The Apple Rumour Mill

With rumours of the iPad 2 media preview due to take place on Wednesday, I’m taking a look at all that the Apple Rumour Mill is churning out, and what we can potentially expect from Apple over the next year…

iPhone 5

Well… there’s not too much hot gossip on the iPhone 5 – only this; an apparent leak of the new screen for the next Apple phone. It’s the bezel of the new potential iPhone 5 screen, which is much bigger than the one of the iPhone 4. Whether or not we will see this on the next Apple phone, who knows – I will keep my ears to the ground for the next set of iPhone 5 rumours the Apple grinder kicks out.

Is Apple’s head designer heading home?

Head of Industrial Design and the man behind the iPhone, iPod, iPad and the MacBook, British born Jonathan Ives is rumoured to be leaving the Apple HQ and heading home to the UK so that his children can attend school here.

Whilst I think it’s sweet that he wants to educate his kids in England, this teamed with an unwell Steve Jobs would create a cloud of uncertainty for Apple, which could impact their future products and share prices. I hope he does stay a little longer as, being the Apple-a-holic that I am, I want him to continue producing more fantastic gadgets for me to play with… and of course, review for all of you.

iPad 2

At the International CES technology conference, mock-ups of how the new iPad 2 will look have been leaked – the next model has a flatter back and will be slimmer at just 9.8mm, which is 4mm sleeker than the original model.

Matching the iPhone 4, there are front and back cameras to enable facetime and back left of the new model hosts a huge speaker to play the 128GB worth of music and films you can store on it. We'll also be getting a USB port and enquiring minds would really like to know if we can run Microsoft Office on this version. Is it any different aesthetically? Not really… Will the technology behind the new model blow us all away? I hope so…

It may be lighter, there is talk of a white version and expect a retina display iPad to blow away the competition. The thinking is it will be dual-core as all the tablets are taking this road in 2011.

Unsurprisingly the media launch in San Fran, is on March the 2nd - the UK event is set to take place at the BBC Television Centre in London on the same date. The press invites see an Apple iOS calendar peeling away to reveal the top right hand corner of an iPad, tantalisingly not showing evidence of facetime or..... anything.

However, there is a chance that this mock up is just to throw us off the scent, rumour also has it that this iPad 2 is the new ‘Big Thing’ to come out of Apple HQ, fully equipped with new apps such as iMilk, iFire and iMotivator: