Even though Apple’s website says that current iPad 3G orders are shipping on May 7th, Apple today sent an email reassuring their pre-order customers that they would indeed be receiving their iPads in ‘Late April’ as originally promised.  Phew?

To Our Valued Apple Customer:

Thank you for your recent order of the magical and revolutionary iPad 3G.

We would like to confirm that your order will be shipped in late April as communicated at the time you placed your order. You will receive a confirmation notice when your order has shipped.

You can get up-to-date information about your order, including shipping status and tracking number, at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus 

Thank you for choosing Apple.

Sincerely,
The Apple Store Team

An Engadget reader found some interesting codes in the iPhone 4 OS which seem likely to indicate some more Facebook integration (you can already set up Facebook to merge your contacts).   Interestingly there is now a generic “SocialKitInternal.framework” which would seem to indicate a broader interface for integration.  Linkedin and Twitter perhaps?  Or maybe Friendster!

Daring Fireball notes that in 2006, a year before the release of any iPhone, Apple had patented the use of ceramics as a encasement material for devices like iPods (they used a iPod Mini in the drawings).  Perhaps this is the backing of that iPhoneHD we’ve been seeing.

The benefits: harder, more scratch resistant and radio transparent than aluminum, Apple’s current material of choice.  While plastic is also radio transparent, Apple may be looking at harder materials. 

Additionally, we, along with a few others, have been hearing that the back of the iPhone is going to be made of a glass-like substance and you might have a perfect storm of ceramics.  That Engadget phone’s back looks awfully glassy.

The specific type of ceramic mentioned in the patent is Zirconium dioxide. (or Ziconia), the very stuff of fake diamonds.  Bling!

 Zirconia may be embodied in a variety of colors including white, black, navy blue, ivory, brown, dark blue, light blue, platinum, gold (among others).

Interestingly, Daring Fireball notes that having glass on one side of the iPhone gives you a 50% chance of losing it when dropping it.  Having glass on the back would make losing it a forgone conclusion in this scenario.  

Perhaps in a 2-D world, this would be the case. But, I’ve dropped my iPhone on its side on more than one occasion only to have it bounce away unscathed.  Apple wraps the plastic around the side on its current models for this very reason.  The new phones look to have aluminum on the sides which would also prevent a lot of breakage.

It looks like Apple

Apple is looking to open up production facilities in Latin America, seeking to exploit tax breaks available to foreign companies opening for business in Brazil.

The company is pondering production of iPhones and MacBooks in Brazil in an attempt reportedly aimed at cutting prices for Latin American consumers, it’s claimed.

Apple will need to join a Brazilian scheme that offers tax breaks on component imports in order to encourage final product assembly inside of that country, Sao Paulo

Remember that picture of the iPad the eve of the release?  It also had an iPhone on top of it and an unidentified object to the right of the screen.  Engadget points out that it looks a lot like that ‘Japanese knockoff’ that hit the airwaves yesterday.  (Which it certainly does).  Interesting.  

More new screenshots belowfrom WeiPhone.com via a Mac Forums post:

It is no secret that iPhone OS 4 software will allow you to use Bluetooth keyboards and remotes.  Here’s a video displaying what using a Bluetooth keyboard is like with an iPhone running OS 4. The video demonstrates typing, as well as the usable function keys.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D72mLN-_xlE&w=700&h=400]

Update: Fake

Update: Fake or maybe not?

Engadget is who came up with the ‘iPhoneHD’ and now they’ve got some shots to ‘prove it’.  What do you think?  For the record, we’re not so sure this is it.

Story is that someone (not Engadget) found it in a bar in San Jose and it has 80GB of Storage and a front facing camera.  It used to boot some totally new OS but now it doesn’t (plug it in?).

More pictures below

A 9to5mac reader asked SJobs@apple.com if future Macs would support BluRay.  While not flatly denying the possibility, Jobs certainly didn’t give out much hope in the form of his famous “stay tuned” responses.  

Jobs did offer up a helpful alternative from his good friends at Google: YouTube.

The NYTimes is also reporting that Steve Jobs responded to a question about the Pulitzer winning cartoonist being rejected from the App Store:

If you are in the market for a desktop or NAS/Server hard drive, you’ve no doubt been checking out some of the 2TB drives pictured above.  HotHardware just reviewed most of the majors in the market from Western Digital, Seagate and Samsung.  

There are 10 pages of hard drive testing glory, but like a lot of people, we’re most interested in the results:

Ultimately, our picks for each class of drive are as follows. For general-purpose drives, you’d think it would be a no-brainer and we’d pick the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB($139) for its relative high performance and great value. The problem is, it has a much lower load/unload rating of 50,000 cycles, versus 300,000 cycles for the other general-purpose drives–the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB uses the older Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology to park its heads, while the other drives use the more updated and more reliable Ramp Loading technology. Once we took the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB out of the running, it was a very close call between the Samsung EcoGreen F3 2TB($179) and WD Caviar Green 2TB ($139.99), but we ultimately chose the Samsung EcoGreen F3 2TB because of its speedier overall performance. For the performance drives it was a much tougher call; but with almost identical overall performance, the Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB ($275) edged out the WD Caviar Black 2TB ($279), due to the Barracuda XT’s lower price tag and lower power consumption (see the specs tables on page three of this roundup). For the enterprise-class drives, it’s a runaway, with the WD RE4 2TB ($285) as the undisputed performance leader that also has high reliability ratings.

They also give the Western Digital AV-GP($173) high marks in media centers for being quiet and able to withstand high temperatures.

FWIW, I bought two WD Caviar Green w/64MB cache ($139) for my home NAS and they’ve been perfect so far.  via Engadget

Sprint touts its new 4G iPad case here.  Honestly, this is a really good play by Sprint.  But, a better play would be rolling out 4G in some bigger markets like yesterday…media heavyweight NYC, for instance.  

4G Mifi isn’t only great for people who also use their MacBooks on the road, it also nullifies any advantage that LTE will have over WiMAX.

Not much in the way of specs or anything but it appears that these Dell 7 and 10-inch Streaks are more 16:9 widescreenier than the iPad.  The smaller, 5 inch models  will launch on AT&T in June, the bigger ones come out toward the end of this year or beginning of next.

Oh well, the iPad had a good run.

BGR says AT&T employees are being told not to take a vacation in June.  They got the same deal in July of last year to cover the iPhone 3GS launch.  

…we