Apple's Champagne Colored iPhone 5S Shown In All Its Sparkly Glory

One thing is for sure, Apple's iPhone 5S is coming very soon and although it'll look just like the iPhone 5, it'll come with a few hardware improvements that will make it the superior iPhone model. But apparently that's not all because Apple plans to introduce a third color that will accompany the black slate and silver aluminum colorways and that color is gold; or to be more specific a more subtle and more delicate tone of gold - champagne. Apple will allegedly hold an event on September 10th (literally just days away) to announce both the iPhone 5S and the more colorful, cheaper, plastic-made iPhone 5C. The date and champagne-colored iPhone 5S have also been confirmed by Taiwanese supply chain sources close to Reuters. The iPhone 5S will notably come with an improved back-facing camera as well as a new dual-LED flash.

iPhone 5C Cases Hit The Ground Running

More evidence pertaining to Apple's plastic iPhone 5C has surfaced recently in the form of none other than protective cases. Elago seems to be one of the few first case manufacturers to release cases for the yet-to-be-announced iPhone 5C. The company's new $11 S5C Slim Fit 2 case is a simple but well rounded snap-on plastic case that looks like it'll hug the iPhone 5C's rounded body with a form fit and lots of matte, soft-touch grippy finish goodness. It isn't the first time cases for Apple products found themselves being sold ahead of time based on official hardware specifications, and it usually means that a particular secretive Apple product is right around the corner.

Our new S5C Slim Fit 2 case for the iPhone 5C lets you protect and cover your phone in style! The case was molded to fit perfectly and allows easy, full access to all buttons and ports on your device.
Our Slim Fit 2 cases are specially coated to reduce the amount of scratches, oil, and dirt residue left on your phone, all while improving grip quality. Ultra slim, lightweight case offers corner and scratch protection, as well as a slight lift to allow your iPhone 5C to be put screen-side down on a flat surface.

Elago's S5C Slim Fit 2 case is available to be ordered now, but will only be in stock on August 26 which may or may not mean that Apple's highly anticipated plastic-made iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S handsets will be announced sooner that we had thought. Another slew of iPhone 5C cases made by a brand called Obliq are all shipping right now at bargain prices. But we obviously don't know if either of these cases will actually fit properly when the time comes and you get your hands all over that plastic iPhone.

Alleged Plastic Budget iPhone Packaging Leak Confirms iPhone 5C

Apple's more affordable plastic iPhone is being mass produced at this very moment, and it seems it cannot be kept a closely guarded secrete as it nears its official debut. This time a photo taken during a factory inspection by a member of a Chinese labor rights group shows empty plastic packaging shells of the plastic iPhone marked with an iPhone 5C branding, which is believed to stand for "Color" as it will be offered in 5 vibrant colors. This would be the first time Apple has moved from its iconic, minimalist cardboard box packaging to hard plastic pod-shaped packaging reminiscent of HTC's smartphone packaging.

Budget iPhone Colors Leaked, 16GB To Retail For $349 Off Contract?

Now that we know what Apple's upcoming low-cost iPhone will look like, a new leak of the purported 4-inch polycarbonate-made iPhone shows the device in a variety of colorfully vibrant colors which are said to look fluorescent in person - including red, yellow, lime green, blue and white. It is rumored that all five colors will only be available with a black glass display as opposed to iPhone 5 models. The Taiwanese site AppleDaily which has acquired the leaked images claims that a 16GB model will retail for $349 with no contract compared to the $649 an iPhone 5 costs without a contract. 

Apple's Back-To-School Promotion Offers $100 Gift Card With Any Mac Purchase

Apple has kicked off its annual back-to-school promotion on all Macs including the iPhone and iPads. Students can still enjoy the usual education discount Apple has offered thru the years, and with a Mac purchase you will receive a $100 App Store gift card good for iTunes and the App Store. With an iPhone or iPad purchase you will get a $50 App Store gift card. The promotion starts today and will end on September 6.

The New 2013 Black Mac Pro

We expected some new hardware to be announced by Apple today at the WWDC, and so we got an entirely new and powerful Mac Pro so drastically unique that it could have easily fell out of some alien spaceship. The new 2013 black Mac Pro as we shall now call it, is a thing of bold beauty. An innovative marvel that has put Apple ahead of the industrial design curve once again. Standing just 9.9-inches tall with a diameter of only 6.6-inches, the new black Mac Pro is ridiculously more compact than its silvery aluminum predecessor. It too is made using a machined aluminum enclosure yet it's finished with a polished black finish which is a surprising first for Apple. It's also assembled in the USA. The black, polished cylindrical-shaped Mac Pro may resemble a posh trash can to some though.

But it's what's on the inside the really matters. The new black Mac Pro packs an impressive line of specs for such a compact form factor. It's twice as fast than its predecessor thanks to a 12-Core Intel Xeon CPU, and it also has new ECC memory yielding double the performance from past variants and PCI express-based flash storage that is more than twice as fast as before clocking in 1.25GBps read and 1GBps write speeds. It also features the latest WiFi 802.11ac standard, faster backwards-compatible Thunderbolt 2, dual-workstation AMD FirePro GPUs that support up to three high-resolution 4K external monitors and a host of backlit I/O. Thunderbolt 2 is used to support and transfer 4K video resolution between compatible external displays.

To keep things cool, Apple designed a unified thermal core to absorb heat from the internal hardware that surrounds it using a single, large turbine-like fan that sucks out the hot air captured by the aluminum-made core. The fan blades are designed to operate more quieter, and are similar in design to the ones Apple used to design the Retina MacBook Pro. Apple hasn't divulged over a release date or price unfortunately.