As Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference loomed, the iOSphere seemed resigned to No New Hardware, taking the wind out of much of the hot air about iPhone 6. But diehards do not go gentle in that good night.
One place where the post-PC era is in full swing is the enterprise. And enterprise IT groups will be watching when Apple unveils iOS 7 at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, June 10, to see if the new version improves its fit for business users.
The key to the next stage of Apple's iOS mobile experience may lie not in the number of changes the company makes to its software but in the kind of changes it makes.
Revenues for wireless LAN products dropped 7% in Q1 2013 compared to the previous quarter. The drop in part is due to buyers delaying purchases as they wait for new WLAN products based on the so-called "Gigabit Wi-Fi" standard, IEEE 802.11ac, according to Infonetics Research.
Hilarity is rare in the iOSphere, rumors being serious business. But this week a post at a Korean tech website, describing a 12.9-inch iPad maxi in the works, triggered hilarity at 9to5Mac for reasons that are unclear.
Even at a trade show focused on core mobile networking hardware and software, you can find products that further the unwiring of work and life.
The hot air levels rose dramatically in the iOSphere this week on the strength of one laconic, six-paragraph posting about the expected weight of iPad 5.
If you've ever dropped, broken or drowned your mobile phone, Kyocera Wireless has a deal for you: two new waterproofed Android phones, one of them ruggedized, aimed at first-time smartphone buyers looking for affordable handsets. The products were announced for the U.S market at this week's CTIA cellular industry conference in Las Vegas.
Aruba Networks became the latest company to announce Wi-Fi access points that can support over 1Gbps throughput, at the cellular industry's CTIA show in Las Vegas this week.
Even before summer, the iOSphere languishes in the iPad rumor doldrums, apparently having exhausted itself with hopes for a Retina display iPad mini 2, and the A7 chip for the iPad 5. But there is hope: The Rollup uncovered the radical iPadiGlasses, in an exclusive report.
Google on Wednesday demanded that Microsoft yank its YouTube app for Windows Phone from the market and disable any downloaded copies of the app, according to Wired.com, which received a copy of Google's cease and desist letter.
It took two hours for three BlackBerry executives to announce four items: a routine software update, a new low-end qwerty smartphone aimed at overseas markets, a new feature for BlackBerry Messenger, and Messenger's extension to iOS and Android.
An unstable hot air mass troubled the iOSphere this week, the sky blackened by contradictory rumours, sometimes in the same blog post.
The iOSphere seems to have lowered itself from mere rumor to mere guesses for iPad 5 and the iPad mini 2, though with just as much assurance.
Almost overnight, thanks to posts finally resembling "news," the iOSphere has become an expert in industrial design, contemplating an iPhone 6 or 5S or something with a flatter, sleeker, cooler, starker, smoother, de-glitzed and overall just better-looking iOS 7.