Absinthe the untethered jailbreak for A5 decides is finally out. Available for download at the following link. Devices should be running either iOS5 or iOS5.0.1. Program is now Mac only.

http://cache.greenpois0n.com/dl/absinthe-mac-0.1.2-1.zip

Update: greenpois0n blog is under heavy load, or probably just fixing database connections as of this writing.

I haven’t got it to work on my iPad2 yet, cos the upgrade is taking forever, and somewhere I read that you’ll need to load greenpois0n for the jailbreak to work too. Lets see how it goes.

Happy Cydia, and Happy Lunar New Year too. What a great present.

TIP: I had an issue with my iPad 2 where Absinthe just didn’t recognize it, so there’s no jailbreak button to press either. Solution apparently was just to use a different Mac. Interesting… I must have tried on the same Mac for like 20-30 times before I nearly gave up.

You’re the Albert Einstein of our time.

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Apple, I don’t really know what you’re up to lately. There’re many things that you’re doing, wonderful things. But they just lack one mega factor, taking care of the current customer base.

In the coming months, I (and I believe I speak for many hundreds of others), who will have to adjust the way they work, their workflows, even their businesses, because of the new products you’re coming up with.

Great is iCloud. Wonderful features and all that. But I fail to comprehend as to why there’re removal of features such as syncing of keychains, Dock items, bookmarks and preferences. I’m a owner of multiple Macs, one Mac Pro and a MBP, and I was pleasantly pleased when all my preferences just automatically synced to my new Mac Pro upon startup.

And where in the world did iDisk go? I rely heavily on iDisk to transfer files between me and my working partners. I love the speed of file transfers, and of course the 1GB file size limit. It makes transferring of media files between my partners and I such a breeze, even easier than using YouSendIt, or WeTransfer, or other file sharing websites. More than that, it offers me more security and file organizing tools just like what we’re used to on the Finder. Abeitly, I use the webapp more than the integration in Finder, but it works just fine! Why does it have to go?

MobileMe Gallery. Gone? That was the best UI for a web gallery by far. Enough said. Of course if the images hosted there didn’t count towards the 20GB storage limit, that’ll be a perk.

Enough about MobileMe. But there’s more, FCPX. What in the world is that?

As a professional editor who uses Final Cut Studio applications on a daily basis, and for a long time too, this is the first time I’m not looking forward to a new release of FCP. No doubt the 64-bit and background rendering features are things that we’ve all been waiting for, but what about the missing features like deck recording and backward compatibility? Small complaint here about the UI too, it looks too much like iMovie. Perhaps iMovie Pro would be a better name for it. Given the features and UI of FCPX, it’s clearly not made to be a professional editing application. I mean, come on seriously? This is the best you have?

No I’m not upgrading to FCPX any time soon, it’s not worth it (though great price point might I add). And given this issue, I sincerely hope you don’t turn Mac OS X into something that resembles too much like iOS either. That’ll be a disaster.

I also have had 3 logic board replacements on my MBP, which is already my second. My first MBP went through much surgery too. And I’ve no idea why it’s happening over and over again. Perhaps I might add that in my email accompanying the survey you’ve asked me to fill out.

I’m disappointed, pissed in fact, that in the coming months I have to change the way I work, to suit the things you’re coming up with. I had always thought using an Apple product was about the product suiting my needs, not the other way round. And for a company that values the happiness of customers with it’s products, it seems to be going downhill.

I’m pretty sure I don’t only speak for myself. I probably speak for dozens, hundreds, heck maybe even thousands of MobileMe and especially FCS and FCP users. We’re professionals, and we like to keep it that way.

Disclaimer: Photos from Engadget.com. Writings all by iUnspoken.

WARNING: Post is graphic intensive.

Tim Cook starts off with the usual data statistics of profits and number of Macs being sold in the FY2010. Mac’s market share now is 20.7%.

AutoDesk finally coming to the Mac.

Continues to show the success of Apple Retail Stores around the world with their new stores in Beijing, Shanghai, London etc.

Photo from the store in Shanghai

Back to Steve Jobs, who continued to talked first about iLife. The best suite of lifestyle applications in the world. Which is why some people buy a Mac. And announcing iLife ’11. Contains the same suite of applications.

Pretty whacky watercolor art there I thought.

Jobs went on to talk about iPhoto ’11. New full screen modes, FaceBook enhancements, emailing photos, added new slideshows, large changes in printing books and letterpress cards.

Jobs then went to invite Phil to explain more about iPhoto ’11.

I like the way Apple does their presentations every single time. Simple and it does it right. Creates a lot of impact at the same time.

So Phil continues to demo iPhoto ’11. In full screen mode.

And the idea is that every single thing can be done in full screen mode, to take advantage of the entirety of the screen that’s available. So you can view Places and Spaces in full screen mode as well.

And you can also choose lists of cities in the menu on the top left corner of the screen and it instantly zooms in to the place that you want to focus on.

In this case, London.

I must say, the speed that was presented during the presentation, show’s how slow our connection is in SG. The speed at which the maps loaded on the screen were just phenomenal. It was as though the connection was to a hard drive navigation system. Crazy fast.

Another shot of iPhoto ’11 in full screen mode.

Phil then went on to show some new slideshow themes that were made available in iPhoto ’11. This one featured a 3D-ish looking globe with the photos from said location. Basically using the embedded GPS information in the photos that were taken.

Album view, much like the interface in iPad.

Showing off some new slideshow templates. This one’s named Reflection, just like the theme used in iMovie.

This one’s much like the upcoming Christmas season.

Also another improved feature in iPhoto ’11 is the ability to send feature-rich emails with the photos. And in addition to that, send them inside iPhoto itself rather than have iPhoto export them and have Mail open up a new email because of that.

So as simply as always, just select the ones that you want to send.

And you send them within iPhoto itself!

And as noted, it’s been arranged into a “postcard’ sort of way.

Many other designs too on the right panel.

Slight improved interface for editing photos as well.

Notice the panel on the right. It’s like a HUD-styled panel. You can basically see all the metadata and adjustment options there. Even where the picture was taken, as well as when it was shared on FaceBook or Flickr, as well as comments that your Facebook friends might have posted on the photo itself.

And there’re the new books interface, also within the full screen interface of iPhoto ’11.

Select different books, different colors, different layouts etc etc. And just send it off to Apple for printing and it’ll be delivered to your doorsteps.

The layout interface.

And all these books that you’ve created, are now also stored digitally on a wooden shelf.

Also available are letterpress cards.

Letterpress cards are basically cards that have intricate patterns physically imprinted onto them.

Apple also showed a video of letterpress card printing, which can be viewed at Apple.com/iPhoto

That’s it for iPhoto ’11, and it’s back to Steve Jobs.

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Next up is iMovie ’11. With new features like audio editing, one step effects, people finder, new and sports themes, and the ability to create movie trailers. Basically the idea is to allow users to do sophisticated editing the easy way, without needing to learn Final Cut Pro.

Though in my personal opinion, it seems to somewhat, as we pros terms it, “spoil the market”. On the other hand, it does make all of us, including professional editors, wanting to learn more and be a step up ahead of everyone else.

And for this, Steve invited Randy Ubillos to do the demo.

So off with the first view of the new audio editing feature in iMovie. Which frankly has been a long awaited feature since the colorful iMacs that I once used back in 2003. Audio has never been a editable part of the process of creating videos in iMovie. It was always 1-track only, with only the levels to edit. This should somewhat improve it.

At least, there’s the view of waveforms, for those who understand them.

Went on to explain one step effects for audio. Somewhat like Voice Candy for those who remember using it. Just a small panel at the side of the screen.

There’s also a function for instant replays, where like that it says, repeats part of the video, pastes a “instant replay” title onto it, and slows it down.

Can’t really see it here though, best to view the videos at Apple.com/iMovie

And then, there’re “instant trailers”. 15 themes to choose from, and a nice interface to get you going.

Choosing the theme

Notice the interface at the left hand side, that’s where you enter all your words and iMovie converts them into video typography. Pretty nice actually.

And there’re these placeholders that show you what kinda of shot should come in at that point in time. Be it an action shot, wide shot, close up etc etc.

So you just fill them all up. A purple line in the clip browser kinda helps you identify which shots iMovie thinks are suitable for those parts. That’s where People Finder comes in, where it uses face detection to identify what kinda shots they are.

So you just place them all in and play or export it out. Quite nice the effects really. The templates are actually quite cool.

Quick snapshots of them all.

And to top it off, all the soundtracks are performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Really cool stuff.

And that does it for iMovie ’11.

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Moving on, next up is Garageband ’11.

New features include flex time, groove matching, more guitar amps and effects, new piano and guitar lessons and a new thing called “How Did I Play”.

Xander Soren takes the stage for this demo.

Starting off, he demos a typical playback of a recorded jam session. Only problem was that the various musical instruments were not exactly in sync with each other, aka, in their own world.

So what can be done, is that you can set a “baseline” sort of beat in the entire composition. In which case, most often, it would be the drums, cause everyone else will just play according to the drum beat.

After which, you can actually set it to be the “baseline” and all the other tracks will automatically be adjusted to be in sync with each other. Hence, Groove Matching.

Then there’s Flex Time.

Basically it allows you to adjust the waveform. In this case, the one showed here was deemed too short and the note needed to last longer. So what you can do, is just “expand” the waveform sideways. And viola.

There are also new piano and guitar lessons.

Interface of a piano lesson.

And there’s this new thing called “How Did I Play?”.

This is where, after the lesson, you can play along together with the “teacher” in the video, as well as accompanying orchestra instruments, and Garageband will actually assess your playing. It assess the notes that you play, indicates the wrongly played ones. It also indicate the parts where the timing might have been a bit off.

As you might have guessed, the red ones indicates a wrong note.

And Garageband keeps track of how well you play as well, recording your progress as it goes along.

And that does it for Garageband ’11 as well as iLife ’11.

iLife ’11, as usual, comes free with every new Mac, and is a USD49 upgrade at the Apple Online Store.

And is available….

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Steve then takes the time to thank Greg and his team on working on iLife ’11.

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Moving on, Steve then talks about FaceTime. Long video short, basically it’s about getting the FaceTime feature onto the Mac. So that FaceTime users are able to call from their iPhones, iPod Touches as well as their Macs.

It’s nothing much really. Just a small interface on the desktop with contacts at the side of it. Of course these contacts are from your Address Book.

And say you’re calling from an iPhone 4 to a Mac. The Mac’s FaceTime’s interface will change orientation, should the iPhone user choose to do so. It’s automatic, so it doesn’t look funny on screen.

That’s the end of FaceTime.

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Moving on, Steve begins to talk about the Mac OS X. Undoubtedly, it is the OS with the most frequent major releases and improvements as compared to the rest.

*Ahem* 5 year gap from Windows XP and Vista, which failed *ahem*.

So here’s introducing, Mac OS X Lion, or rather, a sneak peek into what’s available in the new OS to come.

I found the picture of that lion a tad but comical. Maybe because lions are a common sight.

Okay, this is where “Back to the Mac” comes in. Basically, the iPhone was derived from the Mac OS X. Featured were implemented, a whole new interface was born. Then it went on to developing the iPad.

So the idea here is, to being some of those newly developed features and interfaces from the iPad and iPhone, back onto the Mac.

Somewhat like, what happens when Mac OS X meets the iPad.

It’s also to bring the feature of the iPad like, multi-touch gestures, app store, app home screens, full screen apps, auto saving and apps that resume when launched, to the Mac OS X.

Though some have actually contemplated of implementing a multi-touch surface onto the screen of the Mac.

But face it, it’s just not practical. Because if you use it for too long that way, your arm will feel like it’s gonna fall off. Touch surfaces are best used in the horizontal position.

Hence the development of the multi-touch Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad.

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And then, there’s the Mac App Store.

Well basically it works the same way as it does on the iOS devices. You have a store, where you can purchase apps from. You click and it instantly downloads and automatically installs into your Mac, placing itself on the dock.

Developers still have that 70/30 revenue split with Apple. And all apps are licensed for all your personal computers. Somewhat like the licensing thing for iTunes I think.

The Mac App Store

The app update page

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And there’s this brand new thing called LaunchPad.

Very simply put, it’s an overlay with the interface of the layout of apps just like on your iOS device.

And there’re folders too!

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Last but not least, there’s Mission Control.

No icon for this one.

But the idea is to combine Expose, Full screen apps, Dashboard and Spaces into one interface. Hence Mission Control (which is a terrible name if you ask me)

So you have full screen viewing of say, a PDF file.

So you can basically switch between this and your own desktop with multi-touch gestures, Spaces-style. Get it?

And this is the new interface should you want to see everything together, aka, expose.

So that kinda does it for the sneak peek of Mac OS X Lion, which according to Apple, should be released in Summer ’11, provided anything doesn’t go wrong.

The Mac App Store is also opening in 90 days time, and developers can submit their apps to said store in Nov.

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And Apple does their “One More Thing…” thing again, which is frankly, getting old.

Steve then goes on to ask “What happens when a Mac meets an iPad.”

The idea is to bring the features of the iPad to the Mac, in this case the MacBook Air.

Features like instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, solid state storage, no optical or HDD, thin and light.

Introducing the new MacBook Air.

Throw aside that initial wowing of the previous version of MacBook Air. This one is even thinner.

They’ve also squeezed a lot more pixels into the 13.3 inch display, among other hardware features like Core 2 Duo processing, Nvidia GeForce 320m, full size keyboard and what have you.

And instead of having SSD as storage, what Apple has done is to take out the flash modules out of the casing and install them directly onto the logic board itself, saving space for more battery.

Battery life?

And no it’s not a typo there. It actually, supposedly, has a standby time of 30 days. Good luck to the product reviewers to test that out.

And check this out. The inside of the new MacBook Air.

Apple has always intrigued me with the elegant design of their products, and that includes the insides of them. How everything is neatly organized and located. It’s just elegant, even on the inside.

Unlike other manufacturers, where their components are literally all over the place.

And removing the batteries,

That’s how small the components are. Imagine, this is what, probably 30% of the entire size of the Macbook Air? And that is exactly what runs the entire Mac.

Apple also came up with a smaller version of the MacBook Air. A 11.6inch version.

And.. the line up of the specs and prices.

All these, unfortunately, are in USD.

And yes, it’s only a 1.4GHz processor, up to a 2.13GHz one. Every machine comes with 2GB RAM, up to 4GB, and up to 256GB of storage.

And Apple proceeds to show the Ad as well as the product video. I for one like the product video better, so here it is.

Might take a while to load though.

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And so that concludes the Apple Media Event “Back to the Mac”!

Apple is holding a media event with the caption “Back to the Mac.” on the 20th October 2010, 10am PDT, which roughly translates to 1am on Thursday here in SG.

Speculation is that there might be a refresh of the notebook/laptop line aka MacBook Pros. Probably no so much on the desktops though, seeing that they were just updated recently.

In addition, some are saying that there might be a sneak peak at what could be the next version of Mac OS X. Mac OS 10.7. Or some are even saying that it could be the Mac OS 11.

But whatever it is, hold them credit cards for buying new Macs. At least for the time being. Even after the event, you’ll probably need to wait a couple more weeks for the stocks to hit SG’s shelves.

1) Ensure you have iTunes 9.2 on your computer. You need this version to upgrade and configure your iOS 4 device.
Just run the Apple Software Update program on either your Mac or PC.

2) Have at least an hour or two at hand before you do the upgrade. The iOS 4 file is a good 300-350MB. depending on your connection, it might take a while to download the upgrade to begin with.
Also, the amount of media that your iPhone has. The more media that’s being synced to your iPhone, the longer the process will take. Cos essentially, it needs to restore EVERYTHING back to your iPhone. My 32GB iPhone 3GS with about 17GB of data took a good half an hour to sync everything back, that’s minus the upgrade download time.

3) Check your device. If you’re using. A iPhone 2G or iPod Touch first gen, no go. The update won’t work a bit for you.
iPhone 3G and iPod Touch 2nd gen will experience fewer features than that of the full iOS due to hardware limitations.

4) Don’t be surprised if your multitasking doesn’t exactly work when you try it out in your current apps. The apps itself has to ‘support’ multitasking for it to work. That being said, expect a LOT of individual updates for every app in your iPhone.

And last note, the iOS 4 that was just released a few hours ago, happens to be the exact same version that we developers got from Apple 2 weeks ago during WWDC. The build number is 8A293. So that probably means we can expect an update from Apple soon.

Though, this build version is definitely tons better than the first beta of iOS 4. That was just crap in terms of performance. Haha.

Meanwhile, enjoy your multitasking, folders, Home Screen backgrounds and spell checker among many other features of iOS 4.

This year’s WWDC starts with a massive crowd, the majority of whom are using iPads. And some enthusiastic people raised iPads spelling out “WWDC”. Cool.

Okay, on to the major updates. I’ll try to keep it as short as possible.

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As usual, Steve Jobs comes on stage, greeted by a standing ovation.

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1) iBooks (on iPad)

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-New in-line notes that look like post-it notes.

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-New control to add bookmarks which shows as a red ribbon, which is also displayed in the content menu.

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-Now you can view PDFs in iBooks as well, functions just like the normal books you buy off the iBookStore.

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Moving on, Jobs also talked about HTML5. Basically, any developer who writes in HTML5 will have their content on ALL Apple systems, iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone and Mac. Apple is clearly behind HTML5 100%

Jobs also addressed the issue about why certain Apps get rejected from the App Store. Most of the time, reason being their private APIs, which will pose and issue when the iPhone OS gets updated cos it’ll break the APIs.

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Steve Jobs continue to highlight and demonstrate certain Apps.

eBay

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Netflix. Ya, it’s finally coming to iPhone. No word on 3G support though.

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And of course, Farmville.

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Guitar Hero. Yeah man… Available for only $2.99

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And remember Apple mentioned about the revenue sharing thing on the App Store? Apple has since paid out $1 billion. Cool figure.

Continued to share about the US Smartphone Market Share

Poor Andriod with only 9%. BB still going strong at 35%.

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And now, the major announcement we’ve all been waiting for. iPhone 4. Here’s a look at the history of the iPhone.

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Complete with an all new design, which unfortunately, most of us has probably seen it. But not in detail though!

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Glass on the front and back, and steel around the sides. 9.3mm thick, 24% thinner than current iPhone. There’s a LED flash at the back with the camera.

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Some have commented about a weird black line alone both sides of the iPhone 4.

Well, basically, just the band antennas. Illustrated below.

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iPhone 4′s summary.

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Also, the screen got a new upgrade too. 4 times as many pixels in that small tiny space. Resulting in amazingly sharp text.

326 ppi.. Mad…

Basically, 300ppi is the limit of the human eye retina when reading stuff at 10-12 inches away. Clearly this beats it.

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See the difference between the old and new screens..

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Now moving to testing the webpage load speeds on both iPhone, one 3GS and one 4.

Apparently, they had a network glitch with their WiFi network? Someone’s gonna go down for this… And they switched to AT&T’s 3G network, but that didn’t work either, popping up all sorts of error messages about “not being able to connect to the Internet”. Nice..

And someone shouted “Try Verizon!” I like that. Hahaha…

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Concluding about the iPhone 4.

And of course, powered by the Apple A4 chip.

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Components of the entire iPhone 4. Look at the size of the A4 chip.

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Bigger battery, plus A4 chip.

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New also on the iPhone 4, 3-axis gyro. Meaning, complete with the accelerometer, it can now detect motion velocity in 6 axises. Jobs then proceeds to demo it on the iPhone 4, turning around and the graphic of a block of wood on the iPhone, moves as well.

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Jobs goes on to talk about the new camera system.

New 5MP camera with a 1.75 micron pixel sized backside illuminated sensor for better low light photography.

Now shoots video in 720p at 30FPS. Hmms. What about if I want in 25FPS? Bummer.

LED light can stay on throughout the video recording though, so ain’t that bad. Haha.

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And something really new.

iMovie for iPhone!!

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Workflow is very similar to that of the iMovie for desktop Macs. But the UI for the iPhone seems much more intuitive, possibly cos it’s touch screen. Can you imagine editing HD videos on FCP on a large touch screen? That’s my dream…

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And you can even export in different sizes, 720p, 540p and 360p. Meaning, now you can shoot, edit and export your movie, entirely on an iPhone. Amazing.

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At this point, Jobs starts to turn off the WiFi, and asks the audience to set their laptops on the floor, so as not to disrupt the demos. Apparently, 570 WiFi base stations were responsible for the network jam.

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Moving on, iPhone OS 4 is now iOS 4.

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Going through some of the features like multitasking, folders, unified Inbox in Mail, etc etc.

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Overall of iOS4.

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Apple is also apparently, adding “bing” support for it’s search in Safari.

A comparison of all 3 search engines. Yahoo, Google and bing.

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Also new to iOS4, iBooks! Now you can sync your iPad, iPod Touch and iPhone iBooks together! Wirelessly!

And once again, Jobs demos it on the book “Winnie The Pooh”

And btw, it’s free with every iBook App.

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PDF viewer in iBooks as well, as previously mentioned.

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Going on to show iAds. Basically an advertising platform on the iPhone, throughout Apps, that allows developers to earn money by advertising on the iPhone. (This is clearly not the proper explanation, but you get the idea.)

Only different from the normal ads we see in our iPhones now, is that iAds doesn’t close your app to take you to another page. It keeps you within the app itself. Something like, an app, within an app?

It has really cool features, check it out when Jobs first introduced it when he announced iOS4′s SDK.

And many companies have signed up for the iAds too.

Nissan, Citi, Unilever, AT&T, Chanel, GE, Liberty Mutual, State Farm, Geico, Campbells, Sears, JC Penny, Target, Best Buy, Direct TV, TBS, and Disney, just to name a few.

iAds will be turned on, on 1st July for all iOS4 devices.

That wraps up iPhone 4 and iOS4.

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And Apple did their thing again. Their “one more thing” thing.

Video call! Apple calls it FaceTime, though it’s a really weird name if you ask me.

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See that FaceTime icon at the bottom? Hmm. What happened to the “hold” button?

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However, it’s only available over WiFi, citing reasons to collaborate with cellular providers on this. And only from iPhone 4 to iPhone 4.

Now doesn’t that sound a bit like skype? Or perhaps the quality is better?

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Standards wise…

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So that’s wrapping up the iPhone 4.

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iPhone 4 comes in black and white. $199 for the 16GB model, $299 for the 32GB model.

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iPhone 4 will be available in US, UK, France, Germany and Japan on June 25th. Coming to another 18 more countries in July.

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iOS 4 will be free for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G (not all features supported), and iPod Touch, excluding the 1st generation. Apparently they’ve found a way to make iOS free on iPod Touch too.

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Jobs goes on to show a video about the iPhone 4. Very similar to those of the MacBook Pro Unibody Video and the iPad video too.

View the video here!!

After which, Jobs takes the stage again.

Talks about Apple not just being a tech company, but integrating liberal arts as well. So developers don’t need to mess over integration.

Ends off with “This is our new baby, I hope you love it as much as we do. Thank you very much.”

Awesome.

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So… Last thoughts.

Is Starhub or any of the telcos going to offer some nice package for customers to upgrade to iPhone 4? Come on, you know you want that business going…

Also, the new iPhone 4 uses the new micro-SIM card too. Same ones that you’ll find on the iPad.

No Mac Pro news, no basic MobileMe package too. Oh wells. Quite bummed about the lack of Mac Pro updates though.. Lets see if they’ll announce it at the end of the month.

Check out the new blog banner above for WWDC. Nice.

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1) iPhone OS 4

Pretty much guaranteed that Steve Jobs will spend quite a fair bit of time on this. Though it’s not confirmed when the final version will be released to the public. But Apple has been making a fair bit of effort in seeding new versions of the Software Development Kit (SDKs) to their developers. As it is, I’m also running the beta version of iPhone OS 4 Beta 3 on my own iPhone. Looks pretty awesome. In fact, using my friend’s iPhone and staring at a black background on the Home Screen looks so odd now.

Surely, there’ll be more features that will be revealed at WWDC keynote iteslf too.

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2) Mac Pro / 27″ Display

Considering that the last major update was in March 2009, the Mac Pro line is indeed quite overdue for updates. Possibly, some nice Intel Xeon 5600 6-core processor would be nice, seeing that their shipment dates had been delayed till June.

And also, a new 27″ Cinema Display that resembles the display on the current 27″ iMac too.

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3) Cloud-based iTunes / MobileMe

Both are unconfirmed, though there have been rumors going around that Apple is working on a wireless syncing option for the iPhone, (hence the disapproval of the recent 3rd party wireless sync App on the App Store). There could also be a free version of MobileMe being launched together with it.

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4) Apple TV

Rumors has it that Apple is working on a completely revamped Apple TV. Also said that the new device could be based on the iPhone OS 4, which would make perfect sense for them to launch it at the WWDC together with the iPhone OS 4.

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5) Mac OS 10.7

Reports has it that Mac OS 10.7 has been in use since October last year. Though, it seems quite unlikely that it’ll be announced during this year’s WWDC. Perhaps in Jan 2010?

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Other things include a possible Mac Mini refresh, and new features for Safari 5, including HTML 5 and stuff like that.

So apparently this lady, Diane Campbell, had saved up money over the past few weeks, just so that she could buy the iPad as her first computer. What a nice thought.

That was until she reached the Apple Store and was told that cash was not a accepted form of payment. Why so you may ask?

Apparently Apple uses its customers credit cards to limit purchases of iPads to just two per person, which pretty much gives everyone a fair share of buying a iPad during this peak season. Not for the minority who don’t have credit cards though.

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So Apple changed it’s company’s policy so that instead of using credit cards to regulate purchases, it is requiring that all customers sign up for an Apple account on the spot, a change, to regulate it’s buying policy.

It’s a nice change really. Bet there’re tons of people out there who wants to buy a iPad but just don’t have the credit card to do so.

And as a gesture of goodwill, Apple presented Diane with an iPad right at her residence, for FREE! How awesome is that.

Seriously, a blessing from God for her. Just very touched when I read this story.

Just goes to show, what an impact one person could make. Which asks a question, what impact are you making on the people around you today? Whether be it big or small, people you know or don’t, we all can be a difference in people’s lives, sometimes in the smallest way that we are not even aware of.

As we all know, Apple does keep a tight lid on pre-release products, until the actual day itself. Many have also said that this might just be a Chine-made model of the iPhone.

Not anymore.

The left one being the current iPhone 3GS. The one on the right, the new iPhone.

And come on, face it, China doesn’t counterfeit products that nicely. There’s always this slight hardware fault like a HUGE gap between the screen and the circuit board.

Looks kinda sleek to a certain extent. But then, on the other hand, it looks like one of those Windows Mobile phone. Too flat.

Gizmodo had the honor of breaking it apart, to see what’s inside. And here are a few new features.

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- Front-facing video chat camera (for video chats)
- Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
- Camera flash
- Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
- Improved display. (Might have a higher resolution than that of the iPhone 3GS)
- What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
- Split buttons for volume
- Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic

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Kinda cool eh? Oh, apparently the battery is removable at some point.

Clearly it’s a prototype from Apple HQ. And catch this, it had an 80GB hard drive. I know, crazy right?

Gizmodo had put up a couple of video giving us a full view from all angles of this new prototype. Take a look.

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No one had actually had a chance to look at this phone in detail yet. Cos, as much as it was booting up when it was found, clearly Apple HQ has got a hold on this situation and disabled the device remotely. So it doesn’t do much except look pretty.

Obviously, Apple wants this unit back too! And are considering this unit stolen, and not lost. I mean, come on, seriously? It was found (read “found”) on the floor of a bar.