Jordan Kahn

(Preparations for Apple’s 2013 WWDC developer conference / Image via Nick)

There’s a lot we already know about what we’ll be seeing next week at WWDC– we’ve already brought you exclusive details on iOS 7, OS X 10.9, a MacBook refresh, Apple’s new Radio service, and much more. What else might we see Apple show off next week? Below are a couple of our best predictions based on what we think Apple is most likely to show off as well as few things we’ve been hearing:
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In case you hadn’t heard: BlueStacks, the company with around 10M+ using its technology that brings Android games to PC and Mac, has recently been working on a new dedicated Android gaming console that aims to compete with OUYA and others in the space. It’s yet to launch, and up until today its big differentiator has been its $6.99/per month subscription model, but today it becomes the first to bring iOS games to the TV.

We spoke to John Gargiulo from BlueStacks who told us a little more about the announcement and how the company will bring iPhone and iPad games to the GamePop platform using its ‘Looking Glass’ technology. It’s also announcing its first major partner from the iOS developer world, and it happens to be creators of the hugely popular Fieldrunners series, Subatomic Studios.
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Over the past week a number of 9to5 readers have noticed issues with their Facebook contacts within the Contacts app on iOS 6 and up that are automatically synced when logging into Facebook through Settings. Some users have taken to the Apple support forums to discuss the problem, noting that a large portion of their contacts from Facebook no longer appear in the iOS Contacts app. Rather than a bug, we reached out to Facebook about the problem who told us it’s actually Facebook’s new effort to remove “phone book entries that were not useful.”

In other words, Facebook is trying to remove some of the spam from your iOS Contacts app by no longer syncing friends that have no useful contact information. According to a Facebook spokesperson, friends that have no contact information on their profile other than a @facebook.com email address will not be synced to the Contacts address book going forward.

The result, of course, is you might notice more than a few of your Facebook friends disappearing from Contacts. You can always add them back manually, but Facebook is thinking the majority of users will be happy with its decision to declutter its iOS sync feature. 
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Update: We just got our hands on the iPad 5 cases. A couple images above and a full gallery is after the break.

This certainly isn’t the first time that an iOS accessory maker made a bet on making cases for an unreleased Apple product. In fact, it has become somewhat the norm for CEO of case maker Gumdrop, Tim Hickman, who for many recent Apple products decided to make an investment and start accepting orders for cases of yet to be released products.  It’s not always a losing game– Gumdrop sent over its iPad mini case the day before the iPad mini was even announced and, when we finally got out hands on the device, it fit perfect. However, this time around, there is a good possibility Gumdrop is betting on a rumored product that won’t be announced any time soon: the iPad 5.

https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/342633623834468353

We spoke with CEO of Gumdrop Tim Hickman about the bet he’s making on seeing an iPad 5 next week at WWDC and just how far into production the company is. We also got our hands on the first images of the three new cases the company is launching today for iPad 5, including: the Drop Tech Series, the Drop Tech Designer Series, and the Bounce Skin, all of which include the rumored slimmed down iPad mini-like design that is rumored for the iPad 5.
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Kamcord, the startup offering a free SDK that makes it easy for iOS devs to offer in-game recording functionality to their users, today is announcing some pretty big updates to the service. Since grabbing $1.5 million in seed funding from some notable investors back in December (Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, and others), the Y Combinator-backed service has experienced some significant traction and the team is adding plenty of new features to stay ahead of the competition.

The big new feature being announced is voice overlay functionality that will allow users to narrate their videos while they play, as demoed by the team in the video above. CEO Matt Zitzmann also provided us with some other updates the team has added in the last month, including: Video trimming, a custom UI / white-label solution, and a new “Gameplay of the week” notifications feature.

Also being announced today: Kamcord has recorded over 500 million gameplay videos in the last 6 months alone across the 100 apps its currently deployed in. One those games includes the latest from Chillingo and Zitzmann says the company is talking to all the other big mobile game developers too.
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Update: a person in the know has pointed out a few problems with Brown’s post:

1. It was taken down and is currently down.
2. If you look at one of the lines of Apple’s code that he uses to allege throttling, it doesn’t even have anything to do with throttling internet speed. It’s just the term, used to talk about how often a phone should ping the network when it doesn’t encounter a signal, or something like that.
3. AnandTech posted a lengthy article explaining why it just isn’t true.

Joseph Brown, the developer behind the hacked carrier updates floating around for AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile, just posted a lengthy blog post detailing how he claims “Apple limits devices to even out” the networks of its carrier partners. Specifically, Brown says that Apple is limiting the iPhone 5 to Category 10 (14.4Mbps) HSDPA despite the device’s support for category 24 (42.2Mbps) DC-HSDPA+ and the AT&T network supporting up to Category 14 (21.1Mbps) HSDPA+:

Here we can see what is quite obvious to, really, anyone at this point from being jerked around so much by carriers. Yes folks, this is throttling coding. When we made the AT&T Hacked Carrier Update, this was the first line of coding to be scrapped when the project started. Immediately, through my testing on an AT&T iPhone 5 and iPad 4th generation, there were significant and noticeable results. There is no argueing or disputing that this is clear evidence you are purposely, 24/7, being throttled, even if you haven’t used more data than your authorized to use or that you’ve purchased with your hard earned money. AT&T users, do you think this is fair?

The theory is that Apple limits the capabilities of the device in order to combat the large amount of data/bandwidth iOS device users consume and ease congestion on carrier networks. Brown found signs of throttling data speeds for Verizon and Sprint too. The only carrier that is apparently not limiting the iPhone 5’s capabilities is T-Mobile.

Brown also says “Apple has band preferences set for T-Mobile and AT&T causing signal issues” that could be easily fixed.

Here’s what Brown found in his analysis of the other carriers:
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Following several reports from earlier this week claiming Apple’s much rumored free, ad-supported radio service would be tightly integrated with its iAd business, AdAge claims to have more details on how ads will work in the service.

In case you were wondering whether or not the ads would be audio ads or traditional app-like iAds, AdAge says both:

The audio ads will be sold via iAd, Apple’s mobile ad network, according to a former Apple executive with knowledge of the situation. In addition to audio ads, the streaming music service will also contain the mobile ads iAd currently sells.

The aim of the ad-supported service, which according to the report’s sources will not include the ability to search or play specific songs on-demand, is to drive song downloads to iTunes.

The report adds that a spokesperson for Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the one major publisher that reportedly hasn’t made deal with Apple yet, said the company “is optimistic it will sign a deal with Apple soon.” 
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After sending a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google, and others questioning if the companies could be doing more to prevent increasing thefts of smartphones, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has now scheduled a face to face meeting with the companies to discuss the issue.

NYDailyNews reports Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon will meet with representatives from Apple, Google, Motorola, Samsung and Microsoft at a June 13 “smartphone summit” in New York.

Schneiderman wants the same thing that San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón has been pushing device makers on in recent months– a ‘kill switch’ that would render a device inoperable and discourage thefts of devices:

Letting customers shut down their phones would make them worthless on the black market and reduce so-called “Apple picking” — the fastest-growing street crime in New York City. Schneiderman cited statistics that show a 40% jump in the theft of mobile devices in New York City in 2012.

Back in December, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed thefts of iPhones and iPads were the cause of the increase in the city’s annual crime index and the NYPD’s most recent report showed crimes involving Apple products in the city had increased 40 percent.
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While Apple typically uses a shell corporation abroad to register for trademark names of upcoming, unreleased products, Russian newspaper Izvestia (via AppleInsider.ru) reports that the company has filed for the “iWatch” trademark in Russia, further fueling speculation that “iWatch” will be the name of Apple’s much rumored wearable, wristwatch device.

Tonight newspaper “Izvestia” gave a sensational news: the company Apple has filed with Rospatent application for registration of the trademark ” iWatch “. We think, do not even need to explain what this might mean.

While the report gives the impression that this is confirmation of an upcoming watch product from Apple, it’s of course not that simple. Apple has a couple times ran into issues with trademarks of new products, most notably with its long-lasting trademark battle over the iPad trademark in China and its decision to rename Apple TV from its original “iTV” moniker due to troubles with the British TV network of the same name. Apple, and most other companies for that matter, also typically trademark several names and variations prior to product releases that may or may not ever see the light of day. Apple would also have to go through a number of companies developing smart wristwatch-like devices that have filed for the trademark in the US (many as recently as February).
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ComScore today reported its numbers for smartphone subscribers in the U.S. for the three month period ending in April with Apple experiencing the biggest gains in both categories. The main theme of the report is much the same as we heard in its January and February reports– Apple is up and gaining at the expense of Google and just about everyone else.

When it comes to market share by platform, comScore reports that Google continues its lead with 52.3% (down 0.3 percent since the January quarter), while Apple experienced a slight gain of 1.4 percentage points increasing from 37.8% to 39.2%. That’s compared to BlackBerry at just 5.1% (down from 5.9% last quarter) and 3.0% for Microsoft (down from 3.1%).

Apple also captured the biggest gain for smartphone subscribers by OEM, positioning itself as the No.1 smartphone vendor in the U.S. with 39.2% of the market compared to Samsung’s 22% during the three month period. Filling out the final three positions is HTC, Motorola, and LG:
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As expected, Google just started rolling out its brand new inbox to iOS users after first introducing us to the new category-based design last week. While its not a tabbed design like on the desktop, much like the Android app that just started rolling out iOS users can now access the new feature that groups emails into separate inboxes by selecting categories from the app’s side navigation bar.

 Meet the new inbox: If you’ve enabled the new inbox, your mail is now grouped into categories so that you can see what’s new at a glance and decide which emails you want to read when. Primary mail is shown first and it’s easy to access and keep track of email in other categories by opening the menu. Configure this feature by going to Gmail.com on your computer.

Today’s Gmail update also brings improved notifications allowing you to customize what emails you receive notifications for:
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Apple today published a report on its website detailing the “Economic and Fiscal Impacts Generated by Apple in Cupertino – Current Facilities and Apple Campus 2.” 

Apple notes that the report, which details a number of topics from job creation to construction of its new spaceship campus, was put together by Keyser Marston Associates, Inc. (KMA) for the City of Cupertino under contract with Apple Inc.

With net annual sales in excess of $156 billion, 16,000 employees currently based in the Cupertino area, and annual purchases from local Silicon Valley-based businesses of $4.6 billion, Apple is a cornerstone of the Silicon Valley economy and of the fiscal resources of the City of Cupertino.

Much of the report focuses on the economic impacts and future contributions of Apple’s currently under construction Apple Campus 2. In the report, Apple details how its new campus will “add an estimated 7,400 new high-quality jobs,” increase revenues for the local economy, and enhance tax revenues for the city and surrounding areas. Apple says it will support 24,000 jobs in Cupertino alone when the campus is ready in 2016.

It also detailed investments being made in public improvements surrounding its new campus including infrastructure and utility improvements and its transportation program:
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We’ve told you several times in recent months about Intel’s next-generation Haswell processors that are largely expected to replace Apple’s current Ivy Bridge offerings in the next round of Macs. Now, ahead of Apple’s expected WWDC announcements, Intel has just officially launched its next-gen processors. The company confirmed that quad-core versions of the chips are available now with availability of ultrabooks, all-in-ones, laptops and desktops planned for this summer.

Intel says the processors provide up to a 50 percent improvement in battery life (the biggest gain in the history of Intel’s processors), and double the graphics performance of previous generation chips thanks to its ‘Iris’ technology.

Delivering Intel’s largest generation-over-generation gain in battery life enablement in company history, 4th generation Intel Core processors can bring an 50 percent improvement in battery life over the previous generation in active workloads when watching movies or surfing the Internet, and two to three times improvement in standby battery life. For some systems coming to market this year, over 9 hours of active use battery life or 10 to 13 days of standby with fresh data on a single charge is expected.

Earlier this year we saw stats from early performance tests showing Haswell will provide some notable performance boosts for MacBooks, and we’ve also heard reports that the 4th-gen Intel processors will be headed to iMacs and Mac minis towards the end of the year.

In a more recent report, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo claimed Apple will introduce new MacBook Pro and Air updates next week at WWDC that will include an upgrade to Haswell. Yesterday, we posted even more evidence with SKUs showing that Apple is likely planning a MacBook refresh.
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While it certainly has some competition in this arena, major Apple accessory maker Belkin today announced a new ‘Grip Power Battery Case’ for iPhone 5. Similar to popular offerings from some of Belkin’s competitors including Mophie and Otterbox, the case builds in a 2000 mAh battery that claims to double the battery life of the device.

Belkin says the Grip Power case includes a shock-resistant bumper with secure-hold TPU grip, an anti-glare camera ring, and four color combinations including Civic Blue/Stone and Purple Lightning/Fountain Blue, Blacktop/Gravel and Whiteout/Blacktop.

Belkin is selling the case for $99, slightly less than Mophie and Otterbox, through its website and BestBuy.com. Full list of features below:
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