9to5 Staff

The idea of a next-generation iPhone shaped like a teardrop dates back to a report published by This is my next in late-April, describing a 3.7-inch iPhone with edge-to-edge glass and striking new design shape akin to the late-2010 MacBook Air, meaning thicker to thinner from top to bottom. Piggy-backing on the story, agile Asian vendors followed up with teardrop-shaped cases. Or so we thought.

While we will ‘talk iPhone’ next Tuesday, M.I.C. Gadget reveals that an iPhone 5 prototype had recently gone missing from the Shenzhen district. “This should explain why we are seeing a whole lot of iPhone 5 cases in China today”, the publication concludes.

Much like the widely publicized iPhone 4 prototype that had gone missing at a German beer bar in California, the missing handset was camouflaged in an iPhone 4-like case (strange because the teardrop phone is wider and taller). Inside: A test model with a finalized iPhone 5 chassis sporting the teardrop design. The publication then builds on this tip by speculating that the device houses “slightly modified iPhone 4 electronics” plus the A4 chip “and even the same amount of memory”.

If this is true, then the tear drop iPhone may be the low end device, and the one inside the iPhone 4 case might be the high end.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7iCNIumpc]

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If you’re still on Firefox (Google’s Chrome is now #2 in the UK and some other countries), you’ll be delighted to learn that Mozilla today release Firefox 7, a major new update. Disregarding the obligatory housekeeping, under-the-hood tweaks, optimizations and bug fixes, Firefox 7 drastically reduces memory consumption over its infamous predecessors which have always been criticized for memory leakage problems. This, in turn, has particularly been a pain in the you-know-what on Mac OS X.

Well, according to Mozilla, a non-profit organization behind Firefox, a MemShrink project used in the browser reduces memory use by 20 to 50 percent. As a result, the browser boots faster, your Mac will have more free RAM when skimming through dozens of web sites in Firefox 7 and there’s a lower likelihood of crashing. A Mozilla representative said last week:

Among the Firefox 7 changes are some amazing memory improvements. When this makes it to users in just under 6 weeks, Mozilla will re-take the memory efficiency crown and give our users the highly responsive Firefox they deserve.

Other perks outlined in Mozilla’s blog post include an improved hardware-accelerated Canvas handling which offloads HTML5 animations to your graphics card, making games such as Angry Birds or Runfield run smoother. Firefox 7 also supports W3C’s navigation timing spec, allowing developers to test their page’s load speed remotely. Mozilla also announced the Android mobile version of Firefox which now includes copy and paste.

Firefox 7 is available in more than 70 languages on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Grab your copy over at the Firefox download page or wait for the auto-updated mechanism to kick in and prompt you to update your existing Firefox 6 installation. Changelog is after the break.

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The Loop reports that Apple has finally confirmed the long-awaited media event. The wait will soon be over: Apple has scheduled a press conference next Tuesday, October 4. The event will take place at Apple’s home turf, its Cupertino campus in California at 10am PT, as rumored. If an email invitation is any indication, this will definitely be an iPhone-focused media event. AllThingsD has it on good authority that Apple CEO Tim Cook will deliver the presentation, a first for Cook in his new CEO role.

As 9to5Mac reported yesterday, Apple’s next iPhone will sport a dual-core A5 chip from iPad 2 with nine times faster graphics, giving the handset a leg up over the latest Android phones in the graphics department and gaming. The processor will pack in 1GB of RAM, twice as much as the iPhone 4’s A4 chip or iPad 2’s A5 processor.

Camera on the back will be upgraded to eight megapixels and will sport a backlit sensor that takes incredibly high-resolution and clear shots, even in low light conditions. The camera app might support panorama photography. Other treats include a Qualcomm Gobi baseband chip so a single hardware SKU should address both GSM and CDMA networks.

The biggest selling point is understood to be a voice activated feature called Assistant, stemming from Apple’s acquisition of Siri, a search intelligence startup. The “Let’s talk iPhone” tagline on the invitation could be deciphered as a subtle hint at Assistant.

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AllThingsD takes a look at an interesting line of upcoming toys from Disney which take advantage of Apple’s iPad in unusual ways. Writer Tricia Duryee explains that AppMATes, as they call those toys, interact with the iPad’s display:

In a live demonstration, Bart Decrem, general manager of Disney Mobile, showed me how it works. First, he placed a miniature car on the iPad’s screen to create a bond with the game — no Bluetooth or wires needed. As Decrem moved the toy car across the screen, the game reacted: Cars skidded out in the mud, knocked over buildings and honked their horns, startling tractor-shaped cows.

There are areas to explore, per-toy achievements to unlock, a bunch of upgrades and power-ups and what not. The idea is likely to appeal to six-year olds, especially if the popularity of Apple’s tablet amongst youngsters is anything to go by. AppMATes are arriving on store shelves October 1, including the Apple Store and Disney Store.

The game will be a free download and toys will cost twenty bucks a pop. Disney will initially sell four characters from their animated movie “Cars 2”: Lightning McQueen, Tow Mater, Finn McMissile and Holley Shiftwell. By the way, Disney, you may wanna consider changing the name – it sounds a lot like Playmates. Just a thought. Another video right after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaNzbCtxtcY]

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Skype today updated the native iPad app as well as its iPhone/iPod touch counterpart. The Skype for iPad app now has support for Bluetooth headsets on iPad 2 and contains a “bugfix for security vulnerability”. Plus, the program supports both iPad and iPad 2. The Skype for iPhone/iPod touch also enables Bluetooth support on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS and fourth-gen iPod touch.

Image stabilization and emoticons are now also part of the picture (no pun intended). It appears that image stabilization works only when using your rear camera. There has to be some trade-off, right? Adverts! According to release notes, “advertising will be shown to users that do not have Skype Credit, a calling subscription or premium subscription”. Skype is even making the case for their advertising platform, as they call it:

As with our recent Mac update, there will be an advertising platform introduced in this new release. Paying Skype consumers or users with Skype Credit will not see any display ads on their iPhones or iPads. The iPhone update also includes an important security fix.

As most people don’t use Skype Credit, we imagine rubbing their nose into the upgrade offering will be annoying, to say the least. Instead of up-selling us to a paid service, can we please get an elegant interface instead? Check out the image stabilization feature in Skype’s clip, embedded below. The official Skype blog has more information. Full changelog after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLKE58eA-S8]

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Pictured above: Apple’s $49 Thunderbolt cable (copper).

A representative for Intel, Dave Salvator, told Macworld that the current range of Macs with Thunderbolt I/O will support fiber optic cables which are due next year. This will ensure backwards compatibility of optical cables with existing Thunderbolt ports which work with copper cables.

Circuitry will ensure compatibility of optical cables with existing Thunderbolt ports, Salvator said. Copper cables provide adequate data transfer for use over short distances of up to six meters (about 20 feet), but optical cables will be good for data transfers over longer distances of tens of meters, Salvator said.

Salvator wouldn’t divulge any pricing and availability information, yet to be determined. This confirmation is in line with the promise on the official Thunderbolt web site that all Thunderbolt-branded products are to interoperate across all vendors. This bit is also interesting:

Intel is already thinking ahead, and researchers at the company are developing technology based on silicon photonics that will be able to move data up to five times faster than current Thunderbolt implementations. The technology is slated to hit the market by 2015.

Among the PC vendors, Asustek and Acer will bring Thunderbolt-equipped notebooks to market in the first half of next year. More vendors will follow suit once Intel releases its Ivy Bridge chipsets. Of course, we’re expecting Ivy Bridge MacBooks as well. The Ivy Bridge chipset is said to enable interesting goodies such as OpenCL computing, a 60 percent speed gain over the current Sandy Bridge silicon and display resolutions up to 4096-by-4096 pixels. It will also include built-in support for USB 3.0, but not Thunderbolt.

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A scene from Foxconn’s plant in eastern China, courtesy of weibo.com.

UPDATE [September 27, 2011 at 9:22am ET]: The article has been updated with three video clips from eyewitnesses and additional information sourced from M.I.C. Gadget.

Reuters reports this morning that a fire which threatened to set ablaze Foxconn’s plant in Shandong, eastern China, has been extinguished.

The spokesman said the morning fire was in electrical cables on a building roof. Any damage would be covered by insurance.

The plant mainly manufacture phones, game consoles, LCD TVs and notebooks. No casualties were reported and operations have not been affected, a Foxconn spokesman told the news gathering organization. DIGITIMES chimed in with a Foxconn comment. The company “believes the fire was started from abandoned pipe lines that were placed on top of the plant building”. Foxconn also added:

Since the fire only hit the top floor of the plant building and did no damage to production lines, the company’s operations will remain unchanged, while the damage to the building will be covered by insurance.

Judging by the videos published by M.I.C. Gadget and include here for reference, that doesn’t look like a small, insignificant fire as thick, black smoke raises from the building. Remember, if you will, a May explosion at Foxconn’s iPad assembling facility in Chengdu which left three dead and many more injured. Foxconn at the time blamed the incident on flammable particles in the air. What if this was the same deal? Chinese media reports blame the fire on improper operation of workmanship on color spraying.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR5TvZyx3Z8]

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A mockup of a seven-inch Amazon tablet running a forked Android version.

As Amazon gears up to debut its long-rumored tablet at a media event on Wednesday in New York (a subtle hint of a media-focused launch), TechCrunch chimes in with a name. The Android-driven device will be apparently marketed under the Kindle Fire moniker in order to distinguish it from the family of dedicated Kindle e-readers. Manufactured by Foxconn, Apple’s favorite contract manufacturer, the gizmo should boast a seven-inch color touchscreen (not true multi-touch) and won’t have an email client preloaded, but users will be able to download one from its mobile application store or use a built-in browser for web mail, wrote author MG Siegler who first saw the device early this month.

Meanwhile, AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka writes the online retailer is cutting partnerships left and right with Hollywood studios and magazine publishers. Amazon has now added Fox shows to its streaming catalog, Kafka reported today, explaining the deal includes shows Fox no longer airs and old Fox movies such as “Office Space,” “Speed” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. Also, at least three magazine publishers have thrown their weight behind Amazon’s tablet project: Hearst, Conde Nast and Meredith. Kafka cites industry sources claiming all three publishers “have deals to sell digital versions of their titles on the new device”.

Those titles are allegedly optimized for Amazon’s seven-incher and terms are said to mirror the 70/30 revenue split offered by Apple’s iTunes content store. Even though its success is anything but given, conventional wisdom has it that the Amazon tablet should benefit from Amazon’s many cloud services and long-standing partnerships with content providers. What’s unique about Amazon…

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A native Facebook app for iPad was rumored to be in the works for months and numerous blogs have reported it would launch soon, even big newspapers such as the New York Times. Facebook’s “awesome launch” has come and gone, they integrated with Skype but left millions of iPad fans disappointed with the never-explained absence of iPad functionality. And now, slim hopes have been dashed further by Facebook engineer Jeff Verkoeyen who pulled a Joe Hewitt.

The engineer quit for Google to work on back-end stuff for Android. He blogged about his frustration that Facebook wouldn’t release the iPad app he’s been working on since January of this year. According to Business Insider, the app “has been basically done for months” and Verkoeyen “put a ton of time into it:

It was feature-complete back in May, he writes, but Facebook kept pushing its release out another two weeks, then another. Now, he thinks it “may never be released.”

Of course, the iPad app was in an old Facebook for iOS build but they took it out, most likely because Facebook wants folks to use the web interface. Besides, Facebook has never been strong in mobile.

Verkoeyen later reached out to Business Insider saying he updated his blog post to remove details about the iPad app. “It’s no reflection on Facebook as a company, which is an incredible place to work,” he said of the post. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a CNBC interview that Facebook would probably, someday, release an iPad app.

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Apple spoke with Facebook for eighteen months prior to Ping launch. Alas, no deal was made as the social networking behemoth reportedly demanded “onerous” terms. Be that as it may, Facebook Connect was pulled from the iTunes Ping service last minute. Fast-forward to last week, when the streaming music service Spotify opened to everyone in the United States, no invitation required. Surprisingly enough, Spotify is now a Facebook-only affair. A disclaimer on the new account creation page reads:

You need a Facebook account to register for Spotify. If you have an account, just log in below to register. If you don’t have a Facebook account, get one by clicking the “create an account” link below.

This unusual move by Spotify leaves folks without a Facebook account pretty much in the dark. The Next Web has more clarification, including an alleged response from a Spotify employee advising a disgruntled customer to create a private Facebook account for streaming purposes, pictured after the break. Is it just us or does this sound a bit anti-competitive?

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Chestnut St Apple Store, San Francisco. Thanks John!

Closeup below:
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Last week, in the midst of a highly publicized lawsuit against Samsung (latest info here and here), news broke that Apple was being sued by Via Technologies Inc. In question: Three patents related to microprocessors in tablets and smartphones. If Asian trade publication DigiTimes is to be believed, market watchers are upbeat about VIA prevailing in this case, with a little friendly help from Google.

Who is VIA Technologies? A Taipei-based semiconductor manufacturer, VIA files as the world’s largest independent manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. The company currently holds more than five thousand patents. But why would a second-tier x86 microprocessor maker sue Apple? Well, VIA Technologies and HTC both share the same parent company, the Formosa Plastics Group, a Taiwanese conglomerate whose diverse interests include biotechnology, petrochemical processing and production of electronics components.

One of the world’s ten biggest petrochemical producers, the Formosa Plastics Group was founded by Wang Yung-ching (regarded as Taiwan’s most influential entrepreneur) and his brother Wang Yung-tsai. The group is headed by CEO Wenchi Chen and chaired by Lee Chih-tsuen. But wait, there’s more. As observed by John Oram over at the Bright Side of News* blog, VIA and HTC also share family ties:

The wife of VIA Technologies’ CEO is Ms. Cher Wang, Chairperson and Co-Founder of HTC. In 1997, at the age of 39, Wang launched HTC along with associates HT Cho and Peter Chou. Wang is the daughter of Y.C. Wang, who co-founded the conglomerate Formosa Plastics Group. Formosa Plastics Group and the Wang Family are one of most successful family enterprises in Asia. Cher Wang is known as a highly successful business woman ranked in 20th spot on Forbes list of the 2011 World’s Most Powerful Women.

Those juicy bits were also relayed by other publications, including Webwereld.nl. Wang was instrumental in a July deal when VIA sold graphics chip maker S3 Graphics to HTC for $300 million. HTC then used patents from S3 Graphics in conjunction with the Motorola patents Google transferred to them to countersue Apple. Has Apple opened Pandora’s box by going after HTC?

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It’s litigation day as Apple and Samsung battle it out in courts the world over. In a two-day hearing which began this morning in Australia a judge asked for more time to study Apple’s claims, resulting in a brief Galaxy Tab 10.1 launch delay until the end of the month. Meanwhile, the first round of hearings is underway in The Hague over Samsung’s accusations that Apple’s iPad and iPhone infringe on Samsung’s wireless patents. The Korean company is seeking a ban on those products in The Netherlands.

Apple is represented by Rutger Kleemans (Freshfields) while Samsung’s legal counsels are headed by Bas Berghuis (Simmons & Simmons). Per information sourced from Webwerld editor Andreas Udo de Haes on Twitter and this Nu.nl report, Apple says Samsung is seeking a 2.4 percent charge of chip price for every patent. Even though this is not 2.4 percent of iPhone’s retail price, these royalties could quickly swell given the hundreds of millions of iOS devices sold to this date.

The Wall Street Journal estimated that would add “a 9.6 percent fee to what Apple now pays for the transceiver chips in the iPhone and in 3G iPads”. Based on 80 million iPhones and about ten million 3G iPads projected this year, this would result in a hundred million dollar royalty claim. Judge will consider these issues and rule whether Samsung’s cases will be allowed to continue on October 14 at 2pm.

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Apple in August secured a temporary ban on Samsung’s planned Galaxy Tab 10.1 release in Australia. Today is the first day of a two-day hearing over the matter and Federal Court Justice Annabelle Bennett said she needed more time to dive into Apple’s claims before she ruled on Apple’s request for an injunction.

Bennett observed that “technology moves very quickly”, adding that “it would be in both sides’ interest to have this matter finalized quickly”. The development could further push the launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the country. Per Bloomberg:

At today’s hearing, Apple focused on one alleged patent infringement, relating to the touch screen technology of the iPads. Samsung had agreed not to fight Apple’s claim that the Galaxy 10.1 uses zoom technology that infringes its patent.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual for Apple’s fierce competitor from Korea, which counts the Mac maker as its biggest customer. Just as they announced channel shipments of ten million Galaxy S II smartphones worldwide (and expecting to ship as much tablets in 2011), Samsung in Korea took the wraps off the Galaxy S II HD LTE which features a native 720p display and fourth-generation LTE radio technology. Samsung also raised stakes in the legal spat with Apple by threatening to go after the yet unannounced iPhone 5 in both Korea and Europe as soon as Apple put the handset on sale. More importantly, the company has made an important ally in Verizon Wireless in the United States which voiced support for Samsung in the Apple case. Also…

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UPDATE [Monday, September 26, 2011 at 5:27pm ET]: Note that J.P. Morgan appears to be backpedalling on the original report filed by their Asia team. Per Business Insider, “J.P. Morgan’s U.S. Apple analyst said ‘Apple is fine’, and the U.S. team does not agree with the Asian analyst team which made the report that Apple was cutting back its iPad orders”.

Apple has reportedly cut orders of iPad components for the holiday quarter by 25 percent, JPMorgan Chase & Co. wrote in a report. The move could mean a drop from the seventeen million iPads manufactured in the third quarter to thirteen million units ahead of the all important holiday shopping season. According to Bloomberg:

Several supply-chain vendors indicated in the past two weeks that Apple, the world’s biggest company by market value, lowered fourth-quarter iPad orders 25 percent, the first such cut that analysts at J.P. Morgan’s electronic manufacturing services team in Hong Kong said they have ever seen. The report did not list the affected companies.

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz maintains that Apple will ship between 10.9 million to twelve million iPads in the third and fourth quarters. If you remember, a similar thing happened early this year when Apple reduced orders of iPad 1 ahead of the iPad 2 introduction.

It is nevertheless too early to tell whether this rumored change signals Apple winding down iPad 2 manufacturing ahead of iPad 3. The most likely explanation is that Foxconn is reducing its iPad output in China as the Brazil plant goes online. The Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology, Aloizio Mercadante promised iPads made in Brazil by December.

Per latest supply chain checks, thinner and lighter batteries (presumably for iPad 3) are slated to enter mass production in the first quarter one of next year. TSMC, which allegedly won Apple’s chip business from Samsung, will be at full capacity during iPad 3 build times.

However, with an Amazon tablet allegedly slated for introduction Wednesday, Apple may have tweaked its iPad 3 launch plans. It is also entirely possible that Apple modeled for a too optimistic fourth quarter demand and is now simply re-aligning production plans to reduce inventory (Apple CEO Tim Cook thinks inventory is “fundamentally evil”).

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Having a look at the otherwise impressive Galaxy S II phones from Samsung, I noticed that the USB AC power adapter had a ‘familiar’ feel to it. Turns out, it is almost an exact replica, within a millimeter in every direction.  Compare to their previous USB power adapter.

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Spotify, a popular music streaming service from Sweden, arrived in the United States mid-July on an invite-only basis. Today, Spotify goes live for everyone nationwide, no invitation required. Users can now sign up for an account at Spotify.com and use a mobile app for Android or iPhone to stream music over wireless and cellular networks to their phones, tag songs for offline viewing, favorite tracks, share them with friends and more. What’s best, you needn’t sign up for a paid Spotify account. Thanks to a new partnership with Facebook that Mark Zuckerberg announced at the yesterday’s developer conference (more in the clip below), anyone signing up with their Facebook account gets six months of unlimited listening. What happens when the six-month free period expires?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjAr5nGzjV8]

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If Google and Apple were to merge, their respective Android and iOS mobile software would seize well over three-quarters of the world’s platform share in smartphones, per latest Millennial Media’s “Mobile Mix” mobile device usage share report. Separately, Android and iOS held 54 percent and 28 percent share in August. Millennial now includes data from smartphones, tablets, e-readers and gaming devices so direct comparison to their smartphone-focused July study is meaningless.

Apple continued to be the leading device manufacturer on our network in August, representing 23% of the Top 15 Manufacturers impression share (Chart A). Apple iPhone maintained the number one position on the Top 20 Mobile Phones ranking with 13% of the impression share.

Nearly one-third of devices on all carriers used wireless hotspots. Verizon Wireless and Sprint had 18 and 14 percent carrier mix, respectively, followed by T-Mobile USA and AT&T with eight percent each. Games, music and entertainment remain the most popular app categories. iOS represented 41 percent of the app platform mix and Android 49 percent. On Android, News apps rose by 26 percent month-over-month. Go past the fold for a bunch of pretty charts and more explanation.

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According to an article in Dutch-language Nu.nl, Samsung is stepping up its legal response to Apple’s copycat accusations in courts around the world. Poor machine-translated article implies that Samsung is seeking in the Netherlands to ban Apple’s mobile products which sport 3G capabilities, which includes iPhones and 3G iPads. Samsung did not confirm any such lawsuit, but The Hague court confirmed Monday the existence of a lawsuit between Samsung and Apple. The article references a Webwereld story.

Ironically, Apple hit Samsung in the same court last month, managing to secure a ban on imports of Galaxy-branded phones and tablets. It was a strategical attack because Samsung maintains a distribution centre in the country for the entire European Union market. Meanwhile, a court in Germany lifted the EU-wide ban, except in Germany, because Apple doctored court images in order to make the Galaxy Tab 10.1 appear more iPad-like.

Scenes from Shanghai this morning, where Apple opened its third store. Photos by reader Jeffrey. Click for larger.

Apple’s enormous and beautiful Nanjing East store in Shanghai opened doors to business this morning. If the images depicting the enthused crowd are anything to go by, this could become one of Apple’s top revenue stores. The Nanjing East spot is Apple’s third retail store in Shanghai and sixth in mainland China, if you include the upcoming monster store in Honk Kong’s IFC center. The Nanjing East spot is located within the massive wide building located at the corner of Nanjing Road East and Henan Zhong Lu.

Apple couldn’t have chosen a better place to build this store: It is within walking distance of the city’s famous skyscraper panorama and right within The Bund, a major tourist attraction consisting of the wide avenue of historic buildings. It spawns four levels of retails and the fifth level for backend operations. Sales are on a ground floor, a second floor for product demos, sales and training, while the third, fourth and fifth floor house backend operations and support for business customers.

In addition to the Nanjing East store, Apple will tomorrow open six new stores on four continents: Canada (the Metrotown store), Australia (the Westfield Hornsby store), France (the Parly 2 store), Italy (the Centro Sicilia store) and the United States (the New Haven store). In total, Apple will end the September quarter with 27 store openings, just three stores shy of its self-proclaimed goal of thirty new stores by the end of September. Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt dug up two video clips of the Nanjing East store opening, included below (the other video is right after the break).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mL_ZuJ15LQ]

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Image credit: 9to5mac.com

In spite of our best hopes, 9to5Mac is hearing from multiple sources who have ties to Apple and its manufacturing partners that the company is facing continued design and production delays that might push the teardrop iPhone 5 out until 2012. Today, DIGITIMES weighs in on the issue with additional information which reinforces what we’ve been hearing, putting the blame on touch panel maker Wintek which reportedly supplies one-quarter of iPhone 5 touch panels. According to the publication:

A defect has presented in some iPhone 5 touch panels produced by Wintek which may affect the ability to meet initial shipment targets for the launch which is expected in October, according to iPhone supply chain makers. In response, Wintek simply indicated that all of its products are being delivered on schedule.

The publication goes on to describe the “delayed bubble” defect which the source warns is difficult to avoid if it isn’t detected early on during the process of laminating touch panels. Sources assure the publication that Wintek “is expected to remedy the defect quickly” given that iPhone 5 and iPhone 4 utilize the same touch panel manufacturing procedures.

The report contradicts this story, also from DIGITIMES, calling for 150,000 iPhone 5s being produced every day by Foxconn, waiting for iOS 5 to be finalized and preinstalled on the devices before shipping can commence. In the light of today’s rumor, however, it is possible that the iPhone 4S production has been in full swing rather than iPhone 5 and newest Otter Box cases would certainly reinforce this thinking.

Apple facing manufacturing difficulties isn’t unheard of. Remember white iPhone 4? It took the company eight months to figure out how to make it work so that light leakage doesn’t degrade camera performance. Also, Antennagate anyone? Let’s not forget that Apple’s products are “very difficult to make” and that’s from Terry Gou, the CEO of Apple’s long-time contract manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn. For all we know, Gou might have been referring to iPhone 5 when he made that comment back in June.

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