits and spews gross rays onto every one of your unfortunate victims, and onto a light stand where it belongs.

But how does one make a flash work when it’s not on the camera? The Phottix Odin Flash Trigger for Canon ($350) is up to the task, but that’s a major understatement. The Odin isn’t just another flash trigger system — it’s a Cadillac of features at a Honda price.

You iPhone’s headphone jack is just fine for listening to your MP3s with the crappy Apple-supplied earbuds, but what if you want something a little, shall we say, less terrible? You could of course spring for a high-end headphone amp with its own DAC (Digital Analog Converter), and pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege. Or you could dig $11 out from under the couch cushions and buy CableJive’s LineOut Pro.

I’m betting your address book is a royal mess. It doesn’t take long for it to happen, really. Sync in gmail contacts, then iCloud, then that CSV of leads from your CRM… You get the idea and you feel the pain, so let’s take some of the pain out of it.

Today’s deal is WriteThatName and for $20 (half off) you get a year’s subscription of intelligent, automagic address book management. Thought that might grab you, read on…