Apple Keynote

After two years of misleading iPhone 5 reports the rumor mill finally got something right! Apple has just sent out invites to the highly anticipated next generation iPhone event, which will take place on next Wednesday, September 12, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts at 10:00 am. iMore and iLounge accurately predicted the September 12th date back in July. Now it's time to see if other predictions such as an iPad mini announcement, or an entire iOS refresh turn out to be true.

The most interesting thing about the invite pictured above is the shadow being cast by the number 12. Many people believed the next generation iPhone would not be called the iPhone 5 because it’s a sixth-generation device. It was assumed that Apple would drop the numerical suffix and call it the "new iPhone", just like they did with the third-generation iPad. However, the number 5 shadow pictured on the invite seems to suggest Apple will be sticking with the fan branded name "iPhone 5".

Even though the iPhone 4S won't hit shelves for another day or two, several surprises have cropped up that Apple didn't mention at the keynote presentation. Some of these are great news for those in the market for an iPhone 4S. Other items that have slowly leaked out might not sound too optimistic but in the scheme of things there should be no major deal breakers for Apple.

Of course, many iOS 5 features continue to be discovered and Apple chose to discuss only highlights at the keynote, including the Siri personal assistant, iCloud and improvements to AirPlay. This is certainly the tip of the iceberg as Apple has included over 200 new features in iOS 5. So what did Apple keep to themselves about the iPhone 4S?

Steve Jobs revealed some stunning numbers today at the Apple iPhone 4 event. There have been 50 million iPhones sold, and an additional 35 million iPod Touch units. In addition to all of these devices running iPhone OS, iPad sales topped 450k units so far this week.

In six days, iPad users have downloaded 3.5 million iPad applications and 600k iBooks. Total downloads for the App Store to date is a whopping 4 billion downloads. There are 185,000 apps available, including 3,500 iPad only apps so far. With all of these mobile devices running Safari, Apple's share of mobile browser usage dominates at 64 percent. In second place comes the Android browsers with 19 percent, and BlackBerry takes third with a 9 percent total share.