At 12:01 a.m. Pacific / 3:01 a.m. Eastern today, Apple, AT&T, Verizon and Sprint started taking orders for the new iPhone 5. Orders placed early enough should be shipped a week from today, but last year it only took 24 hours to sell out of the first batch, with subsequent orders taking a week or two to ship. If you want to be an earlier adopter, stop reading this now and place your order. [UPDATE: As of around 9am Eastern this morning, Apple sold out of its initial supply and began quoting a two week wait for delivery. (via iMore) Carriers such as AT&T and Verizon still have some left but I epxect them to run out quickly too.] And now, the news of note from the past week:
- Susan Decker and Adam Santariano of Bloomberg write an interesting profile of Noreen Krall, Apple's Chief Litigation Counsel who is responsible for Apple's recent successful patent lawsuit against Samsung.
- I know of some law firms that require their attorneys to use Good software on their iPad for security reasons. With this software, instead of using the standard Mail app, the attorneys use a special Good mail app that is quarantined from the rest of the iPad. This is good for security, but it means that it is difficult to use other apps on your iPad with attachments to emails. GoodReader just released GoodReader for Good, an app that lets you use GoodReader (my favorite iPad app for reviewing documents) within the Good environment. Joel Mathis of Macworld provides details on this app.
- If you are trying to decide between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint for the new iPhone, Dan Seifer reminds us that you cannot talk and use data at the same time on Verizon and Sprint, but you can on AT&T. You cannot use voice and 4G LTE at the same time on any network, but on AT&T you can use voice and 3G (including the faster variants of 3G that AT&T calls 4G) at the same time.
- Macworld posted one of its "what you need to know" features on the iPhone 5, and this one is packed with details that I haven't seen before. For example, if you want to export video using a cable on the iPhone 5, you need an HDMI and VGA connector that works with the new Lightning adapter — but Apple is still working on those and they won't be available for perhaps a few months. For now, your only option for getting video out is AirPlay (wireless) sharing.
- John Gruber of Daring Fireball wrote a great "first look" article on the iPhone 5, plus a great analysis of the Apple announcement in general.
- Dan Moren of Macworld reports that Apple has unveiled support for Notes and Reminders on iCloud.com. In my initial tests last night, it worked well with Reminders, but some of the Notes on my iPhone don't appear on iCloud.com yet.
- Dan Frakes of Macworld writes about the new Lightning connector on the iPhone 5 and what it means for you.
- A couple in San Francisco recently hired a professional photographer, Kim Thomas, to photograph their wedding, but instructed Thomas to only use her iPhone. Thomas shows some of the results on her website. There are actually some great photos there, but I can't say that I would recommend that other engaged couples go this route.
- And finally, for those looking for yet another accessory for their iPhone, how about a T-Shirt? CuteCircuit has come up with a prototype for something they call tshirtOS, a T-shirt that contains 1,024 ultrathin RGB LEDs, and the video is amusing. (via SlashGear)