After the original announcement of the iPhone 5, one early concern amongst readers was how well the anodized aluminum back and edges of the black iPhone 5 would hold up over time.
One lengthy thread on our forums has been actively discussing the potential issue and Pocket-Lint in their review did note some wear around the edges after some early usage.
Ditching the glass back and reducing the thickness of the glass panel on the front has affected the design of the metal band around the edge of the iPhone. It is now chamfered and while that looks pretty, we've already noticed that on the black model the edge has started to wear, revealing the shiny silver aluminium metal underneath the "slate" coloured coating and, indeed, we've witnessed it on two separate models, ruling out a fluke manufacturing error.
One person on another forum got straight to the matter and took keys and a SIM card tray pin to the back and edges of an in-store iPhone 5 unit with these results.
Of course, purposefully scratching a device is a bit extreme, but daily usage of any phone will generate some wear and tear. This may be a concern if you are particularly sensitive to the issue.
The iPhone 5 just launched in the U.S. along the east coast. Fortune's Philip Elmer-Dewitt is at the 5th Avenue Store and notes that the line is longer than last year's iPhone 4S line:
We're here at the big glass cube of Apple's (AAPL) flagship Fifth Avenue store for the launch of the iPhone 5. The queue of customers isn't as long as the 1,200 that greeted the iPad 2, but at 7 a.m. -- one hour before doors open -- I counted 710 heads, 52% more than the 400 at the iPhone 4S launch.
The first day pre-orders for the iPhone 5 doubled last year's iPhone 4S launch. That initial set of pre-orders for the iPhone 5 should arrive throughout the day.
The iPhone 5 has been launching across the world this evening, starting in Australia and now extending into Europe. The iPhone 5 will go on sale in the U.S. at 8am local time.
Mac-TV.de posted this image of the Frankfurt, Germany Apple Store shortly before it opens. USA Today reports on large lines in many countries:
Eager buyers formed long lines at Apple stores in Australia and Japan. In Hong Kong, buyers had to sign up online for the chance to pick up the device at a preset time. The first customers were greeted by staff cheering, clapping, chanting "iPhone 5! iPhone 5!" and high-fiving them as they were escorted through the front door.
Meanwhile, one reader from Australia has posted their first impressions of their new iPhone 5 and has been posting more photos in the thread.
Of their new iPhone, thaifood wrote:
The screen size is noticeably taller. The change in aspect ratio feels good. The lack of increase in width seems awkward in photos, but when you hold it you understand how much more comfortable it feels when compared to a wider phone. The dock is so tiny now! I almost missed it when checking out the bottom of the device. The speaker grills also look great in the finished modal. They do not appear as large as photos portray them to be.
Those who have pre-ordered can follow their packages with others in our AT&T, Apple (U.S.), UK, Canadian, Verizon or Sprint pre-order discussion threads. The iPhone 5 will become available in the U.S. at retail stores at 8 a.m. local time.
With the arrival of iOS 6, users have begun using the new turn-by-turn directions built into Apple's mapping app. iPhone 5, 4S and iPad 2 and 3 users get turn-by-turn navigation with spoken directions that automatically route users to their destination. The iPhone 4 does not support the much promoted feature.
In iOS 5's Google version of Maps, the app provided directions in list-form and allowed users to press 'next' and 'previous' to navigate from turn to turn. Though the iPhone 4 doesn't officially support turn-by-turn directions, Apple has significantly upgraded how the Maps app presents them.
Directions are displayed on the screen in the same style as "turn-by-turn" but users can swipe manually just like the iOS 5 version, or the directions change after you reach the turn.
The iPhone 5 is already on sale in Australia where, because of time zones, it's already tomorrow. iFixit has sent a technician to an Down Under Apple Store so the site can be one of the first worldwide to tear down the iPhone 5.
iFixit co-founder Luke Soules trekked halfway around the world to Melbourne, Australia to be one of the first to receive the iPhone 5. Then, he flew like the wind back to MacFixit Australia's office and started taking apart our unit. The process is now well underway.
Ars Technica's Chris Foresman points out that the battery in the iPhone 5 has practically the same capacity as the battery from the iPhone 4S, going from 5.3Whr @ 3.7V to 5.45Whr @ 3.8V, or 1432 mAh to 1434 mAh.
iFixit notes that "Apple is very concerned with making sure that all the connectors are firmly seated and won't rattle lose over time." The teardown has reached the logic board, exposing Apple's proprietary A6 processor.
The Lightning connector assembly, which includes the headphone jack and loudspeaker, comes out next.
It seems inevitable that Apple was going to switch its charging source eventually. There's no way they could have crammed a 30-pin dock connector into this assembly.
iFixit also wonders about the iPhone 5's vibration motor. They say that the 4S used a linear-oscillating vibrator and for the 5, Apple has returned to a rotational motor with a counterweight. The linear-oscillating vibrator is "quieter and less annoying" and iFixit is "scratching our heads as to why" Apple reverted to the less elegant design.
With iOS 6 released to the public for just over 24 hours now, Apple's new and highly touted Maps application has received a large amount of public criticism over missing features and glitches. Google has already submitted its own iOS Maps app to Apple, but the company has responded via a public statement issued to AllThingsD:
"Customers around the world are upgrading to iOS 6 with over 200 new features including Apple Maps, our first map service," said spokeswoman Trudy Miller. "We are excited to offer this service with innovative new features like Flyover, turn by turn navigation, and Siri integration. We launched this new map service knowing it is a major initiative and that we are just getting started with it. Maps is a cloud-based solution and the more people use it, the better it will get. We appreciate all of the customer feedback and are working hard to make the customer experience even better."
Later in his piece, AllThingsD writer John Paczkowski says the developer team assigned to the Maps app is "under lockdown" working to fix the app.
Amid major criticism of Apple's new Maps app for iOS 6 that replaces the Google-powered app included on the iPhone since 2007, multiple sources are now reporting that Google already has a separate Maps app for iOS ready to go and in fact already submitted to Apple.
The first report comes by way of The Guardian, which says that Google is indeed preparing its own Maps app for iOS 6.
Google, I hear from roundabout sources, is enjoying the bad press Apple is suffering. It would be surprising if its mappers could resist some schadenfreude, since they are very proud of their work; having it rejected wholesale must be galling.
The same sources say that Google is preparing a Google Maps app for iOS6, which will appear in time. No official statement has been made and there will inevitably be questions over whether Apple will approve it in the App Store. (Apple might not, on the basis that it "competes with existing functionality", but would invite a further backlash if it did.)
The Guardian's report was tweeted by well-connected iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith, who added a "Yep" to the assertion and framed it as if the app has already been submitted to Apple.
9to5Mac has also weighed in with its own claims that Google has had a standalone version of its Maps app for iOS for a number of years and that an iOS 6-compatible version has indeed been submitted to the App Store.
Finally, TechCrunch is also claiming that a Google app is in the works, with the company aiming to have it available on the App Store "before Christmas". Apple has, however, been known to hold other Google apps in limbo for extended periods of time, so it remains to be seen if and when Google's solution will be available as an alternative to the built-in Maps app from Apple in iOS 6.
Update: The Loop's Jim Dalrymple, who is well sourced at Apple, pours a bit of water on the story that Google has submitted its own Maps app to Apple.
Less than two hours before the first Australian Apple retail stores open to begin selling the iPhone 5, lines at stores around the world are lengthening in anticipation of the event. With Apple's pre-orders for the device having sold it out in just about an hour and current shipping estimates registering at 3-4 weeks, it seems that in-store purchases will be popular with those still looking to get their hands on an iPhone 5 as quickly as possible.
A representative from iFixit is currently in Australia waiting to purchase an iPhone 5 for teardown purposes, and he has posted a photo showing the line outside the Telstra retail store where he is currently sixth in line.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has also checked in at the Chermside Apple retail store outside of Brisbane where he is waiting for one of the first iPhone 5 units to hit the streets.
But even in the United States where customers have close to 16 hours to go at a minimum before sales begin, lines are beginning to grow, as shown in this video from @pdparticle at the Palo Alto store near Apple's headquarters.
The iPhone 5 launches at 8:00 AM local time Friday in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The device will launch in 22 more countries a week later on September 28.
Reuters reports that a union representing roughly a quarter of Apple's retail employees in France has authorized a strike to protest working conditions at the company's stores. The strike is being timed to coincide with tomorrow's 8:00 AM iPhone 5 launch for maximum impact.
Demands by the SUD union, which represents about a quarter of Apple Store employees, included the installation of water fountains, providing meal vouchers and paying a thirteenth month of salary as is common at French companies.
"We're inviting all the employees who consider insufficient the advances made as part of annual labor negotiations and think Apple isn't showing enough of an interest in its French employees to join us tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. in front of the Opera Apple Store," union head Thomas Bordage said.
Other unions representing the remainder of Apple's French retail store workforce are not participating in the strike.
Apple's Opéra retail store in Paris
French newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur notes [Google translation] that the union does not know how many employees will take part in the strike, as many employees are worried that they will be fired or have their work contracts not be renewed if they participate.
Apple retail store employees in France have been wearing green wristbands this week to express solidarity and hope that an agreement can be reached, but the union suggests that a deal is unlikely before the strike goes into effect as last-minute talks have not yielded significant common ground for an agreement.
Left: Apple's Clock app. Right: The iconic Swiss Railway clock. Courtesy Wikipedia
The clock, designed by Hans Hilfiker, has become an icon of both the Swiss railway and of Switzerland itself. The trademark and copyright for the clock is owned by the Swiss Federal Railways service.
According to the article:
SBB is the sole owner of the trademark and copyright of the railway clock. The railway company will now get in touch with Apple. The aim is a legal, as well as a financial solution. It is not right that one [Apple] simply copies the design.
The paper notes that Apple Switzerland declined to comment and directed reporters to Apple's corporate headquarters in the United States.
The clock's image is widely licensed, with the watchmaker Mondaineselling replicas around the world.
(Thanks for the translation, Dave!)
Update: In the interest of fairness, we have changed our links from Tages-Anzeiger to the Swiss daily Blick, which first reported the story. The translated quote remains one provided by a MacRumors reader from a paragraph in the Tages-Anzeiger story.
While the teardown lacks the details and analysis that we will see later from iFixit and other teardown specialists and many of the internal components have already been seen over the past few months in part leaks, this first teardown does provide some confirmation of the internal layout of the device through an extensive set of photos.
With all of the components in place, it is clear how tightly Apple has managed to pack in the internals, revamping much of the interior structure of the device compared to its predecessor.
As had been previously seen in leaked photos, the battery has been flipped over to accommodate access from the front of the device rather than the rear and the headphone jack has been moved to the bottom, resulting in significant changes to the overall layout. The move to a taller and thinner body has also pushed Apple toward other innovations such as the new Lightning connector in order to achieve a design that is 18% thinner and 20% lighter than the iPhone 4S.
Earlier this year, Apple announced that as part of an effort to power all of its data centers with 100% renewable energy it would be building a second 20-megawatt solar farm a few miles away from its new Maiden, North Carolina data center. The new solar farm would complement the previously announced 20-megawatt facility that appears to be nearing completion directly across the street from the data center.
Solar panels at Apple's first North Carolina solar farm (Source: Jeremy Detter/Hickory Daily Record)
The location of the second solar farm was not immediately revealed at that time, but the Hickory Daily Record now reports (via 9to5Mac) that Apple has just purchased 200 acres land for the solar farm at a cost of $3 million. The plot is located nearly 15 miles from the data center and is being co-located with a new North Carolina Data Campus designed to attract other companies in need of data center capacity.
Apple recently closed on the land purchase that includes a tract of 218.885 acres and another tract of 0.251 acres, according to deeds and a plat book at the Catawba County Register of Deeds. [...]
The Conover site is the only other property Apple now owns in the area in addition to the main data center campus and solar farm in Maiden. With the two solar farms and a bio-gas-powered 5-megawatt fuel cell installation, it will be the largest non-utility installation in the country, according to Apple. The company expects to generate 124 million kWh a year, which would power the equivalent of 10,874 homes, Apple says on its website.
Several local governments have banded together to create the new North Carolina Data Campus, which has purchased an additional 55 acres for its purposes at the site. Facebook and Microsoft had reportedly looked at the site as a potential data center, but ultimately selected other locations due to a lack of existing infrastructure. The new data campus entity will work to provide the necessary infrastructure in order to make the site more appealing to other companies.
Networking company Sandvine today took a look (via The Loop) at Apple's iTunes Store and Mac App Store traffic yesterday as compared to the previous two Wednesdays, noting that traffic spiked to nine times it usual levels with the release of iOS 6, OS X 10.8.2, and a host of other updates from Apple.
See that huge spike at 1:00PM EDT yesterday? That is when iOS 6 was officially released to the public. This massive increase in traffic was then sustained throughout most of the day, and actually escalated as people got home from work in the evening. This resulted in traffic from Apple’s servers yesterday being over 9 times their average traffic levels.
Sandvine's measurements capture data from fixed access cable and DSL networks, thus including direct downloads through iTunes and the Mac App Store as well as users who updated their iOS devices using the over-the-air update functionality on their Wi-Fi networks. iOS 6 is the first major iOS upgrade to be supported by the over-the-air update feature that debuted with iOS 5.
One of the largest changes in iOS 6 is Apple's decision to replace its Google-powered Maps app with its own solution powered by a combination of its own work and data licensed from other companies such as TomTom. Throughout the developer beta testing process, numerous users reported on the relatively poor quality of Apple's new maps in many regards, while expressing hope that content would improve heading into the public launch.
Despite some improvements over the past few months, Apple's new Maps app has still been one of the most highly criticized aspects of iOS 6 following its debut yesterday. Users have pointed to inaccuracies in Apple's mapping data, errors in locating points of interest, a lack of transit information, and sometimes-bizarre 3D mapping imagery as major issues with the app.
Apple's 3D modeling of the Brooklyn Bridge (Source: @fromedome)
BBC News takes a look at the reception Apple's Maps app is receiving in the United Kingdom, documenting a few of the specific problems reported by its readers:
Among the user complaints regarding Apple's maps sent to the BBC were:
- Some towns appear to be missing, such as Stratford-upon-Avon and Solihull. - Others, like Uckfield in East Sussex, are in the wrong location. - Satellite images of various locations, particularly in Scotland, are obscured by cloud. - A search for Manchester United Football Club directs users to Sale United Football Club, a community team for ages five and above. - Users also reported missing local places, such as schools, or strange locations. Another screenshot showed a furniture museum that was apparently located in a river.
In one high-visibility case from Ireland, Apple has categorized Dublin's Airfield Park as an actual airport, sparking government officials to contact the company in hopes of addressing the issue.
Dublin's Airfield Park categorized as an airport
While Apple has been working on its in-house mapping efforts for a number of years as evidenced by a series of acquisitions of small companies working in the market, Google's mapping services have been live for over seven years, allowing the company to build up massive amounts of data and expertise. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that Apple's mapping solutions are not as refined as Google's in many cases, but users have generally been hoping for more from Apple's public launch.
Reuters reports on a new court filing from Samsung revealing that the company is preparing to add Apple's new iPhone 5 to a lawsuit currently underway in the United States seeking to ban Apple's devices from sale in the country over patent infringement.
"Based on information currently available, Samsung expects that the iPhone 5 will infringe the asserted Samsung patents-in-suit in the same way as the other accused iPhone models."
Samsung said in a separate statement on Thursday: "Apple continues to take aggressive legal measures that will limit market competition. Under these circumstances, we have little choice but to take the steps necessary to protect our innovations and intellectual property rights."
FOSS Patents has more on the filing, which notes that Samsung still needs to analyze the iPhone 5 upon its release to confirm that the device contains the same functionality being targeted in Apple's other models already included in the suit.
After bringing formal infringement contentions, Samsung could ask for a preliminary injunction against the iPhone 5. It does not mention that possiblity, but it's a procedural fact that a preliminary injunction can only be requested in connection with a lawsuit that will result in either the dissolution of the preliminary injunction or its conversion into a permanent one.
Samsung's suit alleges that Apple's devices infringe a variety of Samsung-held patents, including several that have been declared essential to mobile communications technology.
Both Verizon Wireless and AT&T have announced new and expanded areas for LTE coverage in the U.S. LTE is the high speed wireless data networking standard that comes with the iPhone 5 and represents a substantial boost in speed over 3G.
Cult of Mac and iMore have consolidated the list of locations from the network press releases:
After the iOS 6 update today, many have found that they've had problems connecting to the App Store. Some may have had trouble updating apps, while others are unable to view Passbook apps when connecting from the Passbook application.
One reader spotted a solution from Apple's support forums that shows how to get around the issue:
Go to Settings>General>Date and Time>Set Automatically>Off. Set the date one year ahead. Try to [update the apps again or press the button from Passbook]. If you get an error message, go back to the settings. Correct the date and time (set automatically) then go back and try [again].
After switching the date, we were able to successfully connect to the Passbook section in the App Store. A few other readers also reported success with this technique.
It's been a busy day with today's launch of iOS 6 and associated news, so we thought we take the opportunity to provide a roundup of today's stories to help those who might have missed something get caught up.
With the public release of iOS 6, a number of reviews have hit the Internet summarizing the new features and enhancements. Apple has of course detailed many of the changes at both its Worldwide Developers Conference in June and its iPhone 5 media event earlier this month, and Apple's broad-reaching developer program has had access to builds for a number of months, but for many people the public launch is their first time getting their hands on the new operating system. A few of the interesting iOS 6 reviews we've seen so far include:
Compared to previous versions of iOS, and compared to competing platforms, iOS 6 doesn't have the same level of customer facing pizazz this year. Sure, there's Do Not Disturb and the new Privacy features, FaceTime over 3G, Siri for iPad and iPod touch, VIP mail, Panorama photos, Safari image uploads, single-app-mode, and a few other enhancements, but making a new Maps app was a huge amount of work for Apple. Likewise, positioning Siri and Passbook for the future compromised Apple's ability to deliver in the present.
There are still gaps, to be sure, but it seems like there are fewer every year. And Apple is meanwhile trying to plant more flags with forward-looking features like Passbook. Whether it’ll take its rightful place on the Home screen with Mail and Safari, or end up consigned to the dust heap of history like Ping, it’s clear that Apple is not resting on its laurels, with iOS 6.
Simply put, there’s no reason not to update to iOS 6, and plenty of reasons for you to jump onboard.
Overall, iOS 6 is very good, with some nice touches throughout that ease pain points and refine the experience. And Passbook has the potential to be wonderfully useful. But the question marks of Maps and the App Store are big ones, integral to the ability to recommend iOS as the best platform for a smartphone purchase down the line. These are challenges that Apple will hopefully meet, but we’ll see.
In addition to the iOS 6 launch, Apple pushed out a number of other software updates for both iOS and Mac, including the following:
Our iOS 6 forums are incredibly busy with questions and comments about the latest release. Finally, MacStories has posted a nice bullet-point list of lesser-known tidbits and features found in iOS 6. We've highlighted some we found most interesting here:
- "Settings > General > About > Advertising: this is new and you can limit ad tracking by toggling the off/on button" - "When using Safari for iPhone in landscape, you get a full screen button." - "You can now set an alarm with a song and not just a tone." - "Updating apps doesn’t require a password anymore."
Both 
After the iOS 6 update today, many have found that they've had problems connecting to the App Store. Some may have had trouble updating apps, while others are unable to view Passbook apps when connecting from the Passbook application. 
It's been a busy day with today's 
