iOS 5

Having sold over one million iPhone 4S pre-orders, Apple has decided to open their stores early to meet the demand of the best selling iPhone ever.

“We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.”

All 245 Apple retail stores in the US will open at 8 am local time on Friday, October 14. Good news if you plan to get up really early or camp out the previous day. Bad news if you have to work, or are a late sleeper.

Apple asks that you upgrade your existing iPhone to iOS 5 and bring it along if you plan to replace it. You will also need the social security number of the account holder, photo ID, your carrier password and Apple ID and password.

Apple has released the golden master (GM) version of iOS 5 to developers in preparation for the public launch next week. As usual, the iPhone Dev-Team is constantly working to improve the redsn0w jailbreak tool and now has released redsn0w 0.9.9 beta 3 for Mac and 0.9.9 beta 3a for Windows. The latest version of redsn0w can jailbreak iOS 5 GM on all devices except for the iPad 2.

Of course, the current iOS 5 jailbreak is a tethered jailbreak for most devices, meaning the iPhone must be connected to your computer when booting. If the device is rebooted without using redsn0w then iOS 5 will load up in a normal state without any jailbroken apps available (except for the iPhone 3GS using an old bootrom). As developers already know, iTunes 10.5 beta 7 is required to install iOS 5 GM.

New and existing Sprint customers can pre-order the iPhone 4 with iOS 5 for $99 starting on Thursday. The iPhone 4S can be pre-ordered at 12:01 AM PST (3:01 EST) on Friday via their online store. AT&T or Verizon customers can visit Apple’s website or call 1-800-MY-APPLE to order the iPhone 4S tomorrow.

The iPhone 4S features Apple's dual-core A5 processor, 8-megapixel camera, 1080p HD resolution video recording, iCloud and Apple's new voice command assistant Siri. The iPhone 4S is $199.99 for the 16GB model, $299.99 for the 32GB model and $399.99 for the 64GB model. All prices require a new or upgraded contract.

Apple just announced at today's Apple "Let's Talk iPhone" event that iOS 5 will be a free update available to all users come October 12th. iPhone and iPad owners have been long awaiting the release of iOS 5 since its announcement earlier this year. The iOS has been through multiple beta releases with Apple's iOS developer community and is now ready for release.

Apple has basically been reviewing iOS 5 features and has yet to make an announcement regarding what version of a new iPhone will be released. Rumors from earlier this morning suggest that Apple will not be releasing an iPhone 5 today, but will instead be releasing only the iPhone 4S.