Remember this iOS 5 rumour from earlier this month? We are a few days shy a week from hitting April Fools' Day, and if iOS 5 was supposed to land next month according to those rumours, then... April Fools! It's coming this fall, according to a fresh batch of rumours from two TechCrunch sources.
In a posting made Saturday evening on TechCrunch, a fall launch of iOS 5 will coincide with Apple's yearly tradition of kicking off new music-related products in September, although nothing was mentioned on whether the next revision of Apple's iPod touch will have the new operating system installed. We may learn more details of a more concrete release date, and more details about what changes we can expect to see, at this summer's Apple WWDC event. iOS 5 may be demonstrated then, but it would certainly not be released this summer.
On the bright side, the other half of the rumours from earlier this month - a free MobileMe - still holds true, according to TechCrunch's sources. And there's more. Apple is indeed working on bringing an online "music locker" to MobileMe, but there may also be a location finding service for friends and family similar to Facebook's Places. However, it is still unclear whether the entire MobileMe service will go free, or will be split into multiple free and paid tiers. Some of these extra cloud goodies may find their way into Mac OS X Lion.
As for the iPhone 5? For the time being, it appears it will come with a minor iOS 4.x revision, or the recently released iOS 4.3.1. So for now, we can assume the new iPhone will focus on upgraded hardware and perhaps a few new features in the OS, but not on the scale as iOS 4 releasing with iPhone 4.
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