Tim Cook made a public appearance at the Palo Alto Apple Store this morning for the launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c, and it looks like he may have finally taken to a Twitter account he created back in July to share about the experience in his first tweet ever.

At the end of last night’s iPhone 5s teardown, the iFixit team still wasn’t sure who made the chips inside the latest iOS device, or where the brand-new M7 was, even. There was a lot of speculation as to who made the A7, Apple’s new, faster powerhouse of a main processing unit, as well.

That’s ancient history, now, as reverse-engineering and security firm, Chipworks, de-capped the various chips on the iPhone 5s logic board to find out precisely what’s what.

SAN FRANCISCO — The gold iPhone 5s is rarer than, well, gold. If you wanted to snag a gold-colored iPhone 5s this morning, you had to start lining up outside the Apple Store at 7:30 p.m. the night before. Apple had only 20 or so at the flagship Apple Store, which was a lot compared to most outlets.

At about 5 a.m. this morning, Apple staffers handed out tickets to everyone in line reserving them an iPhone. But there were only 20 tickets for gold iPhones, people in line estimated, and they were snapped up instantly by those at the front.

By the time I arrived to the Apple Flagship store on Stockton Street at 6:30 a.m. this morning, all the gold iPhones were gone. The line was already two blocks long though but I wasn’t worried because Cult of Mac.com had someone from Task Rabbit holding a spot.

There was only one problem: I couldn’t find her.

This article first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

Apple devices are on the most wanted list for thieves who snatch smartphones and tablets out of the hands of distracted commuters in big cities.

This type of theft is so easy and generally without consequence that it’s become known as “Apple picking.” The Cupertino company has been on the forefront of trying to curb these crimes, dating back to the Find My iPhone app in 2010 and the new Touch ID fingerprint sensor for the iPhone 5s.  Apple has also added a new i0S 7 feature called Activation Lock, which many are dubbing the “kill switch.”

“As a consumer, I love the idea of a kill switch for the device that I, as the owner, can invoke, but giving that type of power to my carrier is another thing.”

In doing so, Apple has responded to further pressure from authorities who are inundated with cases involving iPhone and iPad crime. (See our investigation into lost and stolen iPhones on Craigslist for more.) But prosecutors in New York and San Francisco, where about half of all crimes involve smartphones, were initially lukewarm on the feature but say they are now optimistic after seeing it in action.

The industry insiders Cult of Mac sounded out, not so much.

“To really make this work, the ‘kill switch’ would need to be wired to carrier networks, so that as soon as the device’s IMEI shows up on the network, the device is disabled by the carrier,” said Tom Kemp, CEO of Centrify, a company that provides unified identity services across data center, cloud and mobile for businesses. “As a consumer, I love the idea of a kill switch for the device that I, as the owner, can invoke, but giving that type of power to my carrier is another thing.”

As smartphone use grows — nearly half of Americans own one — so has iCrime. According to recent comScore data, Apple owns almost 40 percent of the smartphone market, more than its next closest competitors Samsung and HTC combined, with 23 percent and 8.7 percent, respectively. But part and parcel with Apple’s success and their distinctive design aesthetic is the fact that Apple products are an easy targets for a quick snatch-and-resell.

“How much would mugging decrease if your wallet was worth $0? Essentially, that’s what Apple is doing with its new kill switch feature – making your smartphone worthless, ideally. But, who is it really worthless for in the end?” said David Anderson, director of product for smartphone insurance company ProtectYourBubble. “Smartphone thieves often resell stolen devices on the secondary market…Unknowing consumers will purchase devices from sites like eBay and Amazon to cut costs but (will) end up receiving a ‘killed’ device in the mail.”

Companies that survive on tracing stolen gadgets are also not worried that the kill switch will sound the death knell for their businesses. “Unfortunately for consumers, Apple’s tracking and other anti-theft measures are also fairly easy to disable. People are going to continue to steal iPhones and hackers will find a way around the kill switch. It can be as simple as jailbreaking the phone,” said Ken Westin, founder of GadgetTrak. Most of GadgetTrak’s customers are tracing Apple devices — check out the live map — and use of the service has led to a few spectacular recoveries like this one from Kansas to Mexico.

Which brings up another point: whether Apple should be partnering with authorities rather than potentially enabling users to pursue their stolen iPhones

Maybe Apple should be partnering with authorities rather than enabling their customers to pursue their stolen iPhones.

Absolute Software, which says it has recovered 29,000 devices in 100 countries to date, recently launched a partnership with Samsung and says one with Apple is very possible. They work with police and discourage people from trying to get their gadgets back, rogue style.

“Deactivating a device with Activation Lock so that an unauthorized user is unable to use it or sell it can have a positive impact on deterring theft. However, the value of this capability is limited and could lead to encouragement of owners trying to recover devices from thieves themselves,” said Ward Clapham, vice president of recovery services at Absolute. “Self-recovery can be dangerous – even fatal. The best case scenario is for the user to rely on trained professionals to work with law enforcement to recover the device and pursue any criminal charges that may result.”

iPhone users who keep their smartphones mute in their pockets out of fear may find the new service makes it once again OK to stumble down a crowded sidewalk while checking email.

The iWatch might be a really popular theft target.

“With the kill switch, you will no longer feel unsafe using your iPhone on a city street. The kill switch makes the iPhone a much less desirable target for thieves — they’ll have to go back to nicking gold watches and fancy handbags,” says Dave Howell, founder and CEO of Avatron Software, which makes a number of productivity apps. “With this feature, Apple is responding to rising iPhone theft rates, but the company may also been preparing for the launch of the iWatch. The iWatch might be a really popular theft target. The kill switch is a neat, thoughtful feature but it won’t move the market-share needle.”

Howell, a former Apple software engineering manager whose team includes a number of veteran Mac programmers, says he doesn’t have any inside knowledge about the kill switch but that the service fits into Apple’s general ethos.

“I know Apple’s been working hard for some years to make iPhone as safe as possible…Apple has always garnered a reputation for designing for the benefit of users, even when it hurts sales. Certainly preventing theft will put a dent in replacement iPhone revenues.”

This article first appeared in Cult of Mac Magazine.

By now you’ve probably already seen this story floating around the internet, but in case you haven’t, here’s your assigned Apple reading for the day. Bloomberg Businessweek has an exclusive interview with Apple’s Tim Cook, Jony Ive, and Craig Federighi for its latest issue.

With the launch of two new iPhones, Apple’s top designer Jonathan Ive granted very rare back-to-back interviews with USA Today and Bloomberg Businessweek.

Having read everything he’s ever said in preparation for my book about him (due mid-November), I recognized the usual Jony Ive talking points; the striving for simplicity, the importance of caring, and so on.

But there are a couple of paragraphs in the USA Today that especially gave me a strong sense of Deja vu.

As seen in the iPhone 5s, Apple’s new A7 chip is the world’s first 64-bit ARM-based chip… but it’s not Apple’s first quad-core chip. Instead, the A7 is dual-core in a sea of Android competitors boasting 32-bit quad-core processors.

The wait is finally over. iOS 7 is now available to download, three months after it got its first unveiling at WWDC. You can download and install it either via iTunes on your Mac and PC, or by using the over-the-air Software Update feature baked into iOS 6.

It’s been over three months since iOS 7 got its first unveiling at WWDC, and in just a couple of hours, it will be made available to the public. It’ll be completely free to download — no matter which iOS device you’re using — and Apple’s confident it will quickly become the world’s most popular mobile operating system.

iOS 7 is the biggest change to iOS since the original iPhone, introducing a colorful new design for the first time, and bringing lots of new features — including Control Center, improved multitasking and Notification Center, iTunes Radio, and AirDrop.

So should you be rushing to download and install it on your iOS devices as soon as it becomes available, or can you wait until all the fuss has died down? Well, we’ll be bringing your our review in stages over the course of the coming days, but to help make your decision super simple, we’ve trawled through the biggest and best iOS 7 reviews out this week and put together a helpful roundup.

A new rear shell for the second-generation iPad mini has appared online, and yup, it comes in one of Apple’s new favored iDevice colors: space gray.