iPhone 5 To Revert Back To Aluminum Back And Internal Antenna?

By Graham Spencer

A Chinese source has told Economic Daily News (translated by Macotakara) that Apple is abandoning the glass backing of the iPhone 4 in favor of an aluminum casing as well as ditching the external antenna design. According to the source the;

Decision to design similar to iPod touch instead of using glass is supposed that Apple seems to stop problems which are told widely damages from scratching, difficulties of painting white and weight of glass.

The source also reported that Apple is abandoning the current external antenna design that was plagued with controversy over the “death-grip” signal loss and attenuation issue. Although unclear, it seems that the translation implies that the “antenna will be designed to penetrate cellular and Wi-Fi waves via resin made Apple logo” which Apple actually does have a patent for.

Finally the source noted that Apple will include the new A5 processor in the fifth iteration of the iPhone, the same processor in the new iPad 2. As with all Apple rumors, including those regarding the iPhone 5, take them with a grain of salt. In particular when the source has a shaky record in previously predicting a 7-inch iPad by Christmas 2010.

[Via MacRumors]

Top-Notch GTD App Voodo for iPad Gets Reviewed, Plus A Giveaway!

By Graham Spencer

If you are looking for a GTD app that works on the iPhone and iPad you have many, many excellent options that include Things, Due, OmniFocus and a multitude of others. Well now you can add Voodo to that extensive list of compelling GTD apps. Voodo had previously been available as an iPhone app but earlier this week it made it to the iPad as well and I was able to give it a go whilst it was being approved last month.

Jump the break for a review of Voodo for iPad and win one of five copies of the iPhone companion app!

Apple Negotiating With Record Companies Over Cloud Service?

By Graham Spencer

According to sources who talked to Bloomberg, Apple is negotiating with the key record companies of Universal, Sony, EMI and Warner for an improved iTunes service that would simplify access to music that users have purchased. The service would allegedly allow consumers to retrieve a backup of all their music perhaps if their originals were lost.

According to Bloomberg’s three sources, an agreement could be announced midyear which could have the potential of bringing consumers “closer to universal access to content centrally stored on the Internet.” The record companies are supposedly concerned of the gaining popularity of Internet services such as Pandora, which allow users to stream songs rather than purchase them and want to offer users who purchase music a similar convenience.

Mac App Store Adds NetNewsWire Lite To Its Catalogue Of Apps

By Graham Spencer

NetNewsWire, one of the best Mac RSS readers has reached version 4.0 and before a full version is completed, a new ‘lite’ edition has been released on to the Mac App Store. Whilst it is limited in a number of respects, it has an improved and refined UI, is free and remains of the better RSS readers on the Mac.

The biggest limitation is that it doesn’t support syncing, that’ll be a big bummer for many of you, but it’s developer Brent Simmons says that will be coming soon in the full edition of NetNewsWire. The other limitations are the lack of starred items, AppleScript support and searching amongst other more minor ones. Simmons does provide users some comfort in saying “That it supports gestures. That you can edit feed names inline. That it launches and quits very fast.

Mobile Payment Service Square Hits Milestone And Is Featured By Apple

By Graham Spencer

Yesterday was a pretty big day for Square, with the mobile payments startup managing to reach the milestone of processing more than $1 million in payments per day. It was also featured in Apple’s 2010: Year of the iPad video that was played at its iPad 2 event yesterday (you can stream or download the keynote if you missed it, Square is featured 11 minutes in).

The startup has processed a steady increase in payment transactions since last fall when the figure was a couple of million dollars per week. In January, Kevin Rabois, the chief operating officer of Square, said that they expected to process $40 million in transactions in Q1 2011. Also compared to last fall the company is also adding 100,000 new merchants per month as opposed to 30,000.

IMCapture For FaceTime Lets You Record Those Precious FaceTime Calls

By Graham Spencer

For those who have ever wanted to record FaceTime calls you may want to consider purchasing IMCapture for FaceTime, a new app that has the ability to record your precious FaceTime calls. The developer has previously released an IMCapture for Skype and IMCapture for Yahoo Messenger which, as the names suggest allowed you to record calls in those alternative VoIP services.

The app comes with a variety of recording and output options, amongst the options include the ability to record just the audio choose which user (or both) to record and the video can be outputted to several QuickTime-supported formats including MOV, MPEG-4, FLV and SWF. The app runs on the Mac so you will have to be either calling or receiving the call through the Mac FaceTime client to record it. The one other negative is the price of the app, coming in at a very steep $50 - likely aimed at professionals rather than the average consumer who might record a couple of calls.

[Via MacNN]

Evernote’s iPhone App Updated With Extensive Redesign

By Graham Spencer

Evernote, the popular note taking service has just updated its iPhone and iPod Touch app with a completely redesigned user interface. Everything aspect of the the app has been reconsidered and improved for this 4.0 update to improve functionality, speed and utility.

One of the key improvements has been the addition of a snippet view when browsing through notes. It does a great job at providing as much information as possible into a compact space so that many notes can be skimmed over at once. As the Evernote team says;

If the note only contains an image, then we’ll take a slice out of the image and present it full width. If the note has a mix of text and other forms of content, then we’ll show you the title, some text and a thumbnail.

The other fundamental redesign is present in the new note screen which is presented in a split-screen view, the top half being text entry and the bottom half for additional information or the keyboard. You can attach images, a voice recording (up to 90 minutes long!), a location, tags and assign a notebook for the note.

Opera Debuts On The Mac App Store

By Graham Spencer

A new release to the Mac App Store today is the Opera web browser that can be downloaded for free. The app seems to be exactly the same as the non Mac App Store version and identifies itself as version 11.01 and build 1206.

The app also includes its Presto layout engine, which would have been thought to be an infringement on Apple’s Mac App Store guidelines that state, “Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected.” This raises the distinct possibility that browser engines may not fall under the private API category, in which case other browsers could soon be heading to the Mac App Store including Firefox that uses another layout engine called Gecko. Alternatively it is possible that an Apple reviewer has let Opera slip through without realizing, which has happened before with app reviews.

When bringing the Opera browser to the iPhone and iPad, they had run into similar guideline restrictions and were forced to only release Opera Mini that does not use their own browser engine but instead directs traffic through Opera’s servers to compress data. The more fully featured Opera Mobile which is available for Android and other mobile phones could not be released on the iPhone because of its reliance on their own APIs .

Steve Jobs Almost Received An Honourary Knighthood

By Graham Spencer

A former British MP has revealed to The Telegraph that Steve Jobs was close to being offered a knighthood in 2009 for his services to technology. According to the former MP, the proposal for his knighthood was blocked because Jobs had previously refused to speak at a British political event.

The former senior British MP told The Telegraph that he had nominated Steve Jobs for knighthood and that despite reaching the final stages of approval, was inevitably refused by Downing Street. He claims that they explained the refusal was based on Jobs’ refusal to attend an annual Labor conference, just his appearance at the event would have been a big political win for Gordon Brown.