Although much of the tech news bandwidth has been consumed with chatter about the Apple iPhone 5, Samsung has shipped 10 million Android-powered Galaxy S IIs smartphones — before touching foot on U.S. soil. Many expect the Samsung v. Apple battle to be the cage fight of cellular titans.
AllThingsD says that Apple will announced the next iPhone on October 4th, next Thursday, at a small venue at its own Cupertino HQ. Since All Things D’s “source” is almost definitely Apple itself, that date and venue seems pretty solid.
It’s about the only report about the next iPhone that feels solid. What else do we know for sure about the next iPhone? Pretty much bupkis for sure. Apple has gone to unprecedented and incredible lengths to keep the exact details of the next iPhone secret. It’s the first time Apple journalists have truly felt left in the dark for a long time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of the things Apple really gets right is the streamlined names. Other companies add a bunch of confusing prefixes and suffixes to each incremental product change, but with Apple a MacBook Pro is simply called a MacBook Pro, and not a MacBook Pro 15XRCT. It cuts down on the confusion for some of us simpletons.
So if that’s the case, you might be wondering: what the heck is all this talk of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5? Are they the same device? If not, how are they different from each other? What does it all mean?
Well, it’s not as confusing as you think. Here’s the scoop on what all this talk about the iPhone 5 and iPhone 4S is really about.
So after months of hype, it looks like Amazon’s finally ready to unveil its 7-inch, $250 Kindle tablet, built upon a custom Android fork and leveraging all of Amazon’s media stores, including the Amazon Appstore, Amazon On Demand, Amazon Kindle and Amazon MP3.
It won’t be official until it launches, but we’ve been hearing rumors of the device for a while now, and have been told Amazon expects to sell 2M of the devices by the end of the year. Now they are sending out invites to an uncharacteristic press conferenmce scheduled for September 28th at 10:00AM.
Can’t wait to see if this is a viable iPad competitor, or just another crap tablet. I have to say, I’m intrigued. If Amazon can do a better job of an entry-level Android tablet than the Nook Color, they might really have something here.
[via This Is My Next]
Here’s an interesting little detail from the latest version of Xcode: it supports Marvell’s quad-core, ARM compliant Armada XP processor. Could Apple be preparing to ditch its own A-Series of systems-on-chip and go instead with Marvell for future iPhones and iPads?
It’s the first day of fall in the U.S. and already the forecast is turning gloomy on whether the current batch of Android tablets can overcome Apple’s lead. Amazon, perhaps with the best chance to rival the iPad, may have already stumbled by putting up a 7-inch device against Apple’s larger alternative, industry experts warned Friday.
The option to purchase additional content within iOS applications seems to have been plagued by an error for at least 10 hours now, with in-app purchases “failing in a big way,” according to one report. iOS developers who rely on the income they receive from in-app purchases are beginning to lose their patience with Apple.
Despite recent rumors that suggest there will not be an iPhone 5 this October — just the iPhone 4S instead — DigiTimes reports that there are issues currently affecting the supply of iPhone 5 touch panels, which will plague the initial shipments of the device.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has revealed that both Apple and Dropbox have joined the Digital Due Process coalition — a group whose mission is to pressure Congress into updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.
Adonit’s humble origins as a Kickstarter project hasn’t stopped the outfit from taking the iPad-accessory world by storm. Adonit’s Jot styli were radical standouts in our stylus shootout a few weeks back, and their version of an iPad 2 keyboard case, the Adonit Writer for iPad 2 ($100), sparked similar “whoa”s as I marveled at its design.
We’re back with another round of Cult of Mac readers and their Apple gadgets. We had some great submissions for round one, and round two has proven to be just as great.
Android smartphones will quickly dominate as home media hubs, beating out Apple’s AirPlay, one market research firm predicts.
For months, we’ve been talking about the possibility of two iPhones: a speed bump upgrade called the iPhone 4S that may end up also being Apple’s low-cost, prepaid option, and the iPhone 5, the radically redesigned next gen device.
Over the last month or so, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the iPhone 5 is going to show up next month. There’s no evidence for the device in the supply chain, while there’s tons of evidence that the iPhone 4S is coming.
The image above of a new Otterbox case for the iPhone 4S might be the nail in the iPhone 5’s coffin, though.
Facebook’s f8 conference got under way today, and speculation has begun that suggests the social networking behemoth is going to announce its very own music service, which Jonny Evans at Computerworld believes “may give iTunes hegemony its biggest shake yet.” But I’m inclined to disagree.
The next time you visit the corner coffee shop, you may see iPads rather than cash registers. The trend is happening across the country. One Michigan retailer, Mighty Good Coffee Roasting Co., has become an enthusiastic supporter of iPads in business. In fact, customers call the company a “coffee shop meets the Apple Store.”