If Jailbreak developer Chronic’s sources are to be believe, unlocked iPhones may finally hit US Apple Stores this Wednesday.

Unlocked iPhones headed to Apple Stores for Wednesday: MC603 (16GB, Black) MC604 (16GB, White) MC605 (32GB, Black) MC606 (32GB, White)

Chronic originally believed his sources were referring to new MacBook Air models but has since stated the original information was off — it’s for unlocked iPhones.

While countries like Canada and the UK have had SIM-unlocked models available since the iPhone 4 launched (and places like Hong Kong before that), the US has remained GSM-locked to AT&T even after Verizon launched a CDMA iPhone last February.

Before T-Mobile users get their hopes up, it’s unlikely these unlocked iPhones would support AWS frequencies, which means no 3G off AT&T in the US. But for travelers who’d prefer to swap SIM cards than pay extravagant roaming rates, it might be a compelling choice.

If this rumor pans out, expect the unlocked models to come with a hefty, unsubsidized price — like $600+ for 16GB and $700+ for 32GB.

And with iPhone 5 likely coming this fall alongside iOS 5 would anyone rush out and pay that much, right now, just for a factory unlock?

[@chronicwire]

Unlocked iPhones finally coming to US Apple Stores this Wednesday? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Tonight will be a little different folks, we’re doing a live iOS 5 Q&A, so get your questions ready and don’t miss it!

(You can watch from iPhone via Ustream Viewer app (here’s how) and iPad (we recommend Duet Browser.)

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iPad Live podcast tonight at 9pm EDT — Live iOS 5 Q&A! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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This year at WWDC 2011 Apple announced iMessage, a BBM-like instant messaging service built right into the SMS/MMS app. They also built Twitter right into the OS, for clip sharing in Safari, Photos, etc. and come this fall, authentication for the official Twitter app and others. Last year at WWDC 2010 they introduced FaceTime, a video calling service that existed first in the Phone app, then later in its own app on iPod touch, Mac, and iPad. Back in 2002, Apple introduced iChat, an instant messaging service that eventually gained video calling and video conferencing support, as well as desktop sharing and more.

iMessages is proprietary and only on iOS right now. Twitter is proprietary but cross-platform. FaceTime is a collection of open standards that Apple has promised to release the specs for but hasn’t as of yet. It’s also iOS and Mac OS X only right now. iChat uses both proprietary (like AIM) and open (like Jabber) protocols, with different level of feature and functionality support depending on which you use (though you can use more than one). It’s Mac only, but the protocols can be used in other apps on other platforms.

iMessage and FaceTime can both use the same Apple ID, and I can launch into FaceTime via a button in iMessage, but they don’t really work together, not the way Skype calls and chat do, for example. Twitter is treated like a separate systems, and iChat is an island all its own.

I can’t iMessage someone on Mac or Windows. I can’t iChat someone on iOS unless they install a 3rd party app like BeeJive or AIM, and I can’t easily switch between text video/voice in the same app.

iChat on Mac OS X could conceivably become a blended iMessage and FaceTime client. Change iChat’s name to iMessage and have FaceTime calls as easy to launch from Mac OS X (and hopefully Windows one day) as they are on iOS. Add a similar way to switch back from FaceTime and things might “just work” better.

However, Apple seems to be improving the iChat app in Mac OS X Lion all on its own, with no iMessage or FaceTime support in sight. So that doesn’t look like an immediate possibility.

Hopefully Apple is working on this, and we won’t have to wait for iOS 7 and Mac OS X 10.8 to get a grand, unified messaging system.

iMessage and FaceTime and iChat, oh my! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Now that Netflix is streaming to iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Apple TV, what are some of the best things to watch? There’s family programing to keep the little ones entertained, car shows and animal documentaries to keep the men enthralled, recent movies for when friends and families arrive, and sitcoms old and new for when you need a laugh. There are so many movies, TV shows, and specials, it can be hard to figure out what’s best to watch next. And because some of them vary by time or by region, it can be a little complicated. (Hello Mad Men in Canada, good bye James Bond in the US!) That’s where the TiPb nation comes in, of course!

What do you consider the best things to watch on Netflix? What are the classics no one should miss and what are your current favorites? What do you recommend to your friends, and if we got to peak at your Recently Watched list, what would we see?

TiPb Asks: What are the best things to watch on Netflix? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Missed a compelling piece of iPad news, a great review, or a killer how-to? We’re not collecting absolutely everything in iPad here — you can hit up TiPb.com/iPad for that! — but we’re carefully picking what we think is the best of the last 7 days and presenting it here for your review.

And hey! — these double as show notes for our iPad Live! podcast tonight at 9pm Eastern. So join us at TiPb.com/live and follow along!

Meta

• Mobile Nations: Episode Zero
• New to TiPb: Disqus comments, Google search, and +1

iOS 5

• Apple – Nuance VoiceOver technology coming to iOS 5, setting pages found in hidden menus
• iOS 5 shows evidence of 1080p video, will it come to iPad and Apple TV?

iCloud

• Outside the US? No iTunes iCloud music for you until 2012 or later!

News

• Apple files motion to intervene on Lodsys patent lawsuits
• Problems with certain Verizon iPad 2 causing Apple to recall shipments?
• Apple reverses iOS subscription policy
• Real Racing 2 HD bringing full screen gaming over AirPlay
• OnLive to bring full HD console gaming to the iPad
• Apple wants to build a new campus in Cupertino, Steve Jobs presents the 'Mother Ship' to the City Council [video]

Tips

• [Daily tip: How to install a beta version of iOS via XCode or iTunes beta [Mac only]]
• Tip of the Day: How to downgrade from iOS 5 beta back to iOS 4

The week in iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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MacRumors is reporting that the iTunes 10.5 beta for Mac runs in 64-bit mode on Mac OS X Lion, and since the old Carbon APIs don’t support 64-bit, it must have, at long, long last, finally been re-written as a Cocoa app. Before you get too excited, however, it still runs in 32-bit mode on older versions of OS X and doesn’t particularly seem very Cocoa-like, at least at this stage. (Hey, at least the minimize/maximize buttons have regained some horizontal sanity.)

I’d always assumed maintaining Windows compatibility was was hamstrung iTunes, forced it to do too much and stick with older API far too long. Sort of revenge for Microsoft Office on Mac. Wrapping up everything OS X does, like CoreAnimation, CoreAudio, and the other frameworks and bundling them up for Windows can’t be trivial, after all.

That leads me to believe Apple probably hasn’t changed iTunes 10.5 too much, and may just have found a smart way to engage 64-bit on Lion rather than gone to the trouble of moving the entire codebase over to Cocoa, and the even greater trouble of porting that agin to Windows.

Perhaps iCloud will one day take a lot of the bloat out of iTunes, but it will be a long time before everyone, on every PC, is ready to cut the cord completely, so iTunes still has to do everything it does, on Mac and PC, at least for now.

I’d love a light, fast, gorgeously animated Cocoa iTunes that fits in with the rest of the Lion apps, but I’m not going to get my hopes up for now. How about you?

[MacRumors]

iTunes 10.5 beta for Mac is — finally — 64-bit, Cocoa app? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Well known Jailbreak expert Chronic, of Chronic Dev Team, discovered a couple of hidden menu pages in the latest beta of iOS 5, confirming that Apple is heavily involved in bringing system wide voice integration to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Voice recognition was widely rumored to be coming in iOS 5 however there was little mention of it at the recent  WWDC keynote. We did see it briefly mentioned on one of the slides but that was all.

The screenshots above show that the service will come as a partnership between Apple and Nuance; as was widely expected. Maybe we will see it all ready to go when Apple decides to reveal the next generation iPhone, expected to be around the time of the full release of iOS 5 in the fall.

The question is, will this be part of iOS 5 for all devices that can run it, just for Apple A5 powered devices, which would include iPad 2 and iPod touch 5 presumably, or just for the unannounced next generation iPhone?

[@chronic, @chronicwire]

Apple – Nuance VoiceOver technology coming to iOS 5, setting pages found in hidden menus is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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