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Vendor tests and very early 802.11ac customers provide a reality check on "gigabit Wi-Fi" but also confirm much of its promise.

There are endless blogposts and debates on when and whether and how to update iOS 7 when it becomes available today, expected around 1 p,m. Eastern time. Here are some steps suggested by Mike Reed, a solutions engineer who works with enterprise customers for MobileIron, a mobile device management vendor.

This week's iPhone Rumor Rollup, the last before Apple's expected iPhone revelations on Sept. 10, dispenses with rumor in favor of some informed speculation.

Still more photographs purporting to show exteriors of the Apple iPad 5 and iPad mini 2 were posted this week. But they only underlined how little the iOSphere actually knows about the Next iPads.

Sales of so-called "smart watches" will surge from 1 million to 36 million in five years, according to a speculative new report from Juniper Research. But whether that defines "success" remains an open question.

Unconnected rumors about Apple's mobile processor plans have bloggers speculating that Apple's expected A7 chip will have a 64-bit architecture. But the performance boost of such a change is slight, and adopting it will take years, according to chip designer ARM Ltd.

All the likely alternatives call for a much diminished company, or broken up into some software assets and a brand value that's declining every day.

Some code strings in the latest release of Apple's iOS 7 beta software suggest that the next group of iPhones and iPads, expected to be released this fall, could have a fingerprint sensor built into the traditional home button.

Perhaps the iOSphere is exhausted or suffering a post-adrenaline crash, but some this week have actually suggested that consumers will ignore iPhone 5S, setting their hopes on the Radically New and Innovative iPhone 6 in 2014.

As the fall crawls closer, the iOSphere is obsessed with pinning down the exact date of the iPhone 6 announcement, which is a problem akin to knowing the exact location of an electron at any given instance.

Aruba Networks became the latest company to announce Wi-Fi access points that can support over 1Gbps throughput, at the cellular industry's CTIA show in Las Vegas this week.