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WSJ: New MobileMe, Cheaper and Smaller iPhone This Summer

Following last week’s Bloomberg’s report about Apple working on a smaller iPhone with a 2.3” screen and sold off-contract, the Wall Street Journal weighed in earlier today to confirm that Apple has indeed prototyped a phone about “about half the size” of the current iPhone 4. The codename of the new unit should be N97 (not spotted in the iOS SDK yet) and should be cheaper than the “main line” of iPhones.

One of the people, who saw a prototype of a new iPhone several months ago, said the new device is intended to be sold alongside the current line of iPhones and would be about half the size of the iPhone 4. The phone, one of its codenames is N97, would be available to mobile carriers at about half the price of Apple’s main line of iPhones, the person said.

The WSJ also reports among Steve Jobs’ top priorities there is a MobileMe overhaul for 2011, just like the CEO said in an email to a customer a few months ago. The new MobileMe will be free and used as a “locker” for personal media like photos and videos. This would allow Apple to produce iPhones with less storage, and do everything through the cloud, possibly relying on the data center they have been building in North Carolina.

Apple also is exploring a major overhaul of its MobileMe online storage service, the people familiar with the matter said. The service currently requires an annual subscription payment of $99 to $149. Apple is considering making Mobile Me a free service that would serve as a “locker” for personal memorabilia like photos and videos, eliminating the need for consumers’ devices to carry a lot of memory, the people familiar with the situation said.

According to the WSJ, both the smaller iPhone and the new MobileMe are on track for a summer release.

Update: The WSJ is now giving out more details about the new iPhone and MobileMe in their report. The device is “significantly lighter” and has an edge-to-edge screen, which might as well mean the rumors about the lack of a Home button were true. The smaller iPhone should also have voice navigation, although we think that will be a feature of iOS 5 anyway. As for MobileMe, the WSJ mentions streaming of iTunes libraries through the cloud and that Apple was planning a release last year. [via]

The person who saw the prototype of the new iPhone said the device was significantly lighter than the iPhone 4 and had an edge-to-edge screen that could be manipulated by touch, as well as a virtual keyboard and voice-based navigation. The person said Apple, based in Cupertino, Calif., also plans to upgrade the iPhone 4.

The new service would give users access to their iTunes libraries from, say an iPhone or iPad, instead of requiring that the devices be synced by cable with a computer and use space to store the actual files, the people said. The new service likely would be compatible with the iPhone 4, one of the people said.

Three UK + Ireland Block Cydia Servers

Customers of Three in Ireland and the UK might wake up today with a little bit of a shock when they hear that Cydia has seemingly been blocked by the carrier, leading those who jailbreak their iOS devices unable to access certain content from Cydia when on the Three network. The block seems to be for Cydia’s servers so whilst the main page is inaccessible, Three users in the UK and Ireland should still be able to access other repositories and download from them.

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Manuals on Amazon Suggest Late July Launch for Lion

Several manuals for the upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion have been spotted by 9to5 Mac on the Amazon.UK website and all are set to be released sometime around late July, hinting that the OS will also launch around that time. WWDC is expected to be from July 5 to July 9 and it would make sense for Lion to be released shortly after WWDC as these manuals seem to suggest.

Whilst the release date of these guidebooks don’t confirm a late July launch it makes a late July launch likely because there have been several previous cases of Amazon guidebooks effectively revealing a products launch date, such as Office 2011 last year.

Some of the manual covers include references to the already known features of Launchpad, Mission Control and changes to the dock, all of which were revealed in the ‘Back to the Mac’ event late last year.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

greenpois0n Reaches Release Candidate 6, Jailbreaks Apple TV

greenpois0n, the  tool for jailbreaking your iOS devices on version 4.2.1, has been updated again, and now supports jailbreaking the second generation Apple TV. By jailbreaking the second generation Apple TV you will be able to install NitoTV without all the hassle and difficulty of using SSH and entering lines of code into terminal as was previously required.

Now at release candidate 6, this version of greenpois0n is also said to fix some issues that had occurred when using zodttd’s emulators. For those curious, NitoTV allows users to play more video formats, run emulators, view RSS feeds, view weather forecasts and more in what is essentially a more fully featured media center application.

greenpois0n RC6 is available for Windows and Mac.

[Via Engadget]

Nokia Borrows iMovie Loop For Microsoft Partnership Announcement

If Nokia’s recent announcement to partner with Microsoft wasn’t enough to stir up the #fail hashtags on Twitter, leave it to the Apple geeks to point out that Nokia is using their biggest competitor’s theme in their recent announcement. While Apple’s audio loops are royalty free, it’s still amusing to see a competitor using the Macbook theme (Pendulum) in their Microsoft get-together. Check out what Adrian Boioglu from Boio.ro has dug up after the break.

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Super PLS To Be iPad’s Next Display Technology?

Samsung’s cheaper to produce but ultimately superior new panel technology, Super PLS (Plane to Line Switching), is rumored to make an appearance in Apple’s next iPad. While an increase of resolution is unknown (and unlikely), Super PLS costs 15% cheaper to manufacture than the iPad’s current IPS technology, while offering 10% greater brightness for viewing. If Apple is known for one thing, it’s their early adoption and implementation of new and powerful display technologies.

Samsung’s PLS technology is superior to IPS in many regards. The viewing angles provided by PLS are improved as the display actually shifts the shape of the individual pixels so they are displayed brighter and with better contrast from more angles.

iFixYouri and 9 to 5 Mac’s proposed unveiling of Apple’s next display technology is reportedly produced by LG, but Apple typically uses multiple display manufacturers to meet demand.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

Lady Gaga’s New Single Becomes Fastest Selling iTunes Song Ever

We at MacStories aren’t exactly “fans” of Lady Gaga’s music, but the results achieved by her latest single “Born This Way” are noteworthy: in five hours, the song has become the fastest selling iTunes single of all time, jumping to the #1 in the iTunes Store in 21 countries. The song was released yesterday and it’s also available for listening on VEVO’s Youtube channel.

Lady Gaga isn’t new to Apple-related coverage. In September, for instance, Steve Jobs featured a video on stage during the new iPods / Ping introduction showing Lady Gaga giving her support to the new social network. Video is embedded below.

Oh, and apparently she also likes Infinite Loop. [via Music News Daily] Read more

Super Mega Worm Goes Free To Celebrate Verizon iPhone, Mac App Store Release

Super Mega Worm! The game that lets you control the Death Worm Wojira to save the Earth from extinction. The iOS game packed with retro graphics and awesome pixel art. One of the most successful iPhone and iPad games to date thanks to its humour and Game Center support. Well, to celebrate the release of the Verizon iPhone and the availability of the app in the Mac App Store, Super Mega Worm for iOS (universal for iPhone and iPad) has gone free. Free, as in “free for a limited time before it goes up again”.

Go download it here.

Barclays: 33 Million iPads This Year, Apple “Far Ahead” Of Its Competition In Enterprise

In spite of Microsoft’s attempts to convince the enterprise folks that the iPad is inadequate, iOS devices, and especially the iPad, are doing well in the enterprise market segment. Apparently, they’re doing so well that RIM itself has fallen behind and SAP rolled out 1,000 iPads to its employees a few months ago. The recent additions in iOS 4 and 4.2 for business users surely helped along the way in getting iPhones and iPads into offices and large companies. But the iPad, thanks to its larger screen and notebook-like features, is set to produce even bigger results in 2011.

According to Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes, the iPad is “far ahead” of competitors in the tablet market; without setting up a salesforce, Apple is “listening to enterprise customers”. More and more corporate users are quickly shifting to the iOS environment and, most of all, they are bringing these devices to work. The popularity of the App Store and the fact that thousands of applications are available and continually updated in the Business category helps these users install work-related software on their devices, which are also used for personal purposes. As Reitzes notes, this is “the consumerization of IT”. And when the App Store doesn’t provide the right tools to deploy applications on a large scale, wireless app distribution introduced in iOS 4.2 allows enterprises to host and wirelessly distribute their own in-house apps, both on WiFi and 3G.

Last, Reitzes believes 47 million tablets will be sold in 2011, including 33.7 million  iPads. Similar numbers were shared by analysts Wolf and Fidacaro earlier this week.