We've just given away three new iPhone 5 handsets and now we want to celebrate the release of the new iPod touch and iPod nano by giving some of those away as well. They're funner(erer?) than ever, and totally renanoed, and we know you want them, so here's the deal!

We're giving away two (2) free iPod touches and three (3) iPod nanos to lucky iMore readers!

That's right! Free. No strings attached. All you have to do is be a registered member of iMore and leave a comment below telling us which color iPod touch or nano you want. You have one week to get your entry in, so get to it! We will announce the lucky winner next Tuesday, October 23, right here on the blogs. Right in time for the next big contest!

As for the rules: One comment per person. If we find you trying to cheat and enter multiple times, you will be disqualified. The contest is open worldwide, so anyone can enter. And the prize is just the iPod, any additions or accessories are the responsibility of the winners. Now, while we really do appreciate you reading through to the end, GO ENTER! Good luck!

Apple has hired William Stasior, an Amazon executive, to run the Siri unit. At Amazon, Stasior ran the group responsible for Amazon's search and search advertising efforts, known as A9, and has previously worked at Oracle, Netcentives, and AltaVista. Given Stasior's experience in search, there are a number of reasons that he could have been brought on. All Things D has the story, and offers some guesses:

What's more intriguing is what else Stasior might find himself working on — presumably, strengthening Apple's search and search advertising technology in the wake of its increasing competition with Google.

Apple has recently tossed Google's mapping technology from its latest version of its iOS 6 operating system and could eventually remove it as a search option too on its popular smartphones and also its other computing devices and software.

Never say never, but people are searching less for the first time in history, and Apple is a future-thinking company. Simple web search is the now, what's the next?

There's no greater hint than Apple putting Stasior in charge of Siri. Siri is, at its core, an evolution of search. It searches for weather, sports, movies, your music, contacts, apps, and it searches the web. But it does so in an intermediated way, where best-of-breed information sources are lined up for specialized results, including Yelp, Wolfram Alpha, Open Table, and Google.

Stasior comes from a team at Amazon that was responsible for Amazon's cloud search abilities, and much of the work on cloud search includes scalability of the system, something Siri will need as Apple rolls out more features, and more consistent features.

Natural language may or may not be the next big thing, and Siri may or may not be the way natural language interfaces get popularized, but if they are and if Siri is, Apple needs to have it rock solid and ready.

Stasior could help make that a reality.

Source: All Things Digital

Apple seems to be moving to reduce its reliance on Samsung for the manufacture of the A-series processors found in iOS devices, and are possibly planning a move to another company for the production of future chips. While Apple and Samsung have been at odds in the smartphone market, they've remained close partners in manufacturing. The increasing rivalry between the two companies when it comes to the former is cited as the reason for their deteriorating relationship when it comes to the latter. The The Korea Times reports that love-hate might be turning into pure hate.

According to industry sources, Apple has not collaborated with Samsung in the process to develop its A6 microprocessor used in its latest iPhone 5. Samsung has handled the manufacturing of the processors used in previous iPhones and believed to have contributed in their design to some degree.

Apple is still relying on the Korean firm to manufacture its chips but has made it clear it will no longer use its rival's technology, according to a senior Samsung official.

In addition to several lawsuits, Apple has hired a senior Samsung chip designer away from the company at a crucial time when both companies are intensifying their chip design efforts. The hire further drove the wedge between the two companies. A split makes the most sense for Apple, who undoubtedly loathes using a rival as the manufacurer of the brain of their most important devices and is bringing an increasing amount of chip design in-house. Samsung, on the other hand, stands only to lose the multibillion-dollar Apple contract if and when Apple makes the transition away from Samsung for new chip production.

Source: The Korea Times

Since the release of iOS 6, our forums and tip lines have been buzzing with issues relating specifically to iTunes in the Cloud and iTunes Match. Issues seem to range from iTunes Match expiration notices, sync issues with ringtones and text tones via iTunes, and slow performance when it comes to streaming music.

iTunes Match issues

• iTunes Match sending out expiration notices to iOS devices even though their computer still says the subscription is valid. I've personally been experiencing this issue myself. Devices running iOS 5 seem to not have the issue. While my iPhone 5 will not load iTunes Match and tells me it's expired, my iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1.1 works flawlessly with Match. After quite a bit of time on the phone with Apple, they still weren't able to pinpoint the issue.

• iTunes Match streaming slowly or many users experiencing a lot of lag when switching between songs.

• Album artwork missing or not showing up on certain albums, even purchased from iTunes content.

iTunes specific issues

• Syncs hanging up on Waiting on items to copy or Waiting for sync to start. We've had many users experiencing this issue, perhaps even before iOS 6. We aren't exactly sure what's causing the issue, but if you're experiencing it, let us know.

• iTunes removing ringtones and text tones from devices and not syncing them back. This is another one I've personally experienced and have found many others in the same boat not only in our own forums but in Apple's support forums as well. Once iTunes removes the text tones and ringtones they don't seem to want to sync back over. The only way I've found to deal with the issue is to restore my iPhone as new and restore from an iCloud backup that contains the ringtones and text tones iTunes deleted.

We're going to start trouble-shooting them in the forums, so head on over and either start a thread with your specific issue or, if a thread already exists, add what you're seeing into it. We'll keep track of the problems and start sharing solutions. Pick a forum below, add you post, and lets crush this.

• iTunes & iTunes Store forum
• iOS 6 forum
• iCloud forum

The tech world has been ablaze with complaints relating to the iPhone 5 lately. Everything from Apple maps to scratched phones straight out of the box. Are we making a big deal out of nothing? Saturday Night Live seems to think so.

The folks over at Saturday Night Live aired the skit above poking fun at the editors of various large tech sites and their complaints over the iPhone 5. Enter the mock Chinese workers who listen to their complaints and have a few choice words of their own. Whether or not you think the complaints against the iPhone 5 are warranted, it's a good laugh.

Source: All Things D

Apple is reportedly holding an iPad mini event on Tuesday, October 23, and iMore has heard for a while that new Macs would likely be along for the ride. A 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro is one of the most likely things we'll see, and Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac has some details:

The new 13-inch MacBook Pro will be sold in two configurations, with differing processors and storage, and will be available for purchase soon after introduction.

As mentioned before, the 13-inch MacBook Pro will probably require a discreet GPU to handle Retina duties, something that makes Retina challenging for smaller machines, but has a small enough screen not to make panel pricing or yield impractical. In other words, it's the next logical candidate and should basically look like a smaller, more compact version of the current 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro.

Update: John Paczkowski of All Things D is also reporting on the new 13-inch Mac Book Pro:

The machine, a 13-inch version of the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display that debuted in June, will feature the same thin chassis, all-Flash storage and a 2,560-by-1,600 pixel density display comparable to the 2880-by-1800 pixel of its predecessor, sources say. No word yet on price, though it will obviously be a bit less than $2,199 base-line price of the 15-incher.

New Mac minis and new iMacs should also make an appearance. WeiPhone.com posted some interesting possible details about those this weekend. (Google translated).

the the new imac design has epoch-making significance. The innovations include: the side from the side almost can not see the imac's thickness, similar to water droplets curved design tetragonal type than it is now almost completely different. Process, the screen the special glue "sticky" on the panel in front with a special glass attached to the surface, very beautiful. Narrow design, but the bottom of the front is still wide-brimmed design. The bracket made some changes. Stronger performance, the price will be more expensive than the current imac. The first release of the 21-inch product, the follow-up to re-introduce the 27-inch.

So, take a Retina MacBook Pro-style display, extend the chin down and widen the base as minimally as possible to fit the actual computer components, and... profit.

Update: More on the aforementioned new Mac mini from Mark Gurman at 9to5Mac

Alongside the smaller iPad, Apple plans to announce a new version of its Mac mini. Sources say that these Mac minis will come in two standard configurations, with different storage and processor options, and a third model that runs OS X Server.

We should find out more in just over a week.

Source: 9to5Mac, WeiPhone.com, All Things D, 9to5Mac

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Microsoft has launched a new music service which it hopes will offer significant competition to Apple's hugely successful iTunes service. The new Microsoft music offering will be called Xbox Music and will debut on its own Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 devices initially but will also be rolled out for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch a well as certain Android devices too; very soon afterwards. The news comes from Gigaom who managed to speak with Jerry Johnson, general manager of Xbox Music.

But the biggest story to me is that Xbox Music will embrace Android and iOS. Jerry Johnson, general manager of Xbox Music, wasn't able to tell me exactly when the apps for those two platforms are going to come out, but the sense that I took away from the briefing was that his team is working on making it happen sooner rather than later. Xbox Music on Android and iOS will look very much like Xbox Music on Windows Phone 8, which itself in many ways follows the style formerly known as Metro.

So why is this big news? Because Microsoft's past attempts of getting into the music space were much more territorial. The company completely reinvented its DRM for Zune Music, making sure that Zune downloads wouldn't play on anyone's hardware but Microsoft's – a move that irked countless hardware partners who had gotten their devices certified for Microsoft's previous music format.

The Xbox Music service will launch initially on Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox 360 only and will come in two flavors. The first will be ad-supported and offered as a free service solely for playback on Windows 8 machines. The premium version will cost $10 a month and will be usable on additional platforms such as the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 8 phones. Microsoft will also offer a digital download store and a paid cloud music storage service which will supposedly offer an iTunes Match type experience too.

There is no doubt that Microsoft has the power to build something to rival iTunes however past attempts have never been that great. The Zune hardware and software was always hindered by its lack of international availability and it remains to be seen if this service will roll out internationally either. It has often been rumored that Apple would roll out some kind of iTunes subscription service but it has never materialized, maybe this could be the thing to give it a push.

Source: Gigaom

The third and final day of the second annual Cingleton Symposium -- Ç deux -- featured the closing keynote and a special double feature...

Dan Moren once again closed out the show, but this time brought Lex Friedman along for the ride. The Macworld staffers elaborated on why Apple getting HUGE sucks for developers, customers, and Apple. But also, why it sucks less than when Apple was small.

Then Guy English, Scott Morrison, and Petra Mueller officially ended the Cingleton party. And kicked off the after party.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball and special guest Brent Simmons of Sepia Labs recorded a special edition of The Talk Show covering Cingleton, Marco Arment's new The Magazine app, and app.net.

Jason Snell, Serenity Caldwell, Dan Moren, and and Lex Friedman assembled for an episode of The Incomparable. The show focused on how Lex had never seen Indiana Jones. And how everyone else had. they broke down the trilogy movie by movie, from Raiders of the Lost Ark to some fourth movie they claimed was in the franchise but, frankly, sounded like they made it up on the spot.

And that was it, except for the memories, knowledge, and community we all shared and we will each take back with us. Until next time.

Videos were all recorded by Thomas Unterberger, so if you missed the event, you'll be able to catch up on the talks. Last year's are available on Vimeo now.