For over a year now, YouTube’s HTML5 web interface has made the official YouTube iOS app seem slow and ungainly. Now it’s one upped f its slow, stupid brother once again by making watching videos on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad even sleeker and easier on the eyes.

Here’s how to access the new design. Just visit https://m.youtube.com/new_visual_design on your iOS device and select “Try The New Visual Design!” Once the app reloads, you’ll be good to go.

I honestly don’t even know why Apple bothers to ship iOS with a YouTube.app installed anymore. The web app is superior to the native app in practically every way.

[via MacStories]

Apple may unveil early next month an inexpensive iPhone that could “drastically expand” the tech giant’s smartphone market – along with providing a huge 50 percent margin. The iPhone 4s, described as an iPod touch with a cellular antenna, could sell for $300, yet cost just $150 to build, claims one Wall Street analyst Monday.

Did you already undergo the rather tortuous process of getting your entire iTunes library mirrored onto Apple’s iTunes Match servers? Well, bum luck, champ, because Apple just reset all its iCloud Libraries a mere 15 minutes ago. You’ll have to start all over again.

The good news, though, is that it might mean Apple will release the iOS 5 Gold Master as early as today.

If you’re looking forward to Motorola’s second-generation Xoom tablet, then feast your eyes on these leaked images that show the device in all its glory.

Amazon’s upcoming Kindle tablet may have cracked one of the toughest nuts facing companies hoping to compete with Apple’s lean, mean iPad supply machine: cost. The Internet retailer may rely heavily on the cloud to store ebooks, as well as stream music and video, weekend reports suggest.

Samsung could wait even longer to begin sales of its Galaxy Tab in Australia. A Federal Court judge hinted she may okay a “brief” injunction while she studies Apple’s patent-infringement claims. The suggestion came during the start of a two-day court hearing on whether sales by the Korean tablet manufacturer should be halted in Australia.

Apple is reportedly planning to introduce curved glass displays to its iOS devices as early as next year, according to a new report. The Cupertino company has reportedly invested in glass polishing hardware for its suppliers that will allow them to produce launch the first curved glass device in the first half of 2012.

In a move that even took analysts by surprise, Apple has recently slashed iPad orders by 25 percent for the fiscal fourth quarter. The cuts, which surfaced over the past two weeks, could indicate renewed urgency for the iPad 3 or a plot to corner tablet suppliers. Or it could mean that even Apple’s not immune to an economic downturn.

We’re all dying to know what we can expect from Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone. For months we’ve been speculating on what it will look like, what kind of features it will boast, and when it will be available. However, a new report could tell you all almost everything you ever wanted to know about Apple’s new iPhone — including its new internals, and an iOS feature that will debut on the fifth-generation device.

We’ve got a special one for you, folks. My dear friend and colleague Bill Scott found a delightful treasure while riffling through his archive a few weeks ago: the original brochure for the Lisa, Apple’s very first graphical user interface computer with a mouse. Bill worked at Hovey-Kelley Design when the firm created the first mouse (his beautiful sketches can be seen at the New Yorker).

Dating from early 1983, the brochure is a fascinating window into how Apple was thinking about the future of computers almost 30 years ago. It has hilariously florid discussions of how revolutionary the mouse is (“The mouse and the natural movement of your own hand. They’re all you need to control Lisa.”), overly obvious explanations (“The keyboard is just for typing.”), and the occasional fashion anachronism (see the vest and lavender bow above). Though it would be a few years yet until Apple became an industrial design powerhouse, it’s interesting to note how advanced the company’s graphic design already was — at least by the standards of the pre-Mac, dots-and-teal squiggles era.

It’s an enormous document, so I’ve uploaded it to Scribd, where you can read it online or download it for offline reading. Definitely worth your while if you bleed brushed aluminum.

San Francisco Police have requested surveillance footage from the bar in which an fifth-generation iPhone prototype was reportedly lost by an Apple employee back in July. The footage won’t be used in the iPhone investigation, however, but rather an internal probe into how the police assisted Apple’s search for the device.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCfn8tDqa9U

Brightness Icons is a tweak for jailbroken iOS devices that makes it easier than ever to adjust the brightness on your device. No longer do you have to navigate your way around the Settings app to dim your display — simply do it right from your home screen.

We’re already expecting this year’s iPhone event to be a little different to those that we’re familiar with. Not only will it take place in October, rather than June, but Tim Cook will take Steve Jobs’ place on stage, and the event won’t take place at the Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Instead, it will be held on Apple’s campus in Cupertino.

Although it’s by no means immediately obvious, Mac OS X includes a handy tool built right into Safari that enables you to capture streaming video from most websites.  In this video I’ll show you how it’s done.

Seems like a formula for success: Take a fine, Napa leather iPad 2 case (like Sena’s Folio for iPad 2), add a compact Bluetooth keyboard and an executive touch or two, and the result is the  Sena Keyboard Folio for iPad 2 ($150) — an executive-grade miniature office.

We had high expectations for the Keyboard Folio. Sena just upgraded the keyboard, ditching an error-prone, rubber keyboard for a hard-shell Hippih Expression keyboard — and we were the first publication to receive one for review.

Yes WordPress, you’ve finally given the WP iOS app a bionic injection — an upgrade that’ll make it an order of magnitude more useful (certainly for bloggers like me, anyway). Finally, I have a whole row of commands to easily insert links, quote marks and the like. But why did it take so long?

Domenico Panacea – you may remember him from the LED Apple logo t-shirt –  shot a nice video of the opening of the first Apple store to disembark on the isle of Sicily in Italy at the foot of Mount Etna, the Apple Store Centro Sicilia.

I love iPad 2 accessories that follow the guiding principles of the gadget they were built for. I mean, c’mon — d’you really want to lug around a case the size of a large waffle skillet just to have some keys to type on? Of course not.

The Logitech Keyboard Case by ZAGG for iPad 2 ($100) follows those principles to the letter: It’s light, super-functional and ultra-portable, just like the gadget it was made for.

In a single week, Facebook has become not just a competitor to Apple, but the Mother of All Apple Competitors.

Facebook this week announced a series of initiatives and partnerships that the New York Times says makes Facebook a “primary entertainment hub.”

Facebook’s 800 million users will be able to play and share music from Spotify, MOG, Rdio, Rhapsody, Turntable.fm, VEVO, Slacker, Songza, TuneIn, iheartradio, Deezer, Earbits, Jelli, mixcloud and other services, right from their profiles and News Feeds.

Facebook will enable the discovery, sharing, buying and renting of movies and TV shows via Netflix, Hulu, Blockbuster, IMDB, Dailymotion and Flixter.

And just as the iPad is gaining traction as the electronic newspaper of choice, Facebook announces partnerships with the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Slate, the Associated Press, Reuters, Yahoo News and others to make Facebook the default online newspaper site.

Facebook is now more directly threatening to Apple’s business model than Microsoft, Google and Sony combined. 

More than 300 people camped overnight for the grand opening of Apple’s first store in Hong Kong. Some camped out for two days to be among the first inside the new flagship store.

Here’s what the store looks like, plus a video report of the grand opening:

Apple is resetting the iTunes Match beta on Monday at  9am, according to an email sent to developers late on Friday night. Developers’ music libraries will be erased and the match process will have to begin again.

The email says:

I am a rummager, capable of picking patiently through a pile of rusty casters to mine four matching couch legs. (Those too-tall ones that came with the couch are irksomely out of proportion. A quest is in order!)

But I love the idea of Yardsale app – which takes advantage of the iPhone’s GPS to find the crap you covet (need!) near you – cutting down on the legwork.

Note: Although this iCapsule only fits the original iPad, we thought we’d include it anyway; why should iPad 2 users have all the fun?

The Rocketfish iCapsule Keyboard ($49) is a big bulky blob of a hardshell case. But it’s probably the best case on the market for turning your iPad into a laptop.

The latest version of my favorite Bittorrent client uTorrent has a pretty cool new feature: iOS support. And while that doesn’t mean uTorrent’s coming to the App Store, it does mean you have a new and easy way to sync torrented content with your iPhone or iPad.

A couple days ago, it leaked that reputable case manufacturer Otterbox had already made up to three million cases for the iPhone 4S. That number always seemed a little far fetched, but the pictures themselves didn’t like: Otterbox was banking on the next iPhone to be a relatively small update over the iPhone 4.

Today, Otterbox is in the news again, though, with a banner ad showing up on their official website implying we’ll see both the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S next month. But what might seem like a knowing insider’s wink is, in actuality, something very different: a tease.