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Steve Jobs showing off the white iPhone 4

Reiterating previous claims that Apple is set to unveil a larger 4-inch iPhone later this year, Bloomberg now reports that late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs “closely” oversaw the new design of the sixth-generation iPhone.

The device will supposedly be a departure from the design Apple introduced with the iPhone 4 in 2010, and the current 3.5-inch screen will be replaced with a larger display.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has placed orders from suppliers in Asia for screens that are bigger than the 3.5- inch size now on the smartphone, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had worked closely on the redesigned phone before his death in October, one person said.

The design change will be Apple’s first for the iPhone since 2010, when it introduced the iPhone 4. Electronics makers, led by Samsung, are moving toward bigger screens, as consumers use handheld devices for a broader array of tasks, including watching video, playing games and browsing the Web.

Two other mainstream publications, The Wall Street Journal and Reuters, have also said that Apple is planning a 4-inch iPhone for release this October. It’s currently unclear how Apple will implement the redesign specifically.

Bloomberg has proven to be a reliable source of Apple’s plans in the past. Interestingly, iMore has reported that Apple has yet to decide on a design for the next iPhone.

Whether Apple decides to go with a 4-inch display or not, the iPhone is definitely due for a design refresh. We can’t wait to see what Apple has up its sleeve later this year!

Source: Bloomberg

With all the rumors that Apple plans to increase the next iPhone’s display to approximately 4-inches, and yesterday’s reports from Wall Street Journal confirming the rumors, there is much speculation regarding the exact dimensions and resolution of the upcoming display. Overdrive Design blog’s Niilo Autio pointed us to the mock-ups he did of how apps might benefit from a 4-inch display using a resolution of 640-by-1,152. The images below are compared to apps on the existing iPhone 4/4S design. The added screen real estate is especially noticeable in the Safari and Mail apps.

Apple has yet to offer iOS IT training and certifications

Today London-based Amsys announced a new one day course for IT professionals charged with managing and securing iOS devices in their organizations. The course, iPhone / iPad: Security in the Enterprise, was designed by Amsys itself and not by Apple.

Amsys is an Apple Authorized Training Center, meaning that it’s staffed by Apple certified trainers who use Apple’s official training curriculum to teach the company’s range of classes for IT professionals.

With all the training resources that Apple provides to its certified trainers and training centers, you might be wondering why Amsys created this class on its own. The answer is simple – Apple hasn’t provided substantive training options for managing and securing iOS devices. The dearth of official options is leading Amsys and other Apple training facilities scrambling to create their own content to fill the gap.

Business Rules Inc. is a training center based not too far from where I live in upstate NY. It’s one of the most comprehensive Apple training centers and offers classes in its Rhinecliff, NY and Kansas City training centers as well as at other locations in various U.S. states. It has also begun offering its own iOS classes. Currently it offers four classes – two on iOS app development, one on mobile device management using Apple’s Lion Server, and a program specifically geared to iOS in education. None of them have been created or certified by Apple’s training department.

These classes represent a type of cognitive dissonance between Apple’s training department and the needs of its customers. iOS has had comprehence device management built-in for two years. It has had some level of enterprise integration since 2008 when Exchange ActiveSync and Apple’s iPhone Configuration Utility launched alongside the App Store and iPhone 3G.

Even so, Apple hasn’t offered serious training or certification options related to iOS . The closest the company has come is the Mobility facet of its consultants network. Membership  requires (PDF link) Apple’s Snow Leopard and Lion certifications or certifications from Microsoft, Cisco, or CompTIA – none of which focus on iOS  (some don’t even focus on mobility at all).

It’s great to see dedicated trainers and technology professionals stepping into the fill the iOS training gap (including the speakers at MacTech’s various Boot Camp  and In Depth events). As effective as these options are, they’re stopgap measures. They don’t provide a uniform curriculum or an industry standard certification by which IT professionals can be compared. For that, Apple needs to be involved.

Cult of Mac’s own Charlie Sorrel explained the magic behind this slick feature built into iPhoto for iOS, but he didn’t spend much time on how to actually make it happen. I figured it might be high time to do just that, in today’s tip.

Granted, there are many ways to get your photos from one device to another, including Dropbox, PhotoStream, Messages, and email, just to name a few. The joy of beaming via iPhoto, though, is most likely about collaboration. Imagine editing a photo on an iPad, then sending it to your partner’s iPhone for further tweaks. Sounds pretty fantastic, right? Here’s how it’s done.

First of all, make sure that Location Services are enabled on both iOS devices. To do this, launch the Settings app on your iOS device, tap on the Location Services tab and toggle the On button. Make sure that iPhoto is toggled on in the list of apps that Location Services are enabled for, as well.

Next, launch iPhoto on each device. Tap the little gear icon at the top right of the screen (on the iPad – the iPhone places this gear in the lower right) and toggle Wireless Beaming on. Choose a photo you want to use, and make your iPhoto edits. Enhance!

Tap on the standard iOS Share button (it looks like a box with an arrow coming out to the right) and choose the Beam icon. You can grab the selected photo, or you can Choose another one from your library, tapping up to 100 thumbnails to mark the photos for beaming. A badge will pop up asking to Include Photo Location. You have to Allow this, or you won’t be able to Beam any photos, darn it.

iPhoto for iOS will then find the other iOS device (as long as it’s on the same WiFi network) and list it for you. Tap on the name of the other device, then on the Beam Photos button. A badge will show up, telling you how many photos are headed across the network. Your second device will ask you to accept the photos with a tap on the Yes button. iPhoto will take care of the rest.

Source: TUAW

Got an iOS tip of your own? Need help troubleshooting your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad ? (sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address) or leave a comment below.

Tragedy struck just after 8 p.m. ET last Wednesday. Bounding down my apartment’s outside steps, I stumbled slightly, and in what resembled one of those slow-motion sequences you see on film, my iPhone 4 went flying out of my hand and over a balcony, landing three floors below with a plasticky smack and spray of glass shards.

You could say I was shocked, stunned and horrified. To clear a few things up: No, as I told my inquiring editor, tequila shots were not involved. Yes, I realize it’s just a phone. But I don’t make a habit out of carelessly destroying expensive things — especially when I’m so close to the end of my AT&T two-year contract and looking forward to a no-penalty upgrade to a new phone circa, say, October.

I’ll jump forward to the end: this is a happy story. I walked out of the Apple Store in Center City Philadelphia at 7 p.m. the following day with a brand new iPhone 4. But the journey was very impressive considering the level of service I received for a product that is not a refrigerator or pricey household appliance. Remember, we’re talking about a phone. (Note: I did not disclose my profession to the Apple Store staff for obvious reasons. Nor do I think every customer does or would have the same experience I did — your mileage at the Genius Bar may vary.)

Apple is famous for customer satisfaction — it scores tops among cell phone owners and computer owners, according to the American Customer Service Index. It’s probably no coincidence that high customer satisfaction scores – and offering professional and prompt technical help goes a long way towards ensuring satisfaction — are happening at the same time as the historic expansion of Apple’s business and the ascendance of its stock price.

After my Genius Bar appointment, Apple sent me its standard follow-up customer survey asking me about my experience. And since I write about Apple, I figured I’d share my answers here, in survey form. I was asked to rate my satisfaction with various aspects of Apple’s service on a scale of very dissatisfied to very satisfied.

Overall, how satisfied were you with your in-store repair experience?

Very satisfied. The morning after the fateful accident, I walked into the Center City store without an appointment. I was immediately greeted and told to come back for the next available time slot at the Genius Bar in 20 minutes. When I returned, I waited about a minute and 30 seconds before my designated Genius, Dan, walked up.

That wait was the only thing about my experience that was short — but we’ll get to that in a minute. Despite a somewhat complicated situation due to a failed iCloud backup, I was consistently updated on what was going on with my device. And the employees acted like they cared about solving my problem. Customer service isn’t necessarily the most rewarding job, so it’s gratifying when an employee understands that your presence means there is a problem and that getting it fixed is important. (Apple has just over 34,000 retail employees, with about 100 assigned to each store. Horace Dediu at Asymco calculated that Apple retail sales employees make from $9 to $15 per hour, but Genius Bar workers can make up to $30 per hour.)

Overall, how would you rate the professionalism and technical ability of the store employees responsible for your repair?

Very satisfied. This was somewhat of an emergency situation for me — it’s hard to get work done as a reporter when your only phone is unusable for calls or apps you might be writing about. The Apple Store employees made me feel like getting a new iPhone right away was a priority for them.

They also were very straightforward with me. They made sure I knew what my options were from the start: I could use my AT&T upgrade for a new iPhone 4S, which would start my two-year contract over again (no thanks), purchase a new iPhone 4S off contract for $500 (eek); or, if I left my broken device with Apple, they’d replace my same model with a new iPhone 4 for $149. I chose the latter.

They also let me know that this is fairly routine. Dropping a phone three stories? Not weird at all — they’ve seen and heard worse. The phone’s screen had a lot of scary-looking shards of glass sticking up from it, and when I apologized for its state, my designated Genius shrugged: “I have chefs’ fingers. I deal with cracked screens like this all the time.”

How many times were you contacted about the state of your repair?

At least 10 times, and I hadn’t even left the store. While my new phone was re-syncing Dan would attend to his other Genius Bar appointments, but he’d continually pop back over to update me on the status of my phone. This went a long way toward making me feel like the situation was resolvable and that they cared about getting me a satisfactory outcome.

Once your repaired product was returned to you, what happened?

This actually wasn’t a simple get-a-replacement-phone-and-resync-it-with-my-latest-iCloud-backup situation. Turns out, after 25 minutes of syncing my new phone, none of my roughly 3,000 photos copied over. This was, you might say, problematic. After some troubleshooting, Dan said iCloud was the culprit: my last iCloud backup had failed. He said I should bring my computer that my phone was synced with in and he’d try again, and made me another appointment later that day.

When I returned with my MacBook Air and my new iPhone, he battled further issues: iPhoto kept crashing, and the latest iTunes backup wouldn’t sync. He tried a few different approaches, and finally ended up finding a solution. This troubleshooting took almost an hour, again, thanks to the sheer number of photos I had on my device. Then once he figured out the fix, it was a least another 45 minutes of syncing.

From the start of the discussion, how long was your interaction at the Genius Bar?

Over the course of two different appointments, I spent just under four hours getting in-person tech support from the Apple Store. While that might sound excruciating, Dan was seriously heroic, never got flustered, and even took time to discuss one of my favorite topics while we were waiting: where to procure Philly’s best pizza. (Osteria on North Broad Street, if you’re wondering.) As someone who works from home or remote locations regularly, it wasn’t really a problem to be nearby the Apple Store all day. But that might be harder for people who have to report to offices.

Plus, when his shift ended at 6 p.m., he found another Genius to check in on me while we waited for my syncing to finish so they’d be sure my problem was entirely fixed before I left the store.

In the end, yes, it took a while, and iCloud has some serious issues to work out. But I left with a new phone, only $160 and some change poorer. And, perhaps more importantly, a lot of customer goodwill — an asset that even the most valuable company in the world can’t put a price on.

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Tuidle lets you twiddle with your iPhone

There’s probably only one thing you should be doing while you are using your iPhone, and that’s sitting down, or standing politely off to one side of the sidewalk. Anything else is likely a danger to both you and to passersby. The folks behind the Tuidle iPhone case though, think otherwise.

The Tuidle (pronounced “twiddle”) is billed as a case that will let you “multitask with one hand.” The schoolboy in me thinks that that sounds pretty dirty, but in fact it looks very handy indeed.

The Tuidle is a case with a loop on the back, and this loop is mounted on a click-stop turntable. You just slip a finger through the loop and the phone is held safely in your hand as you type, take photos or play games one-handed. Moving the turntable lets you choose the phone’s orientation.

And here is the list of things the makers think you should be doing with it:

• walking a dog
• holding an umbrella, a subway handrail, a loved one, etc.
• riding a bike
• snapping photos
• laying down

To be fair, you’re not supposed to actually be using the phone during these activities — just holding it on your hand.

It looks like a great idea, and it is dirt cheap: The designer Naveed Ghalib wants just $8 plus $2 postage for your Kickstarter pitches.

Source: Kickstarter
Thanks: Julie!

TechnoBuffalo reported that an upcoming Sprint trade-in promotion will allegedly give existing iPhone owners at least $100 towards an iPhone 4S—if they sign a two-year contract and open a new line of service. The deal will supposedly run between May 18 and June 30:

If you’re an iPhone customer considering jumping ship to Sprint, the Now Network’s upcoming promo just might be enough to influence your decision. A trusted source has shared with us that starting on May 18th Sprint will begin offering a minimum of $100 on any iPhone trade-ins towards an iPhone 4S.

T-Mobile offered a similar deal earlier this month, where the carrier promised $200 trade-ins for any iPhone.

Related articles

• Target discounting iPhone 4S to $149, iPhone 4 to $49 – in store only
• Best Buy now offers iPhone 4 for $49 on contract
• After backlash, Sprint CEO to return $3.25M in salary tied to iPhone

Just like Target, many regional carriers, and other retailers following the trend, Best Buy has begun offering the 8GB iPhone 4 for $49.99 on the usual two-year contract through Sprint, Verizon, or AT&T. That’s $50 off the $99 price tag Apple and many other retailers still sell the device for. Unlike some of the other offers, it doesn’t appear to be an in-store only deal, as free shipping is included. The offer is listed as valid between “5/11/12-6/30/12″ and is available through BestBuy’s website now. However, some models are currently listed as “not available for shipping”. 

Related articles

• Target discounting iPhone 4S to $149, iPhone 4 to $49 – in store only (9to5mac.com)
• Bluegrass Cellular & Golden State Cellular launching iPhone 4S for $149, iPhone 4 for $49 starting May 18 (9to5mac.com)
• Apple Store Genius Bars now facing more iPhone 4 replacement constraints, told to swap for 4S (9to5mac.com)
• PowerPatch Battery Case for iPhone 4 / 4S for $51 + $5 s&h (9to5toys.com)
• TRTL BOT Stand Case for iPhone 4 / 4S for $15 + $8 s&h (9to5toys.com)

If Apple wants ownership of your domain, it's probably going to get it.

Just as we expected, Apple has successfully claimed ownership of the iPhone5.com domain name after filing a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) earlier this month to have the domain transferred from its existing owner.

According WIPO’s website, the case has now been terminated.

The iPhone5.com domain name now belongs to the brand protection agency Corporation Service Company, which was believed to be working on behalf of Apple to secure the domain, which was first registered back in 2008.

The now former owner of the domain argued that their site was “not endorsed, sponsored, nor otherwise affiliated with Apple,” and that it was “for the sole purpose of entertainment and knowledge.” But it seemed inevitable that the complaint would rule in Apple’s favor.

The Cupertino company has successfully claimed ownership of all sorts of domains that have included its trademarks in previous years, including iPhone4.com and iPhone4S.com.

Despite its efforts to secure the iPhone5.com domain, it seems unlikely that Apple’s next-generation iPhone will be named the iPhone 5. After the company abandoned its numbering system for the third-generation iPad back in March, it is expected to do the same again with its smartphone, naming the next device simply “the new iPhone.”

Source: WIPO

Via: The Next Web