The new iTouch will likely rely on the A4 CPU, feature a camera and a front-facing camera, gyroscope and a higher resolution display. It remains to be seen if the new iPod Touch will feature a 5MP camera with flash and HD video recording or the same 3,2 MP camera and SD video recording of the 3GS.

There have also been rumors of a new iPad… featuring a front-facing camera and 7 inches screen. The move of using smaller screens, if done for real, may be caused by LG Electronics not being able to manufacture enough iPad displays to meet the demand, effectively slowing down the growth of the platform.

On top of all that, a new iDevice without a name has been spotted: the latest beta of iOS 4.1, due to ship in the coming weeks, includes three new “Configuration Descriptors” within its USB configuration files — all of which pertain to devices that list “Apple, Inc.” as their “manufacturer” — as can be seen in the screenshot below.

The first product is the fourth-generation iPod touch, referenced within the code as “iPod 4,1.”; the second unreleased product is “iProd 2,1.”. The inaugural version of the iPad released this past April was listed in configuration files as “iProd 1,1″ prior to its announcement.

Finally, a mysterious device is listed only as “unknownHardware.” Although the configuration files tag this device with a unique Apple product ID of 20547, it’s textual descriptor is similarly listed as “Unknown- Add device descriptor info for this device.”

It’s possible that the new product will be the new Apple TV — rumored to be dubbed iTV — that will reportedly run iOS 4.0 and will be capable of running applications found on the App Store.

Apple will hold its annual music and media event next month, as it has done for the past several years, and we’ll see what of all this will be reality and what won’t.

Unlocking a smartphone for use on a different carrier then you got it with has been legal in the US (thanks to a DCMA exception) as well as in Europe for some time now. The bad news for iPhone users is that Apple and AT&T do not provide any way to officially sim-unlock the devices…

Apple has an official policy about unlocking iPhones and there are authorized carriers that can execute a legal “factory unlock” without voiding your warranties around the globe. This unlock process happens through Apple’s own servers and is based on the iPhone IMEI code. There’s no way you’ll get this factory unlock in any country if the iPhone came to you through AT&T.

There is only one way to unlock your iPhone, which is to jailbreak it. Until a few days ago, the jailbreak wasn’t legal or illegal. Hackers have been hard at work on jailbreaking iOS 4 since it was released in June. With last Monday’s decision by the U.S. government, their efforts are now considered legal. The process still voids your warranty — so be sure to backup your device and restore it to a non-jailbroken state before you walk into an Apple Store to ask for help.

In addition to allowing access to legitimate third-party software, both free and paid, through services like Cydia, jailbreaking can also be used to pirate App Store software, one major reason why Apple has fought the practice. In my opinion, if Apple really wanted people not to jailbreak their iPhones and use Cydia, they should just allow people to “factory unlock” their devices after the 2 years contract with AT&T is expired. Otherwise, you’re forced to do so only to legitimately use your iPhone with an alternative carrier (be it inside or outside the US).

Error: The binary you uploaded was invalid. The bundle did not contain an icon for iPad of exactly 72×72 pixels, in .png format.

Solution: Add a .png to your project of this size, then go to Info.plist, add a new key CFBundleIconFiles, rick-click it and change it to an array, and for values put the filename (without extension) for your 57×57 and 72×72 icons.

Error: The binary you uploaded was invalid. The application-identifier entitlement is not formatted correctly; it should contain your 10-character App ID Seed, followed by a dot, followed by your bundle identifier.

Solution: In Xcode, remove Entitlements.plist from your project. When you re-add it, you will see it is created from a template that has a prebuild application-identifier property.

The app store has really been a moving target lately… Good luck out there!

If you haven’t followed the events lately, here is a brief summary for you…
Short after the iPhone 4 launch, users started reporting the iPhone 4 had a worse reception then the iPhone 3GS. Magazines did their tests, some agreed, some didn’t.

Then, Apple announced it’s just a software issue, but their report sounds weird. According to Apple the iPhone thinks the signal is “stronger” then it really is and therefore the user will expect to be able to make a phonecall in areas where it wouldn’t be possible. Too bad in the same areas iPhone 3GS and lots of other smartphones are able to make and receive calls instead.

Apple has also said that any mobile phone experiences reception issues when held improperly. Now either Apple thinks left-handed people like me were born and educated improperly, or they’re just climbing on mirrors!

Apple finally said that users can use any case that covers the metal exterior band of the phone, which also acts as its antennas, with a case to prevent conduction through the user’s skin. So they recognize the hardware design flaw, but only implicitly?

Consumer Reports announced on Monday that it cannot recommend the iPhone 4 to potential buyers due to reception problems that are a result of the design of the handset. The conclusion was reached after testing three of Apple’s iPhone 4 handsets purchased from three separate retailers in the New York area inside a controlled environment of a radio frequency isolation chamber.

“In this room, which is impervious to outside radio signals, our test engineers connected the phones to our base-station emulator, a device that simulates carrier cell towers,” the nonprofit organization wrote. “We also tested several other AT&T phones the same way, including the iPhone 3GS and the Palm Pre. None of those phones had the signal-loss problems of the iPhone 4.”

They also suggest a solution — the video herebelow is worth watching. Now, Apple’s turn again. Will they do as everyone expects and start giving away the Apple branded case for free? Will it go on denying?

Developer ChilliFresh, creator of the offending application which has been removed from the App Store last week, claimed that a discussion with Apple revealed the company removed more than 5,000 “overtly sexual” applications from the App Store. However, other adult oriented content, such as the official 99 cent Playboy app, remains for sale.

The developer, ChilliFresh, claimed that an Apple representative said images of both women and men in bikinis are inappropriate, as are words that have a sexual connotation. Apple allegedly is not allowing applications that can be “sexually arousing,” or that imply sexual content.

That number was supported by tracking from AppShopper.com, which found that more that nearly 4,000 applications were removed last Friday, Feb. 18. The total number of removed applications is said to have amounted to roughly 3 percent of the entire App Store.

But how many of those are iPhones and how many are iPods Touch?
As always, we miss the official data from Apple… and that alone tells the story.

The same day, AdMob, the mobile advertisement platform, released their own OS 3 adoption rate statistics showing a rather less optimistic big picture of the market. The facts suggest that most iPhone users are installing the OS 3.0 as soon as they find the time to follow the process, while iPod Touch users are upgrading only when they are strictly required in order to continue using their device or their favorite Apps.

AdMob’s results indicated that 44 percent of iPhone ad requests were from devices running iPhone OS 3.0.  That’s actually quite a lot considering the OS was launched only three days prior to those statistics.  The alarming number is that only 1 percent of iPod touch ad requests were from devices running 3.0.

Speaking of other sources, Tapbots (developer of the popular iPhone app Convertbot), has just released their own iPhone OS 3.0 adoption rate statistics based on their users, confirming a vast difference between iPhone and iPod touch iPhone OS 3.0 adoption.  According to their statistics, nearly 80 percent of their iPhone users are already running iPhone OS 3.0.  In comparison, about 50 percent of their iPod touch users are running the new OS.

Statistics reported from the iPhone SDK Developers Google Group vary, some say that between 70% and 90% of their users upgraded to 3.0 which happened within about a week. Others report around 50-60% within the first week, constantly rising.

Clearly, iPod Touch users are feeling like “b-series” users to Apple, having Apple ask them to pay $9.95 is working as an upgrade deterrent for iPod Touch users. A positive note for developers is that users that use many Apps are more likely to download the new OS, especially as more and more will drop iPhone OS 2.2.1 support. Many new apps in the App Store already require iPhone OS 3.0, and as time passes this will only become even more common.  In the end, it may force many iPod touch users to have to upgrade.

I’m a happy owner of an iPod Touch first generation, and I’m keeping 2.2.1 for testing purposes given these figures. With OS 3.1 already in the works, will iPod Touch users choice be to wait?

What will you do?… just login to comment :)

Rumors about a new iPod Touch to be introduced in a special event in September have been around for a while. The new device should feature a camera, probably a smaller one like the iPhone 3G.

Since the main focus of the iPod Touch marketing are games, the device will probably also feature a faster CPU and possibly the new graphics chip that also powers the iPhone 3G S.

Analytics firm Pinch Media says it’s seen the device string for the new iPod multiple times since April. The usage pattern repeats the one seen for the iPhone 3GS and directly suggests that Apple is testing compatibility with the new iPod touch to guard against any show-stopping flaws before the device goes live.

Determining when this new iPod touch will be released is difficult. The iPhone 3GS was seen in October 2008 but wasn’t released until eight months later — but the iPod touch normally borrows components from the iPhone that preceded it and therefore needs less testing prior to release. The iPod touch has always been updated in a special music-themed event held in September.

So, if you’re thinking to get an iPod Touch 2G now, my recommendation would be to wait a couple of months :)

UPDATE: Steve Jobs returns to work after near 6-month leave, working at Apple a few days a week, from home otherwise. Source: Reuters

For those who didn’t notice, Apple’s latest press release about the iPhone 3GS initial sales success reported a quote from Steve Jobs.

“Customers are voting and the iPhone is winning. With over 50,000 applications available from Apple’s revolutionary App Store, iPhone momentum is stronger than ever.” – Steve Jobs

This and the fact Jobs has been seen on Apple’s campus last week made me wonder if he’s coming back to work anytime soon, to present Apple’s worldwide events with his great keynotes, and to complete the work on the mysterious, tablet-PC-sized iPhone OS powered device said to be his main focus at Apple’s lately. Recent updates and rumors would confirm this to be a likely scenario, but what has really been happening to him and Apple lately?

Apple’s secrecy policy gives all journalists and fans a hard time to foresee Apple’s next moves. Even people working in the company are kept unaware of what’s going on in other departments, and –according to AppleInsider– are often given misleading details in order to track down people disclosing Apple’s secrets to the press and to rumors sites.

Steve Jobs has acknowledged that he did undergo a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital and that he has come out of surgery in good condition. The executive finally gave permission to the Tennessee hospital to publish the news after several unconfirmed rumors surfaced all around the web.

Apparently, Jobs was the patient with the greatest likelihood of developing an end-stage liver disease among those with a blood type matching the next available donor liver; as such, he was a prime candidate for the operation and is now believed to have come out of his surgery with an “excellent prognosis” and a strong recovery.

The operation suggest that, like the majority patients who recovered from the form of pancreatic cancer he had in 2004, the cancer had metastasized in his liver, creating the “hormonal imbalance” that ultimately forced Jobs to take leave of his normal office for the past six months.

Methodist University Hospital is one of the ten largest locations offering liver transplants in the US and Jobs specifically chose the hospital due to its strong reputation for patient survival rates.

Some governance experts cited by the New York Times — in a profile of the company’s unparalleled aura of secrecy — reports that given the fact that Jobs required major surgery such as a liver transplant “now makes one of Apple’s assertions from January — that Mr. Jobs was suffering only from a hormonal imbalance — seem like a deliberate mistruth, unless Mr. Jobs’s health condition suddenly deteriorated. [...] Of course, no one knows enough to say definitively.”

In a report published this past weekend, the Wall Street Journal said that although Jobs is returning to Apple this month, he’s likely to work part-time initially, a move that may ease him into a reduced role at the company while Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook assumes greater responsibilities.

Although Cook hasn’t been awarded the title of chief executive, he’s been handed control of Apple for extended periods of time on two separate occasions. The first of which was a two-month stint back in 2004 when Jobs took leave to recover from successful surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his pancreas.

Since resuming control of the company in January, Cook has been entrusted with responsibilities once reserved only for Steve Jobs, such as handling negotiations with exclusive U.S. iPhone service provider AT&T, the Journal reported Tuesday.

It is worth noticing “we” (Apple’s users, followers and fans) are likely in good hands with Cook. He was brought to Apple by Jobs in 1998, a time when Apple was in terrible shape, having lost more than $1 billion in fiscal 1997 as it gained notoriety for insufficient manufacturing practices, with bloated inventories that forced it to take costly write-downs on unsold computers and parts.

By the end of the company’s fiscal 1999, Cook had worked Apple’s inventory down to two days’ worth, or about $20 million, compared to 31 days, or $437 million, two years earlier.

That same fiscal year, Apple grew its gross margins by 9% and the company earned a $600 million profit despite slumping sales. That started the positive trend that Apple is still living today, with a continuos growth and exciting new products being released regularly since the introduction the first iMac.