MacRumors

Aspyr Media, the company responsible for the porting of a number of Windows games to the Mac platform, has taken the notable step of embracing Apple's Mac App Store, potentiality leading the way for a surge in gaming interest that could drive growth on the new app marketplace. For its debut, Aspyr is offering Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Civilization IV: Colonization, two notable titles from the company's library of games. Aspyr has told us that it is planning to bring "many" of its titles to the Mac App Store, although some of its games do not meet Apple's current requirements for Mac App Store offerings and will thus be unable to make the transition in the immediate future.

Call of Duty 4 made its debut on the Mac platform in September 2008, but remains a popular first-person shooter title among Mac gamers. Weighing in at a massive 6.85 GB in the Mac App Store, Call of Duty 4 offers players an immersive gameplay environment and a well-regarded storyline.

Featuring a tense storyline, filled with plot twists, Call of Duty 4 thrusts players into battle like never before. With amazing special effects, including rim-lighting, depth of field, texture streaming and character self-shadowing, players are enlisted into one of the most photo-realistic gaming experiences imaginable.

The community-oriented Call of Duty 4 multiplayer gameplay features a robust leveling system, variety of unlockable perks, hot-join and matchmaking, as well as create a class and party capabilities to ensure that players of all skill levels can join in the fun. Additionally over 100 challenges and a host of new game environments and modes deliver unlimited possibilities. Infinity Ward has also included Kill-Cam, a fan favorite feature that they created in Call of Duty 2, which allows for spectator instant replays.

Civilization IV: Colonization is an updated remake of the original 1994 Colonization turn-based strategy game, with the Mac version of the new game having seen its first release in January 2010.

Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Colonization is the fifth offering in the award winning Civilization IV series for the Macintosh. A re-imagining of the classic Colonization strategy game Sid Meier created in 1994, this provides a new game experience in which you lead a European nation on a quest to colonize the thrive in the New World. Explore, trade, fight, and guide your people from the oppressive motherland. Ultimately you can battle for your freedom and independence!

One issue with the two new releases may turn out to be pricing, with Call of Duty 4 going for $49.99 on the Mac App Store. While this is below the standard $54.99 list price for the game, boxed copies of the Mac version of the game are currently going for only $32.56 on Amazon, although some users may prefer the instant access and easy installation on multiple machines permitted with Mac App Store purchases. Civilization IV: Colonization is currently priced at its standard list price of $29.99 in the Mac App Store, but Aspyr itself is currently offering the title at a promo price of $23.96 through its own GameAgent store and Amazon is offering boxed copies for $19.27.

Aspyr and other developers are of course subject to Apple's policies of taking a 30% cut of revenue from Mac App Store sales, making it more difficult for developers to match pricing found through other channels such as Amazon that take smaller profits. But the convenience of the Mac App Store's purchasing, installation, and updating capabilities may serve to draw in users and help drive the growth of the gaming market within the store.

Update: Call of Duty 4 is currently the top-grossing game on the Mac App Store, beating out the popular Angry Birds. Civilization IV: Colonization currently ranks as the fourth-highest grossing game.

Earlier this week, we shared some highlights from a Bloomberg interview with Verizon President Lowell McAdam that offered a glimpse of some of the behind-the-scenes dealings that led to the carrier announcing that it will begin offering the iPhone next month.

In a similar interview with outgoing Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, Bloomberg Businessweek reveals a few more details of interest about the history of Verizon's relationship with Apple. Most notably, Seidenberg reveals that Apple was solely focused on GSM technology for the original iPhone and had absolutely no interest in also producing a CDMA version for the initial launch, meaning that Verizon was "never in the running" to partner with Apple back in 2007 when AT&T won exclusive rights for the iPhone in the United States.

It all started with Apple (AAPL), and Apple decided that it wanted one carrier in every major market. So Apple and AT&T consummated a deal three years ago. And because Apple was more focused on a single technology - the GSM technology - they chose AT&T. We had good discussions with them, but it was clear to us that they weren't looking to make a device for both sets of technologies.

The comments seem to dispute a report from around the time of the original iPhone's introduction claiming that Apple and Verizon had been in talks but that Verizon had rejected Apple's demand that it receive a share of monthly service fees, a demand that AT&T accepted for a time before the two companies reworked their relationship to eliminate monthly fee revenue sharing and move to the more traditional subsidized hardware business model.

Seidenberg also notes in the new interview that both he and McAdam had periodically called up and visited with Steve Jobs and Apple COO Tim Cook to talk about a possible iPhone on Verizon, suggesting that Verizon had long been extremely interested in the iPhone. The comments support a statement made by Seidenberg in October 2009 noting that the decision regarding a Verizon iPhone was "exclusively in Apple's court" and April 2010 remarks sharing that Verizon had explicitly asked Apple for the right to carry the iPhone.

In the new interview, Seidenberg also touts Verizon's wide array of businesses, from Internet backbone to FiOS residential service to 4G wireless networks, that will allow the company to serve video and other content to customers wherever they are. Citing an estimate that 90% of Internet traffic within five years will be video-related, Seidenberg suggests that Verizon is well-positioned for the coming wave and in an excellent position to continue working with Apple.

Apple today issued a media alert announcing details for next Tuesday's release of its financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2011, corresponding to the fourth calendar quarter of 2010. The results will be released after the close of Tuesday's trading at approximately 4:30 PM Eastern / 1:30 PM Pacific. Apple's conference call discussing the results will follow at 2:00 PM Pacific and will be available via a live audio webcast. MacRumors will provide running coverage of the conference call highlights.

Apple's first fiscal quarter of 2011 was relatively quiet when it came to new product introductions after a busy previous quarter. The only notable product introduction during the quarter leading up to and including the holiday season was the revamped MacBook Air that saw a new, sleeker design, flash-only storage, and an 11.6-inch model joining the previously-existing 13.3-inch size.

For the quarter, analysts are predicting net earnings of $5.36 per share on revenue of $24.34 billion, above Apple's guidance of $4.80 profit per share on $23 billion of revenue. Apple's year-ago results for the first fiscal quarter of 2010 included net earnings of $3.67 per share on revenue of $15.68 billion.

Apple today launched a new 10 Billion App Countdown promotion to celebrate the upcoming milestone, awarding the user who downloads the 10 billionth app a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

As of today, nearly 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So we want to say thanks. Download the 10 billionth app, and you could win a US $10,000 iTunes Gift Card. Just visit the App Store, and download what could be your best app yet.

As noted in the official rules for the contest, users can make up to 25 contest entries per day by either downloading an app from the App Store or by filling out an alternate entry form.

Apple conducted a nearly identical contest just eleven months ago to celebrate 10 billion songs downloaded from the iTunes Store, illustrating just how quickly the App Store, which only launched two and a half years ago, has nearly caught up with the iTunes music store in download volume.

All Things Digital reports that the Steve Jobs-Rupert Murdoch media event rumored to have been scheduled for next Wednesday to introduce News Corp.'s new iPad-focused news publication The Daily has been pushed back. The change apparently comes as Apple seeks more time to finish working on its end of the project, which involves support for recurring billing subscriptions through users' iTunes Store accounts and the ability to automatically "push" new content on a daily basis to those with subscriptions.

Apple and News Corp. have made a joint decision to push back next week's planned launch, according to sources familiar with the companies' plans. The delay is supposed to give Apple time to tweak its new subscription service for publications sold through its iTunes platform.

Plans to debut the iPad newspaper at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next Wednesday have been tabled "for weeks, not months," Im told.

The reported internal delay comes as the first hints of what the publication may look like have appeared, with Poynter's Damon Kiesow discovering a small image buried in The Daily's website showing a pair of cover screenshots.

But peeking inside the source code of its recently-launched companion website, TheDaily.com, I came across the image below, which appears to be a house ad for the new app.

The Daily staff has reportedly been producing sample editions of the tablet app for several weeks, so the covers shown here may represent that work.

While it is not entirely clear how content on The Daily's website will compare to that found in the app, Kiesow also discovered other hints of certain functionalities for the website, including support for social media sharing and an embedded video player. The tablet application, which is rumored see subscription prices of 99 cents per week, has been said to be offering substantial video and multimedia content.

Market research firm ChangeWave Research today announced the results of new survey examining the impact of the Verizon iPhone on customer carrier preferences. While the survey of professional and early-adopter consumers was conducted in late December, ahead of the official Verizon announcement, the general media consensus at the time had been that a Verizon announcement was imminent.

Among the findings of the survey was a surge in the percentage of AT&T subscribers planning to change carrier over the subsequent 90 days, rising to 15% from 10% just three months earlier.

Importantly, when we compared the churn rates for the top wireless providers, we found major differences.

Only 4% of Verizon's customers plan to switch in the next 90 days. In comparison, 10% of Sprint/Nextel's customers say they plan to switch, as do 15% of both T-Mobile's and AT&T's.

Related to that spike was a result showing that 16% of surveyed AT&T customers were planning to switch to Verizon if it began offering the iPhone, with an additional 23% of AT&T customers registering as unsure whether they will switch carriers.

That metric was even higher among AT&T's iPhone customers, with 26% of them saying they would leave AT&T for a Verizon iPhone. While most AT&T iPhone customers are currently tied into long-term contracts, many of them are apparently ready to jump ship anyway, with 41% of those planning to switch saying they will do so within the first three months of Verizon iPhone availability and an additional 31% doing so within a year.

ChangeWave has also continued to track reports of dropped calls on the major carriers, an area where AT&T has struggled mightily. The most recent survey did in fact find some good news for AT&T in this area, with its dropped call rate falling to 4.7% in December from 6% as measured in September. But despite clear improvement presumably related to network improvements, AT&T's call-drop rate remains far above that of Verizon's 1.7% figure.

While the Verizon iPhone 4 announcement this week captured all the headlines, the fact that the new CDMA-based hardware is now ready to go also opens the door for other major CDMA carriers around the world to carry the device. According to DigiTimes, the CDMA iPhone 4 is set to rapidly make its way to China, Japan, and South Korea, with other countries also likely to see the device.

The report also offers some information on the supply chain for the CDMA iPhone 4, which has reportedly been tooled up to produce 7 million units this quarter, although it is unclear how many of those will make their way into the hands of consumers by the end of the quarter and how many will be used to fill out channel inventory for sales going forward.

As had been previously noted, Pegatron has been brought onboard as a second iPhone 4 manufacturer, joining Apple's long-standing partner Foxconn. Today's report also offers some clarity to an earlier report that both Foxconn and Pegatron would be producing the CDMA iPhone 4. The new report indicates that Foxconn's shipments of the CDMA iPhone 4 began in December and are headed to the United States, while Pegatron will begin shipping CDMA units for the rest of the world this month.

China Telecom, that country's third-largest carrier, has already been rumored to be in discussions to carry the CDMA iPhone, and a pair of Indian CDMA carriers, Reliance and Tata, have also been claimed to be talking with Apple about bringing the iPhone to their networks.

Research firms Gartner and IDC yesterday released their preliminary quarterly personal computer shipment data, offering up a picture of market performance during the fourth quarter of 2010 and for the year. Overall, the PC industry exhibited small growth on a worldwide scale, with unit shipments growing by about 3% between the fourth quarters of 2009 and 2010. But shipments in the U.S. actually declined year-over-year by about 5-6% according to the two firms. IDC in particular points to the iPad as having a detrimental effect on PC sales.

Growth steadily slowed throughout 2010 as weakening demand and competition from the Apple iPad constrained PC shipments. In addition to relatively high market penetration and a 'good-enough' computing experience with existing PCs, consumers are being more cautious with their purchases and competing devices have been vying for consumer dollars. This situation is likely to persist in 2011, if not worsen, as a wave of Media Tablets could put a dent in the traditional PC market," said David Daoud, research director, US Quaterly PC Tracker and Personal Computing.

According to Gartner's report, Apple matched its fifth place in the U.S. market from a year ago in grabbing a 9.7% share, up significantly from a 7.4% share in the prior-year quarter. The number is down slightly, however, from a 10.4% share in the previous quarter, although Apple typically sees a decline in market share in the fourth quarter of each year as it comes off of the strength of its third quarters buoyed by educational sales.

Apple's U.S. unit growth for the quarter was 23.7% year-over-year, well ahead of the overall U.S. industry trend of a 6.6% decline.

IDC's report paints a slightly different picture, but still shows Apple gaining market share in the U.S. as it experienced significant growth in a declining market. According to IDC, Apple's U.S. shipments grew 15.2% year-over-year for the fourth quarter, bucking the trend of the overall industry's 4.8% decline and allowing Apple to move from 7.2% market share in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 8.7% in the fourth quarter of 2010.

For the year, IDC's numbers show Apple being edged out by Toshiba for the fourth position in the U.S. market, with both companies claiming 8.8% market share and Apple shipping over 6.5 million computers. That share number was up significantly from 7.8% for calendar year 2009, and came on 18.4% unit growth. As usual, neither Gartner nor IDC covered Apple's worldwide performance for the fourth quarter or the full year, as the company does not rank in the top five by global shipments.

MacNotes.de reports that the second-generation iPad is currently scheduled to debut in the United States on one of the first two Saturdays in April: the 2nd or the 9th. (The report's headline states the 2nd or 7th, but the lead refers to "the first or second Saturday". The headline of the original German-language version correctly refers to the 9th. )

According to the report, the second-generation iPad will follow a release pattern somewhat similar to that of the original model, coming first to the United States for as long as three months until international launches begin in July. The new iPad is also said to be planned to be available only through Apple for up to the first six months of availability, with other retailers such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy having to wait until October to begin stocking the device.

Reliable sources told us about the upcoming launch of the Apple iPad 2: the first or second Saturday in April will see the first sales of Apples new tablet. The iPad 2 will sell US-only for three months, and Apple Store-only for up to half a year. In July, more countries will follow. Walmart, Best Buy and Co. maybe have to wait until October until they are allowed to sell Apples new tablets.

While an early April U.S. launch for the next-generation iPad seems reasonable given the release schedule for the original device, such delays in international availability and restrictions on third-party vendor availability would be very surprising given Apple's efforts to expand production capacity over the past year. Even the original iPad was available through both Apple and Best Buy at launch, and it would be odd for the company to have to backtrack on its recent expansions of availability to such major retail chains as Wal-Mart and Target.

The source for today's report also indicates that the next-generation iPad will ship with a "retina" display, USB port, and two cameras. The report clarifies, however, that the "retina" display will not be of as high a pixel density as on the iPhone 4, similar to claims made by Digg founder Kevin Rose last week after observers questioned his initial report on a "retina" display in the iPad.

With Apple using the new developer build of iOS 4.3 to test new multi-touch gestures for accessing the home screen and switching between applications, speculation immediately arose that Apple might be considering doing away with the home button on the iPad as a means for shrinking the device.

According to BGR, Apple is in fact contemplating doing just that, with both the iPad and iPhone being considered for home button removal.

We have exclusively been told that the reason Apple just added multitouch gestures for the iPad in the latest iOS 4.3 beta is because the iPad will be losing the home button. Yes, we are told that Apple, at some point in time, will remove the home button from the iPad's design. Instead of button taps, you will use new multitouch gestures to navigate to the home screen and also to launch the app switcher.

That's not all, however. In addition to the home button disappearing from the iPad, we're told that this change will make its way over to the iPhone as well. Our source said Apple employees are already testing iPads and iPhones with no home buttons on the Apple campus, and it's possible we will see this new change materialize with the next-generation iPad and iPhone devices set to launch this year.

BGR's source also indicates that the next-generation iPad may gain Photo Booth functionality and more iPad-specific versions of iLife applications.

The potential removal of the home button is certain to be controversial, as Daring Fireball's John Gruber argues that the single physical feature on the front of the device serves as a reference for new users, allowing them to intuitively know how to use the device the first time they pick it up.

These gestures do mean that you don't have to use the Home button. But there's a serious discoverability problem with them. The physical Home button is impossible to miss. That it is the one and only button on the faces of these devices is a big part of why normal people are able to pick them up, start playing with them, and figure out how to get around with no help. How in the world would a normal person figure out or guess that they need to do a "five-finger pinch" to get back to the home screen?

Usability issues are an even bigger hurdle on the iPhone, with its limited screen size for many-finger gestures and the ease of use it currently enjoys with one-hand operation using solely the thumb to navigate around the device.

Some further digging into the newly released iOS 4.3 developer build has revealed settings for a new feature called "Find My Friends". The strings are associated with the Settings app and is related to "MobileMe". The obvious interpretation is that Apple may be looking to offer a location-based friend-finding service like Loopt and Google Latitude.

Services like Loopt allow you to find your friends who near you at any given time by leveraging your mobile phone's GPS signal. The constant updates can broadcast your location to your friends to know who is nearby. Obviously, these sort of systems are opt-in only, but shows what Apple maybe up to in fleshing out their MobileMe service. Steve Jobs wrote in an email in December that the MobileMe service will get "a lot better in 2011".

Location-based services have seen incredible growth and interest in the recent years, with several companies like Twitter and Facebook offering location-based features.

As first noted by Engadget, the latest iOS 4.3 developer build contains model references to as-yet unreleased iPhone and iPad models. The new designations include:

iPad2,1
iPad2,2
iPad2,3
iPhone4,1
iPhone4,2

For reference, the first generation iPad carries a model number of "iPad1,1" while the AT&T iPhone 4 carries the "iPhone3,1" model number. These new designations likely represent the next generation iPad and iPhone. It seems likely the second digit represents hardware differences between models -- such as a Verizon iPhone and AT&T iPhone. The iPad is also believed to be coming to both Verizon and AT&T, so that may explain at least a few of the different model numbers.

The iPad 2 is believed to be coming out in the next month or so, while the iPhone is traditionally refreshed in the summer during WWDC.

One of the most interesting new features found in the developer release of iOS 4.3 is the introduction of four and five finger gestures for the iPad.

This beta release contains a preview of new Multi-Touch gestures for iPad. You can use four or five fingers to pinch to the Home Screen; swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar; and swipe left or right between apps. We are providing this preview before releasing them to the public to understand how these gestures work with your apps.

The above video shows the user four-finger swiping from left/right to switch between multitasking apps. Meanwhile pinching with 4 or 5 fingers can return you to the home screen, which potentially removes the need for a physical home button.

iOS 4.3 is not yet available for public download.

One of the more controversial changes made with the release of iOS 4.2 late last year was a change in the functionality of the switch on the side of the iPad, moving it from a screen rotation lock to a mute switch as seen on the iPhone. Apple CEO Steve Jobs had even reportedly responded to a customer question by noting that the change was permanent and that it would not be a user-configurable option.

Apple appears to have had a change of heart, as today's iOS 4.3 beta appears to have added an option in the device's Settings application to allow users to customize the behavior of the switch.

MacStories reports that Apple has seeded the first beta version of iOS 4.3 to developers. The iOS 4.3 beta is available in versions for iPad, iPhone 4 and 3GS, and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch, as well as a separate download for the new Apple TV. Consequently, it appears that Apple will no longer be supporting the iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch with operating system updates.

Details of changes included in the new version are unknown at this time, although Apple has been said to be building in support for personal hotspot functionality as seen on the Verizon iPhone, as well as possible support for recurring billing for App Store content subscriptions such as News Corp.'s forthcoming tablet-focused news publication, The Daily.

Update: We've heard that the new version now allows developers to stream video to compatible devices via AirPlay.

MacStories also notes that Apple has implemented new multi-touch gestures for the iPad, including four- and five-finger pinch gestures to take users to the home screen, swipe for multitasking tray, and swipe to switch apps.

Update 2: Configuration settings for personal hotspot functionality are indeed present in the iOS 4.3 beta.

Update 3: A new FaceTime icon and support for full-screen banner format iAds for the iPad have also been spotted.

Other World Computing (OWC) last week announced the debut of its new Mercury Aura Pro Express solid state drives for Apple's latest 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models. The new drives, which offer greater speed and capacity than Apple's factory options, are available in 180 GB, 240 GB, and 360 GB capacities. Based on a SandForce controller, the drives also feature a number of other technologies to enhance speed, performance, and data integrity.

The Mercury Aura SSD line features industry leading SandForce DuraClass Technologies:

- DuraWrite extends the endurance of your Solid State Drive (SSD).
- Intelligent Block Management & Wear Leveling automatically distributes data evenly across the entire SSD.
- Intelligent Read Disturb Management spreads the active read/write across the flash components eliminating data corruption caused by constant use.
- Intelligent "Recycling" for advanced free space management gradually re-writes data across the SSD over time to ensure data never gets corrupted.
- RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) protects the data on your drive similar to having a RAID setup.
- Best-in-Class ECC Protection for longest data retention and drive life.

Prices begin at $499.99 for the 180 GB drive and move up to $579.9 for the 240 GB model and $1,179.99 for the 360 GB model. Shipping estimates are currently listed at 19 days for the 180 GB version, 2 days for the 240 GB version, and "pending" for the 360 GB version.

All three drives are compatible with both the 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch MacBook Air models introduced in October 2010. Apple's own drive options begin at 64 GB for the 11.6-inch model and top out at 128 GB, while the 13.3-inch model comes with 128 GB and 256 GB options.

Taiwanese firm PhotoFast had previously announced similar SandForce-based SSDs ranging up to 256 GB that would be compatible with the 11-inch MacBook Air, but Apple quickly moved to halt sales of the drives. It is unclear if Apple is objecting to the new offerings from OWC and/or applying pressure to have them removed from sale.

Bloomberg takes a look at the negotiations between Apple and Verizon that finally led to yesterday's announcement that the carrier will begin carrying the iPhone next month after three and half years of AT&T exclusivity in the United States. Among the interesting tidbits of information revealed in an interview with Verizon President Lowell McAdam:

- The Verizon cell towers on Apple's campus disclosed by Steve Jobs last July were in fact installed to enable testing of the CDMA iPhone on Verizon's network.

The companies erected Verizon cellular towers at Apple's Cupertino, California, headquarters to check the phone's signal and avoid the reliability troubles of the iPhone at AT&T.

- Engineers from Apple and Verizon worked very closely together throughout product development, with a top Verizon engineer spending more than a year working directly on Apple's campus and Apple engineers being provided with "their own laboratory to play with" at Verizon.

- Negotiations were primarily handled by McAdam and Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, with input from Jobs and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg as needed.

"We probably worked six or nine months on the technical side of this and saw we could make this work," he said. "Then we did the commercial side. The commercial deal took us a day.

- Verizon and Apple also had to reach an understanding about the prominence Verizon's branding would have on the device, with the iPhone carrying no external Verizon logo and no preinstalled applications or custom software changes promoting the carrier.

To reach a deal, Apple and Verizon had to reconcile different approaches to branding. Verizon puts its stamp on other manufacturers' devices, including phones from Research In Motion Ltd. and Motorola. By contrast, only Apple's name appears on the iPhone.

"They don't put a lot of logos on their phones," McAdam said in the interview. "So that wasnt a major issue for us."

Former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee notes that Verizon was likely easily persuaded to go along with Apple's demands in the branding department after seeing the success of the device on other carriers under similar terms.