iOS 4.3 for iPad Daily Mag as Apple's NC servers go online

Apple’s rumored December special event seems set to see the launch of iOS 4.3, a new version of the mobile OS equipped with mechanisms to enable newspaper and magazine subscription payments — and Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs are expected to host the show in which they try to frame the paywall future for publishing.

We already knew about the event, but the introduction of iOS 4.3 is a new one — though it makes sense. News Corp. has big ambitions here, assembling 100 staff to man the newsroom for the title, a daily, iPad-only newspaper.

MacStories has a little more information:

Here’s what we heard from a reliable source: when Apple didn’t know about the WiFi issues in the GM seed of iOS 4.2, the OS was scheduled to be released weeks before Nov. 22nd. Apple found out about the WiFi issues, released a second GM build and iOS 4.2 came out yesterday. It came out in November, but it should have been out in the first half of November. Anyway, before the WiFi issues were discovered, Apple was already planning to release a new build of iOS 4.x in mid-December. Most specifically, they were planning for an iOS 4.3 release on December 13th, which is a Monday.

MacStories also tells us the AAPL data center is set to be pushed to the limit. “Our source told us Apple isn’t saying much, but judging by some the internal documents, it seems this is going to be a mass expansion of all services, iTunes, MobileMe, activations, retail services and any cloud services they might go with in the future.”

Back to the title,

“The central innovation, developed with assistance from Apple engineers, will be to dispatch the publication automatically to an iPad or any of the growing number of similar devices,” The Guardian recently reported.

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