Apple is set to announce its next-gen iteration of the popular iPad in the first week of March, a new report from AllThingsD reveals.

Sources say Apple is likely to host the launch event for the device in San Francisco, almost exactly year after the company announced its current iPad model. There is no concrete data on when it will be available to buy, but if last years launch of iPad 2 is anything to go by, expect it to be available for purchase two weeks after the launch.

Specifications of the new device are said to be almost entirely what we’ve been led to expect from all the rumours. Experts expect a device similar in form factor to the iPad 2, but powered by a much faster chip (though most probably not a quad-core), with a much improved graphics processing unit, and a wonderful 2048 x 1536 Retina Display resolution to feast your eye on.

Along with the new device, expect a newer version of the OS bringing the necessary iPad 3 exclusive features.

No invites have been sent as yet to the major industry watchers, and Apple has said it wont comment on speculation or rumours.

Source: AllthingsD

Don’t you love it when photos of devices get leaked? While it might be a PR nightmare, snapshots of units under production always set the tech world on fire, especially if that product is from Apple.

The good folks over at Repair Labs have posted an image that compares the current iPad2 back casing with a casing that is currently under production for the iPad 3. Peering into their crystal ball, the team have deduced what some of the upcoming changes will be to Apple’s pride and joy (it’s amazing what you can figure out by looking at the placement of screws).

The screenshot shows the iPad 2 casing on the left, and the reported new iPad 3 casing on the right. The casing reveals a different enclosure for the rear camera, speculating that there might be a higher quality camera available in the next iPad. The mounts for the logic board are also different, pointing to a refreshed board that might sport a different processor. The width of the board also suggests a different battery, further fueling the rumors that Apple is looking to get even more battery life out of the next iPad. And while a newer LCD is also expected to make an appearance, it’s good to see that the device hasn’t increased in thickness in any way, so Apple techs are certainly working hard on keeping the iPad slim and trim.

Of course, all of these are mere speculation, but who doesn’t love a good rumor mill?

In a report released by research firm Canalys, the Q4 results of last year have finally allowed a complete tally for 2011. There have been some surprising developments and others that were expected. Looking at the table below, you’ll see that for the first time, smartphone shipments have crossed the global shipments of desktop pc, laptops, netbooks and tablets combined.

The annual growth of smartphones is quite high, with almost 63% increase over last year. This has allowed for a global shipment of 487.7 million smartphones, compared to 414.6 million client PCs. Of course, the real star of the show are tablet computers, that have seen an astronomically high 274% increase over last year.

“In 2011 we saw a fall in demand for netbooks, and slowing demand for notebooks and desktops as a direct result of rising interest in pads (tablets),” said Chris Jones, Canalys VP and Principal Analyst. “But pads have had negligible impact on smart phone volumes and markets across the globe have seen persistent and substantial growth through 2011.”

Coming back to smartphones, it seems that the sudden increase in popularity of tablets hasn’t affected the smartphone market. The competition among the major platforms seems to be one-sided, though, as Android smartphones had the lion’s share of shipments, with almost 49% global market share. Apple comes in at a distant second with 19% followed closely (and surprisingly) by Symbian. BlackBerry seems to be strolling along at 10.5%; not nearly as bad as everyone was making it out to be, but still nowhere near Apple or Android.

Most of us go through so much electronic junk, buying more than we really need, and often just throwing it away. Sometimes a smartphone ends up in a drawer; sometimes it’s sold. Oftentimes a new computer is bought and the old one gathers dust in the garage. And I could say that I’m going to urge you to dig out that old computer and start using it again because I feel so strongly about protecting Mother Earth, but that’d be a lie. All I want to do, in fact, is to make you put your tech gear to better use and perhaps learn something in the process.

I’ll put this in the context of my recent experience with an old Mac. I’ve always wanted an iMac G4, the one with the half-dome base and a display that seems to float in the air. One day I found one on a website – something akin to eBay – called the seller up and the next day I was the proud owner of a once-powerful Mac. As it turns out, there’s much more power in my iPhone 4S than this Mac. It has an 800 Mhz processor, 1 GB RAM, and a 64 MB graphics card. Wow!

So besides looking very pretty on my desk, what was I supposed to do with this computer? Sure, I can browse the web with it, but it can’t run the latest browsers, so a lot of sites simply won’t work. Gaming is out of the question, as is any photo or video editing. It can’t keep up with video playback beyond some pathetically low resolution, and I’m pretty sure playing MP3s will be a stretch for the processor.

I could use it to write articles like this one with, so for that it’s still useful. But what I’ve decided to do is to get back to basics and really learn UNIX and the command line.

You know, “ls” for listing the contents of a directory, “ps” or “top” for checking what’s running, “rsync” for copying files to and from a server, “grep” to find things, and so on. I know some of this from having worked with computers for many years, but I still can’t say I’m very comfortable with a command line. The goal now is that my old Mac will, because it’s so old and slow, make me proficient at UNIX.

I’ve already started making a list of things I have to start working on. First on the list is learning some basics in the Bash shell, the Vim text editor, as well as how to do FTP and SSH. With that in place, I should be able to do a lot of the maintenance of my websites just by using the Terminal application on the iMac.

After that, I thought I’d venture on with network configuration, website hosting, and some software development. But that’s far away in the future so let’s not get too carried away.

Regardless of whether you want to use an old computer to become a command line whiz kid or not, there’s a lot of things you can use it for. It can be a file server, print server, used to download things with, and lots more.

Only your fantasy sets the limits, and your wallet will thank you, as well. Not a bad combination.

According to a source close to 9to5Mac who’s working at Foxconn, there are a few pre-production handsets of the next iPhone, currently being called the iPhone 5, circling around. While differing in size and overall design by a bit, most of these sample handsets have one thing in common: a screen size of 4-inches or bigger, and that it has a straight body design, not a teardrop shape that tapers on one end (like the MacBook Air).

Another thing of note was that not one of the samples had the same form factor as the iPhone 4/4S, meaning that a complete redesign is in order.

She's not the source.

Going with the same lead time as the iPhone 4S, whose production started ramping up till late spring of last year, 9to5Mac assumes that there is a good possibility that the iPhone 5 will be released like the older versions, i.e. a summer/ WWDC announcement.

While this is currently still being treated as a rumor, the same source also indicated last year that the next iPhone release will be an iPhone 4S, contrary to the iPhone 5 rumors abound. Given some credibility, one can likely take this rumor with a smaller grain of salt than usual.

Apple today announced its financial results for Q4 2011 and the numbers are nothing short of record breaking. The Cupertino-giants upped their revenue from $26.74 billion from the same period in 2010, to $46.33 billion last year.

The company’s main sales hero was, of course, the iPhone, selling 37.04 million units across all the varieties. Apple also sold 15.4 million iPad tablets – a boost of 111% from last year. The iPod range continued to do well, selling 15.4 million units, with Mac computers tailing along as usual with 5.2 million unit sales.

The profits doubled as well, with the company making a cool $13.06 billion, compared to $6 billion in same quarter last year.

CEO Tim Cook is obviously pleased and has emailed his employees congratulating them for their efforts.

Team,

Tim

While Samsung’s army of lawyers are busy battling patent wars with Apple, it’s marketing division is waging it’s own little war against the Cupertino giants, although in a wholly unharmful-to-the-industry-way, and a lot more hilariously.

In this new advertisement for the Galaxy S II, a bunch of sheepy looking iPhone users are shown camping outside their local Apple store, with only the company of each other and the “first” unboxing video of the device they have been waiting for. That’s when a camper’s roommate steps in, strutting a brand new Galaxy S II. Things get Samsung’ed after that.

Check it out:

After a long, long wait, greenpois0n has finally released the untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.

Before you go ahead, hacker pod2g had some slightly worrying news on his blog, “A tool named Absinthe and developed by the Chronic Dev Team will install the untether on your device. Also the iPhone Dev Team will release a CLI (command line) tool to help diagnose issues and repair things if it goes wrong. This is a little scary I know, but the chance you break something is really small, since we made lots of tests to verify the process on different devices. But it is the first time we use the backup/restore functions of iTunes to install software, and there are maybe things we are not aware of. As you already know, different security researchers put a lot of energy to work out the different issues we had to install the untether on new devices.”

If you happen to know an iPhone 4S that runs on iOS 5.0, 5.0.1 (9A405 and 9A406 versions) or the iPad 2 WiFi/GSM/CDMA that runs oniOS 5.0.1, they should happily unwind with the aptly named Absinthe.

Currently, only the Mac version of it is online but Windows/Linux versions should appear soon. The process is quite long compared to previous jailbreaks so be sure to have a fully charged device.

You can download the jailbreak from the site, and follow these steps.

They may not be re-inventing it, but Apple’s latest efforts into a new industry just might revitalize it. At least, we (sincerely) hope so.

During a press meet in New York today, Apple released iBooks 2, which now comes packed with textbooks ranging from subjects like Algebra, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Environmental Science, etc. The books are optimized for a tablet-layout, with visuals and interactive elements embed for easy learning. Like any textbook, the iBook versions will also have Q&A sections and important questions. The books will also have a highlighting system that automatically coverts selected texts into study cards and piles them up neatly for quick viewing.

The textbooks are mainly from High School and will be available at $14.99 or less. McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have already partnered up with the bookstore. And considering Apple’s popularity, and reach, it should be brimming with textbooks in no time.

Apple also released an app called iBooks Author. The app will allow creation of textbooks and make it simple with drag and drop functionalities, widgets, organization tools and templates. The app is available on the Mac App Store.

Finally, a new iTunes U version was released as well, allowing students to take classes directly from their iPad. The app will enable teachers to share lectures, notes and other study material from the tablet. The app was available to universities only, but is now avalable from KG and up.

Steve Jobs would have been so mad. Steve Wozniak, the genius behind the Mac computers and one of Apple’s co-founders, has praised Android in an interview, saying that some features of Google’s popular mobile OS works better than his iPhone.

Wozniak particularly mentioned the voice command function, saying that he had more success with Android than with iOS’s Siri.

“I have a lower success rate with Siri than I do with the voice built into the Android, and that bothers me,” said Woz. “I’ll be saying, over and over again in my car, ‘Call the Lark Creek Steak House,’ and I can’t get it done. Then I pick up my Android, say the same thing, and it’s done. Plus I get navigation. Android is way ahead on that.”

His primary phone is still the iPhone, but he really wishes “it did all the things my Android does, I really do.”

Android is not still perfect for him, and says that it could be complicated for new users and has a slightly higher learning curve.

“If you’re willing to do the work to understand it a little bit, well I hate to say it, but there’s more available in some ways,” he said.

“The people I recommend the iPhone 4S for are the ones who are already in the Mac world, because it’s so compatible, and people who are just scared of computers altogether and don’t want to use them. The iPhone is the least frightening thing. For that kind of person who is scared of complexity, well, here’s a phone that is simple to use and does what you need it to do.”