iPhone 4S

AT&T has announced that they are expanding the availability of FaceTime over cellular to all customers with a compatible iOS device, no matter what data plan they have. While some AT&T iPhone 4S users began seeing this feature back in November, AT&T did not make a statement at the time, and reports were sporadic.

I've joked that to-do apps are like gym memberships -- something people throw money at out of guilt and good intentions, but seldom follow through on using. Finish by Basil, just released for the iPhone, aims to to help with that through a combination of good design and the understanding that failure often is an option. In fact, Finish is crafted precisely with procrastinators in mind.

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Some of the more interesting things, at least conceptually, I saw at CES 2013 were the smart appliances shown off by the likes of Samsung and LG. They're not anywhere near the sci-fi of Tony Stark's house, never mind Star Trek or the Jetsons, but they're a beginning. As a geek and fan of futurism, that's exciting. And it's an area Apple isn't playing in publicly yet, at least beyond the living room.

The rumor that Apple is working on releasing a budget entry level iPhone for emerging markets just won’t go away. This morning, in a report by hit and miss rumor site Digitimes, it is claimed that the low end design may adopt plastic instead of the high quality materials used in its usual model.

Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft’s former President of the Windows Division is now using an iPhone. Sinofsky, who departed company with Microsoft back in November 2012 hasn’t taken long to discover what we already know. The discovery was made by 9to5 Mac who received a tip about Sinofsky’s use of Twitter for iPhone.

Apple has supposedly cut orders for iPhone 5 components, including screens by roughly half. This according to two people familiar with the matter, one of whom also said other component orders had also been cut. Apple apparently notified the suppliers last month, (both?) of the people said. Juro Osawa of the Wall Street Journal claims that it's because people aren't buying enough iPhones.

There'll be an iPhone 5S and iPhone 6. There'll be a Retina iPad mini. There'll be a thinner, lighter iPad 5. There'll be an Apple A7 system-on-a-chip. There'll be an LTE radio that can do simultaneous voice and data, and eventually voice over LTE. There may be curved displays, biometric sensors and security, 4K AirPlay, onboard voice parsing, in-air gesture and face recognition, and much, much more. Apple's hardware will continue to tick tock its way towards the future, but for mainstream users, most of the time, the devices we hold in our hands today are more than good enough. And it's the stuff inside and around them that's become far, far more important.

Earlier this week, Asymco’s Horrace Dediu wrote a wonderful post about the huge differences between Microsoft and Apple in China. He makes a very strong case for how difficult of a position Microsoft is in. I encourage you to the Asymco post in detail to understand his arguments. Pretty compelling stuff.