Speaking about Siri during the D10 conference on Tuesday, Cook said Siri is one of the most popular features of the iPhone 4S. But he hinted that Apple is nowhere near done with its development, stating the company has “some cool ideas about what Siri can do.”

“I think Siri has proven that voice is something people want to do,” he said in an interview at the D10 conference on Tuesday, where AppleInsider is in attendance. He added that customers will “be pleased with where Siri is going,” and that new features will be seen in the “coming months.”

Cook also explained that the key feature of Siri is not the voice recognition technology of it, but instead the understanding of natural human language. He said that the artificial intelligence of Siri is “something people have dreamed about for years.”

The Apple CEO also said that Siri could be improved if it were made broader, and that the company sees “unbelievable potential” in expanding the technology. Cook revealed that Apple is “doubling down” on Siri development.

But he said he thinks what makes Siri truly resonate with users is the fact that the iPhone 4S personal assistant has “a personality.”

Visit AppleInsider’s D10 archive for more of Cook’s comments and ongoing coverage of the conference.

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The images showing a slightly taller iPhone design were provided by repair firm “uBreakiFix” (via Engadget). The images appear to show an iPhone with an aluminum back, featuring ends made of glass at the top and bottom.

The significant redesign also features a much smaller dock connector on the bottom of the device. It also shows a headphone jack that has been relocated to the bottom of the handset.

However, the purported next-generation iPhone component also features a suspicious font used to display the “iPhone” product name on the rear panel, suggesting the component could be an elaborate counterfeit.

The component does align with a number of rumors that have surrounded Apple’s anticipated sixth-generation handset. Some reports have claimed that Apple plans to ditch the glass-back design employed on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S for a new aluminum back.

A relocation of the headphone jack on the next iPhone could also explain why a previous component showed the headphone component attached to the earpiece and Wi-Fi parts. In the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, the headphone jack is included with the handset’s volume buttons and mute switch on the same component, as all of those features are located in the upper left corner of the device.

In addition, Apple is also rumored to retire the 30-pin iPod dock connector, which its devices have featured for years, with a new, smaller port that would save space on its devices. The new dock connector is rumored to make its debut on Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone, which is expected to launch this fall.

Finally, the next iPhone is also rumored to feature a 4-inch display, slightly larger than the 3.5-inch screen found on all previous iPhone models. The back panel pictured in the latest component appears to show a slightly longer design, which could accommodate a larger screen on the next iPhone.

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Cook told journalist Walt Mossberg at All Things D’s D10 conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Calif., that he thinks Apple’s relationship with social networking service Facebook is “very solid.”

?We have great respect for them. I think we can do more with them,” he reportedly said.

When questioned whether he thought that Facebook was “onerous,” a reference to late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ opinion about Facebook’s terms for his company’s Ping music service, Cook replied that they have “their way of doing things.”

Cook went on to note that some people would say the same thing about Apple. He added that just because two companies have strong points of view doesn’t mean they can’t work together. “Stay tuned,” he said.

One possible avenue for further cooperation between Apple and Facebook is deeper integration of Facebook into iOS. Last year, Apple built rival social service Twitter into the system level of iOS 5. Hints of similar integration for Facebook were reportedly spotted within beta builds of iOS earlier this year.

In 2010, Apple and Facebook were said to have negotiated for 18 months over the Ping service before talks finally broke down. After Ping launched, Jobs reportedly invited Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg over for dinner to discuss the service.

Facebook raised $16 billion in its IPO earlier this month, but the company’s stock has since fallen sharply.

Though Apple and Facebook maintain a “solid” relationship at the moment, the two companies could become competitors if rumors of an in-development Facebook phone are to be believed. Facebook has reportedly been hiring former Apple iPhone engineers to work on an in-house phone project that could end up challenging Apple and Google.

Visit AppleInsider’s D10 archive for more of Cook’s comments and ongoing coverage of the conference.

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The images published on Wednesday by iPhone repair firm iLab Factory (via Macotakara) show what appears to be a slightly taller iPhone design, accommodating a larger screen that has been rumored to be 4 inches diagonally. The design also appears to have moved the forward-facing FaceTime camera to the center of the device, just above the earpiece.

The schematics appear to match up with images that surfaced a day earlier, showing an elongated back panel claimed to be from Apple’s next iPhone. That part shows an aluminum back with what look to be like small glass ends on the top and bottom of the handset.

The back panel that was pictured online on Tuesday is one solid piece connected to the sides. Pictures of the bottom of the panel also show space for a smaller dock connector, and a headphone jack that has been moved from the top to the bottom of the device.

However, the font on the product name “iPhone” on the back of the alleged prototype part also appears suspicious, and does not identically match Apple’s existing logo, which has suggested to some that the part could be an elaborate counterfeit.

The alleged iPhone schematic that surfaced Wednesday is just the latest in a line of evidence that the next iPhone could have a slightly larger screen. Numerous reports earlier this month, including one from The Wall Street Journal, claimed that Apple has been ordering larger screens that measure 4 inches diagonally for its next iPhone.

The sixth-generation iPhone is expected to be a major departure from the largely identical external appearances of the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 4. Rumors have pegged the next iPhone to launch this fall, about one year after the debut of the iPhone 4S.

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Even more than a year after that, there are still segments of northeastern Japan that remain off-limits due to high radiation levels. According to Softbank founder and president, Masayoshi Son, “The threat from the nuclear accident cannot be seen by the human eye and continues to be a concern for many people, especially for mothers with small children.” Well, will this smartphone’s capabilities make you want to go out and bring home one of these puppies when it is available?

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When trading resumed after Heins’ promised statement, RIMM shares saw a sharp 13 percent decline fueled by growing concern that the company’s downward spiral would continue, but ended the day up 2.09 percent, reports Barron’s.

The news comes on the heels of recent reports that the value of RIM’s unsold inventory grew to some $1 billion last quarter, up from $618 million a year ago and double what it was in 2008. The total doesn’t include unsold smartphones and tablets held by resellers around the world and it is expected that the company will be forced to write down the huge stockpile of devices.

In his statement on Tuesday, Heins said that “RIM is going through a significant transformation as we move towards the BlackBerry 10 launch, and our financial performance will continue to be challenging for the next few quarters.” He cites growing competition in the smartphone sector as driving the poor results, but remains optimistic about the company’s direction and says it will continue to be “aggressive” in both enterprise and consumer markets.

The CEO expects first quarter performance to yield an increase to the $2.1 billion cash position it held at the end of the last fiscal year.

RIM CEO Thorsten Heins looks to BlackBerry 10 as sales atrophy. | Source: BusinessWeek

Also revealed in Heins’ announcement was the company’s retention of three financial advisors from J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and RBC Capital Markets to help “assist the Company and our Board of Directors in reviewing RIM?s business and financial performance.”

“These advisors have been tasked to help us with the strategic review we referenced on our year-end financial results conference call and to evaluate the relative merits and feasibility of various financial strategies, including opportunities to leverage the BlackBerry platform through partnerships, licensing opportunities and strategic business model alternatives,” Heins said.

Heins points out that, despite the negative outlook for the upcoming quarters, there have been positive changes made in recent months:

Despite the current challenges, we have made significant progress on a number of fronts in the past few months:
Our annual BlackBerry World conference and BlackBerry 10 Jam took place earlier this month and both were tremendously successful. More than 5,000 developers, partners, carriers and enterprise customers from 115 different countries saw the first glimpses of our next-generation BlackBerry 10 platform and their response was encouraging.
Our developer partners have been enthusiastic with the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype unit we distributed at BlackBerry World and many are well underway in developing applications to be ready for the launch of BlackBerry 10 in the latter part of calendar 2012.
The support and enthusiasm from our developer community is also reflected in our app growth, where we now feature more than 80,000 apps, which represents a 220% increase from one year ago, and more than 15,000 apps for PlayBook compared to less than 2,000 last year. We believe this bodes well for our ecosystem as we get set to launch BlackBerry 10.
We are making steady progress with the innovation of our next-generation BlackBerry 10 mobile computing platform, which is still on track to launch in the latter part of calendar 2012.
Our global subscriber base continued to grow this quarter to approximately 78 million, driven primarily by growth in international markets, which is partially offset by high churn in the United States, and our BBM user base has grown to approximately 59 million users globally.
Our strong brand internationally was recently enhanced with the successful launch of two new BlackBerry 7 phones in India and Latin America.

Also announced today was the hiring of two new executives, Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear and Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben. Tear will take the position once held by current chief executive Heins, who replaced co-founders and longtime co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, while Boulben replaces Keith Pardy.

Heins reiterated a high level of confidence in the upcoming BlackBerry 10 ecosystem, mentioning the OS no less than nine times in the brief statement. RIM’s next-generation platform has seen a number of delays and a recent prototype was described as being a mini PlayBook.

Most recently, reports pointed to a major upcoming job cut that could see the termination of up to 40 percent of RIM’s workforce.

The Waterloo, Ontario-based company is scheduled to hold its first quarter fiscal 2013 conference call on June 28 with discussions ranging from today’s issues to overall company performance. As of this writing, after-hours trading saw RIMM shares down 7.75 percent at $10.36.

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Production of the next iPhone is expected to begin at the end of the second quarter or the start of the third quarter of calendar 2012, according to Taiwanese supply chain sources who spoke with DigiTimes. The next iPhone’s display is expected to feature in-cell touch panels that will make the high-resolution Retina display even thinner.

In order to achieve a screen resolution of 326 pixels-per-inch, the next iPhone will reportedly use LTPS technology. The in-cell panels are expected to be built by LG Display, Japan Display and Sharp.

Those same three suppliers were identified earlier this month in a handful of reports that claimed Apple is purchasing 4-inch displays for its next iPhone. Until now, all iPhone models have featured a smaller 3.5-inch touchscreen.

Collectively, LG Display, Japan Display and Sharp have a quarterly production capacity of 95 million LTPS panels. With a current yield rate of 75 percent, the companies can produce as many as 72 million panels at the moment.

That puts Apple and its next iPhone in a position to take up as much as 70 percent of the output of LTPS panels in 2012 and 2013, tech supply chain sources reportedly said. That situation could put smartphone makers other than Apple in a difficult position for components.

Industry insiders expect that Apple will produce more than 40 million iPhone units in the third quarter of calendar 2012, growing to 45 million units in the fourth quarter of the year. Apple’s current quarterly record for iPhone sales came in the holiday quarter of 2011, during which the iPhone 4S launch drove the company to sales of 37 million iPhones.

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As for the Samsung Series 3 Chromebox, this is a compact as well as highly powerful home or office computer, paving the way for the Chrome operating system to function in a desktop environment. Measuring 7.6 x 7.6 x 1.3-inches, this computer is tiny enough to occupy minimal space on your desk, in a bookshelf or perhaps even have it lay next to the couch, making it ideal to tote around wherever you are. Design-wise, it is simple, sporting a sleek matte black finish as well as silver accents.

As for the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook, this little wonder is able to boot up in just seven seconds, letting you increase your productivity levels by a tiny margin. After all, compare that to having your current notebook to fully boot up in a couple of minutes, just how much more work can you get done with that time? Hardware wise, you get an Intel Celeron 867 Dual Core 1.3GHz processor, where it will be accompanied by a 16GB SSD as well as 4GB RAM, which should be sufficient enough to deliver the relevant computing power to get your work done. Of course, since it runs on Chrome, you need an Internet connection to fully utilize it, and the built-in 3G wireless feature (optional) from Verizon Wireless helps you be connected anytime, anywhere. Verizon will deliver up to 100MBs of Mobile Broadband service monthly, where it will keep the device company for a couple of years.

Integrated cloud storage will let the Chromebook and Chromebox access one’s files securely from just about anywhere, while synchronization technology helps you back up all of your preferences, bookmarks and apps, letting you experience a more or less uniform setting regardless of whether you are working from a Chrome browser elsewhere or on another device. There is also Google Cloud Print thrown into the mix for easy web printing to any Samsung Google Cloud Print ready laser printer.

Expect the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook and the Samsung Series 3 Chromebox to arrive from today onwards, with the Series 5 Chromebook Wi-Fi model retailing for $449.99 while the 3G model will be more expensive at $549.99. As for the Series 3 Chromebox Wi-Fi model, it goes for $329.99.

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The Galaxy S III launched Tuesday in a number of countries across the region, including the U.K. and Germany. By the end of July, Samsung expects to have the Galaxy S III available in 145 countries on 296 wireless operators.

No official indication has been given as to when Samsung plans to launch the Galaxy S III in the U.S., but various rumors have pointed toward a launch in mid-to-late June.

Samsung boasted on Tuesday that the Galaxy S III has already become the most-preordered Android handset ever at carrier Vodafone U.K.

A report from Reuters on Tuesday compared the launch of Samsung’s latest smartphone to an Apple product debut. It noted that about 50 customers were lined up outside of a BASE mobile phone shop in Berlin on Monday.

Hype for the Galaxy S III has been significant as the device is expected to outsell its predecessor, the Galaxy S II, which reached 20 million sales worldwide. The Galaxy lineup has been comprised of Samsung’s flagship Android smartphones, designed to take on Apple’s market-leading iPhone.

The launch of the Galaxy S III comes months before Apple is expected to launch its sixth-generation iPhone. Rumors have pegged the next iPhone to launch this October, a full year after its predecessor, the iPhone 4S.

Samsung unveiled the quad-core Galaxy S III earlier this month. It features a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED screen, a 1.4-gigahertz processor, one gigabyte of RAM, and available capacities of 16, 32 and 64 gigabytes.

Last week, Samsung officials deflected criticism of the design of the new handset, stating that its look and feel was not changed due to litigation from Apple. Samsung currently faces a number of patent infringement suits from Apple that accuse the company of copying the design of the iPhone and iPad in its own products.

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The date and time of the keynote was revealed in the official schedule for WWDC 2012 released on Tuesday. Developers can now visit the official site and sign in with their Apple ID to access the conference schedule and view session-related resources.

The developer-centric conference will feature a number of sessions to assist in creating applications for iOS and OS X, and as with previous years, the conference will begin with a keynote presentation. It is expected that Apple will use this keynote unveil iOS 6, the next major upgrade to its mobile operating system for the iPhone and iPad.

Aside from the time and date, details on the WWDC 2012 keynote are unknown. Apple’s schedule does not provide any information on who might be speaking, but it is expected that Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook will lead off the keynote presentation.

Not all sessions for this year’s conference have been announced, which is a standard practice for Apple. The names of certain developer sessions likely will not be released until after the keynote, in order to not reveal any secret features of iOS 6.

Also on the WWDC 2012 schedule are the annual Apple Design Awards, which the company originally announced in late April. The Apple Design Awards will take place Monday, June 11, after the keynote presentation, at 3:45 p.m. Pacific.

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