It’s not surprise that Apple likes to keep things top secret when it comes to their new products not only from all of us but also from their very own employees as Reuters has just found out by interviewing current and past Apple Store employees.

“We haven’t seen it; we never do” before a product is launched, said one employee, who asked not to be identified because workers are barred from speaking with the media. “Every store employee I know, including the managers, they haven’t seen it.”

Now we understand why Apple is this strict when it comes to their new product launches – to avoid leaks. But there is a flip side to that coin as even Apple Store Geniuses are clueless as to how to fix the product let alone get their hands on it until the day of it’s release. Apple has reportedly even gone as far as having store managers guard pallets of new products the night prior to launch day.

So if you happen to go into your local Apple Store and start asking questions about a soon to be released product and you are not getting the answers you are seeking, cut the employee some slack as they truly are kept in the dark and more than likely don’t know much more than you. In fact, sometimes you are better off visiting our forums for more information.

[Via Mac Rumors via Reuters]

Apple Store Employees Kept in Dark Regarding New Products is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple just released iTunes 9.1 with iPad compatibility and iPhoto 8.1.2 which fixes some problems with iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV sync.

iTunes first:

iTunes 9.1 comes with several new features and improvements, including:

• Sync with iPad to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on the go

• Organize and sync books you’ve downloaded from iBooks on iPad or added to your iTunes library

• Rename, rearrange, or remove Genius Mixes

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

And for iPhoto:

This update addresses minor issues in the area of import and syncing to iPhone, iPod or Apple TV.

The update is recommended for all users of iPhoto '09.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4052

If you download it and try it out, let us know if you see any other changes!

Apple Releases iTunes 9.1 for iPad, iPhoto 8.1.2 for iPhone Sync is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple seems to really be embracing social media these days. Their latest effort? Facebook. You can now browse the App Store directly from within Facebook via Apple’s newest Facebook application. There are a few tabs to chose from; the proverbial Wall and Info, but then it starts to get interesting. You have a Featured tab that shows you this weeks currently featured applications. Games, so you can filter by any game genre and Search and Share. From here, you can search for any application. Once you find the application you are looking for, You can get the app (launched via iTunes and the iTunes web page) and post it to your profile. The later is what I am excited about because now I can share with my friends what my most recent favorite app is.

Virtue as partnered with Apple to create this page hot on the heels of their other Facebook page for iTunes. Check for some more screenshots after the break!

App Store, meet Facebook is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Four weeks to enter and four great prizes given away already, now it’s time to announce who got what, and most importantly — who’s getting the iPad gift-certificate!

Week 1: iSkin Solo FX SE Give-away

• Black: afoodieslife
• Pink: lubsyb
• White: TroyOneOn

(Note: none of you have responded to our YouTube messages telling you you’ve won; if we don’t get a response by next Tuesday, April 6, 2010, we’re going to declare it abandoned and pick new winners — so check your YouTube messages!)

Week 2: Griffin PowerJolt

• @bendoke

Week 3: Special Edition Street Fighter IV iPhone cases

• Joseph Hoffmeyer
• Dave01568

Week 4: SCOTTeVEST $150 gift-certificate

• spiderman001728

And the big one: iPad Give-away

• Zeagus!

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who participated! If you didn’t get anything this time, fret not! we’ll be announcing more give-aways soon!

And TiPb’s big iPad give-away goes to… is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

This may not be much of a surprise but according to a former Sling Media employee over at Zatsnotfunny.com, the company will be working on a iPad specific version of the ever popular SlingPlayer – “some day”. Unfortunately that day will not be April 3rd.

“When it makes a noticeable difference in quality, we will definitely provide higher resolution streaming. The iPad is a good example of a device where we are hard at work on this, but unfortunately it won't be there at the April launch.”

With the absence of the likes of Hulu and Netflix streaming on our iPads we can only hope SlingPlayer gets here sooner rather than later.

[Via 9to5Mac via Zatsnotfunny]

SlingPlayer for iPad Coming “Some day” is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Here we have Babo Crash [$0.99 - iTunes Link], a fun new gem-switching game for the iPhone and iPod touch from Playbrains. In this game you have to match similar coloured gems with adjacent gems in sets of three or more, in a similar fashion to Bejeweled. The difference in Babo Crash is that if you match up more than 4 gems you unleash specialized hero gems. These hero gems, when matched, have specialized gem-busting powers.

Babo Crash has over 21 levels of gem smashing fun that gets faster as you go along. It also uses the OpenFeint system so you also have access to leaderboards and achievements online.

If you want to see screenshots of the game in action (and find out how you can get yourself a free promo code for the game!), stay with us after the break.

How can you get your hands on this game for free? Sweet and easy — just leave a comment below telling me why you would enjoy the game and you are entered. We'll pick the winner at random (though saying something cute or funny never hurts!) Make sure to use a real e-address or we will not be able to contact you. Give-away starts now and ends Thursday, April 1st, 2010.

(Note: Unfortunately, Promo Codes only work in the US App Store, so if you don't have access, you won't be able to claim a prize.)

Babo Crash gem-switch game for iPhone is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple is about to add a third device to their iPhone OS family, the iPad, but so far developers are still limited to 100 UDID “slots” for ad-hoc distribution (aka beta testing), leading Craig Hockenberry of the Icon Factory to wonder on his Furbo.org blog if the “crunch” is coming.

Let’s say you (or your company) has a developer account with Apple, two popular iPhone/iPod touch apps, and are about to release an iPad app. That’s three apps total. But all you get are 100 slots total — not per app, not per-user, not 100 for iPhone and 100 for iPad. Total. So if you have 5 developers in-house and each wants to test on all three iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), that’s 15 slots gone already. If you want to maintain compatibility with older devices like the iPhone 2G or the iPod touch G1, you might need slots for those as well. If anyone has replaced a lost or broken device, or had one swapped out under warranty, that means a new UDID and another slot taken. We could be up to 20 slots gone already.

If you have beta testers, the problem scales. Each device each tester has comes with a UDID and takes a slot. If you want to maximize your beta testers, that could be 3 slots each (one for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad) and perhaps more if they have old iPhones or iPod touches, or if they’re replaced a device. That means 15-20 beta testers can consume every slot you have left. Sure you could stretch that out by only having each tester register 1 device but that adds complexity and still only delays hitting the limit.

Further compounding the problem is that Apple only frees up the UDID slots once a year, so any lost devices, developers who have left the company, or beta testers who have dropped out can equate to wasted slots just sitting there for up to a year.

With the iPad launch, it means any developer whose already maxed out and whose slots don’t free up before April 3 is in a tough spot. They can’t register any new UDIDs, which means they can’t register any iPads to test on. That’s not only bad for them, it’s bad for users who expect well-tested, well-polished apps and games.

Hockenberry thinks there’s a better system for Apple to adopt:

A tweet from Mike Piontek crystalized this thought: the limitation for Ad Hoc provisioning should be based around individuals, not the devices that they own. It makes more sense to regulate Apple IDs rather than UDIDs. I want John Gruber to be able to run my apps on whatever devices he currently owns. I want to put my own name on the provisioning list and enable the five iPhone OS devices sitting on my desk. All that Apple cares about is that are only 98 other people besides Gruber and me.

And he points out it’s not just developers but those same Fortune 100 companies Apple often touts who would benefit:

(I suspect that Enterprise IT has similar problems and would welcome a solution based on employees rather than the hardware they own. I can only imagine the headaches of managing thousands of devices.)

If you’re a developer, let us know if the ad-hoc crunch is a concern and what, if anything, you’re doing to handle the oncoming iPad UDID storm.

iPhone and iPad Developers and the Upcoming UDID Crunch is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple’s iTunes News is back with another helpful reminder, this time on the two different types of sharing that now exist in iTunes 9 — share libraries and Home Sharing.

Sharing libraries via streaming:

You can enable it on the Sharing tab in the Preferences panel, which will allow your computer to look for the libraries others are sharing and let you choose whether to share your whole library or just selected items and playlists. When Sharing is turned on, shared libraries on your local network appear in the Shared section of the iTunes window’s left-hand column. You can play the content that appears there as if it were on your own computer.

Home Sharing:

lets the users of up to five computers on a home network copy over music or any other item they’d like to have in their own library. Then they can then enjoy it even if your computer is no longer on the network, and they can sync it to their own devices. To turn it on, use Turn On Home Sharing in the Advanced menu on each of the computers, and use the same active iTunes account to activate each one. Copying is then a simple matter of dragging from a shared library and dropping into your own.

I’ve enabled Home Sharing but I tend to just stream from shared libraries. It just feels quicker to me when I’m looking for something. Which do you use and why?

iTunes 9: Shared Libraries vs Home Sharing is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Live from GDC 2010 Rene talks with Johnny Coghlan from Chillingo, publishers of The Hero [$1.99 - iTunes link], Radio Flare Redux [$2.99 - iTunes link], RavenSword: the Fallen Kind [$4.99 - iTunes link] and via their ClickGamer label, Angry Birds [$0.99 - iTunes link], the newly launched Crystal social gaming network, and what plans they may have for the iPad.

Watch along after the break!

YouTube link

TiPb Apps 7.2: Chillingo (GDC 2010) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Daring Fireball often blurs the line between carefully concealed wink-nudge leak and flat out facetious commentary, so with that in mind John Gruber has this to say about the 4th generation iPhone (which still won’t be called iPhone 4G!):

• Apple A4-family system-on-a-chip. Nothing on whether that would be the ARM Cortex A9 multicore CPU with brand new PowerVR SGX GPU we’ve been drooling over, however.
• 960×640 display. That would be bigger than even the bigger DROID Google Android phone, but fit perfectly with the mediocre pixel-doubling announced for current iPhone apps on the iPad’s 1024×768 display.
• Front facing camera. Which would mean all those iChat Video rumors we’ve been hearing about forever would finally come true, albeit after the HTC EVO 4G broke the barrier.
• 3rd party multitasking in iPhone 4.0. Yeah, that one we’ve got covered going way back. Which just don’t know how they’re going to implement it yet?

Again, this could just be Gruber cracking wise at the WSJ’s Verizon-rumoring expense. However, a lot of this might also be considered obvious things Apple “has to do” to stay competitive. Yet Apple hasn’t exactly been pushing the hardware specs since the iPhone 2G back in 2007. Steve Jobs was rumored to have said the next iPhone will be an A+ upgrade. Is the above a good start?

UPDATE: Engadget says they’re hearing it will launch on June 22 and be called the iPhone HD. Hey, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

UPDATED: 4th Gen iPhone HD to Launch June 22, have Apple chipset, 960×640 display, front-facing camera, multitasking is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog