The report focuses on Pegatron, which has served as an alternate assembly partner to Foxconn for a number of Apple products. According to Digitimes, Pegatron has landed orders for both a new iPhone planned to launch in September and a new iPad scheduled to debut ‘in the fourth quarter’.

The iPhone claim appears to be a reasonable one given current thinking that Apple will return to a roughly one-year interval between iPhone updates, with a September launch coming just under a year after the early October introduction of the iPhone 4S last year.

But the iPad claim is a more troublesome one, as Apple has so far stuck to a yearly schedule for iPad hardware updates centered around the March-April timeframe. A late 2012 release of a new ’10-inch iPad’ presumably arriving as a next-generation version of the current device would mark a significantly shorter lifecycle for the current model than would be expected.

Similar rumors of a late-year iPad update surfaced last year before being quashed amid reports that work on the new Retina display would keep Apple on its yearly update cycle.

Mockup of 7.85-inch iPad next to an iPhone (courtesy of CiccareseDesign)

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Mockup of Apple television set based on Thunderbolt display design

The Apple HDTV makes FaceTime calls using the built-in iSight camera. The camera is sophisticated, with facial recognition and the ability to zoom into the user’s face and follow them as they walk around the room. This allows users to make video calls from the couch across the room, rather than having to stand smack in front of the TV.

In addition, calls are initiated by Siri, the iPhone 4S’s virtual assistant. ‘[Apple] used Siri to make a FaceTime call,’ the source said.

Apple’s rumored television set is widely expected to make extensive use of Siri, a rumor that first surfaced in Jobs’ authorized biography, in which he was quoted as saying that he had ‘finally cracked’ the problem of creating an elegant interface for the device. With Jobs calling it ‘the simplest user interface you could imagine’, speculation immediately leapt to Siri, which could allow users to change channels and find shows using only their voice.

The idea of a Siri-enabled television set quickly gained steam with a followup rumor from The New York Times claiming that Apple was indeed working on such a device for a launch in late 2012 or 2013.

Apple has reportedly been working with component suppliers on plans for Apple television sets in recent months, although debate continues as to whether such a product will be ready for launch by late this year, next year, or even 2014.

What we’ve learned: the new iPhone will indeed be longer and thinner than the iPhone 4 and 4S. Approximate measurements are 125mm by 58.5mm by 7.4mm—a 10mm jump in height, nearly 2mm reduction in thickness, and virtually identical width. According to our source, Apple will make one major change to the rear casing, adding a metal panel to the central back of the new iPhone. This panel will be flat, not curved, and metal, not ceramic. Our artist’s rendition provides a rough idea of what this change will look like; it echoes the current-generation iMac design, to be sure.

The report also claims that Apple will be adopting the rumored smaller dock connector for the device, which will be ‘closer to a pill shape’ than the existing connector.

iLounge has offered some correct information in the past, and was rather accurate in its claims regarding the latest iPad. Not all of the site’s claims came to fruition, however, with the new iPad’s front-facing camera failing to gain HD resolution and Apple offering no sign of an enhanced smart cover for the device.

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There’s got to be some element of truth here…

Per iLounge, Apple’s next-gen iPhone will be slightly taller to accommodate a 4-inch screen with a new aspect ratio, will feature a redesigned dock connector, and will also have a new metal panel on the back side, a new report claims.

The latest rumors about Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone stated that the new iPhone will be about 10 millimeters taller, giving it dimensions of 125 millimeters tall, 5.8 millimeters wide and 7.4 millimeters thick. That’s about 2 millimeters thinner than the current iPhone 4S, with essentially the same width as the current model.

Because the new iPhone will allegedly be the same width, that would mean that new applications would need to be designed to work with the handset. The taller screen would have more pixels at the top and bottom, giving it a different aspect ratio.

‘According to our source, Apple will make one major change to the rear casing, adding a metal panel to the central back of the new iPhone,’ the report said. ‘This panel will be flat, not curved, and metal, not ceramic.’

Author Jeremy Horwitz also added that the new iPhone is expected to be partially made from Gorilla Glass 2, which offers identical strength to the original Gorilla Glass with a thinner design. At just 0.8 millimeters thick, Gorilla Glass 2 can withstand 121 pounds of pressure.

Finally, the report also claimed that the next iPhone will have a new, smaller dock connector that will be ‘a little larger’ than the bottom speaker and microphone ports on the existing iPhone 4S. The new port was described as ‘a pill shape,’ and is believed to have just 16 pins, compared to the current 30-pin dock connector.

‘It will be used in all upcoming devices, including an update to the iPod touch that’s expected this year, and will almost certainly feature a similarly updated screen and CPU,’ the report said.

In March, iLounge reported that Apple was working on a new case for the iPad that would protect not only the front screen, as the current magnetic Smart Case does, but also the aluminum back panel of the device. The site credited a ‘repeatedly reliable source,’ but such a case has not yet been released.

The rumors come on the heels of a new component claimed to be the SIM card tray for Apple’s next-generation iPhone. A home button also purported to be from a prototype Apple handset also appeared, but no components thus far have given any concrete indication that the next iPhone’s design will be a radical departure from the look of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

Still, there has been rampant speculation that Apple’s next iPhone will have a redesigned exterior. Rumors of unibody enclosures, larger screens and thinner form factors have all cropped up in recent months.

Early prototyping of the next iPhone is believed to be underway ahead of a launch anticipated this fall, one year after the debut of the iPhone 4S. In March it was said that Apple was reviewing potential components for the new iPhone.

Rumors surrounding the next iPhone have picked up steam in recent weeks, as one report said the handset will feature Qualcomm’s ‘MDM9615″ LTE 4G chip for high-speed wireless connectivity. Reports have also claimed that the next iPhone will adopt in-cell touch panel technology, which will allow Apple to make the next iPhone thinner by 0.44 millimeters, or fit in a larger battery.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

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A recent Deseret News article comments on The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ (Mormon) role in helping to rid the world of measles. This is in light of an Associated Press story that states measles deaths worldwide dropped dramatically from 2000 to 2010.

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The promise of Photo Stream is easy to see on iOS devices. Take a photo or screenshot on your iPhone, load up the Photos app on the iPad, and wait for the images to land on the device via Photo Stream. The phrase ‘it’s so easy with online’ comes to mind.

Strangely enough, things aren’t quite as easy on the Mac. The only way to access Photo Stream pictures is to manually activate the service within iCloud settings and then use iPhoto or Aperture to view and manage the pictures. Or so I thought.

Thanks to this awesome post on The Iconmaster, I now have a saved Spotlight search that targets the folder in which all of my Photo Stream .PNG files are stored. By saving this search to the sidebar in Finder (or the Dock, if quick access is a priority), I can now view and manage files from Photo Stream without having to load any extra apps up. In my quick tests, a screenshot from my 4S took about 30 seconds to appear in the Photo Stream folder on my Mac. The only caveat here is that you may need to have either iPhoto or Aperture installed on your Mac for this to work (I didn’t want to uninstall my apps to find out).

I used to use the Dropbox app for quickly shooting photos straight to my Mac for posts, but thanks to this tip, I can now take full advantage of Photo Stream for painless and automatic photo transfers across all of my Apple devices.

As much as AT&T may drive you crazy, you might like this.

Per Electronista and Engadget, AT&T will begin unlocking certain iPhones in the (very) near future. As of April 8, customers that are either out of contract or bought contract-free will have the option of derestricting the phone’s SIM slot much like the already-unlocked iPhones sold at Apple retail stores. The only other condition was to have a healthy account.

“Beginning Sunday, April 8, we will offer qualifying customers the ability to unlock their AT&T iPhones,” a spokesman said. “The only requirements are that a customer’s account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.”

The initiative follows a number of complaints that led to Apple’s Tim Cook taking action and arranging for a handful of case-by-case unlocks. Other carriers worldwide have been offering after-sale iPhone unlocks, most notably in Canada, but AT&T until now has declined to do it, even for customers who paid the unsubsidized price.

More incentive exists for AT&T to unlock phones now that its spectrum refarming gives a real chance that its 3G network, and future 4G LTE network, will work properly with existing iPhones. A SIM unlock was previously only useful for those either willing to limit themselves to 2G data or who were traveling and wanted a much less expensive local SIM card instead of AT&T’s roaming plans.

If you go through the unlocking experience, please let us know how it went and stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

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