5 Reasons to Skip iPhone 5 Lines.

By Jefferson Graham, USA TODAY

Folks are already lining up at Apple Stores to join the annual party, hoping to be first on the block with the new iPhone 5. Pre-orders are sold out, and online orders placed today won't be delivered for two to three weeks. That means braving the lines at Apple Stores and other retailers is pretty much your only option, if you want the phone Friday or this weekend.

    * A line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan.

      Scott Stein, USA TODAY

      A line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan.

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Scott Stein, USA TODAY

A line outside the Fifth Avenue Apple Store in Manhattan.
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But maybe being first on the block isn't so radically important. The iPhone 5 will be just as cool in mid-October. Here are five reasons not to bother camping out for an iPhone this weekend.

1. The phone isn't that radical. Yes, the phone has been redesigned with a slightly larger (4-inch) screen and faster processor. Apple promises zippier speeds via connections to 4G LTE service from AT&T, Verizon Wireless and Sprint. The LTE service is available in some spots, but not everywhere. Those are all great features, but they will be just as great a few weeks later, after you've ordered the phone online and waited patiently for it to arrive in the mail.

2. Competition. Your chances of getting the phone for this weekend aren't good. Apple sold 2 million iPhone 5s in its first hour of pre-order sales before pulling the plug. Odds are very good that pros will be online ahead of you -- folks who are paid to be there by foreign interests who either want to re-sell the iPhone or to make their money producing apps and need the new device as soon as possible. The iPhone 5 goes on sale Friday in the U.S. as well as in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the United Kingdom. It rolls out a week later to 22 more countries, including Italy, Spain and Sweden. But countries such as China, Russia and South Africa will have to wait a long time for their official iPhone 5 fix. Apple hasn't announced when the phone will be sold there. So you've got some stiff and well-heeled competition on the line.

3. Software update effectively gives you a new iPhone. On Wednesday, Apple makes available a free iOS 6 software update that gives you a new phone without you having to buy a new one. Apple promises 200 new features in the software, which includes Apple's take on Maps (goodbye, Google Maps) which offers spoken turn-by-turn directions. You also get Passbook, an app that ties together all your tickets and loyalty cards, Facebook integration and a massive improvement for the FaceTime video chat feature. Before, you could only speak in Wi-Fi hot spots. But with the new software, you can also talk over cellular signals. Get used to the new features on your old phone while you wait for the new one to arrive.

4. It's an expensive purchase. The iPhone 5 starts at $199 with a new or renewed two-year contract. If you're not eligible for an upgrade, the iPhone 5 starts at $649 and goes up to $849 for a model with 64 gigabytes of storage. That's a lot of moola to spend -- even more if you ditch work for the day to stand in line and get docked for a day's work.

5. You buy time to stock up on new power adapters. The iPhone 5 ditches the old 30-pin connector that worked on 150,000 devices -- such as car chargers and home stereos -- in favor of the new, smaller and thinner "Lightning" cable. Apple's reasoning is that the new thinner, phone required a smaller charger. Apple will try to ease the pain by offering a $29.99 adapter for the old cords, which we all have lying around the house to juice up our iPhone, iPad and iPod. So by the time your new phone arrives in the mail in early to mid-October, you'll have discovered the new software features you like, have adapters ready to charge up and dock your new phone and saved yourselves hours of strife braving the weather and crowds so you could be first on your block.

But, hey -- playing devil's advocate -- you'd be missing quite a party!

Sony to introduce smaller PS3 this holiday by Brett Molina, USA TODAY

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Sony will launch a smaller, lighter version of its PlayStation 3 console this holiday with a slightly lower price tag.

The Japanese-based tech giant will sell two versions of the PS3: a 250GB model for $269 starting September 25 and a 500GB version for $299 on October 30.

European consumers will have a third option: a PS3 with 12GB of flash memory. Sony has not indicated whether this model would be available in the U.S.

The $269 model will be sold as a limited edition bundle packaging the PS3 action title Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and a voucher for $30 worth of digital content for online game Dust 514. The 500GB model will launch as a standalone device and a bundle that includes a copy of Ubisoft action game Assassin's Creed III.

Sony says the new console is less than half the size of the original, chunkier PS3 models launched in 2006, and roughly 20%-25% slimmer than current models unveiled three years ago.

The announcement of revamped consoles is Sony's latest attempt to push sales of the PS3, which continues to battle rival Microsoft and its Xbox 360 and the Nintendo Wii, the current sales frontrunner. Sony will also compete with a brand new console, the Nintendo Wii U, starting this November.

Sony also announced its PS3 subscription service PlayStation Plus will be available to owners of its Vita handheld gaming system starting this November.

Digital inheritance laws remain murky

Printed books and CDs might have the edge over their digital counterparts at one inevitable point of our lives: death.

Physical media -- music, books, movies -- usually can be passed on to heirs without overly burdensome legal complications. But when it comes to digital files, the legal landscape remains murky and has failed to keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancements, analysts say.

Consumers now have more places to buy their digital content -- ranging from Amazon and Apple to Google. And those sellers have varying terms of use that few purchasers bother to read. Further complicating matters is the shift to store more of our digital media files in the cloud on those companies' remote servers.

"This is an unsettled area of law," says Dazza Greenwood, president of Internet consulting firm Civics.com who frequently has dealt with the issue. "It's a little messy right now. Eventually more people are going to die and pressure will build for broader policy and practical solutions. There's a lot of confusion and misunderstanding right now."

Content sellers have been slow to react partly because the issue of transference-upon-death is complex and affects only a limited number of customers, says Evan Carroll, founder of The Digital Beyond, a Web publication that publishes and collects articles addressing digital inheritance. "But these companies are going to be forced to think about it more. The sole motivator would be the consumer pressure to do so," Carroll says.

Whether digital media can be willed to next of kin depends largely on ownership and is a question of much debate among lawyers who specialize in copyright law.

While consumers may be under the impression that they are "buying" songs, e-books and movies, many content sellers -- including Apple, Amazon and Google -- specify in their terms of service that they're merely offering a license to use, or effectively long-term rent, that isn't transferable, Greenwood says.

As a practical matter, consumers can easily copy and pass on files that are stored on the user's hard drive. But transferring ownership can be more difficult if users' files, such as iTunes songs and videos, are digitally protected by content sellers. "We're also moving to a world where we don't own things. What if it's in the cloud, and what if the company goes belly up? Do you own it? It's not clear," says Deven Desai, intellectual property professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego.

Apple doesn't' have "a policy to will or inherit an iTunes collection," says Tom Neumayr, a spokesman for Apple.

Amazon declined to answer whether it would grant access to a deceased person's account if his or her next of kin did not have the password. But "with access to your account, family members will be able to access your digital content," says spokeswoman Kinley Pearsall.

Google did not reply to a request for comment.

Heirs also can access a protected account -- without much interference from content sellers -- if they're given a password in advance, though they may technically be in violation of terms of service.

"So long as the law is unsettled, it's up to content sellers to provide options and not to take advantage of consumers," Greenwood says. "The law hasn't caught up with technology. Longer term, just allowing someone to use the deceased's password as a solution won't be good enough."

There has been some legislative progress for surviving family members. At least three states -- Idaho, Nebraska and Indiana -- have enacted laws that allow next of kin to gain access to digital accounts, Carroll says. Other states, including New York, North Carolina and Oregon, are also considering making changes.

Xuan-Thao Nguyen, an intellectual property law professor at Southern Methodist University, has a more liberal interpretation of companies' terms of use. If a company doesn't specify a specific time period for content licensing, users may argue that the content belongs to them in perpetuity. "It's incumbent on them to draft the term limit of the license," she says.

Laws are more relaxed with e-mail and other content that users create. Gmail details a process for heirs to obtain access to accounts. Yahoo states that its account is not transferable. But its stance was successfully challenged in a lawsuit several years ago when a judge granted the father of a soldier who had died in Iraq access to his son's Yahoo e-mail account. "You have to jump through some hoops," Carroll says.

To prevent estate issues, digital media owners should plan ahead, Carroll advises. Users can specify information -- passwords and accounts to be passed on -- in their will. "If we choose to do nothing, we're leaving things to chance," he says.

Some data-inheritance services have also emerged in recent years, promising a secure place to store documents and passwords that will be passed on to a stated beneficiary upon the account holder's death.

Switzerland-based DSwiss, which offers free and paid "password locker" accounts, says its SecureSafe service is increasingly offered by Swiss banks to their account holders. With users' information stored securely in the servers in the Swiss Alps, "not even we can get access to this data," says Andreas Jacob, DSwiss' head of marketing.