iMore is getting a steady stream of reports that iOS 6 beta 4 removes the native YouTube app from the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. This isn't a huge surprise, as iMore reported back in May that Apple was going to be using iOS 6 to remove as much of Google as possible from their mobile operating system. Access to iOS user data is hugely valuable to Google, and Apple doesn't want Google having that kind of competitive advantages. That's why Apple has gone to the trouble of building their own native iOS 6 maps app, that's why they're using Siri to intermediate and broker queries away from Google, and it might also be why the YouTube app is gone from the iOS Home screen.

9to5 Mac caught wind of the removal almost immediately, and other sites are reporting it now as well. But here's thing -- it might not be entirely bad news. I might even be good news. Frankly, the ongoing animosity between Apple and Google has lead to iOS having substantially worse Google-powered apps than Android has been enjoying for a while now. While Apple and Google argued over turn-by-turn and Latitude, Android got better and better maps. The iOS YouTube app also lagged behind the Android YouTube app so much many preferred to use the pure Google web app instead.

For those of us who want the best of Apple and the best of Google, removing Google from the built-in apps -- apps that only get updated when Apple updates the entire iOS firmware stack, if Apple chooses to include them in that update -- could end up being great news.

For the same reasons Apple releases many of their apps into the App Store, and Google has decoupled some of their from the core Android OS and moved them into Google Play, If Google releases proper Google Maps and YouTube apps into the iOS App Store. Due to past federal scrutiny, it would be hard if not impossible for Apple to reject them, and it would allow Google to be Google and Apple to be Apple, and let iOS users once again enjoy the best of both worlds.

iOS YouTube was introduced after Apple first showed off the iPhone but before it launched in 2007. Back then, getting video on mobile was by no means and easy task. Times have changed. Flash on mobile was attempted and failed. H.264 video has become more and more prominent. The iOS YouTube app is no longer needed. YouTube.com or a dedicated Google YouTube app would far better serve Apple and Google users.

Just please, Google, don't make it a thin UIWebView wrapper around the mobile YouTube site. If you release a YouTube app -- and I really hope you do -- make it as good if not better than your much-improved Google+ for iOS app.

Apple has just released iOS 6 beta 4 (10A5376e) for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad to developers. iOS 6 beta 4 is currently available to paid developers via Apple's developer portal, developer.apple.com and as an over-the-air (OTA) software update via Settings, General, Software Update on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

iOS 6 was introduced at WWDC 2012 on Monday, June 11. Beta 2 was released on two weeks later on Monday, June 25. Beta 3 was released three week later on Monday, July 16. Now, Beta 4 has followed 3 weeks after that. While slightly longer between releases, iOS 6 is sticking to a more regular, Monday schedule than last year.

We previous looked at how many betas there might be for iOS 6, using past release schedules as checkpoints, and how iOS 6's flagship features compare to those of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, Windows Phone 8, and Blackberry 10.

If reports of a September 12, 2012 Apple special event are accurate, that will likely be the date for an iOS 6 Gold Master (GM) seed for developers, with general public release following on or around September 19, shortly before the new iPhone 5 launch rumored for September 21.

Thanks Ronald!

iMore has learned that Apple intends to update their entire lineup of iOS device products to support the new, miniaturized Dock connector, and to do it as early the rumored September 12 special event this fall. This would include the new iPhone 5, the the new iPod nano and iPod touch, the rumored 7-inch iPad mini, and an updated version of the current 9.7-inch iPad.

The information comes from the same sources that told iMore about the new, smaller Dock connector back in February, and about a mini Dock adapter to fit legacy accessories last month.

We've gone over the reasons why Apple would release an iPad mini and how they could implement it before, but refreshing the iPad 3 so soon after it's March, 2012 launch, especially considering past updates have occurred only yearly schedules, is something equally interesting to consider.

Apparently, Apple believes consistent Dock connectors across the line, and other improvements they're able to make to the new iPad this point, are more important than sticking to yearly release schedules. Apple has previously shown little aversion to extending release schedules, with a 16 month gap between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and no substantive iPod touch updates for 23 months and counting. But what about significantly shortening them?

Rumors of early iPad updates also aren't without precedent. Last year Daring Fireball, TechCrunch, and iMore and others heard the iPad 3 was being considered for a fall 2011 launch before ultimately getting scheduled into the "regular" spring 2012 slot.

Furthermore, iLounge reported last week that they'd heard from their own sources that an updated 9.7-inch iPad was in the works, but framed it in the context of a 4th-generation device that would include the new Dock connector, a rear-mounted mic, and address heat issues. They felt it was unlikely, however, due to Apple's typical iPad release schedules.

Yet Apple is firing on all cylinders are the moment, confidently moving OS X updates to the same yearly schedule as iOS updates, and beginning the process of bringing Retina displays to the Mac.

Whether a new, new iPad this fall would be an iPad 4,1 or simply a new iPad 3,x is unclear. Certainly Apple could decide again to hold off on any and all updates until next spring, or could do a more modest iPad 3 update this fall and a proper iPad 4 next spring.

In the meantime, it sure sounds like Apple is planning to run the line when it comes to iOS device updates this September.

Additional resources

• The 16:9 iPhone: How Apple could handle the longer screen on the next iPhone
• Everything you need to know about the iPhone 5

• iPhone 5 discussion forum

• Solving for 7: How Apple could implement the iPad mini interface

• Everything you need to know about the iPad mini
• iPad mini forum

iMore learned back in March that the next iPhone would have 4G LTE networking. We've seen a pretty clear history of Apple integrating technology from the spring iPad release into the summer/fall iteration of the iPhone for the past few years. Last year, that included the A5 processor, 512MB of memory, and 64GB of storage. This year, it seems almost certain it will include LTE.

Before the new iPad came out in March, I correctly speculated that both US and Canadian carriers would be the only ones to offer an LTE enabled version. Almost six-months later, the rest of the world is still waiting LTE support, and I think the new iteration of the iPhone will follow suit.

We've got a good idea spec-wise about what we're going to see, and an LTE radio seems inevitable. For the timeline, let's take a look back to at Qualcomm. The chipset used in the iPhone 4 was announced over a year prior to the device's actual release. Back in February of 2011, Qualcomm unveiled its next generation of chipsets, including the 28nm MDM9615, due to arrive in Q2 of 2012. This chip will provide enhancements in modem performance, power consumption, board area and BOM expense, exactly what Apple is looking for in its devices. The 9615 will support pretty much every standard out there today, including LTE (FDD and TDD), DC-HSPA+, EV-DO Rev-B and TD-SCDMA. If I were to bet, I would say the 9615 is the prime suspect.

And then there's the battery debate. The latest iPad showed us that it takes more battery to handle LTE, but really, how much more? Apple rates the battery life of the LTE and WiFi models of the iPad on its website as 9 hours and 10 hours respectively. LTE then accounts for roughly 10% of the battery's usage, with the rest attributed to the more powerful processor, retina screen, and additional RAM. Remember, the new iPad is actually heavier and thicker than the iPad 2. But it's a tablet, big and bulky already, so adding a bit to it isn't the end of the world.

Translate this over to a new iPhone, and people aren't going to be all that thrilled about a thicker heavier device. So where should we plan to see this increase in battery life from? The bigger screen. Combine the rumors of a larger, 4-inch screen with a thinner in-cell display, and the size of the battery underneath will be increased not only to handle the additional pixels, but also the more power-hungry radio. It's already used to handling a a EVDO or HSPA+ radio, so we're really not talking much.

Finally, as with the iPad, consider the frequencies used for LTE. Network testing and planning is happening in nearly every wireless band available. In North America, it's primarily on the 700 and 1700 MHz bands, but 800, 1900, 2500 and possibly even 1500 MHz are still in play. Add in the rest of the world, with 900, 1800 and 2600 MHZ, and you have the potential for up to nine (ennea) bands for the radio chipset. Ennea-band support wasn't in the latest iPad, and quite honestly, I don't see the need for it yet.

When the iPad was announced, there were around 30 countries with commercial LTE service available. Today, according to my count, there are still less than 35 countries with live LTE networks. Outside of North America and Europe, lots of planning is going on, but few deployments are actually happening. I'm thinking Apple will head for the low hanging fruit again, the countries with mature networks, and skip those in testing or planning phases for the next round. Translated, LTE enabled devices will hit the US and Canada at launch, with the possibility of some European and Australian carriers, but that's about it.

Bottom line, LTE is coming to the iPhone, and it's coming this fall. Just don't expect it to show up everywhere.

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Nuance has just announced Nina, a new virtual customer service assistant SDK (software developers kit) for iOS and Android. Nuance, which is widely believed to power Apple's Siri voice recognition, is aiming the SDK at iPhone and iPad developers who want to quickly and easily add voice assistance to their App Store apps. And while Siri understands what you're saying and the context in which you're saying it,Nuance claims Nina uses voice biometrics to understand just who exactly is doing the talking. Robert Weideman, executive vice president and general manager of the Nuance Enterprise Division, said in their press release:

Nina is a watershed innovation for the automated customer service industry, not only because it brings the virtual assistant directly into an app, but because it raises the bar through its level of interactive dialog and language understanding. Nina provides our customers a major competitive differentiator by enabling more successful self-service through their mobile apps. We are especially pleased to further our partnership with USAA, a company known for its innovation and approach to delivering a premier mobile customer service experience to its members.

USAA, a financial services company with a US military focus, is piloting the system this August and intends to fully roll it out early next year.

Nina is comprised of a personal assistant persona, the SDK proper, and the backend cloud component. It's is available to developers now in US, UK, and Australian English, with additional languages slated for later this year.

By contrast, Apple does not supply iOS or Mac developers with Siri API in the iOS SDK, which means that, while any app with a keyboard can tap into the system-wide Dictation speech-to-text functionality, they can't hook into Siri's response system. In other words, they can't let Siri see into their app or their service and return their results. No asking your banking app what your balance is, for example. Not with Siri. Which is why developers might find Nina attractive.

Aside from Google, who hired one of Nuance's founders and created their own implementation, Nuance has a virtual lock on voice recognition technology. As devices like the iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Mac move towards more natural language input methods, the ability to understand voice becomes table stakes. Since most companies have to license that from Nuance, and they all end up using the same engine, the competitive advantage shifts to natural language parsing and response -- understanding not only what a person is saying, but what it means and how to act on it.

Apple bought Siri in part because of their excellent, context aware parsing technology. As Nuance provides tools like Nina, and as competitors like Samsung bring similar services like S Voice to market, parsing might likewise become table stakes.

That leaves packaging and services, which is likely why Apple spent so much time on Siri's Pixar-like personality, and on and the services they integrated to support it -- results from Yelp, Yahoo!, Wolfram|Alpha, and other more. And why Apple is adding sports, movies, turn-by-turn navigation, and additional services to Siri as part of iOS 6.

Is voice ID strong enough security for things like accessing banking details, however? "My voice is my passport" has been the stuff of movies for years. But it's also been spoofed in those same movies for years...

Either way, Nina looks to fill a void Apple's either not ready to, or not interested in. Would you want Nina in any of your apps? Which ones?

More: Nuance

OS X Mountain Lion not only ships without X11, but actually removes X11 from your computer when you upgrade. If you're not familiar with X11, it's a networked graphical user interface that geeks and systems administrators alike use all the time, every day to connect to and run various UNIX applications. It might not sound like a mainstream feature, and it isn't, but it's something that let me and people like me do our jobs using the Mac. It let me connect to work via ssh and use X11 forwarding to view terminal applications, use tsclient, vnc etc... It let me be an Apple customer. And now it's gone.

My roots in UNIX and Linux, and I've always enjoyed using and tweaking them to my hearts content, from Gentoo, to FreeBSD to Ubuntu. A couple of years ago, I got tired of the tweaking and just wanted a beautiful Unix experience out of the box, where I could use Terminals, ssh connections, and X11 to keep getting work done, but have all the bells and whistles of a commercial operating system as well. I went with Mac OS X due to it's BSD lineage and because it looked nice too. I could stay in Terminal all day, and enjoy the experience.

And now I'm wondering if I made a mistake.

There were always compromises and annoyances. The Terminal was always limited, copy and pasting text in it was non standard, there was no default repository for ports or applications. And no matter how many cores or how much RAM I threw at it, it would beachball when copying and pasting from one terminal to another using the default app on Mac OS X. I installed extra terms and macports and other third party applications to reduce the annoyance, but it seems I was fighting a losing battle.

Over the years, Apple began to neglect, or worse, remove more and more of the traditional UNIX portions of OS X.

Which brings me back to Mountain Lion and Apple coming into my machine and ripping out the X11, and giving me this when I search their knowledge base for answers:

X11 is not included with Mountain Lion, but X11 server and client libraries for OS X Mountain Lion are available from the XQuartz project: http://xquartz.macosforge.org. You should use XQuartz version 2.7.2 or later.

Apple also removed the perfectly functional RSS features from Mail and Safari in Mountain Lion. You can't even open an RSS file and preview it in Safari anymore. In previous years Apple stopped installing some features by default, including the Adobe Flash player, but removing features is a disturbing trend.

Imagine if Apple removes Terminal itself in the next version of OS X, or decides iMessage is the future and gets rid of Mail.app?

I'm installing XQuartz and I hope Apple provides support for it going forward. Without its UNIX underpinnings, the Mac becomes less useful for IT workers like me.

Apple is known for their user experience but this was a very bad one. Maybe they figure a UNIX geek like me is perfectly capable of searching their knowledge base and finding alternatives, and I certainly can and did.

But there's no knowledge base article to explain away the feeling of violation that comes with a vendor reaching into your personal computer, even during an OS upgrade, and removing something you depend on every day.

iOS 6 is Apple's next major OS update, and now I'm left to wonder, what if any functionality will that remove from my iPhone or iPad? Will RSS still work in mobile Safari? Will something else I rely on be gone?

And that's not the kind of thing Apple users, even the geeks, should have to worry about.

While Samsung shipped roughly double the amount of smartphones Apple did last quarter, market share still isn't translating into profit share, as Apple retains an absolutely massive 73% share of smartphone and tablet profits. And that was during a slow quarter where people started anticipating the next iPhone. John Paczkowski reports for All Things D:

So while Samsung outselling the iPhone 2-to-1 is a nice milestone and no doubt a point of pride for the Korean company, it's not the financial victory that it might first appear. Samsung might be the mobile industry's king, but Apple still rules overall in the most important metric of all: Profit.

What's more astounding is that's 73% of profits (and 43% of revenue) based on 6% of smartphone and tablet shipments. Every year to date, Apple has sold more iPhones than all previous years combined. iPhone 3GS sold more than iPhone and iPhone 3G combined. iPhone 4S is selling more than iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and iPhone 4 combined. Next quarter is the big one, with a new iPhone, perhaps an iPad mini and more to drive holiday sales. If Apple can continue growing at that scale, and they can do it without significantly increasing costs and decreasing margins, how much profit share can they capture? How high can Apple go?

At the same time, while Samsung is doing fine, how long can the HTC, LG, Nokia, and BlackBerry's of the world continue to fund innovation and competition when they're profit neutral or negative? Does it leave the doors open for alternative business models, like Amazon's content-subsidized Kindle, or for new players, like Facebook?

Source: All Things D

Marc, Rene, and Seth iterate through Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the Nexus 7, and Windows Phone 8, and interrogate Michael Simmons of Flexibits and Fantastical. This is Iterate!

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