Yet Apple and third-party developers have set a new record: in 453 days since the original iPad came out on April 3, 2010, the App Store has more than 100,000 iPad-exclusive apps available.

It is no secret that the iPad development scene was fueled by the success of the iPhone and iPod touch. When the SDK was first released in 2008, thousands of developers began building and testing apps for the iPhone and iPod touch. With over 10 billion downloads, the AppStore is now becoming one of Apple’s prized possessions in terms of digital downloads.

With the current growth of the iPad, it would be no surprise to see a 200,000 app milestone soon. With Apple pushing automatic downloads, wireless sync, and iCloud, it is clear that Apple is trying to ensure an easy process of downloading, syncing and using apps.

[Via]

As outlined by Apple in the handsets’ description:

Get all the features of iPhone 4 — FaceTime video calling, Retina display, HD video recording, and more — in a phone that you can activate and use on the supported GSM wireless carrier of your choice, such as AT&T in the United States.¹

If you don’t want a multiyear service contract or if you prefer to use a local carrier when traveling abroad, the unlocked iPhone 4 is the best choice. It arrives without a micro-SIM card, so you’ll need an active micro-SIM card from any supported GSM carrier worldwide.

For a while now, we’ve been hearing rumors claiming that Apple’s fifth generation iPhone will feature an improved camera. Now, DigitTimes claims that this is indeed the case, and that camera image sensors for the handset will be provided by OmniVision (90 percent) and Sony (10 percent).

According to the report:

OmniVision has grabbed a majority of total CMOS image sensor (CIS) orders placed by Apple for the fifth-generation iPhone, market sources have claimed. Meanwhile, power amplifier (PA) supplier Avago Technologies has landed orders for the WCDMA version of the device for its first time, according to the sources.

About 90% of the CIS orders for Apple’s new iPhone will be supplied by OmniVision, while Sony takes up the remainder, the sources said. The upcoming device will feature a built-in 8-megapixel camera, the sources added.

Other iPhone 5 camera-related rumors involve a repositioned flash unit, which was previously hinted at by several “leaked” cases. These cases suggested that the flash unit would be moved to the other side of the iPhone, and would sit parallel to the camera unit.

Guide:

STEP 1: Install iTunes 10.5 beta from direct link here. [Mac - Windows 32 bit - Windows 64 bit]

STEP 2: Now you need to download the right firmware file for your iOS device:

• iPad 1G
• iPad 2 (Wi-Fi, GSM, CDMA)
• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4 (GSM, CDMA)
• iPod 3G
• iPod 4G

STEP 3: Now open iTunes that you downloaded above and restore using your firmware.

You can download iTunes 10.3 from here.

Features

Notifications:
They’ve built something better than you expected for notifications. They’ve built something called Notification center. It’s a single place combining all your notifications. Just swipe your finger from the down up to reveal the notification center. It shows you everything, Facebook notifications, Twitter and everything you need. When you get a text message, you get a nice notification at the top there. You can dismiss it, or tap there and you can always go back later.

Newsstand:
It’s all about reading news and magazines. They’ve added subscription lately. Some incredible titles are doing it, like national geographic. They created a single place in the app store that combines them all at one place, purchase them, and they’re automaticly downloaded right on the home screen

Twitter:
They’ve made it more and more easier. You go to settings app, and you can just enter your credentials and all your apps will already be logged into your twitter. They added twitter to many of our apps. Like Cameras, photos. There is a new option to share: Tweet and it opens a nice sheet. YOu can get a countdown and even optionally add your location. It’s that simple. In addition, you can tweet articles from safari, websites. VIdeos from youtube, and even apps

Safari:
iOS 5 is making safari even better. The first is reader. It’s available up here as abutton. When you read a story, you tap that button and we extract all the info. Even if it’s a multi page story. WE put it in a single scrolling story. Really convenient. Second one is reading list. It’s a simple convenient way for you to save a story to roead it later. When you add something, it will add it to reading list on every iDevice. Even on the mac or Windows. When you email now too, you can have the content in the content window. It works great on iPad and iPhone. Really nice.

Tab Browsing:
This features enables you to jump on the mac or any other iOS device easily.

The Reminder Up:
It’s a new revemaped system of the reminder. That’s it.

Camera:
First, it’s gonna be way faster to get in and take a photo. Just hit the new iCon, and you’re right there. Even if you have a passcode and you can hit the camera from the lockscreen. You can also take picture with the volume up button (remember Camera +?) You can now pinch to zoom within the camera. If you hold your camera you can lock exposure. This is a really advanced feature, and we brought it tothe iPhone. ONce that you take these photos, you can edit them right in your iPhoen or iPad. Rotate, red eye reduction.

Mail:
Mail is one of the most used applications on iOS. We’re making it even better. Rich text formating, bold, underline. You can control indentation. Drag the address across fields. Also: search the entire content of your emssage on your phone and the server. It’s really nice to use this. You can swipe and so on. Also, we added more support for entreprise customers. This time we’re adding X-Mime. you can use certificates, and get that locked iCon that says your mail is encrypted.

New Keyboard to iPad:
Since the revolution iPhone, we revollutionzed the keyboard. They’re making it even better. For those who like to type with thumbs. It’s a split keyboard that moves around with your thumbs

PC-Free:
You can now setup and activate device right on the go without need to PC, yes without PC. Now you can add and delete calendars right from iOS. And surprisingly they’re letting people update over-the-air.

Game Center:
You can fight for achievement points. Compare with friends, have recommended friends.

iMessage:
They’re launching a new messaging system for all customers. It supports iPad, iPod and iPhone. It does everything plus it adds some new features as delivery receipts. You can always enter and go out, the content of the conversation is saved. It works 3G and Wifi. All encrypted. It allows you to send and receive messages while you’re playing games.

Availability

iOS 5 will ship to all of our customers this fall. iOS 5 will be available to developers tonight. We’ll of course upload the betas of iOS 5 on our servers to let our users have fun with it before it’s being released. Please follow us !

An iPad (Wi-Fi +3G) has apparently been hacked to make phone calls and SMS messages. While we’re not sure about the legitimacy of this claim, a relatively low-quality YouTube video demonstrates the hack in action, and it appears to work.

The hack has reportedly been achieved by iPhoneIslam, the same group who brought FaceTime to the Middle East. As you can see in the video below, a brand new hack – called PhoneItiPad – appears to add a working Phone and Messages application to the iPad 3G.

Don’t get too excited, because the hack isn’t available in Cydia yet. However, according to the group, it will be able to purchase in the Cydia Store “very soon” (before WWDC).

According to someone “in the know,” Apple’s second generation iPad should be jailbroken by @p0sixninja in “about three weeks.”

The news comes from @veeence, the guy who successfully predicted the release of an untethered jailbreak solution for iOS 4.3.1. According to a Twitter update posted by @veeence yesterday, we should expect support for the iPad 2 to be added in around three weeks:

It’ll likely work on the iPad 2G as well, as soon as it gets jailbroken. Rough ETA is about 3 weeks, according to @p0sixninja.

Over the last few years Apple has purchased two online mapping companies, Placebaseand Poly9. This has led many to speculate that Apple may want to abandoned Google Maps in favor of new mapping technologies developed in-house instead. Tension between Apple and Google has been on the rise ever since Google decided to expand into areas already dominated by Apple.

A new report coming out of 9to5 Google indicates that Apple may, in fact, stay with Google Maps when iOS 5 is finally released in the next few months. It now seems more than likely that Apple will instead enhance the mapping features in iOS 5 by building in a crowd-sourced traffic database and improving traffic related services as well. Apple may also choose to include it’s own turn-by-turn GPS navigation system when the next iOS update is released.

Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference starts June 6, and the focus of this year’s event will be the forthcoming new versions of Mac OS X Lion and iOS 5. In a little over a weeks time, Apple will finally reveal the future of iOS 5 and the fate of the Maps app as well. For now, however, it looks as though Apple will be using Google Maps for the foreseeable future. Exactly what upgrades the Maps app will receive is anyone’s guess at the moment.

Hopefully, the future of Apple navigation will include the ability to cache mapping data so you can still find where you’re going, even if you don’t have any bars. Oh, and voice recognition across the entire operating system would be really nice as well.

Source: 9to5 Google

It’s unclear if Samsung will be successful in this motion since it’s Apple suing Samsung for copying its device, Apple has not announced the existence of an iPhone 4S/5 or iPad 3, and Apple hasn’t given any indication that it will file for that preliminary injunction.