Sweet*Red

As Apple’s yet-to-be-made-official fall festivities approach, we’ve heard that Apple has begun iOS 5 and iCloud training with retail store employees. According to these sources, training is done through a new section inside of the company’s recently released internal RetailMe application.

Apple typically rolls out their major iOS releases in the days surrounding new iPhone launches. Apple Stores usually only begin their training of new software in the couple of weeks leading up to a respective product launch (obviously this time around could be different, though). Apple beginning their iOS 5 training within the last few days could mean a launch sooner than the recently rumored dates of mid-to-late October.

In addition to iOS 5, Apple Store employees have also begun receiving detailed information on Apple’s upcoming iCloud service. Apple originally said iCloud would be launching alongside iOS 5, which is necessary because of iCloud’s full integration into the next-generation iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV operating system.

If anything, this iOS 5 and iCloud training news helps support our original report of late September iPhone 5 pre-orders and an early October launch. Evidence that Apple is nearing completion of their iCloud service is a pickup of iCloud for Mac and Mac OS 10.7.2 betas to developers. In addition, Apple’s recent betas of iOS 5 have certainly focused on performance, speed, and the removal of bugs. Thanks, iDannyOcean!





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WHAT DO YOU THINK? WANNA KNOW

Since late yesterday, MacRumors has received a few reports of users who have seen their devices running various beta versions of iOS 5 shutting down and returning to activation mode. The reports have been sporadic, with some users suggesting that earlier beta versions may simply have been expiring and been disabled by Apple.
But according to a report from Karthik.K (via AppleInsider), the deactivations appear to be a concerted effort by Apple to crack down on registered developers who have been selling off extra beta slots to offer non-developers access to iOS 5 beta versions. Developers who have sold off their slots are apparently reporting that Apple has shut down their accounts over the violation of the company's developer terms, which limit beta iOS installations to the developer's own devices for testing purposes.
Many of my developer friends have reported that Apple has sent an email warning which said that they have identified the developer to be selling his slots for some users to get early preview of iOS.

And Apple has started closing the developer accounts for selling the slots and also, have flagged the UDIDs associated with that dev account, thus making the iOS 5 device unusable.

Many developers have received this letter and immediately banned their account from the developer’s program.

Once Apple locks your iOS device, the phone will enter the initial setup mode asking you to connect to a WiFi network. And nothing happens more than that.

Apple allows developers to register up to 100 devices to a single developer account, which costs $99 per year. Each developer can submit a list of Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) to be registered under their account, and some users have taken to selling off those device slots to non-developers for $5-10 apiece in order to pay for their own developer access and make a small profit. Going even further, entire websites have even sprung up to facilitate the direct sale of such slots.

As a result of those beta slot sales, access to the iOS 5 has been relatively wide open, facilitating significant disclosures about the next-generation mobile operating system despite many of the details technically being covered by non-disclosure agreements between Apple and its developers.

It is unclear why it has taken Apple so long to crack down on the behavior, as the selling of beta slots has been an open secret for quite some time. iOS 5 is set for a public release sometime this "fall", with the general consensus being that it should appear alongside the iPhone 5 in September or October.

Update: Most of those reporting that they were affected by the issue note that they were running either Beta 1 or Beta 2 of iOS 5, both of which have expired. We have received scattered reports of users on Beta 3 and Beta 4 being affected, but those may be erroneous. Consequently, the issue may simply be expiring early beta versions as we initially supposed.

We are still looking for more reports of users on iOS Beta 3 or the current Beta 4 who can confirm being affected.

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UPDATE FROM YESTERDAYS ARTICLE

A report from CapitalVue is making the rounds today for its claims that Apple has finally struck a deal with China Mobile to a launch the iPhone on the world's largest mobile carrier. China Mobile currently has over 600 million customers.

Unfortunately, the sourcing on the rumor is somewhat uncertain, as the report points to "a company filing" picked up by Chinese-language site ccidcom.com. An automated translation of the article suggests, however, that the report came from the Associated Press, and we have been unable to locate such an article.



But if ccidcom.com's report is indeed true, it suggests that China Mobile will initially introduce the iPhone 4 in October, to be followed later by the iPhone 5 and future 4G LTE models based on the carrier's homegrown TD-LTE standard.

China Mobile has long expressed interest in offering the iPhone, and with Apple making a strong push into China the carrier certainly has to be a priority for Apple even with the technical hurdles of China Mobile's unique network standards. Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook was spotted at China Mobile's headquarters back in June, fueling speculation that a deal was being finalized. Just a few weeks later, a photo on an alleged China Mobile prototype iPhone 4 surfaced, further suggesting that a compatible device has indeed been in testing.

Apple currently offers the iPhone in China only through China Unicom, but has also been reported to be moving toward a deal with China Telecom, perhaps even more quickly than with China Mobile. Regardless, it seems that Apple is certainly making the Chinese market a priority and is working hard to get all of the country's top carriers on board for the iPhone as quickly as possible.

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Apple has understandably long had an interest in controlling domain names associated with its products and features, as recently evidenced by the company snapping up 50 new domain names immediately following its announcements at WWDC earlier this year. Most of Apple's domain name holdings are managed by MarkMonitor, a San Francisco-based brand protection firm that handles such tasks for a significant number of major companies.

We noticed today that Apple's name has appeared in the public WHOIS listings for applepico.com, a domain that has been controlled by MarkMonitor for a number of years but which neither hosts its own content nor redirects to any other site at the present time.



Given that the domain has been associated with MarkMonitor for many years, it is possible that Apple has owned the domain right along, but it is somewhat odd that the WHOIS listing was modified today to make Apple's position as registrant publicly visible. Prior to today, the registrant had been listed as "DNStination, Inc.", an arm of MarkMonitor's brand protection services used to provide anonymity for the company's customers.

With the change in WHOIS listing, the door naturally opens to speculation on exactly what product or feature with a "pico" name Apple might be interested in protecting.

One natural avenue for such speculation leads to pico projectors, tiny image projectors that can be built into handheld devices such as mobile phones and cameras. Apple patent applications have revealed that the company has at least thought about how such a feature could be incorporated into an iPhone, but there has been essentially no evidence that Apple is in fact looking to add the capability to the iPhone in the near future.

A second possibility relates to Apple's iPod line and is sparked by the fact that the domain was initially registered back in December 2005, just a few months after Apple released the iPod nano. At the time, Apple had been releasing increasingly small iPod devices and had just replaced the iPod mini with the iPod nano. Consequently, Apple could simply have been looking to preserve the possibility for a future "iPod pico" device if the company was indeed responsible for the initial registration of the domain name. Of course, if that were the case, Apple would presumably have been more interested in the ipodpico.com domain name, which was not registered until January 2007 and is not owned by Apple.

We hesitate to read too much into today's development and do believe that Apple has owned the applepico.com domain name for quite some time, and thus it is likely that no specific announcement of a product or feature related to the name is imminent. It is interesting to note, however, that Apple does indeed own the domain name and that there has at least been some recent shuffling of the registration information for it.

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WHAT'S YOUR OPINION ON THIS ARTICLE I WANNA KNOW

Bloomberg reports on an article from Russian business newspaper RBC Daily claiming that wireless carriers are in discussions with Apple to launch the iPhone 5 in that country as soon as November.
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone 5 may start selling in Russia in November, “almost immediately” after sales begin in the U.S., RBC Daily reported, citing handset retailers it didn’t identify.

The report notes that previous iPhone models have been slow to officially make their way to Russia, setting up a large market for unauthorized device sales. Russian mobile phone operators are obviously eager to bring Apple's latest iPhone models to the country as soon as possible in order to capitalize on their popularity with official distribution.

Claims of the iPhone 5 making its way to China as soon as October have also appeared in recent days as carriers in countries around the world seek to gain access to the rumored forthcoming device as close as possible to the U.S. launch. Apple has historically staggered its international rollouts to prioritize its biggest markets and those where distribution is simplest. But a number of countries with large populations such as China, India, and Russia have often seen device launches come well after the initial wave.

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AWESOME FOR RUSSIA!!!