Lorraine Luk and Juro Osawa:

The new screens measure at least 4 inches diagonally, the people said, compared with 3.5 inches on Apple’s latest model, the iPhone 4S. Production is set to begin next month, the people said. Analysts have predicted that the next iPhone will come out in the fall.

Bloomberg adds some fuel to the fire with their sources who say that “Steve Jobs had worked closely on the redesigned phone before his death in October.” Which gives me some more hope that if the next iPhone does have a 4-inch display it will be for some very good reasons.

There’s also been a lot of talk about how Apple will change the design of the iPhone to incorporate the larger display. And, Rene Ritchie has done a good job running down the possibilities.

I’m of the opinion that if Apple were to change the iPhone’s display, making it taller and keeping it 640 pixels wide is probably the best bet. It will make older apps look better on the new display (by adding black bars to the top and bottom) and will make it easier for developers to port their apps to the new display size, since apps are already more flexible with vertical height to account for the larger status bar during phone calls.

Nate Anderson, writing for Ars Technica:

The idea isn’t to deter current pirates, apparently (the new scheme requires all legal purchasers to sit through 20 seconds of warnings each time they pop in a film, but will be totally absent from pirated downloads and bootlegs). It’s to educate everyone else. As ICE Director John Morton announced in a statement yesterday, “Law enforcement must continue to expand how it combats criminal activity; public awareness and education are a critical part of that effort.”

Unskippable garbage before the movie is one of the many reasons why I’ve ripped every DVD I own. I have a feeling that making movies easier to watch will discourage pirates far more than forcing them to sit through annoying government warnings.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

I like the new slide-up player features but I’m not happy about the addition of Playlists. It adds another tap between viewing a list of my subscriptions and viewing a list of all of my unplayed episodes. I really miss the old Reeder-style view buttons along the bottom.

And, I’m not the only one who plans on holding onto the older version.

John Gruber connects the dots on why HTC made the decision to lock the boot loader on the HTC One X for AT&T.

Sean Hollister:

This week, Microsoft revealed that the new operating system won’t have any kind of DVD playback, unless you specifically purchase Media Center or use third-party DVD software.

Apple pulls optical disc drives out of their computers and Microsoft pulls DVD playback out of their OS. It’s not surprising that they’re a few years behind.

Sometimes it feels like I’m only playing the game to get rid of the icon’s badge. But, I think this sums up most peoples’ opinion on the matter:

Like most one-hit wonders, fans got bored and moved on.

(Via Ben Brooks.)

Jeremy Horwitz:

What we’ve learned: the new iPhone will indeed be longer and thinner than the iPhone 4 and 4S. […] According to our source, Apple will make one major change to the rear casing, adding a metal panel to the central back of the new iPhone.

iLounge has also been told that there will be a redesigned dock connector that will be smaller than the current one but slightly larger than the current iPhone’s bottom speaker.

I love the idea of a smaller dock connector (although, I don’t know if they’re necessary anymore) but I don’t want a 4-inch iPhone. One of my favorite things about the iPhone is it’s compact size and elongating the device and putting a larger display on it doesn’t sound like an improvement. I don’t want Apple to move in the direction that Android handset manufacturers have.

Another example of Google blatantly annoying its users. Eventually, our old habits will end and they’ll regret pushing all of their new “features” down our throats.

Josh Constine, writing for TechCrunch:

While Google keeps cramming its search results pages full of tools and social content, today Bing confirmed with me the full roll out a redesigned search results page that completely clears the left sidebar, and replaces the tabbed header with a cleaner set of links.

I’m this close to switching to Bing. Google’s search results page has been driving me nuts for a while but that stupid “+You” button that they shoved in the upper left might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

The only one thing I’d change with Bing’s search results page is to move the ads a little bit further to the right. But, I think it’s safe to say that the only thing keeping me on Google is old habits.

I was very excited to try out Sunstroke when I first heard that it was coming to the iPhone just a few days before it’s release. When it finally came I was not disappointed.

Sunstroke is an RSS client developed by Gone East that syncs with your installation of Shawn Inman’s Fever. The client works just as advertised. It gives full access to your feeds, saved items, and hot links which are the most popular links among the RSS feeds that you subscribe to.

Navigating through the application is easy and intuitive, tapping on a feed group will list all of the items in that group with options along the bottom to show read items and to toggle between sorting by feed or by date. Tapping on the arrow along the right will list all of the feeds in the chosen group if you’d like to read items from a specific feed.

From the individual item view you can tap on the title to open the item in Sunstroke’s integrated browser or you can save it using the button on the bottom left. If you’d like to jump to the next or previous item in your current list you can use a pull-t0-refresh like action to move between them, which I’ve found incredibly handy for those feeds where I want to read everything published. Along the bottom right in the individual item view there is a sharing button that can be used to open the item in Safari, tweet the link, email the link, or send the it to Instapaper. And, there are even more options for sharing in the application’s settings alongside the ability to show unread counts and tweak some of the application’s behavior.

The Hot Links feature works just like you’d want it to, giving you the option to change the date range along the bottom of the screen. The links are listed with the corresponding link temperature along the right so that you have an idea of how popular a given link is among the feeds that you subscribe to. Tapping on the link will bring you to the web page unless you’re subscribed to that sites RSS feed, in which case it will display the individual item without having to load the web page at all. And, tapping on the arrows along the right will list all of the RSS feeds that have linked to that page.

I don’t find myself using the Hot links very often, only if I haven’t read my feeds in a few days and want a way to catch up quickly. I’ve always been more of a “subscribe only to feeds that matter so that I can scan every headline” kind of guy. But, I still find it useful on occasion.

The design of the application is just wonderful, using a cool (or should I say hot?) white, grey, and red color scheme that makes the applications stand out among most of the feed readers I’ve seen for iOS. The application even pops on the iPhone home screen because of it’s bright red icon.

The application feels really stable to me only hiccuping a few times during the month that I’ve been using it. The few errors that I’ve gotten were that the Fever installation was unreachable but it’s unclear whether that was the application’s fault or a blip with my web server. What I do know is that I haven’t seen the error in several days and I’ve never had the application crash on me.

If you, like me, have fallen in love with Fever but want something that’s a little bit faster for viewing your feeds on your iPhone, I suggest giving Sunstroke a try. The application is $4.99 which may seem high compared to other RSS clients on the iPhone. But, most of those clients aren’t worth your time. And, Sunstroke is competitively priced with other (what I would consider to be) premium RSS clients like NetNewsWire and Reeder. But those clients only sync with Google Reader, and I enjoy using Fever much more than I ever enjoyed using Google Reader.

Sunstroke – $4.99

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Chrome & Apps:

Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your stuff. Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

I don’t have any interest in letting Google index my files. And call me old fashioned, but if I’m going to be doing any collaborating, I’d rather do it in person.

Tickets sold out in under two hours. I think it’s time for Apple to start thinking about adding a second WWDC. The conference is just too popular for the amount of tickets available and I think it would be worth holding two WWDCs per year. Maybe one could focus on iOS with the other focusing on Macs.

Neat flash game created for Ludum Dare’s 72 hour online game jam by Shaun Inman, Neven Mrgan, and Alex Ogle. 

Sean Buckley writing for Engadget:

We did encounter a snag using it however, our tablet would randomly reboot every few minutes while the dongle was attached, though a sticker on the kit’s front implores users to update their slate before use. Our tablet is up to date, of course, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see a compatibility fix in the coming weeks. Despite matching our Prime’s color profile, the dongle is a little on the ugly side, facing its screws towards the user, rather than hiding them on the tablet’s back. Hiccups and eyesores aside, the attachment works, plain and simple. It isn’t as elegant of a solution as we might as hoped, but at least it’s free.

It causes random reboots, its ugly, and it’s a dongle. But hey, at least it’s free. I guess I just don’t understand why people put up with sub-par hardware.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

Philip Elmer-DeWitt points out that the evidence given for Apple entering the television market is shaky at best and lists some reasons why Apple wouldn’t want to. ”They need large retail display areas and lots of warehouse space” is my favorite from his list. My prediction: Apple won’t get into the TV business until they start increasing the size of their smaller retail stores.

Jamie Keene:

Ikea is planning to introduce furniture with built-in home entertainment systems later this year. The range includes three designs, all of which incorporate an LED TV, 2.1 sound system with wireless subwoofers, Wi-Fi for smart TV features, and DVD / Blu-Ray players.

Looks like a pretty neat setup. But, I’ve always been a bit weary of purchasing a Television with a bunch of integrated stuff. The additional features usually end up breaking before the TV set does.

Jeffrey Inscho:

Developers of the next Instagram: please give users the opportunity to directly support your service by paying for it! Please take our money! Please have a sustainable business plan, or better yet, a platform philosophy!

Some platforms are doing it and it’s working. Look at Pinboard. Look at 500pixels. Look at Instapaper. All thriving with a paying user base. It’s time for us, as empowered users of technology, to start following the money.

(Via Stephen Hackett.)

Mark Zuckerberg:

I’m excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Instagram and that their talented team will be joining Facebook[…] That’s why we’re committed to building and growing Instagram independently. Millions of people around the world love the Instagram app and the brand associated with it, and our goal is to help spread this app and brand to even more people.

I quit using Instagram long ago because it was much easier to share photos on Twitter for me and, at the time, none of my friends were on Instagram yet. As Zuckerberg said, they are “committed” to keeping Instagram independent but I’m not convinced.

I decided to delete my account and if you’d like to do the same Instagram’s instructions on how to do so can be found in their Support Center.

(Via The Brooks Review.)

The sliding camera button on the iOS 5.1 home screen is a perfect example of Apple favoring obviousness over simplicity and even elegance.

I purchased an AirPrint enabled printer last year and have been very happy with it. But, Shawn Blanc offers some options for those without AirPrint enabled printers that would like to print from their iOS devices.

Shawn ended up settling on Printopia:

Though I mostly use Printopia for actually printing out documents, it’s helpful to have its additional features.

Those features include running in the background with no Menu Bar or Dock icon, printing to any folder on your Mac, and being able to “print” directly to various applications.

Sunstroke is coming to the App Store soon and I’m really excited to get my hands on it. I absolutely love Fever but have wanted a native client for a while now. This might be the perfect addition to my iPhone’s home screen.

I just hope it turns out better then the other iOS Fever client that was eventually abandoned by its developer.

The press release from this morning’s announcement to initiate a dividend and share repurchase program.

I own both the first and second generation Apple TVs but don’t plan on purchasing the new one anytime soon. The television in my living room doesn’t support 1080p inputs so the previous generation Apple TV will be just fine for now.

I have fallen in love with the new user interface. It worries me a little bit that Apple hasn’t found a UI they want to stick with yet — it seems like with every software iteration they’re debuting a new UI. I think every one of them has been an improvement upon the last but I wish that they would find one and stick with it.

Now available in the App Store for $4.99. It’s an amazing piece of software that’s compatible with the iPhone 4, 4S, iPad 2, and the new iPad.

I haven’t spent any time with the software, I have a first generation iPad and don’t think I really want to spend too much time editing and organizing photos on my iPhone. But, I was very impressed by Randy Ubillos’ demo on stage at Apple’s event last week. I was especially impressed with the Photo Journals, I can really see myself using it as a way to share photos with my family.

But honestly, they really couldn’t come up with a better icon?

Maybe the most important announcement coming from Apple’s event yesterday, the iPad is now being sold for $399 and the 3G model is just $529. The lowered price point will help put it into the hands of millions of users who wouldn’t have purchased it otherwise.