Apple’s next generation of mobile iDevices will be powered principally by A5-class System-on-a-Chip (SoC) hardware, according to Rumors’ sources. The A6 will indeed be introduced next year, as has been long rumored, but may be exclusive to the family of next-generation AppleTV devices at first.
According to sources, the iPhone 5, iPod Touch 5 and iPad 3 will all be powered by a series of chips that, regardless of how they will be marketed by Apple, will be essentially unchanged from the A5 except for clock speed differences and a possible switch of suppliers (thusly, also possibly a switch in manufacturing processes but with little functional effect). Unless the iPad is split into two or more tiers as has been considered for the entire iOS device family more than once in the past and is expected to happen with the AppleTV’s next generation, the A6 is expected to be exclusive in its initial production run to the new AppleTV family. Read more
Apple issues first iOS 5.1 beta to developers
The next minor version of iOS has just been seeded to Apple developers, bringing with it at least one welcome addition: voice recognition in text input areas.
This would allow the user to speak instead of tapping through the on-screen keyboard in any area that requires text input, for instance you could dictate messages to the AOL Instant Messenger app or the Twitter app. Read more