Did You Notice I Wrote From My iPad Today?

I often talk about how I can very happily work from my iPad. How I can focus more on my writing. How I can do virtually everything from my iPad that I need to do on a daily basis. Today I (pretty) much did just that. So, did you notice?

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Glance Back at 2012 and Look Ahead to 2013

Lots of sites are looking back at 2012 to review the year gone by, but while there is no doubt it’s been a pretty exciting year, I thought I’d start with a look at the year to come and make a few arm waving predictions about what we might see. Well, a few arm waving predictions and a good number of pretty sure bets as well.

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iOS 6 to Get OS X Mountain Lion Features Such as iCloud Tabs Support, “Do Not Disturb” Toggle For Notifications, Mail VIPs

9to5Mac continue to leak more information about the features in iOS 6.

They've just reported that some of the new features from OS X Mountain Lion such as iCloud Tabs support, Mail VIPs, "Do Not Disturb" toggle for notifications will make their way to iOS 6.

OS X Mountain Lion will include a number of popular apps and features such as Messages, Notes, Reminders, Game Center, Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay Mirroring from iPad, so it is not surprisingly to see some of the new features introduced in ninth and next major release of OS X are coming to iOS 6.

Here's how some of the new OS X Mountain Lion features will work in iOS 6, according to Mark Guman of 9to5Mac:

Cloud Tabs:

iCloud Tabs is a feature that allows iCloud users to view a list of tabs opened in the Safari web browser across multiple iOS devices and Macs. Although previously rumored, iCloud Tabs is not a feature – in its initial implementation in iOS 6 and Mountain Lion – that syncs your entire current web browser work across devices. When the iCloud Tabs button is clicked on an iOS 6 device (or Mac), all the tabs opened on each device are simply shown in a synchronized list. From here, users can quickly pickup individual tabs that they were working on across their Apple devices. The iCloud Tabs button on the iPhone and iPod touch is hidden behind the Bookmarks toolbar.

Mail VIPs:

Like in Mountain Lion, Mail VIPs in iOS 6 puts a star next to emails received from a specified group of people. VIPs assigned to iCloud accounts will sync with iCloud across iOS 6 iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, and OS X Mountain Lion Macs. OS X Mountain Lion users have so-far praised the feature, as many users find themselves constantly looking for email from a select group of contacts.

Do Not Disturb toggle:

The Do Not Disturb toggle will allows users to block incoming alerts and banners. When we wrote about this feature coming to OS X Mountain, we were hoping that it comes to iOS 6. So good to know that it is also coming to iOS 6.

According to 9to5Mac, the Do Not Disturb toggle is stationed like the Airplane Mode button in the Settings app as seen in the mockup below.

With Apple adding such useful toggles in the Settings, we wonder when they will introduce SBSettings-like functionality so that we can access them quickly from any app without having to go through the hassle of exiting the current app, launching the Settings app and then enabling or disabling the toggle.

Let us know what you think about the possibility of features such as iCloud Tabs support, Mail VIPs, "Do Not Disturb" toggle for notifications coming to iOS 6. What's on your iOS 6 wish list?

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How Many iPhones And iPads Did Apple Sell Last Quarter?

Apple's expected to reveal iPhone and iPad sales figures for the past quarter this Tuesday at their quarterly earnings call. If you remember, Apple posted record iPhone sales of 37 million units for the quarter ending December, thanks to the momentum created by the launch of iPhone 4S in October.

The iPhone 4S has continued to expand its availability in the US, as well as other important markets like China and Apple's on track to introduce the new iPad to 9 new countries this Friday in addition to the 12 countries in which received the last week. Although these new countries won't contribute as much to the numbers Apple reports in the earnings call (the figures are from January to March), it shows that Apple is pushing its manufacturing line to churn out iPads and iPhones as fast as possible in order to meet demand.

Fortune's Philip Elmer-Dewitt spoke to various analysts and compiled estimates from all of them for both, the iPhone and the iPad

Would Apple surpass the record figure of 37 million iPhones sold? 13 out of the 48 analysts seem to think so. Most of the estimates are in the 30 to 40 million bracket. For the same quarter last year, the sales stood at 18.6 million units.

The iPad estimates for the same period range from 9 million to 15.5 million, as compared to last quarter's figure of 15.43 million iPad sales. If you're wondering why is the estimate low considering that the new iPad comes with a number of upgrades, remember that the device went on sale on the 16th of March, meaning that it only got a sales window of two weeks in the 3 month period.

Apple's quarterly earnings call is scheduled for the 24th of this month, and we'll be bringing to you all the key announcements from there, right here. Stay tuned.

For all the estimates, head over to this link for the iPhone and this for the iPad.

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Air Display Will Allow You to Use Your New iPad as a Wireless HiDPI Retina Display For Your Mac

Avatron - developers of Air Display - a popular iOS app that allows users to use their iPad, iPhone and iPod touch as a wireless display for their Mac or Windows computer have just announced that they will releasing a new version of their app that includes support for the new iPad's Retina Display.

After some initial hiccups, Avatron has managed to get their app working  on the new iPad with good performance. They have also added support for Lion's hidden HiDPI mode, that renders with double-resolution on a double-resolution screen. MacRumors explains:

HiDPI mode allows OS X to support high resolution monitors while retaining the same relative size for user interface elements, such as windows and buttons. 

HiDPI mode will let the new iPad act like a 1024x768 point screen where each point is made up of 4 pixels. Apple has already built in support for HiDPI and some of their Apps, such as Messages, already include Retina-sized artwork that work in this mode. Users simply have to choose "1024x768 (HiDPI)" mode in their System Preferences to take advantage of the new mode. 

Here's how it looks like:

The goods news for other iOS device users (especially iPad 2 and iPhone 4S) is that, thanks to the performance  tuning and profiling, updated iOS app delivers dramatically better frame rates on their iOS devices as well.

Air Display is available in the App Store for $9.99 [direct App Store link] and the update with support for iPad 3's Retina Display will be available as a free update.

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What Does The New iPad Tell Us About The Next Generation iPhone

While Apple's obsession with secrecy is well known, there has been an interesting trend since the introduction of iPad in 2010.

Due to the annual product cycle of iOS devices, a new iPad in March, followed by the new iPhone in fall (since last year), the new iPad has given us some interesting clues about what to expect in the next iPhone (and also the other way round).

Though Apple can always pull a fast one on us this year, we take a look at what the new iPad (3rd generation iPad) tells us about the next generation iPhone (sixth generation iPhone).

Naming Convention:
 

The first thought that might have crossed your mind on reading the title is, of course, the naming convention that Apple broke with the release of the new iPad. It shed the numeric suffix attached with the name of the iPad, and the iPhone is expected to follow the trend.

That was a fairly easy one, considering that the MacBook and the iMac never had numbers attached with their names.

What more can we guess about the next iPhone from the new iPad?

4G LTE iPhone:

For starters, Apple finally shipped a 4G LTE device, without making a lot of compromises on the device size or battery life.

When asked about making an LTE compatible iPhone, Tim Cook, back in April last year, said:

"The first generation of LTE chip-sets force a lot of design compromises with the handset, and some of those we are just not willing to make."

The new iPad seems to be using Qualcomm's MDM9600 chipset, which supports LTE and is also backwards compatible with HSPA and EV-DO. The iPad's large size and relatively less market penetration (as compared to the iPhone) makes the device an ideal candidate to conduct an LTE test run. When Apple does bring LTE to the iPhone, it is expected that the company would use Qualcomm's smaller and improved 28nm chipsets.

Battery Life:

The newer chipset mentioned above, would consume lesser power than the one that is included in the iPad. This point is even more interesting when we take into account the massive increase in battery capacity in the iPad (25 watt-hour to 42.5 watt hour). The iPad's size hasn't increased in proportion to the increase in battery capacity, which probably means that Apple has figured out a way to pack more battery power per unit volume.

So, not only would the battery life of the next iPhone be impacted to a lesser extent thanks to Qualcomm's new chip, but the battery itself would be more powerful. This paints a pretty good picture for the next iPhone's battery life, in contrast to what's happening right now.

Physical Size:

All LTE phones introduced till now have been fairly large in size, presumably to accommodate the large battery and an LTE chip. Tim Cook, most probably, meant this when he spoke about "design compromises." Again, these problems would be solved by newer LTE chipsets, which tells us that Apple won't (forcibly) increase the size of the iPhone by a lot.

Faster A5X Chip:

All of Apple's custom designed Silicon in the "AX" series have first shown up on the iPad, and then made its way to the iPhone. If this trend is any suggestion, the next iPhone should most certainly be powered by the A5X chip, which was, again, debuted 

on the new iPad released this week. The A5X, with a quad core GPU, would bring increased graphics performance to the iPhone. And as noted by Michael Morgan, a mobile device analyst, this chip would most likely be powered down to 800MHz, just like the iPhone 4S, to save battery life.

Are you excited about the next generation iPhone based on these clues? What else is on your wish list?

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Confirmed: Apple Uses Corning’s Gorilla Glass in iPhones

How Steve Jobs got Corning to revive their, then-shelved, "gorilla glass" product for the iPhone is well documented in Jobs' biography. However, there has been no official admission outside the book, from either of these companies about their relationship.

While Apple has used Corning's Gorilla in the first few generations of the iPhone, it hasn't been clear if Apple is using Gorilla Glass in iPhone 4 and now the iPhone 4S.

Apple seems to have confirmed that it does, in the newly posted "Job Creation" page, where Apple says that it has created more than 500,000 jobs in the U.S., directly or indirectly.

An extract from the page:

Corning employees in Kentucky and New York who create the majority of the glass for iPhone

The page, however, doesn't mention the iPad, or the iPod touch for that matter. Also surprising: Corning didn't figure in Apple's list of suppliers, which the company released as a part of its supplier responsibility program.

Corning continued working on the Gorilla Glass, after it first entered the smartphone component business with the original iPhone, and debuted a newer version of the glass at CES, early this year, which is 20% thinner than the original Gorilla Glass but still retains the same strength.

Now that Apple has come out in the open about their relationship with Corning, it is quite possible that Apple has used the Gorilla Glass 2 for the iPad 3, which will be unveiled by Apple on the 7th of this month. Despite Corning making the glass thinner, the iPad 3 is rumored to be thicker than the iPad 2, which is rumored to be due to the Retina Display.

Here's a video showing to what extent can the Gorilla Glass withstand load:

Another interesting tidbit: The job creation page, sort of, confirms Reuters' scoop about Apple collaborating with Samsung to manufacture the A5 chip in Texas:

[the five hundred thousand] figure also includes workers in Texas who manufacture processors for iOS products

On the same web page, Apple adds, seven thousand people would be working on Apple's new spaceship-like  campus in Cupertino, when construction begins.

[via iMore]

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Apple Has Already Started Testing iOS 6.0

While we wait eagerly for Apple to release iOS 5.1, we have just received news that Apple has already started testing iOS 6.0 - Apple's next generation mobile operating system (not very surprising).

Ars Technica reports that they've observed iPads running iOS 6.0 originating from Apple's headquarters visiting their website, based on the browser user agents in their server logs.

we began looking at iPad user agents coming from Apple's corporate IP block in Cupertino and discovered that Apple appears to be surfing the Web using iPads running what looks like iOS 6.0. The whole listing shows iPads running iOS 5, iOS 5.0.1 (the current public release), iOS 5.1 (the upcoming release currently available to developers), and iOS 6. The iPads that appear to be running iOS 6 are also using a slightly newer build of WebKit—the older OSes all show WebKit 534.46, while the ones claiming to be iOS 6 show WebKit build 535.8

.

Last year, Apple gave a preview of iOS 5 and also released the beta version of the iOS 5 to developers during the 2011 WWDC in June and released it to the public in October.  So we expect Apple to follow a similar schedule this year as well.

However, Ars Technica speculates that Apple could give us a preview of iOS 6.0 at the iPad 3 media event. We won't bet on it as we expect Apple to preview iOS 5.1 at next week's media event.

Apple's next generation iPad - iPad 3 that will be unveiled at the media event on March 7th is expected to come pre-installed with iOS 5.1 and Apple is also expected to release iOS 5.1 to the public on or around March 9th.

Ars Technica has also observed device with a screen resolution of 2048x1536 visiting their website, which is the same resolution rumored for iPad 3's Retina Display.

What's on your iOS 6.0 wish list?

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Qualcomm Unveils Next Generation Gobi Chips That Could be Used in 4G LTE iPhone & iPad

Qualcomm today unveiled the launch of its fifth generation Gobi embedded data connectivity reference platform for mobile devices, which supports multiple LTE bands with backwards compatibility to existing 2G/3G technologies.

Qualcomm announced:

Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced its fifth generation Gobi™ embedded data connectivity reference platform for mobile devices, including thin form factor laptops, tablets and convertibles. Based on Qualcomm’s Gobi 4G LTE wireless baseband modems, the MDM9615™ and MDM9215™, the technology delivers fast LTE connectivity on FDD and TDD networks worldwide, with backwards compatibility to both HSPA+ and EV-DO networks. This will allow support for regional LTE frequencies with backwards compatibility to existing 2G/3G technologies, allowing Gobi 4G LTE devices to connect to the faster LTE network locally and stay connected to the Internet globally on 3G networks worldwide. 

Qualcomm’s latest Gobi 4G LTE connectivity reference platform includes embedded GPS capability and features an application programming interface (API) with LTE extensions, which is compatible with leading connectivity standards, including CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B, HSPA+, dual-carrier HSPA+, TD-SCDMA and LTE, with integrated backwards compatibility to HSPA and EV-DO.

There were some rumors last year that claimed that Apple's fifth generation iPhone (iPhone 4S) will support 4G LTE networks. However, industry experts had pointed out that it was highly unlikely as Apple was looking for a solution where chips support 4G and 3G/2G on a single chip so that the 4G LTE iPhone is as thin or thinner than iPhone 4 and it doesn’t consume too much battery life. The chips that would meet Apple's requirement were expected to be available only in 2012.

Apple executives had also indicated that they’re not willing to take a lot of design compromises, which are enforced by the last generation 4G LTE chipsets.

With the launch of Qualcomm's fifth generation Gobi chips, 4G LTE iPhones and iPads in 2012 now becomes quite a distinct possibility. We won't have to wait too long as Apple is expected to unveil iPad 3 - their highly anticipated third generation iPad on March 7th, which will give us a glimpse of what to expect in the next iPhone.

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Corning Unveils 20% Thinner Gorilla Glass 2 – Will it be Used in Next Gen iPhone & iPad?

Corning officially announced the next generation Gorilla Glass  at CES 2012 yesterday.

Corning's Gorilla Glass is used in various electronic products such as smartphones, tablets, PCs, and TVs.

Corning claims:

New Corning® Gorilla® Glass 2 is now up to 20 percent thinner, enabling slimmer devices, better touch responsiveness, and brighter images without sacrificing the damage resistance consumers demand. The result is superior design flexibility for electronics manufacturers as they develop high performing, touch sensitive, and durable mobile devices.

To get a better idea, Gorilla Glass is 0.8 mm in thickness (original Gorilla Glass was 1 mm in thickness) and can withstand 121 pounds of pressure (same as the original Gorilla Glass).

Apple has previously also used Gorilla Glass for their iOS devices, however it is not clear if Apple uses it in the current generation of iOS devices.

MacRumors' Arnold Kim provides some interesting details:

Apple has previously used the strengthened glass in their iOS devices. In 2010, David Pogue relayed a claim from a scientist that Apple was the #1 customer for Gorilla Glass and buys "practically all the Gorilla Glass that Corning can make." At least parts of the story were confirmed in Steve Jobs' biography. Corning reportedly shelved the idea for Gorilla Glass back in the 1960s but revived the project at the request of Steve Jobs in 2007. The original iPhone launched with the damage-resistant glass, though there has been some debate about whether it still is being used in their most recent models. Corning, of course, has never acknowledged Apple's usage but says that due to "customer agreements", they can't identify all devices that use their Gorilla Glass.  

It remains to be seen if Apple will use Corning's Gorilla glass 2 in the next generation iOS devices that will be launched this year and if it will opt to go for 20% thinner glass, which still retains the same strength or keeps the thickness of the glass the same but offers greater strength.

Check out the video where Gorilla Glass 2 is put to test:

[source MacRumors]

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Imagination Technologies Unveils Next Generation GPU For iOS Devices; 20 Times More Powerful And 5 Times More Efficient

UK based Imagination Technologies, the maker of graphics processing unit has unveiled their next generation GPU - PowerVR Series 6 at CES 2012.

The Verge reports that Imagination claims that the sixth generation of its GPU's will provide 20 times or more performance improvements, while also being 5 times more efficient.

The Verge reports:

The PowerVR Series 6 is starting off with two core designs, the G6400 and G6200, but will continue to expand into "a growing family." Imagination claims the sixth generation of its graphics core can deliver "20x or more" the performance of current-gen hardware, while also being five times more efficient. That's thanks to producing the highest GFLOPS both per mW and per square millimeter.

The maximum computational performance is said to "reach the teraFLOPS range," though it's not entirely clear whether either of the particular core designs introduced today are capable of it. The difference between them is that the G6400 has four of Imagination's new compute clusters, whereas the G6200 only has two.

 

Apple holds a 3.9% stake in the company and has used their chips in iOS devices for the last few years, for example - Apple is currently using PowerVR SGX543MP2 in the A5 system-on-a-chip that powers iPad 2 and iPhone 4S so it is very likely that these next generation GPU's will make it to Apple's A6 system on chip that is expected to power iPad 3 and the sixth generation iPhone that will be launched later this year.

[source The Verge]

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Rumor: Apple May Launch 4G LTE iPad Next Summer; 4G LTE iPhone By Fall

Nikkei Business reports that Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo will start offering the next generation iPhone and iPad.

According to Nikkei Business, the Japanese carrier has reached an agreement with Apple to launch an LTE iPad next summer and LTE iPhone next fall.

NTT DoCoMo is the predominant mobile phone operator in Japan and holds more than 50 percent of the cellular market.

BGR reports (via Nikkei Business):

Japanese news organization Nikkei Business on Wednesday stated that an iPad 3 with LTE is currently slated to launch on NTT DoCoMo some time during the summer next year, and an LTE-enabled iPhone 5 will launch later in the fall. Apple CEO Tim Cook is said to have met with NTT DoCoMo president Kiyoyuki Tsujimura and VP Takashi Yamada earlier this month to work out the details of the arrangement, and the companies have reportedly reached agreeable terms. 

Apple and NTT DoCoMo have been in discussions before, but according to rumors, the Japanese Carrier wasn't too happy about Apple's demand on unit volume and its refusal to allow carriers to install their apps on the iOS device.

Back in April, Will Strauss, President of wireless chip tracker Forward Concepts noted that Apple was looking for a solution where chips support 4G and 3G on a single chip so that the 4G LTE iPhone is as thin or thinner than iPhone 4 and it doesn’t consume too much battery life.

Qualcomm has recently introduced the next generation LTE chipset - Gobi 4000 that could be used in the 4G LTE iPhone and possibly 4G LTE iPad.

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