MacRumors

Yesterday, we reported that a number of iPhone 4 users have noticed yellowish or brownish splotches on their device's screens, obviously causing a fair amount of concern for some of those users.

According to a forum post at AppleInsider, however, the issue should resolve itself over the next several days, as it is claimed to be caused by a bonding agent in the screen that has not yet fully dried following the manufacturing process.

Apple is using a bonding agent called Organofunctional Silane Z-6011 to bond the layers of glass. Apparently, Apple (or more likely Foxconn) is shipping these products so quickly that the evaporation process is not complete. However, after one or two days of use, especially with the screen on, will complete the evaporation process and the yellow "blotches" will disappear.

How do I know? I was involved in pitching Z-6011 to Apple.

The veracity of the poster's claim has not been verified, but it does offer some hope to those affected by the issue. Adding to those hopes are reports from users that their blotches are in fact fading with time and usage, indicating that affected users should probably take a wait-and-see attitude for a few days rather than rushing out to their local Apple Stores in hopes of exchanging for new units.

I had major yellow spots on the bottom corners of the iPhone 4 this morning when I received it (as shown in the other thread) and as of right now they have COMPLETELY faded away. I have no idea what caused this but it happened. So keep an eye on it over the next day or so if you have the issue. . . It just seemed like the more I used the phone today the more it faded. It's really odd but I'll take it.

Update: Gizmodo is reporting that Apple support staff are issuing conflicting recommendation to users with this issue, with at least one user reportedly receiving confirmatory word from Apple that the issue is "residue from manufacturing" that should clear on its own within a few days while others have been told to bring in their phones for replacement.

Despite early ordering problems and possible reception issues, the iPhone 4 has had a successful launch worldwide to large crowds. Japan was the first country to see the iPhone 4 go on sale and over 300 people lined up at the flagship store for Softbank, the iPhone 4's Japanese mobile carrier. Softbank sold out of the iPhone 4 by early afternoon.

France, Germany, and the UK were the next to launch the iPhone 4 and just followed by the U.S. East coast. The lines have been reported to be very long at many of the locations we've heard from. Our own local Apple Store (Richmond, VA) reports their longest lines for any iPhone launch.

Helpful iPhone 4 Resources

Join our iPhone forums to share your experiences or get help with your new device. We've started a few threads for people to get started:

- First Impressions to iPhone 4
- Examples of Photos Taken with iPhone 4
- Examples of Videos Taken with iPhone 4

There's a great example in the Photo thread of how powerful the iPhone 4's camera flash is.

AppShopper is a useful site to find new apps and price drops existing apps. Apple has let loose an enormous number of app updates have been released in the past 24 hours to offer support for iOS multitasking as well as support for the iPhone 4's retina display and gyroscope.

The are over 220,000 apps available, but here are a couple of guides to get you started:

- AppShopper: Essential Apps: Getting Started with iPhone 4
- TouchArcade: So You Just Got an iPhone 4 - An App Store Gaming Guide

Earlier this evening, iPhone 4 signal drops had been reported from individuals holding their new iPhones in their hand. The issue seems to have been isolated to a specific location on the device itself. It is demonstrated well in this video by Insanely Great Mac:

The video shows that calls were consistently dropped when the iPhone 4 was held in the left hand while touching the bottom left corner.

It's not clear if the bottom-left sensitivity is a problem with every iPhone 4 or if there is only a batch of iPhone 4s that are affected. Of course, the solution for now would be to avoid holding the iPhone in the manner demonstrated.

Note: the lower number of bars on the iPhone 4 as compared to the 3GS is a known software issue. Apple told Mossberg that it would be addressed in a future software update.

Update: A couple of commenters have said they have been unable to replicate on their iPhone 4, while others have, so it may not affect every device.

Apple has released their version of iMovie into the App Store. The new App is $4.99 and requires an iPhone 4.

Make beautiful HD movies anywhere with iMovie, the fun, feature-rich video editing app for iPhone 4. Create a video postcard of your day at the beach and publish it to the web -- without ever leaving your spot in the sand. Or make a movie of your childs birthday party and send it to your parents -- while the party is in full swing. With iMovie for iPhone, you can start several projects and finish them whenever you want and wherever you are.

Apple introduced the App during the WWDC keynote, and has since confirmed an iPhone 4 is required. We suspect the requirement is due to the faster processor and more RAM that the iPhone 4 uniquely offers.

Lines are starting to grow around the world for the iPhone 4 launch. Pictured above is the Michigan Ave Apple Store in Chicago where the weather isn't quite cooperating. Steve Wozniak was spotted in line and even signing a passerby's iPhone 4 box (he must have pre-ordered).

We've continued to get reports all day of Best Buy and Wal-marts having anywhere from 0 to 5 units for sale on launch day. We have also heard unconfirmed reports that the shortages are due to Apple not meeting production numbers. It'll be interesting to see how much stock Apple retail stores have of the new iPhone.

Forum users are organizing meetups across the world in our forums. If you are standing in line, feel free to participate in this thread, your own regional thread (search here), and email any photos to tips@macrumors.com and we'll post the most interesting ones here.

Update:

Gizmodo has compiled a series of videos demonstrating that the iPhone 4s single bars seem to drop down significantly when being held in hand. The report actually began in our own forums with a video demonstrating the reproducibility of the problem:

The finding has generated many responses from people who have noticed similar behavior. While there has been some talk of this being a display error rather than an actual signal issue, several have reported that calls do drop when the bars decline. At least one user has posted a video demonstrating it not happening on his iPhone 4:

While this reader dismisses the claims as "trolling", there are plenty of videos from a variety of users demonstrating the reproducibility on many other people's iPhone 4s.

The question, though, remains -- is this a new issue or are people more acutely aware of it due to the attention drawn to the iPhone 4s exterior antennas. One expert had even predicted this might be a problem.

We're not so sure it's an iPhone 4 specific issue. We remember seeing videos demonstrating this same issue for prior iPhone devices. For whatever reason, those videos never drew that much attention. Here's a video showing the same phenomenon on an iPhone 3G. This video was posted in 2008:

A number of readers in our forum have discovered that their iPhone 4s arriving today are exhibiting areas of brown or yellow discoloration on the highly-touted Retina display. Users in Apple's own discussion forums are also beginning to notice the problem.

At least one user paid a visit to the Genius Bar at his local Apple retail store but was told that there are no replacement units available at the moment. Given the iPhone 4 shortages, it may be some time until affected users can obtain replacements.

The prevalence of the issue is unknown at this time, but there are a significant number of users reporting experiencing it on their phones.

Valve Software today issued an update to its popular Counter-Strike: Source game, bringing Mac OS X compatibility and a number of new features and fixes. To celebrate the release, Counter-Strike: Source is priced at $6.80, a 66% discount, until Friday.

Like other titles from Valve and third-party publishers on the company's Steam game distribution platform, Counter-Strike: Source is available under the Steam Play program, which allows users to play on multiple platforms while only being required to purchase the game once.

Valve has been releasing titles from its library at a regular rate over the past month or so, debuting Steam back in mid-May with Portal before releasing Half-Life 2 and its sequels in late May and Team Fortress 2 earlier this month.

While Mac users have been experiencing relatively stable releases through Steam, gameplay has been somewhat hampered by framerates below that of corresponding Windows releases. Valve has reported that it is working with Apple and graphics card companies NVIDIA and ATI to update drivers to improve performance. In addition, Valve has warned users that Mac OS X 10.6.4 has been causing performance issues for high-end games on Macs using NVIDIA graphics cards, and impacted users are encouraged to hold off from upgrading their operating system until the issues are addressed.

Apple has just issued a brief press release addressing availability of white iPhone 4 models, which are now set to launch in "the second half of July" due to manufacturing challenges.

White models of Apple's new iPhone 4 have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected, and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July. The availability of the more popular iPhone 4 black models is not affected.

For those people with a few hours to kill either waiting for a pre-ordered iPhone 4 to arrive or camping out to purchase one tomorrow, Apple has posted the user guide (PDF link) for iPhone 4 and iOS 4 for your reading pleasure. The 243-page guide, which is also available in an iPhone-formatted version accessible through Safari for iPhone, is broken down into 28 chapters and offers information on the features of iOS 4 as they relate to Apple's new iPhone 4 and 3GS devices.

The user guide covers a multitude of topics, from physical features of the iPhone to setup and on through the various software offerings included by default on the devices. Also included are sections on the iTunes Store and App Store, as well as Apple's free iBooks application available separately through the App Store and the iPhone's Nike + iPod capabilities.

Despite receiving notifications from Apple earlier this week that their iPhone 4 pre-orders would be arriving today, one day ahead of the official launch, a number of U.S. customers have noticed that the tracking information for their shipments through FedEx are suggesting that they may not be receiving their orders today.

Those customers can still hold out hope, however, as FedEx has posted a service update reporting that deliveries are proceeding as scheduled but that updates to tracking information are being delayed.

Package deliveries are proceeding as normal, however tracking updates are temporarily being delayed. Please try back later.

While the notice does not specifically address iPhone 4, it seems reasonable to assume that the volume of shipments going out today is causing some issues with FedEx's tracking system.

A few customers were even lucky enough to receive their shipments yesterday, with many more already being delivered today.

Meanwhile, customers looking to score iPhone 4s at their local Apple Stores tomorrow are beginning to form lines at locations around the country.

One of Apple's key design features for iPhone 4 is its all-glass front and back, utilizing a material touted by Apple as being "more scratch resistant than ever". Apple has placed such faith in the strength and durability of iPhone 4's glass that it is featuring bumpers to offer protection for the device's edges while leaving the front and back fully exposed.

Several of the early iPhone 4 reviews noted that the glass seemed to be holding up well, with several reviewers reporting having dropped their devices with no ill effects observed. Engadget is now reporting, however, that several scratches have been discovered on the back of its review unit after only five days of use.

The photo you're seeing above is our leader Joshua's iPhone 4 review unit, snapped by Ryan Block just moments ago. Ryan pointed out that there are some nasty scratches on the back of the phone. While we don't have any better photos of it at the moment, Josh told us that they're hard to see unless in bright light, but they look pretty notable to us for a five day-old unit made of Gorilla Glass.

While few would expect iPhone 4's glass to reach an indestructible level of durability, the rather rapid accumulation of "nasty" scratches in just a few days of use may be a concern to some possible purchasers and bears watching as users consider their options for protecting the device during daily use.

Earlier this month, we pointed to a YouTube video of what appeared to be a Mac OS X version of Adobe Audition, the company's professional audio production application that has long been a Windows-only release.

As noted by both The Loop and Macworld today, Adobe has officially acknowledged that Audition will be coming to the Mac, with a public beta scheduled for release in "Winter 2010".

Adobe Audition for Mac, coming in a future release, will bring modern audio post-production to the platform of your choice. Familiar tools for audio editing, multitrack mixing and recording will meet expanded device support, greater workflow flexibility, and optimized performance. Plus, best-of-breed audio restoration tools make it easy to clean up production audio. With the essential tools you rely on for fast-turn projects, Audition for the Mac brings a fresh face to audio post-production.

Adobe has also posted a pair of preview videos showing what users can expect in Adobe Audition for Mac.

In January 2009, both MacRumors and Daring Fireball's John Gruber began hearing rumors that Apple was working on a project code-named "Marble" that was believed to be an overhaul of the Mac OS X interface set to appear with Snow Leopard later that year.

As time went by, however, Gruber noted that "Marble" was unlikely to appear in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and indeed the new operating system did not carry the significant overhaul many had been hoping for, leading to speculation that it could still appear in Mac OS X 10.7 whenever that sees the light of day.

Yesterday, Gruber revealed that "Marble" actually appears not to be a Mac OS X interface revamp but an overhaul of Xcode, Apple's developer tools for Mac OS X and iOS. A beta version of Xcode 4 was previewed at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this month, but with the sessions covered by non-disclosure agreements, it was taken some time for details on the update to come out. One of the major changes in Xcode 4 is the integration of Interface Builder into the larger Xcode application, creating a unified interface that comprises the "Marble" project.

Xcode 4 is still in beta, Apple doesn't have screenshots available, and what was shown at WWDC 2010 is covered by NDA. But if you have a developer account, you can get a tour of the new interface by watching the Developer Tools State of the Union session. It is, to say the least, a major overhaul - primarily focused on doing more within a single window, even going so far as to bake Interface Builder into Xcode itself. According to several informed sources at WWDC, that's the "Marble" project.

It is unknown when Xcode 4 will make its official debut, but it appears to promise a significantly enhanced development environment for creating and testing applications.

The iPhone 4 officially launches on Thursday. If you haven't already pre-ordered one, there's still a chance to get one on launch day, but you're going to need to be prepared to stand in line. We've heard reports that Wal-Marts, Radio Shacks and Best Buys are getting just a handful of units each, and those units are almost certainly spoken for already. So, if you want to get an iPhone 4 on day one, you're going to need to find an Apple Store which is likely to have a reasonable number of walk-in units. Those with pre-order reservations will be shuttled to their own line to pick up their new iPhones.

Lines have already started at Apple Stores in a few major cities. If you're looking for some company, we have a meetup forum that is organizing meetups in various cities. Search for your city here to find local individuals.

If you have pre-ordered the iPhone, some early deliveries started yesterday with many more expected today. We've started organizing threads that might be of use for those still deciding:

- First Impressions of iPhone 4
- Video Taken with iPhone 4
- Photos Taken with iPhone 4

The iPhone 4 comes with some specific new features and some early apps are starting to take advantage of the high-resolution Retina display as well as the Gyroscope. Some of these include:

- Real Racing (Gyroscope and Retina Display)
- Eliminate: Gun Range (Gyroscope and Retina Display)
- Sketchbook Mobile (Retina Display)
- Kindle for iPhone (Retina Display)

A list of more of these iPhone 4 capable apps will be posted to iPhone 4 Apps thread over time.

Please send line photos, unboxing photos, tips and more to tips@macrumors.com.

Early benchmarks of the iPhone 4 show it to be 31% faster than the iPhone 3GS according to the Geekbench 2 app. Geek Bench has been a popular benchmarking utility on the Mac that has recently made the jump over to the iPhone. As always, benchmarks are a bit of an artificial gauge of performance, but can be useful in head to head comparisons.

The iPhone 4 is known to use the same Apple A4 processor that is also found in the iPad, but Apple has never revealed the processor speed of the iPhone 4. The iPad is known to have a 1GHz processor. We looked at a few benchmarking utilities to see if we could determine if the iPhone 4's A4 processor was the same speed as the iPad's. Unfortunately, the state of benchmarking on iOS seems a bit primitive, and is further complicated by the fact that iOS 4.0 does not run on the iPad. GeekBench, for example, only runs on iOS 4, so we can't compare it directly to the iPhone 4's results. A couple of other benchmarking tools available produced some inconsistent results, so we can't be completely confident in them, but it appears that the iPhone 4 is indeed faster than the iPhone 3GS but slower than the iPad.

BenchTest: 3GS: 2.298, iPhone 4: 2.514, iPad: 3.667 - This benchmark only showed a small increase in speed with the iPhone 4, but some of the results seemed strange. All the "seconds" in the iPhone 4 results were listed at 0.00, though a score was still generated. It's hard to say if the results are entirely accurate.

Checkup: 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad - This also showed the trend of iPad > iPhone 4 > iPhone 3GS, but running the benchmark multiple times could result in a large variance.

iFixit has managed to obtain and post a tear down (in progress) of the new iPhone 4. The iPhone 4 isn't due for release until Thursday, June 24th, but many customers started receiving their orders as early as today. A few notes of interest:

- Storage capacity is not etched on the back
- iPhone OS 4, build 8A293
- 3.7V 1420 mAh Li-Polymer battery
- Screen is believed to use Corning Gorilla Glass
- A4 Part Numbers confirm 512MB of RAM rather than 256MB found in the prototypes

Aside from the hardware evidence, one reader sent us this screenshot from iPhone diagnostic app Checkup run on a new iPhone 4:

Checkup also shows that the iPhone 4 does have 512MB of RAM, but is unable to identify the speed of the processor.

Apple's embargo on iPhone 4 reviews has been lifted, and the big names in tech journalism have been rolling out their detailed thoughts on Apple's new device that is scheduled to officially launch on Thursday but has already made its way into the hands of a few lucky customers.

Here are a few choice snippets from some of the high-profile reviews coming out today:

Walt Mossberg / The Wall Street Journal:

I've been testing the iPhone 4 for more than a week. In both hardware and software, it is a major leap over its already-excellent predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.

It has some downsides and limitations - most important, the overwhelmed AT&T network in the U.S., which, in my tests, the new phone handled sometimes better and, unfortunately, sometimes worse than its predecessor. I'll get into that below. But, overall, Apple has delivered a big, well-designed update that, in my view, keeps it in the lead in the smartphone wars.

David Pogue / The New York Times:

Despite the strong initial, positive reaction, this must still be a nerve-racking time to be Apple; the iPhone is no longer the only worthy contender. Phones running Google's Android software are gaining rave reviews and packing in features that iPhone owners can only envy. The Android app store is ballooning, multiple phone makers are competing, and Google updates the software several times a year. Apple releases only one new model a year, so the new iPhone had better be pretty amazing to compete.

It is.

Ed Baig / USA Today:

The new iPhone 4 I've been testing for about a week and a half - along with the major refresh of the mobile operating system software at the core of recent models - demonstrates once again why Apple's handset is the one to beat, even as it faces fierce competition from phones based on Google's Android platform, among others.

Xeni Jardin / Boing Boing:

The fourth incarnation of Apple's iPhone is an incrementally improved, familiar device - not a new kind of device, as was the case with the recent introduction of iPad. Yes, the notable features with iPhone 4 - both the device and the iOS4, which came out yesterday in advance of the iPhone itself - are mostly tweaks. But what tweaks they are: Apple's focus on improvement is as much key to the quality of its products as innovation. But there's one flaw it can't completely eliminate: the unreliable quality of calls placed over AT&T, which remains the iPhone's only U.S. carrier.

Joshua Topolsky / Engadget:

We're not going to beat around the bush -- in our approximation, the iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market right now. The combination of gorgeous new hardware, that amazing display, upgraded cameras, and major improvements to the operating system make this an extremely formidable package. Yes, there are still pain points that we want to see Apple fix, and yes, there are some amazing alternatives to the iPhone 4 out there. But when it comes to the total package -- fit and finish in both software and hardware, performance, app selection, and all of the little details that make a device like this what it is -- we think it's the cream of the current crop.

Stay tuned over the next several days as we continue to cover the iPhone 4 launch and all of the latest developments.