The iMore show returns tonight to talk iPhone 5 and iOS 6 fallout! It's the good, the bad, and the ugly. We'll bring the talk, you bring the snacks.

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This Fall season, Apple is busier than ever before. Back in 2010, Apple had their product launches spaced out. Spring saw the original iPad. Summer had the iPhone 4 in its traditional spot. Fall saw new iPods. This year, however, they just finished rolling out the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, and they've given us impressive new updates to the iPod lineup as well, mirroring many of the updates in the iPhone 5. Soon enough it looks like we'll be seeing the iPad mini announced.

This prompts the question: Is Apple weighting product too much towards the Fall? Does it leave them vulnerable to competitors who can now counter-program them by launching products in the Spring and Summer of 2013, when Apple is in mid-cycle, without having to worry about any major new Apple launches?

I look at this in simple terms. The market for smartphones and tablets is growing very rapidly. Tablets are well on their way to becoming everyday mobile computing devices in the home, school, workplace, and all sorts of industries. They are a complete paradigm shift from yesterday's notebook and netbook trend.

The multitouch market has only been around for a few years. I think when this market is 10 years old, we'll look back and realize we underestimated how important it would become. And Apple ... well they pretty much popularized it. So they better capitalize on it.

This brings us back to the question of whether or not Apple is doing too much this Fall. I think we're looking at a rare land grab in the market right now. Apple is in a dog fight with Google (Android) and to a lesser extent with Microsoft (Windows) and RIM (BlackBerry).

In my mind, there is absolutely no point waiting to bring firepower to the fight. If you have a new weapon, unleash it on the market. Win customers and grab land. Why wait?

The holiday season is massively important in this market. By launching a new iPhone, iPod family and an iPad mini all in time for the holidays, Apple is setting themselves up to grab a lot of new land in the most important time of the year.

Since customers tend to be fairly sticky when it comes to mobile computing platforms, this plays into Apple's favour. This is good. As a shareholder, I love seeing this.

So, will Apple potentially face a slower Spring or Summer season? Yes, of course that's a possibility. But we don't know what Tim Cook and Team Cupertino have planned for next year. Even if they aren't ready to disrupt the next market (whether it be the TV or something else), I'd rather see Apple win at the mobile computing land grab by pushing out incredible products quickly.

I also think that an iPad mini shows Apple's willingness, under the leadership of Tim Cook, to grow their markets. Sure, Steve Jobs said that a 7" tablet would be too small. He also said no one wanted to watch video on an iPod, that no one was reading anymore, and that Apple wasn't making a phone.

Amazon and others proved people will buy them and enjoy them, just not in iPad numbers. I see no reason why Apple should sit out on this game. It's like Samsung making a 50" and 70" TV but deciding not to make a 42" model. It's just a form factor. We don't need 10 different sizes, but the market will certainly appreciate more than one.

I like seeing Apple push, and I like seeing Apple get stuff into consumers' hands quickly. Instead of thinking of this as a potential hole for competitors to attack in the Spring and Summer, I think of it in terms of how much further ahead Apple will be.

Marc Edwards of Bjango, Dave Wiskus of Better Elevation, Mike Piontek of Junecloud, and Rene Ritchie of iMore talk about the iPhone 5, its 16:9 aspect ratio display, and it potential and consequences for designers. This is Iterate!

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Panellists

• Marc Edwards (@marcedwards) of Bjango
• Dave Wiskus (@dwiskus) of Better Elevation
• Mike Piontek (@robotspacer) of Junecloud
• Rene Ritchie (@reneritchie) of iMore.com

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Apple may be turning to its retail employees to improve its new Maps app for iOS 6. Retail store employees are reportedly being asked to, on a volunteer basis, examine the mapping data for their area and submit corrections and improvements to Apple. Stores participating in the initiative will give 40 hours of staff time per week, which will be distributed across several employees. Exactly how the mapping data will be examined remains unclear, though MacRumors says that there may be small teams of employees in each store:

One source has indicated that a team of ten employees would be participating in the program at one store, with one of those employees being designated a "subject matter expert" to oversee the team and receiving training on how the team will operate. Changes to maps will reportedly be submitted through a dedicated internal portal on Apple's systems.

Apple's Maps have recieved heavy criticism since their launch with iOS 6. The backlash prompted Apple CEO Tim Cook to write a letter to customers, apologizing for the mistakes made in Maps, promising to make Maps better, and offering alternatives while Apple improved the product.

Data acquisition, aggregation, cleansing, and de-duplication are non-trivial tasks. Apple is dealing with a huge amount of sources, many of which format data in wildly different ways, and getting it all into a one coherent mapping product for customers is likely proving far more challenging than Apple estimated. But it's vital for Apple to correct errors quickly, since maps are an important feature for so many of its customers. Using teams of its own retail employees, who can contribute significant local knowledge to the effort, will allow Apple to do just that.

Have you seen any improvement to the iOS 6 Maps data in your area over the last week? Are locations showing up more accurately? Are points-of-interest showing the correct information?

Source: MacRumors

Tapbots, the creators of the extremely popular Twitter app Tweetbot, have released Netbot, an iPhone and iPad client for the Twitter-like social network App.net. If you're a fan of Tweetbot, you'll immediately feel at home with Netbot with its identical interface, familiar sounds, and simply outstanding design.

There are three main tabs in Netbot: Timeline, Mentions, and your profile. If you tap on a post, a toolbar will slide out from under it that gives you options to reply, repost (re-tweet), star (favorite), share, and more. You can also double-tap on a post to see its details or triple-tap it to reply (triple-tap can be changed to repost, star, or translate in Settings). Swiping a post to the right will open the conversation view and swiping to the left will open the post Detail view. If you use Tweetbot, you should already be familiar with all these gestures.

App.net profile pages allow for a "cover photo". In Netbot, profiles pages show the user's cover image at the top of the screen and, if you swipe down, the image will grow and zoom with the interface. If the user does not have a cover image, the default dark, charcoal background will be in its place. On any given profile, you can look up the user's posts, followers, following, mentions, and stars. You can also mute or follow users from their profiles.

The last two tabs in Netbot are customizable by holding your finger down on them. Your choices are stars, search, or mute filters.

Netbot includes many different options in its settings including your preferences for sounds, font size, quote format, and the ability to choose services for URL shortening, image and video upload, read later, sync, and mobilizer.

We've been testing it for a while now and it's worked every bit as well as you'd expect from Tapbots. The only limitations we've found are the ones involving features and API (application program interfaces) that App.net simply hasn't rolled out yet. Most notably, Netbot is missing the option for push notifications.

Tweetbot has the best push notification implementation of any Twitter client we've ever tested, and from speaking with Tapbots, they absolutely plan to add it to Netbot as soon as possible While some other clients have included them, Tapbots is waiting for App.net to make the appropriate, official API available (which should be soon).

The good

• Beautifully designed
• Intuitive gestures
• Support for stars
• Support for Instapaper, Pocket, Readability, bitly pro, and Pinboard
• Crosspost to multiple accounts, including Twitter, by tapping the header in post creation
• iCloud sync
• Tweetbot users will feel at home wit Netbot

The bad

• No push notifications

The bottom line

If you're not a fan of the Tapbots aesthetic, nothing in Netbot will win you over. If you're a Tweetbot fan, however, you'll love Netbot. It's an excellent client for the new App.net social network. When it gets push notifications, it'll be near-perfect.

Do you use App.net? If so, make sure you follow the iMore and Mobile Nations crew (I'm @llofte) and include a link to your @name in the comments below!

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Back in may iMore reported that the iPad mini was good to go this fall, and that it would indeed be a smaller iPad in a thinner, lighter shell. Now it's being reported that the 7.85-inch -- non-Retina -- iPad mini has begun mass production in China. Lorraine Luk at the Wall Street Journal has the story:

Asian suppliers for Apple Inc. have started mass production of a new tablet computer smaller than the current iPad, executives at component makers said, as the Silicon Valley company tries to stay competitive against tablets from rivals such as Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

The WSJ claims competition is intensifying in the tablet space, but realistically, where? Apple is now selling the iPad in 90+ countries. Not only does Apple have iTunes in more countries than any competing content store, Apple's business model allows them to sell iPads even in regions where there's no iTunes store. Contrast this with Amazon, who can sell cheap tablets in the U.S. and a few, select other markets where they're able to try and subsidize them with content stores, but literally cannot afford to sell them anywhere else.

While there may have been some early concern that the Nexus 7 or Kindle Fire HD would put significant competitive pressure on the small sized tablet market, necessitating a $200 response from Apple in the form of the iPad mini, it seems more likely Apple is looking at this from an Apple perspective. For some potential buyers, $500 is too high a price point, and 9.7-inches is too big and heavy a device to appeal. Remove both those barriers of entry, and you increase the addressable market.

Apple wants to own the tablet space, not just the large-sized tablet space. From education to enterprise to highly mobile, value-concious consumers, it's a huge target to hit.

Independently, iMore has learned that Apple is still planning to take their iPad mini-sized shot at it this month.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Turns out rumors of a fall wedding were true, and T-Mobile USA and Metro PCS have announced they're getting hitched in a $1.5 billion merger. Metro PCS will be taking T-Mobile's name, and the message they're pushing is one of value and affordability. Deutsche Telekom CEO René Obermann:

We are extremely pleased to announce this transaction with MetroPCS, which enhances Deutsche Telekom's position in the expanding U.S. wireless market. The T-Mobile and MetroPCS brands are a great strategic fit – both operationally and culturally. The new company will be the value leader in wireless with the scale, spectrum and financial and other resources to expand its geographic coverage, broaden choice among all types of customers and continue to innovate, especially around the next-generation LTE network. We are committed to creating a sustainable and financially viable national challenger in the U.S., and we believe this combination helps us deliver on that commitment.

Regarding the iPhone -- or, more accurately, the prospect of finally getting an iPhone on T-Mobile: As expected, nobody really took that one on during this morning's conference call. Executives did, however, remind everyone that T-Mobile's open to folks bringing unlocked AT&T iPhones to its network. But for now, nothing new on the prospect of an iPhone 5.

Here's T-Mo's CEO to tell you all about it...

If there's one thing iMore loves even more than iPhones and iPads, it's giving cool iPhone and iPad devices, accessories, and apps to our awesome readers. This week we have the design your own iPhone 5 winner, and the weekly photo contest winner. And we'll tell you who they are... after the break!

Weekly Photo Contest: Panoramas! (with iOS 6): Catastrophology

iPhone 5 dream device giveaway!

Grand Prize winner - menithings with his iPhone X concept!

Runners up - sau124 and trickedoutdavid!

Congratulations to all the winners! You will be contacted during the week with information on claiming your prizes.

The UK government has announced that the mobile networks in the UK have buried their differences and agreed a new timetable for the roll out of LTE. The agreements were made at a meeting yesterday involving Ofcom and the rival mobile networks. It was agreed that all of their differences would be settled and the one aim would be to get the roll out of LTE expedited with a target now of Spring 2013; six months earlier than planned according to a report from the BBC.

"Delivering 4G quickly is a key part of our economic growth strategy," said Culture Secretary Maria Miller. "I am grateful to the mobile operators for their co-operation in bringing forward vital 4G services." A combination of factors, from a change of government to threats of legal action from operators, had slowed down the process to free up spectrum used by analogue television broadcasts. While the auction of the airwaves made available by the digital switchover is still scheduled for January next year, clearing them for 4G use will happen far more quickly than originally envisaged.

Ofcom said that it had secured the earlier release of frequencies that were previously used for digital-terrestrial broadcasting. Ed Richards, Ofcom chief executive, said: "The actions we have taken with industry and government avoid the risk of significant delay and are tremendous news for consumers who might otherwise have waited a considerable period for the next generation of mobile broadband services."

EE (Everything Everywhere) is all set to launch its LTE network in the coming weeks after they managed to wangle a way around the red tape. This had angered O2 and Vodafone who were looking at taking legal action against EE; further delaying the roll out of LTE. Those threats have now been dropped and EE is free to roll out its LTE services later this month. The competition is now on for the other UK networks to get their services sorted to prevent EE having a longer exclusive that necessary.

This is great news for UK consumers, we are already lagging behind many other countries with the roll out of LTE so this should be a shot in the arm for those of us that want super fast data speeds. If you want to see a demonstration of what LTE is capable of in the UK, make sure to check out our hands on with an iPhone 5 running on EE's LTE network. I am sure you will agree, it's very impressive, Spring 2013 can't come soon enough!

A word or warning if you're on O2 or Vodafone though, the current iPhone 5 on sale in the UK only supports 1800MHz LTE, Vodafone and O2 will only support 800MHz and 2600MHz LTE. This means that you won't be able to enjoy those LTE speeds without changing your phone. You may have to wait for the iPhone 6 unless Apple updates the hardware.

Source: BBC

Element Case is bringing their ultra-premium SECTOR case to the iPhone 5 and it will not disappoint -- It's their most advanced design to date and now attaches with only a single screw. It still uses aerospace-grade aluminum, but now has some "secret" polycarbonates in the package as well. (We didn't ask, they didn't tell.) They also say they've fully RF tested it for full LTE 4G compatibility. Of course, we'll have a full review of it when it's available.

But while we wait, you have a chance to win! That's right, If you're still rocking an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, Element Case wants to give you a chance to win a smoking hot SECTOR case of your very own. The SECTOR 4 from Element Case features stainless steel screw assembly, T6061 aluminum body, oversized accessory ports, and is designed to wrap around your device to provide the utmost protection. The single screw assembly makes it easy to install and remove the case from your device in one move, though why you'd want to remove this work of art is beyond me. The backplate is covered in Ultrasuede, providing not only a soft surface, but also a wonderful contrasting texture.

Just drop a comment below and we will choose one of you to receive your very own SECTOR 4, completely free! The winner will be chosen Monday night, one entry per person please. Good luck!

Remember, you're entering to win a SECTOR 4 for the iPhone 4S/iPhone 4, the SECTOR 5 for the iPhone 5 is coming later!