Rumor: iPhone 5 Won’t Feature “All-New Design”

As reported by AppleInsider, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo with Concord Securities issued a note to investors this morning including details of the next-generation iPhone, allegedly scheduled for a Fall 2011 launch with a possible announcement at Apple’s usual September media event. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, the iPhone 5 won’t feature an all-new design marking a departure from the current iPhone 4 industrial hardware design – rather, it will be a “slight modification” with the addition of the Apple A5 processor, and a Qualcomm baseband for CDMA and GSM models.

His checks with supply chain sources indicated that the next handset from Apple will not feature an all-new-design, but rather only “slight modifications” from the iPhone 4.

Specifically, Kuo has heard that the iPhone 5 will include the faster A5 processor already found in the iPad 2, as well as a higher resolution 8 megapixel rear camera. He has also been told that Apple will switch to a Qualcomm baseband for both GSM and CDMA models, along with an improved antenna design.

The analyst believes “trial production” of the new device will start in August, with massive production for retail distribution in September. Whilst Ming-Chi Kuo has a good track record when it comes to Apple rumors (he pinpointed the rumored white iPhone 4 release in April, and the fact that the iPad 2 would feature a 1024 x 768 display with iPod touch-like cameras), it is worth noting that several reports in the past weeks indicated the iPhone 5 wouldn’t ship until this Fall, or that Apple was considering an updated design with a metal back and a redesign antenna system. Among other rumors, NFC capabilities and a bigger screen to face competition from Android handsets which come with bigger displays than the iPhone’s.

Last, Ming-Chi Kuo claims the biggest selling point of the iPhone 5 will be the new operating system, iOS 5, Apple will unveil in the next months. iOS 5 is set to be previewed at the WWDC in June, and previous speculation suggested it would be a heavily cloud-based OS with new social, location and music features built on top of a “locker” for media Apple will include in a future (quite possibly free) version of MobileMe.

Droplist, The Dropbox-based Todo App, Gains Native iPad Interface

A few weeks ago I reviewed Droplist, a Dropbox-based “list creation app” that allowed you to quickly create todos and lists on the iPhone and have them available anywhere thanks to the Dropbox integration that turned these files into plain text documents. Droplist is an easy to use app that’s powered by a nice design, and it’s now available on the iPad as well thanks to the latest update that made the app universal for all iOS devices.

The iPad app retains the same functionalities we’ve seen on the iPhone: you can create lists on the desktop by following simple formatting rules, and save them to Dropbox to make them available in Droplist. If you prefer to turn an email or a message into a list with its own actions, Droplist allows you to paste items and see them becoming a list in a few seconds. The UI design is, of course, different as it takes advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen, but you’ll feel right home if you’ve used Droplist.

Droplist is available at $1.99 here, and it’s the easiest way to create lists on Dropbox.

Dropbox 1.4 Brings Tabs Back, Direct Uploads from Other Apps

A major update to the official Dropbox app for iOS was released night in the App Store, and it adds important new functionalities to the uploading aspect of the app. Originally released last May on the iPad (a  month after the iPad 1 went on sale), the app was often criticized because of its unintuitive navigation and limited upload features that didn’t allow users to interact with external applications or navigate between folders and starred items with ease. The latest update, version 1.4, aims at fixing these usability issues by bringing tabs back. Instead of having to tap on buttons in the top toolbar, Favorites, Uploads and Settings are accessible alongside the main Dropbox folder in a series of tabs at the bottom.

The most notable feature, however, is the complete revamp of uploads. Not only can Dropbox upload multiple photos and videos at once from your camera roll, it can also accept direct uploads from external apps thanks to the “Open In” menu. For example, you can select a document from apps like Mail and iFiles, send it to Dropbox, and have Dropbox automatically open the upload interface letting you pick a destination for the document you’re importing. It’s fast and works really well.

Dropbox 1.4 is available for free in the App Store. Read more

Rejoice, The Easter Update To Angry Birds Seasons Is Here!

Remember hearing about that “amazing” Easter update for the Angry Birds Seasons game? Well just a few hours ago that update for Angry Birds Seasons went live (for the iPad version too) with version 1.4.0 and its full of 15 new Easter-themed levels, and of course some more of those golden eggs!

The new Easter-themed levels (jump the break for screenshots and a video) look just like you would expect with the strong prominence of the Spring sun, chocolate eggs and of course Easter bunnies. Intriguingly the update also brings the ability to send some Angry Birds and Easter themed cards to others.

EASTER EGGS FOR ANGRY BIRDS!
Spring is upon us and the time is ripe for some chocolate eggs and easter bunnies! So shed the winter gear and get in – Easter Eggs have never been this delicious! If you think St. Patrick’s Day was a blast, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet! This episode will again prove that Angry Birds is the most generous update giver of them all!

New Features in version 1.4.0:

- 15 LEVELS FULL OF SPRING
- NEW THEME TO FIT THE MOOD
- GOLDEN EGGS A-PLENTY
- LISTEN TO THE TWITTER OF BIRDS TO GET MORE

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Access Recent Apps, Volumes, Servers and Documents From Your OS X Dock

Here’s an interesting tip about the OS X dock I absolutely didn’t know about, which was brought to our attention by OS X Daily. With a simple Terminal command, you can create a new “smart” stack item in your dock that will automatically collect your most recent applications, servers you’ve connected to, documents, volumes and Favorite items. The stack – which needs to be manually enabled – comes in handy if you’re looking for a quick way to re-open items you’ve recently launched – and especially for Servers and Volumes, this means the stack is collecting my most used items, not just the recent ones.

To enable the recents menu, type this in the Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

Then, to relaunch the Dock:

killall Dock

The new stack will automatically be placed in the rightmost section, next to the Trash. To remove it, simply drag it out of the Dock. I like this menu because it’s making me save lots of time that would have been spent into the Finder otherwise (the method above worked just fine for me on Snow Leopard 10.6.7). Check out more screenshots below.

Update: if the Terminal command throws you a syntax error, make sure to copy the plain text from OS X Daily.

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Apple Launches “Apple Support Communities” - Redesigned Discussions Website

Originally announced back in August 2010, Apple took down for maintenance discussions.apple.com – the official discussion board of the company where users could discuss in threads about various Apple products and applications – and replaced it with a brand new, redesigned version called Apple Support Communities. You can check it out now here.

ASC is basically a completely revamped version of Apple Discussions which is tailored towards making it easier to ask questions, receive feedback and answers from fellow iOS and Mac users, and browse threads by category, topic or relevance. As detailed in the tutorial and Etiquette sections, Apple Support Communities features a new design that should simplify the process of asking questions and replying with detailed information about a product. The compose window has been redesigned to have a cleaner look and more formatting options; your personal page can be customized with “widgets to bring you the content you’re interested in, from within or even outside the community”; you can receive email notifications for a specific community as well as subscribe to feeds. Top “participants” of a community (example: iPad community, or the “Using iPad” place – a term that indicates sub-sections) are featured in a new sidebar widget, and the overall design has been improved with a cleaner look, and more navigation options to see most helpful responses without reading an entire thread. You can play around with preferences for thread views and email notifications, upload an avatar and submit the products you own directly from your account’s page. Surprisingly enough, many UI elements of the new website are borrowed from the iPad with popover menus and overlays. You can also increase your “level” and collect “points” by being an active (and helpful) participant in the communities. From the “Your Stuff” tab, you can manage your bookmarks, check on discussions you’re involved with and see announcement posts. There’s indeed lots of stuff to do and tweak in this new website design. For instance, you can attach tags to your posts and “browse by tag” from the new Search page.

In an effort to better connect iOS and Mac users through discussions and answers, Apple Support Communities looks like a good first step towards a full-featured social backend that we hope will gain a native iOS app to quickly browse topics and submit posts in the future. In the meantime, you can visit ASC and create an account here. Read more

New MacBook Airs Shipping with Faster Samsung SSDs?

As reported by Anandtech, Apple has apparently switched to Samsung as the supplier for the solid state drives that ship with the new MacBook Airs (late 2010 models). When the revamped MacBook Air line was unveiled and released last October, Apple relied on Toshiba to power the new machines built around flash storage – more specifically, they ditched classic hard drive enclosures using “blade SSDs”, which basically include only the chips needed by flash storage as detailed by iFixit. Those SSDs (available in 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB configurations) were manufactured by Toshiba and carried model number TS128C. It’s not clear when Apple exactly made the switch to Samsung – Anandtech goes on to say they’re not even 100% sure these drives are from Samsung, yet all signs point to that – but several users are reporting recently purchased MacBook Air units come with drives carrying model name SM128C.

The best part? According to initial benchmarks, the Samsung drives are noticeably faster, as you can see in the chart below.

The interesting aspect is that the SM128C models provide quite a nice performance bump in at least one performance metric. Benchmarks posted by users show that the SM128C manages up to 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write speeds. In our tests (and corroborating what users have reported), the TS128C only offers speeds of up to 210MB/s read and 185MB/s write. The SM128C also supports Native Command Queuing (NCQ) while the TS128C does not.

Again, there’s no confirmation Apple has switched to Samsung as the only supplier for MacBook Air SSDs, and this change might as well be a temporary solution adopted by Apple to face shortages from Toshiba. But, then again, there’s the high chance a MacBook Air purchased today features a faster SSD from Samsung. [via 9to5mac]

Official Moleskine App for iOS Now Available

Moleskine, a popular brand of notebooks, diaries and sketchbooks, released its first official app for iPhone and iPad yesterday in the App Store, bringing the look and note-taking capabilities of Moleskine products to iOS devices – also adding features only possible on smartphones and tablets like geo-location and image inserting functionalities.

Once installed, you can choose between different notebook styles like ruled paper, plain, or squared. From the settings, you can set a text size, text color, or edit the cover picture that will appear upon launching the app. Moleskine uses a mix of custom UI elements and standard iOS graphics for displaying popovers and menus; the result is, in my opinion, very elegant and minimalism. Unfortunately, playing around with this first version I noticed there’s no way to sync the iPad app with the iPhone counterpart – your notes are going to stay local on each device.

Notes – or, as Moleskine calls them, “thoughts” – can be organized by category and location. The main screen, called myThoughts, displays two buttons in a bottom toolbar to visualize categories and location points. Once you create a new note, you’ll notice a clipboard icon in the top toolbar that allows you to bring up a custom, animated pop-up menu to rename the note, assign categories / colors / labels, choose paper styles and share via Twitter, Facebook or email. The animation of this menu is really nice, although it caused the app to crash a couple of times. As far as true note-taking capabilities go, you can type text, sketch and insert images. Both text and sketches can have different sizes and colors, whilst images can be zoomed and cropped before being inserted into a document. Text automatically wraps around an image as you move it around, but images (and sketches) will be removed when you share a note via email.

Overall, this app is a good first attempt to bring the Moleskine experience to iPhones and iPads. The lack of syncing might be a deal-breaker for many nowadays, and I believe Dropbox integration could come in handy and should be considered by the developers. The app is free in the App Store, and you can check out a gallery of screenshots below. Read more

Tea: An App for Tea Drinkers

Released two weeks ago in the App Store, Tea for iPhone is a beautiful app that aims at becoming a one-step solution for seasoned drinkers and tea newbies alike that have always been looking for a centralized place to manage their brewing notes, favorite teas, suggestions and timer settings. Tea clearly isn’t an app for everyone: unless you’re really passionate about tea, your collection of leaves and, overall, the knowledge you’ve accumulated over the years, I wouldn’t suggest installing Tea from the App Store. But if you love drinking tea, this is the app to have, and quite possibly one of the most beautiful pieces of software that (together with Tweetbot) have landed on the iPhone recently.

The main screen of the app gives you access to various types of tea you can brew. In the bottom toolbar, you can access the settings to change the order of teas, group by brand and enable social sharing on Twitter and Facebook. A History button in the middle of the tab bar lets you see all the teas you’ve brewed at once, whilst the Scratchpad allows you to write down all your tea-related notes in a single location. When you add a new tea, you can choose Name, Brand, Type and Amount. Types vary from  White and Green to Black and Oolong – you shouldn’t be disappointed by the options offered in Tea. The Amount tab lets you choose between different units like grams, kilograms and ounces. Once you’ve picked a tea, the Set Brew screen displays a rotating indicator that enables you to select quantity, number of cups, brewing time, and temperature. Everything is selectable with a standard iOS menu, and the interface design is really polished. Once set, tap “Brew” in the upper right corner to bring up a beautiful timer you can pause or cancel at any time. When the time is up, you can leave a note and a rating – which will be remember by the app for future brews and infusions.

With an impeccable attention to detail and a great feature set, Tea for iPhone is the best app to prepare your teas, collect notes, share your results and manage your inventory. You can find it in the App Store at $1.99 for a limited time.
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