Report: iPhone 5 Components Being Prepared For October Release, iPad 3 Too?

DigiTimes is today reporting that the supply chain for the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 is beginning to prepare materials for production of the two devices. According to DigiTimes’ sources, both devices are expected to make their debuts in September and launch to the market in October.

According to the sources, production of both the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 will begin in August with volume starting to pick up in September and October as they launch. The sources also note that roughly 6-7 million units of the iPhone 5 will be produced in the third quarter, in addition to continued production of the iPhone 4.

Upstream component makers including Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), which is in charge of assembling the devices; Simplo Technologies and Dynapack International Technology, in charge of manufacturing batteries; TPK Holding and Wintek, in charge of touch panel modules; Catcher, in charge of chassis; and Largan Precision, in charge of webcams, are all expected to benefit from the orders.

Whilst this report affirms previous rumors and analyst expectations of an imminent start of iPhone 5 production, this reports claim of an iPad 3 in October is somewhat questionable. DigiTimes has somewhat of a hit-and-miss record of Apple related rumors, although it should be pointed out that the timeline of an iPad 3 release date is a bit murky. Earlier this year there were rumors of two iPad releases this year, but then more recently DigiTimes itself claimed Apple is beginning their component certification process with a 2012 release time frame for the iPad 3.

[Via DigiTimes]

More Details Surface Over A Possible Mac Pro Refresh

MIC Gadget has an interesting article today that has some details of what could be an imminent Mac Pro update. You may recall that a few weeks ago, Cnet’s Brian Tong tweeted that an updated Mac Pro and Mac Mini would come out in August. Most interestingly, MIC Gadget managed to take a screenshot of the Apple Store a few days ago when the Promise Thunderbolt RAID system went on sale. Curiously, in one of the promo images, it was shown beside a Mac Pro. This is despite the device being a Thunderbolt-only device, which the Mac Pro does not currently support.

The image was subsequently pulled and whilst it could just have been an error by the graphics department, it does fit in line with the suggestion that Thunderbolt capability is slowly being rolled out onto every Mac with every hardware refresh. The MacBook Pro refresh earlier this year started the trend, followed by the iMac refresh and recent rumors are suggesting that the MacBook Air refresh will similarly get Thunderbolt capability. The image also suggests that the current design of the Mac Pro will go unchanged from what it currently looks like.

In a similar vein, Intel’s Sandy Bridge hardware has also been making its way across the Mac refreshes and MIC Gadget believes this trend will continue with a Mac Pro refresh. They are claiming that the Mac Pro will feature an 8 core CPU that will be ‘exclusive’ to Apple for a few months before other PC manufacturers can have access to it in Q4 of this year. They note that this isn’t particularly new, with Intel previously working with Apple on the first MacBook Air which received similar treatment.

Our sources indicate Apple is making headway with access to this technology, and they are investing heavily into the Mac Pro. Sandy Bridge will be integrated with the new Mac Pro CPU as well, but issues remain with the heat being produced by such powerful CPUs.

[Via MIC Gadget]

Apple Expected To Surpass HP In Global Portable PC Shipments In 2012

DigiTimes is today reporting that industry sources are expecting Apple to become the number one portable PC vendor globally. Hewlett-Packard (HP) is currently the number one vendor for portable PCs, but if tablets are included in the calculation, Apple will far surpass HP in 2012.

According to the sources, Apple is expected to ship 60 million iPads in 2012, accounting for 75% of all tablet shipments, which are expected to hit 80 million units in 2012. Meanwhile Apple’s MacBook line is expected to total 15 million units in 2012, bringing a total of 75 million units of portable PCs if tablets are included.

HP will continue to increase their portable PC shipments in 2012 but would be unlikely to match the success of Apple, instead shipping between 45-50 million portable PCs. Shipments of HP tablets aren’t expected to add much to this total, leaving Apple to ship roughly 20-30 million more units of portable PCs.

[Via DigiTimes]

AppShopper 1.4: Top 200, App Ratings, Reviews, and more

Last week, Arnold Kim gave twitter a little preview of some new features and functionality of AppShopper 1.4 for iOS. The new update was just approved by Apple and now has features like Top 200 and App ratings. Other new features include:

  • Links to 3rd party app reviews like 148apps and TouchArcade
  • Automatically load apps when scrolling to the bottom of a list
  • New filters for search
  • Email notification settings
  • Disable push notifications during certain times of the day (Yeah!)
  • In-app AppShopper account registration
  • Share an app’s info via Twitter, Facebook, email and more
  • Various bug fixes

Screenshots for iPhone and iPad after the break.

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Give Me My Eject Key Back!→

Give Me My Eject Key Back!

A couple of months ago, I visited the OWC offices and took advantage of OWC Jamie’s workbench skills and had him perform some “OWC Love” on my 2011 MacBook Pro by removing the optical drive and replacing it with an OWC Data Doubler + 750GB HDD – to compliment the 480GB SSD I already have inside as my start-up disk.

With the optical drive removed, I started thinking about how the Eject key was now totally useless, and I thought that maybe there might be some way to re-purpose it to do something useful.  Turns out that I was by far not the first person to ever have this thought and that there are apps pretty much dedicated to remapping the Eject key.  These apps are especially popular with MacBook Air owners who are without an internal optical drive right out of the box.

One of the cool things you can do to a MacBook Pro is remove the optical drive in place of an OWC Data Doubler, which turns your optical drive bay into a usable bracket for a second internal hard drive. The benefit is that you can either achieve super fast speeds by setting a pair of SSDs in RAID 0, or you add additional space or a scratch disk to your machine without the added bulk of external storage. In doing this, however, the eject key on the MacBook Pro becomes needless. After all, how many times do you normally use that key anyway? Erik offers some great advice on how to map your eject button to something functional, while retaining the ability to eject a USB optical drive.

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Inside Google+ Mobile Web App

Two days ago Google launched Google+, the company’s latest effort to get into the social networking space and build a platform to share content and connect people. For those who missed the coverage (you can find some detailed reports here and here), here’s the gist of Plus: it’s a social network connected to your Google account that looks a lot like Facebook but it’s got a cleaner design and a set of different “apps” tied together by the Plus brand. What does it mean for consumers? It means that whilst Circles, Huddle, Hangouts and Sparks could be seen as separate services and concepts, they’re in fact sections of the entire Google+ website. Yesterday, Google started allowing people to send invites to other users, which resulted in a massive explosion of invite requests on Twitter and thousands of new sign-ups. After a few hours, Google was forced to close invites due to “insane demand” and promise more coming in the next few weeks as the service scales to accomodate new users and more content.

Google+ has a strong mobile counterpart, too. As the service aims at empowering Google users to share and connect at any time from anywhere, Google built native apps for Android and iOS devices to let users enjoy the Google+ experience on the go, and upload media such as photos and videos shot with their phones. Furthermore, the mobile apps get access to Huddle, a group messaging feature built into Google+ that some are already eyeing as Google’s response to iMessage, only it works on both iOS and Android. However, the official iPhone app is not available yet, and Google says it’s “coming soon”. In the meantime though, users can try a mobile optimized web app, which relies on Google’s recent mobile UI changes to lay out a unified interface to access Google+ and switch between various Google services.

Last night, I signed up for Google+ and played around with the website. Today, I decided to take a look at the mobile web app which, surprisingly enough, might just be the nicest thing Google has ever done on iOS’ Mobile Safari. Read more

Instacast 1.3 Now Available: Chapter Lists, Download Waiting List, and Video AirPlay

Instacast is simply my favorite podcast player on iOS, and I’m delighted to say that Instacast has now reached version 1.3 and is available for download in the App Store. Instacast 1.3 brings lots of new features to the fold, including improvements for clearing out cached tunes, a download waiting list, chapter lists (super useful for podcasts like the Mac Geek Gab), video airplay for those Revision3 podcasts, and “group sorting” in the All Episodes list that bundles together similar episodes. There’s a lot to talk about, so let’s dive right in.

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