As we all know, after an incident at the Apple store in Beijing, selling of iPhone4S has stopped in China. But the company has turned to a new, safer tactic to sell its most wanted device. The new system do not allows reserving an iPhone without inputting full credentials, including government photo ID matching the name and ID number. This is meant for keeping out scalpers who use bots to snag up phones in the reservation system.

If you want to buy an Apple Phone in Hong Kong, you need to enter your information on newly set up page on the Hong Kong Apple online store site and enter a lottery. You have only three hours to put in for a phone, between 9am - 12pm. If you are a lucky one, Apple will email you by 9pm that evening, letting you know instructions on pick up your handset the following day. When a “winner” goes to the store, one needs to show the marching ID. 

Sure, it is a very strict system not to be allowed to walk in and buy the phone, but violence from people who attacked the store in the releasing day of iPhone4S, was stricter. 

The new reservation system is only for shoppers in Hong Kong, it is unknown yet whether Apple rolls this out across the country.

Probably you have a lot of different calendars arranged in your Google Calendar and wonder how to manage which calendars display across the different devices you sync to. Google has provided an easy and straight-forward way of doing this if you are set up through Exchange ActiveSync. It is as simple to do, as following the steps below.

Setup Google Sync on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch; go into Safari and point it to m.google.com/sync in order to manage your devices.

Then you have to select your desired device. If you have ever synced other devices, you will see them all displayed with a time-stamp of your last sync.

After you tap the device you would like to manage, you will have an opportunity to select any calendar you want synced to your device. If you want your device not to be synced with any calendar, you can de-select them as well.

Tap ‘Save’ and you will be taken back to your device selection. Then open up your calendar application and allow it a moment to sync up your new calendars. If you tap ‘Calendar’ at the top-left, you will be able to see a list of all calendars and verify that only the specific calendars you selected have been synced.

Now you have full control over your mobile calendar! Enjoy!

Dear iOS App Developers, here is an important announcement for you: we give you a chance to get a free review on Apple iPhone Blog every week! The promotion concerns to FREE apps only and starts on Monday, January 30th! 

Please follow these easy steps to get started:

1. Go to our Facebook Fan Page  and submit your app by placing your app’s iTunes link in the comments in Free App Promotion Tab. 

2. Invite your friends and associates to vote for your app!

All the apps are inserted in Poll options as soon as they’re submitted by you. Everyone is then allowed to vote for the app they’d like to be reviewed. The app that gains the majority of the votes by the next Monday will be reviewed on our blog exclusively for FREE, meaning that you reach 1500-2000 target users in less than a day! Your App links are inserted, promising approx. 200 downloads within the first 48 hours!

Once the winner app is announced and gets the free review, it is removed from the poll options, while other apps continue to compete to become next week’s winners, with their votes kept! The promotion never ends, so you will definitely become a winner one day! 

Do not miss your chance, submit your app now  and start voting for it on Monday!

Winning Tips:

• The earlier you submit your app, the more votes you are able to gain. 
• You can share the poll among your friends and ask them to vote for you.

We will notify you when the poll goes live. Wish you all luck and thank you for supporting Apple iPhone Blog!

Apple has an amazing success in first quarter, ended on December 31. Can you imagine 110 million people went to an Apple store in during the period of time?  That means approximately 22.000 customers per Apple store per week. 

But the most important thing is quantity of sold items. It is worth mentioning that iPhone sales have increased, as the company has sold 37.04 million gadgets which is 128% jump over the comparable quarter in 2010; as for iPad (15.4 million) and Mac (5.2 million), their sales beat estimates as well. Consider Apple has not been able to produce as many iPhone 4Ss as it would have liked and it was not even able to sell the phone in China. 

Though, Apple stores are not all where the company hits their record-breaking sales figures. It has 13.000 points of sale in the world for the iPhone, including Think big box electronics retailers, carrier stores, and the like.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said: “We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs, Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash on hand. Revenues from iTunes hit $1.7 billion. More than 140 million applications and pieces of content were downloaded on Dec. 25. iCloud has 85 million users. There are now 550,000 apps available. Developers of such apps have earned more than $4 billion, $700 million in Q1.

(Summary of Apple Applications 2011).

Analysts wondering: if everything went Apple’s way, what would the quarter have looked like? And when will this amazing growth spurt end if none of those problems can lay the company low? How do you think?

Hackers are continuing working on SIRI and they are discovering something new in it everyday. 

As for now, we meet with Lingual - a new jailbreak-only tweak, from Code Themed team, that allows translation from English to 30+ languages. The developers hope to include translation to English in a future update. We have not installed the tweak, but some people have reported that they have tested it and it works flawlessly, quickly pulling in results using Microsoft’s Bring Translate API as a backend. Its only limitation is that backend is not strong enough and sometimes fails to correctly translate phrases. But it is said that developers of Lingual cannot be held accountable for Bing’s shortcomings and they have done an important work in such a short period of time. This could prove a useful tool at your disposal.

To use the tweak say to SIRI: “translate [something] to [language]” or “what is [something] in [language]?” No icon will be added to your home screen and no settings are available for the tweak. Just install and talk to SIRI.

We are continuing to collect useful information about SIRI  and SIRI is continuing to surprise us. 

Today’s trick is about how to quickly access birthdays with SIRI.  Rhythm of life is tiring and routine that is why sometimes we forget very important things, e.g. birthdays.  But an amazing feature of your phone   is here to help you. You will not have to worry, fake a distraction, jump out the window, race to the car, etc. just because you forgot special someone’s special day. Just make sure you have the birthday recorder in your calendar in your iPhone4S , all the remaining will be done by SIRI. 

You just need to hold down the Home button until SIRI  pops up; then ask SIRI “When is […’s] birthday?” consider you can also ask your own birthday, e.g. “when is my birthday?” or ask the question with proper names. You can include even relationships, for example “When is my wife’s birthday?”, provided they have been added to the contact. After you ask the question wait for SIRI to answer.

Now you can be an inattentive as never before. Just do not forget to ask SIRI  the question permanently. 

Meet another winner of our Holiday Promotion – Calendarium! A new, easy to use calendar that makes each of your day special!

Helping you to discover many interesting things about every day of the year, with Calendarium you never get bored. The app suggests a new way to combine calendar of historical events with times of sunrise/sunset, number of week, day, day length, moon phase and more!

Available in the reference category in the Apple App Store, you can grab Calendarium for only $0.99! The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, and requires iOS 4.0 or later to be fully functional. 

Calendarium features English and Polish languages and the current version available is 1.1, with the latest update bringing option to share events by twitter, as it supports Twitter for iOS5 and all the bugs are fixed.

With Calendarium you learn about the events that took place in the past that day. The detailed information about the hours of sunrise and sunset, moon phase and day length can also be found. 

Here is the list of app features:

• Discover historical events and holidays and share it with your friends via mail, SMS or twitter;

• Sunrise and sunset time;

• Week number, day number, weekday and year;

• Number of days passed from 1 Jan and days left to 31 Dec;

• Moon phases;

• Day length;

• Geographic coordinates;

• No Internet connection required;

• Also in Polish.

Remember our Holiday Promotion on Facebook? The polls are over today, with the winners announced! Since the very first day of the promotion, The Quiz has been an unconditional leader, managing to uphold the top position till the last day in FREE apps! So here is what the app is all about:

Have you ever experienced that awkward moment, when you feel just stupid, as you find out you have no answer to some general or common sense questions? The Quiz is just that…

Found in Games category in the Apple App Store , this free app has been rated 4 stars out of five. The free version features "Big 20" quiz with only 200 questions, but other more than 3000 questions are also available in other three In-App Purchases, covering all categories and ensuring great time with truly testing your knowledge! The app is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad and requires iOS 4.2 or later to be fully functional.

All the four different quiz formats (one free and the rest three costing $0.99) sum up in various scoring systems, helping you to rank higher in the Game Center Leaderboard, as your final result is calculated by the a sum of correct answers of all quizzes!

Top In-App Purchases of The Quiz include three different types of challenges, containing:

• Survival- you have a minute to answer the questions and 3 “lives” that earns additional seconds to your time due;

• Take a Risk Competition- with 20 questions to answer, each of which may double your score or make you lose;

• Three Minutes – with no time limit for each question, you score as much, as many questions you manage to answer correctly.

The Quiz features very well written English questions, nice UI and bizarre quiz layouts, making the app a great one to try with your family or friends to find out who is smarter. 

And some good news for those who already own the app – the update is going to be rolled quite soon, making this fantastic app even better! Also note that hundreds of new questions are being added on monthly bases, so keep up tracking to maintain your positions while competing with others!

Though Android is still the leader in mobile operating system race, after releasing of the iPhone 4S, the gap is getting smaller. 

According to a study from Nielsen which was conducted among 75,000 consumers over the age of 18, releasing of iPhone 4S had an enormous impact on consumer purchasing decisions. Among those who bought a new smartphone in December, 44.5% chose an iPhone, compared to just 25.1 percent in October.

Android continues to lead among all U.S. smartphone users with 46.3 percent, but it declined from 61.6 percent in October to 46.9 percent in December. As we all can see, Apple's phones’ growth is a great detriment for Android.

We should consider, that 46% of U.S. mobile consumers had smartphones as of December 2011, so in 2012, as more people buy a smartphone, the battle between the companies is set to get even hotter, however if Apple releases iPhone5… 

At Apple's "Education Event" at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the company unveiled reinvented textbooks, calling them a "new textbook experience." The freshly introduced books are graphical, interactive, and take advantage of features such as 3D imaging, embedded video, and multi-touch gestures. The books will be available for the iPad users to download directly from the iBooks Store.

If you’re wondering how the publishers will manage to make those new iBook2 textbooks, here’s an answer for you: there will be a new Mac app rolling out, as Apple announced. The new assisting app will significantly facilitate to design and format these new interactive textbooks, allowing users to embed HTML, 3D objects, interactive image galleries, Q&A, and so on, and allow the creators to publish their work to Apple's iBookstore directly from the app! Moreover, the authors will be allowed to update the published books, in case there are some typos and other petty errors captured.

iBooks Author, allowing you to create dynamic, current, engrossing, and truly interactive e-books, is available for free in the Mac App Store for everyone who desires to become an early adopter!

Few of the iPad-based education program partners were also announced, including Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt —together making 90% of the textbooks currently available in the US! The companies mentioned will be filling the new "Textbooks" category in iBooks 2 with high-school level textbooks, and are piloting the new iBook Author app as well. Covering every subject level of study for high-school students, the textbooks will be available for $14.99 or less at launch – while the publishers will be able to set their own prices, but only in return for selling them exclusively through iBooks, so $14.99 appears to be the standard option by now.

The event was noteworthy for one more thing – iTunes U offering by Apple, for syncing your iBooks textbooks to your iPad. While Apple's Eddy Cue unveiled the new iTunes U app, designed to look a lot like iBooks 2, strictly a portal for accessing all types of educational materials, including a class syllabus, full course notes and videos, as well as iBooks notes. 

Apple has teamed up with some of the world's top universities such as Duke, Harvard and many more, suggesting them to offer course materials for the part-time students as well, including lecture videos, quizzes and so on. Furthermore, though iTunes U used to only be accessible for the University students and lecturers, Apple has now made the app accessible to K-12 school districts, universities, and colleges in 26 countries! 

However, there are two important things to note:

1. An iTunes Store account is required to access iTunes U course materials, so you should create an iTunes account first.

2. iBooks textbooks are readable only on iPad.

As a conclusion, it should be said that the era of heavy and dull textbooks is over! Although no iPad3 or iPhone5 was announced, the students now are still much luckier to have as strong and considerate supporter as Apple. Let us know your thoughts about iBooks Textbooks and iTunes U below in the comments! 

You can save time and effort entering common information like name, email, phone number and well used phrases with setting up shortcuts. Did you know iOS 5 has a special feature that allows you define a word or phrase to a key combination; the feature is called “Shortcuts.” It is very easy to set, just follow the steps below.

Go to settings, click on General, and click on Keyboard. You will see a predefined shortcut which is triggered by tipping omw; here you need to click on Add New Shortcut. Choose a username, email address or phrase you use a lot and type in. To trigger the shortcut, choose a letter combination. Just hit the Save button, now it is stored for future use, then you can add as many as you wish. When you are finished go to General, tap Keyboard and you will see there a list of your shortcuts.

As for Notes, open up an application that you can type into. Type in the shortcut one of your phrases; as you see here are the whole phrases open up in a bubble below.  If you hit the Space Bar, the whole phrase appears…

Is not this a good way not to waste your time and nerves?

By the way, if you want us to review some features of your iPhone, do not hesitate to let us in comments. 

Although, it’s only 3 months passed after releasing  of iPhone 4S,  people are already waiting  for a new phone from Apple. Rumors  about the new phone are endless and they never calm down.  As we know, physical design of the iPhone 4S  and 4 is similar to each other, but iPhone5 is expected to be completely different. Though, until a keynote speech we can never be sure about the final product.

As for now, a mock-up video has been spread which depicts re-imagined iPhone by totally removing the Home button. Author of the video is a designer Kris Groen who has shown us his vision about the new generation of Apple phone, his own concept design.

The most different thing in “Groen’s iPhone” is that it does not have Home button. Author of the design replaced the button with two separate Home buttons on each side of the handset, located midway up. Groen, based on a user experience point of view, believes that ‘squeezing’ both of the new Home buttons together would take you directly back to your Springboard. The new buttons would also allow for fast application switching when used individually.

Another important change is screen size of the phone, which is increased to whopping 4-inches diagonally with Retina display. Some people want the iPhone to be bigger; others think the current model has perfect screen size because anything bigger will be uncomfortable, just like other smartphones.

What about you? How do you feel about the concept? After seeing the video below do not hesitate to let us in comments.

Patent war is not something new. Motorola vs. Apple is not new as well. As for now, patent war continues and it continues between Apple and Motorola again.

Three Apple patent infringements were set aside this week by the International Trade Commission, claiming against rival smart phone maker Motorola Mobility. The company which owns a vast mobile industry patent portfolio was accused by Apple of infringing three patents, including two that cover touch screen technology.

Though, Apple lost a ruling in its efforts to block imports of Motorola Mobility. A Motorola press release notes that the Administrative Law Judge ("ALJ") in the US International Trade Commission ruled in favor of Motorola Mobility, finding no violation for any of the three Apple patents listed in Apple's suit. The ALJ found no violation for any of the three Apple patents listed in Apple's suit.

Motorola's senior vice president and general counsel said: "We are pleased with today's favorable outcome for Motorola Mobility. Motorola Mobility has worked hard over the years to develop technology and build an industry-leading intellectual property portfolio. We are proud to leverage this broad and deep portfolio to create differentiated innovations that enhance the user experience." 

Apple’s defeat at the hands of an International Trade Commission (ITC) this past week now stands on the record. Generally ITC rulings are important because it may impact the import/export of products into various countries. Although, they are so long-drawn-out, offending companies manage to modify their products to escape a sales ban.

As promised , selling of the iPhone 4S in China and in other countries has begun. No Apple product was launched without long lines and frustration but all the expectations have been exceeded now. Some fights were breaking out near the Apple’s “main store in Beijing” between the people who just wanted to buy the phone. Some of them waited overnight in the freezing cold (-9 degrees) to become the first to purchase the phone.  

The store was pelted with eggs too from a crowd of about 500 people. Reason of the action was that opening the store was delayed by at least an hour. Apple had advertised that the store would open at 7 a.m. and at 7.15 a.m. people began crying “Open the door!” and “Liars!” The conflict was significant enough to attract the attention of police; it temporarily cordoned off the shop. The company has become a victim of its own success...

Therefore Apple has decided to postpone the retail availability of its iPhone 4S at the stores in Beijing and Shanghai. People can get the device through Apple’s Web site or buy at China Unicom and other authorized resellers.

An Apple spokesman told: “The demand for iPhone 4S has been incredible, and our stores in China have already sold out. Unfortunately, we were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being.”

Although Apple, famous for blowing off CES each year, doesn’t exhibit at the event this time,  the show was far from free of its impact. The company has demonstrated that its attentiveness on a few well designed devices with a great user involvement and securely integrated ecosystem is a winning track! With this said; it seems that most corporations that belong to the same industry have just given up completely and begun a game of follow the leader!

The most explicit example of this was a slide displayed by Acer when showing off its new cloud service for photos.  The slide looked so similar to the Photo Stream slide from Apple’s iOS 5 announcement that it was absolute comical situation... The same offering with the same visualizations – so what’s the news?

Then there was the hyping of Samsung’s new Series 9 laptop, a very attractive and very compact sample of the engineering response to the Apple’s MacBook Air, with the emphasized features of “connectivity” and “user experience” – in which Apple undoubtedly outrivals…

On the other hand, Android head Matias Duarte announced a ‘style guide ‘for Android app developers, aiming to help them with “typography, color palettes, and other stylistic advice” extremely similarly to Human Interface Guidelines of Apple, guiding on how apps for iOS and OS X should easily work. 

The influence and leadership of Apple was obvious all over the show as the corporations from Nokia, to Samsung, Microsoft and even Intel, as it passed in the smartphone argument with a reference design and Lenovo collaboration... It definitely seems that all the companies try to live up to Apple standards, and do not even try to hide this...

Now you can protect your iPhone with a nice case. The most important thing is that you can design it yourself! The case works with the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4.

At Consumer Electronic Show, attendees were able to build their iPhone cases using interlocking pieces. There was a little workshop station set up for people to build their cases on the spot. From canisters filled with different colored parts, people could pick and build the case for their dream colors. 

People, who were not able to attend the event, should not envy because they can create their dream cases outside Las Vegas. As the video below depicts, that is very simple, just like sliding the pieces together. You need four modular pieces to build your case, though it comes with six ones. That means you can re-design it as often as you wish. Be sure the four-parted case lets you access to all of your phone’s port. You can get parties of the case for $35.

A cloud-based streaming music service will be available for Apple’s various devices. Expected date of releasing the free application is summer. At CES representatives said that the catalog of Music Unlimited already includes 15 million songs.

As the matter of the fact the Music Unlimited is Sony’s music service, we can assume that the company is ready to offer its vast content ecosystem to devices outside of its own. President of Sony Network Entertainment believes that cloud-based services are in an early stage of competition and Sony is getting its skin in the game. At Consumer Electronic Show he said: "You can be a Sony customer, but that doesn't mean every product you own comes from Sony. We have an opportunity to reach these customers, and show them the benefit of being a Sony customer." The president also noted that Music Unlimited has more than a million active subscribes, however the figure includes premium and trial members. 

Availability on Music Unlimited is increasing. It has accessibility in 13 countries around the world.

As the American carriers have begun selling Apple’s hit device, T-Mobile has been left out of the “game.” At the Consumer Electronics Show CEO of the company admitted today that the lack of the iPhones has hurt its ability to retain subscribes, particularly high-value-contract ones.

Last October, when the iPhone 4S  came to some carriers, expressing interest to Apple, T-Mobile posted a blog, saying it was Apple’s decision that they “still don’t have the iPhone.”

Chief technology officer of T-Mobile Neville Ray believes that the iPhone never made it to T-Mobile because of the unique band of spectrum (AWS), which it uses for its wireless network. That would have required extra work to ensure the iPhone ran correctly on the network. But the next chipset that Apple is going to use will overcome the hurdle. He claims that he has seen the roadmap of chipsets that Apple plans to use and it has that capability. Ray said: "The next chipset will support AWS; the challenge that existed in the past will go away." Though Apple can ignore that capability and not strike a deal with T-Mobile.

No matter T-Mobile get the iPhone or no, it is widely believed that the next version of the  Apple phone will run on LTE (Long Term Evolution) which is where the other major carriers are headed.

After ten days of releasing iPhone 4S , 22 countries have been added to the list  of the countries where pre-orders were available for the phone. However demand on the phone continues even today because it is not available worldwide yet. As for now Apple has announced that in January-13 the phone will be making its way to China and other countries. As the matter of the fact the smartphone will be launched before the Chinese New Year (January 23rd), Chinese people will not have to think too much about presents for lovely people.

The phone will be sold through the Apple Online Store, Apple’s retail stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers. Pricing is not announced in local currencies, although it is listed as $199, $299 and $399, depends on flash memory unit - 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models. Consider iPhone 3GS is free! A two year contract is required to obtain the phones from participating carriers .

The phone will be available in other countries as well. These countries are: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.

But China is the key market among those countries because the  addressable market in China for potential smartphone users, which includes iOS and Android, is 122 million! Besides, China is the second largest market  for application store downloads. Other important things connecting to the issue is Apple’s payment policy  in China and the company’s store in Shanghai . 

Availability on Apple’s products increases day by day…

Could you imagine that the iPhone 4S demands twice as much data as iPhone 4 and three times as much as iPhone 3G? A study, released in Jan-6 by U.K.-based telecom network technology firm Arieso, looked at data usage across a variety smartphones and connected devices. It claims that iPhone 4S users are the hungriest data consumers in iPhone family. 

The Arieso study, “Recent Smartphone Trends & the Extreme Data User” reveals a trend that each new device is more data hungry than the last. According to it, one thing is obvious - capacity issues plaguing mobile operators around the world will worsen in 2012.

The most significant change in users behavior has been catalyzed after introduction of the iPhone 4S. Its users download 2.76 times as much data as users of the iPhone 3G!

Author of the study Dr. Michael Flanagan commented: “The introduction of increasingly sophisticated devices, coupled with growing consumer demand, is creating unrelenting pressure on mobile networks. The capacity crunch is still a very real threat for mobile operators, and it looks set to only get harder in 2012 the mobile industry needs new investment and new approaches to boost network performance and manage the customer experience”.

Are you a little bit surprised/frustrated to know iPhone 4S consumes more than other models?

iOS has tons of hidden features that are not obvious at first glance. Things are layered in iPhones and you need some guide to know more about your phone. The tips below are not for them who are in touch with iOS, however the post will surely help newbies. If you do not think this is for you, you will probably know someone who the tips are for.

Meet the application switcher. If you have had an application open recently, instead of heading back to the home screen, you can re-open it with double tapping the home button! You can see your most recently opened applications on the first page or even view your application history with scrolling to the right.

Close the broken applications. Sometimes applications break and you need to reset your device to unfreeze them but that is a tiring action to do, is not it? Here is the solution. Go to the home screen, double tap the home button, find the icon for the application you need to close and hold your finger on it for a few seconds. After this, re-launch the application from the home screen and it will work freshly.

Application switcher again. The application switcher is a great detail of the phone, although it is hided. With its help you can switch, close, slice, dice applications. On your iPhone it also gives you an opportunity to lock your screen orientation and even control (pause/play/go back/skip) tracks in whatever application is currently playing music. 

To find it, double tap the home button and swipe to the right from the first page.

Find your notifications. Did you know that you can jump to any application that needs your attention? iOS keeps a list of your recent notifications. Just swipe down from the top of the display and bring down the notification drawer. There you will find your unread texts, messages that your applications have queued up and other configurable widgets like weather, stocks, etc. However you can adjust what shows up in this drawer in Settings > Notifications.

Access the camera quickly. We have all been in a situation when we missed the chance of taking a photo in unrepeatable moments. While we get the phone out of pocket, unlock it, go to the home screen, launch the camera application and wait for the camera to boot up, the moment is gone. That is why we need quick access to the camera.

From the lock screen double tap the home button and choose a camera icon, appeared besides the unlock bar. Consider you do not even need to unlock the phone!

And the last trick for today – that is the bonus trick for you. Click here  and find a surprise for you!

Could you imagine that the first iPhone was dreamed up in 1983??? It is not said explicitly whether it was called an “iPhone” but this is the original rendition of an Apple phone.

The gadget you see in the images here was designed by Hartmut Esslinger – one who designed the Apple IIc portable computer. He is the father of Marc Esslinger, an employee of Apple, who has a very special relationship to the company also. The “1983 iPhone” foreshadows the touchscreens of the iPhone and iPad as well.

Since the images of the phone have been circling on  webs, Apple’s history has become interest area for Stanford University. Although the archives are guarded secret, Stanford is going to start grant access to select journalists and organizations. The archives were donated after Steve Jobs’s rejoin to the company, in 1997. 

Despite the age of the “phone, that never was,” it looks amazing that can be updated into a modern consumer product easily. Will not it be nice to see this concept reworked with advanced conversation transcription?

An important, but not a large-scale event is planned to be held in New York by the end of January by Apple, as “sources close to the situation” claim. Being well known for moving around their public show-and-tells, the tech giant is expected to focus on a media-related announcement. Not surprisingly, numerous rumors have aroused, all leading to different directions.

Some say it’s all about introducing iPad 3, the next iteration of the popular tablet device. Others claim that it’ll be iPhone 5 - the so much discussed next generation smartphone, anticipated since July 2011 . Recently aroused Apple TV   set and Apple Wearable Computer   is also considered as the reason of holding the media event, but the company is expected to launch a new Apple TV product later in 2012, and such an event would undoubtedly be held in the heart of the industry in Hollywood or at least in Silicon Valley.

On the other hand, several sources stressed that the event is not related to any of upcoming version of the iDevices, emphasizing the fact that Eddy Cue, Apple SVP of Internet Software and Services, will also be engaged. Being in charge of a large swath of Apple’s media units, including the iTunes Store, App Store, iBookstore, as well as iAd and its iCloud services,  Eddy Cue last appeared at Apple’s New York event dedicated to the introduction of The Daily  - News Corp.’s online magazine. 

To finally detect the truth, we contacted Apple media help, but not surprisingly, we’ve not got any reply yet. In case we get to know something, we’ll definitely keep you updated. By then, do not regret to share what you think the event will be dedicated to by sharing your opinions below in the comments. 

Microsoft’s products for iOS devices is not something new, maybe you remember the company has updated an iOS application  recently. In December it has also released a Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 5000 which is compatible with an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch.

Having the slim keyboard means to be able to take it wherever you go and use it without any cable. The best part of it is that the keys are full-sized and very comfortable.

A disadvantage of using the keyboard with an iOS device is the way its “Delete” key works – you have to use the “Backspace” key for getting rid of any text.

To skip around between words, your PC keyboard shortcuts won’t work either. Instead of the Control-D you need to hold the “Alt” key as you move around between words. However that will not matter for Mac users. 

The keyboard is not a new invention of the company, because it was firstly produced last year, called Microsoft Mobile Keyboard 6000. However 5000 is cheaper than the older one. Difference between the prices is caused from the fact that the 6000 includes a separate number pad. Price of the 5000 is $49.95.