MacRumors

The iPad has been available in the U.S. for nearly two months now and is officially rolling out to nine more countries this Friday. At its U.S. debut, about 2,000 iPad-specific apps were available in the App Store and this number has since swelled to over 7,000 with more arriving every day. Here are a few notable ones that have been released over the past couple of weeks.

Air Display

Avatron Software, the makers of the Air Sharing HD document sharing app, recently released a new app, Air Display, that turns an iPad into an extra external display. In order to work, the app requires a desktop companion application - which is available for Macs running OS 10.6 only for now though a Windows version is coming and for the Mac and the iPad to be on the same Wi-Fi network.

Set-up is pretty easy and we found that the app works as advertised, though video lags a little behind the accompanying audio and it's probably best suited for more static items such as Inspector windows, iChat buddy lists and the like. Youre also not restricted to using your computers mouse to navigate the display on the iPad you can use its multi-touch display to click links and buttons. To enter text, youll need to use your computers keyboard since the iPads virtual keyboard wont pop up when you get to a text field.

For $9.99, turning your iPad into a extra display is pretty cheap compared to buying a dedicated display and this app could be invaluable for laptop users who need a little more screen real estate while on the go.

CoPilot Live HD

ALK Technologies, the developer of GPS applications for a wide variety of mobile devices, was the first to put out a turn-by-turn navigation app specifically for the iPad. CoPilot Live HD North America debuted in the App Store earlier this month and it's priced aggressively relative to other GPS apps at $29.99. We've been trying it out and it is a joy to have navigation guidance on such a large screen, though we wish there was a setting to let the map take over the majority of the screen and force the next turn guidance section to be smaller.

CoPilot Live HD will work only on iPads with 3G connectivity since these models possess a GPS receiver while the Wi-Fi only models do not. Additionally, this version of the app works only on the iPad and not the iPhone, though ALK Technologies does offer CoPilot Live North America specifically for the iPhone, priced at $19.99.

BeejiveIM

BeejiveIM has been one of our favorite IM apps for the iPhone and the company put out an iPad-speciic version of the app just a few days ago. BeejiveIM for iPad lets you set up multiple IM accounts under the most popular instant messaging protocols used today and offers push notifications to let you know about incoming messages even when the app is closed. It also lets you send images and voice notes as attachments to your instant messages.

BeejiveIM for iPad is available at an introductory sale price of $5.99 right now for a limited time only.

Market research firm NPD today released data showing Apple continuing to hold a commanding lead in both overall and digital download music sales in the U.S. for the first quarter of 2010. According to NPD's data, Apple continues to dominate digital download distribution in the U.S. with 70% of the market, up from 69% in the year-ago quarter and well ahead of second-place Amazon's 12% share.

In the overall U.S. music market (physical CDs and digital distribution), Apple gained four percentage points over the year-ago quarter to snatch 28% of the market. Amazon surged by three percentage points to tie Wal-Mart for second place at 12% of the total market.

Overall, digital downloads now represent 40% of U.S. music sales, up from 35% in the first quarter of 2009.

The data comes as Apple faces a new antitrust inquiry from the U.S. Department of Justice over its tactics in the digital music download market. Just last week, Billboard published data from all of 2009 showing Apple firmly in command of the overall U.S. music market. Still, it remains to be seen whether the Department of Justice will consider Apple's competitive sphere to primarily be digital downloads, where the company holds an overwhelming proportion of sales, or in the overall market, where it also the top spot but with under 30% of the market.

DigiTimes offers an interesting Q&A with one of its research analysts reporting several previously undisclosed details about the development of the fourth-generation iPhone expected to be introduced early next month at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. One of the most interesting tidbits included in the report is a claim that Apple had a second next-generation iPhone under development that more closely resembles the iPhone 3GS, a phone which Apple has been keeping in reserve in case unforeseen difficulties with the more significantly redesigned versions seen floating around in prototypes forced Apple to fall back to manufacturing processes with which it is already familiar.

The leaked iPhone 4G had a tag that said "N90," which is the internal development codename for the iPhone 4G, and very few people outside the company knew about it prior to the leak.

On a side note, Apple initiated the iPhone 4G project at the end of 2008. According to our sources, Apple actually has another product codenamed N91 for the project, which offers less change from previous iPhones compared with the N90. It's a parallel product to back up the N90 in case there are major delays due to significant modifications in casing, display resolution, digital camera support and so forth.

In fact, it seems possible that there may even have been a third version of the next-generation iPhone floating around Apple's labs, as details found in the iPhone SDK 3.2 back in February revealed a device, presumed to be an iPhone, carrying an "N89" internal model number. The iPhone 3GS carries internal model number "N88".

The report also claims that a Verizon-compatible iPhone scheduled to be produced by Pegatron instead of Apple's existing iPhone manufacturing partner Foxconn will not enter mass production until at least the second half of this year, if not 2011.

Pegatron will indeed assemble an iPhone, but the manufacturing cooperation is still at the EVT (engineer verification test) stage. There are two more stages - DVT (design verification test) and PVT (process verification test) - before mass production. Though there were reports that shipments for this particular device will begin in the second half, we believe 2011 is more likely.

Finally, the report notes that Apple did investigate the possible use of OLED screens in the next-generation iPhone, but ultimately decided against adopting the technology due to insufficient production capacity, cost, and performance issues.

According to our sources, Apple had spoken with Samsung Mobile Display (SMD) about the possibility for AMOLED panels since the development of the iPhone 3GS, but production capacity remains a big issue. SMD only has the capability to fulfill 50-60% of iPhone orders at the moment even it dedicated all AMOLED capacity to Apple.

DigiTimes has had a spotty record in the past with a number of inaccurate product claims over the years, but does seem to have a better handle on the pulse of Apple's Asian suppliers and manufacturing partners than most other sources.

Boy Genius Report briefly claims that AT&T has confirmed to its employees that the next-generation iPhone will launch in June, with hints that availability could even come well before the end of that month.

Title says it all, but you didn't really need a confirmation, did you? The phone will be available for purchase in June, not July, and from what we've heard, it won't even be late June.

Boy Genius Report previously noted that AT&T had instituted a block on employee vacations for the month of June, a move indicating a likely iPhone launch during that time as evidenced by similar blocks in previous years.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is expected to formally introduce the next-generation iPhone on June 7th during his keynote address at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco. Earlier rumors had suggested that Apple is looking to push the next iPhone's actual launch as close as possible to that date, perhaps even making it available before the conference concludes.

In the less-than-three months since Apple first passed Wal-Mart to hold the third highest market capitalization among U.S. companies, Apple's stock price has continued to increase while second-place Microsoft has seen its shares drift downward. The combination of events has quickly closed the gap between the two companies, and today Apple finally surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization for the first time in 20 years, although second-by-second fluctuations currently see the two companies frequently swapping positions.

Market capitalization is a popular metric for assessing the size of a company as a representation of the investing public's notion of the company's worth. The figure is derived by simply multiplying the number of outstanding shares of the company's stock by the share price.

In the case of Apple, slightly over 900 million shares outstanding times over $250 per share yields a market capitalization of about $228 billion. Microsoft, meanwhile, has a share price of only slightly over $26.00 but over 8.75 billion shares outstanding, giving it a nearly equal market capitalization to Apple.

With Apple and Microsoft now neck-and-neck, only Exxon Mobil's $282 billion market capitalization remains significantly ahead of Apple's among U.S. companies. Exxon Mobil's shares have dropped significantly over the past month, bringing its market capitalization down from a high of over $325 billion.

As noted by Kotaku, Valve Software is set to launch the Mac OS X version of Half-Life 2 today, with follow-up sequels Half-Life 2: Episode One and Half-Life 2: Episode Two also seeing their public release for the platform.

Valve announced in early March that it would be bringing its Steam game distribution platform and library of games to Mac OS X, with the public release going live earlier this month. Among the 60 launch titles for Mac OS X was Valve's Portal, which was available for free until earlier this week.

Valve will continue to roll out new titles for the Mac on a regular basis, with the Half-Life 2 package representing the next step in that process. To celebrate the launch of Half-Life 2, Valve has remade a portion of Apple's iconic 1984 Super Bowl commercial in a Half-Life 2-inspired theme, with series protagonist Alyx Vance serving as the main character in the promo. Several frames of the remake were used in one of six leaked teaser images sent to MacRumors and other sites ahead of Valve's official Mac announcement.

Update: The three Half-Life 2 titles have now been updated, with support for Mac OS X obviously being the most significant item of interest for Mac users. The titles are temporarily on sale at 30% off, with Half-Life 2 priced at $6.99 (down from $9.99) and Episode One and Two available for $5.59 each (down from $7.99).

Wired has launched their first iPad app version of their digital magazine. Wired has been one of the publications that has long been exploring the possibility of a digital distribution on Apple's iPad -- even before the iPad was ever officially acknowledged. They had worked extensively with Adobe at the time who had been promoting their digital publishing system.

The final product may have seen some delays, however. Due to Apple's strong stance against 3rd party cross compilers, Conde Nast and Adobe reportedly had to go back to the drawing board to rewrite the original Flash-based app into Objective C.

Wired seems happy with the app and explained how they are taking advantage of the medium:

The tablet is our opportunity to make the Wired we always dreamed of. It has all the visual impact of paper, enhanced by interactive elements like video and animated infographics. We can offer you a history of Mars landings that lets you explore the red planet yourself. We can take you inside Trent Reznors recording studio and let you listen to snippets of his work in progress. And we can show you exactly how Pixar crafted each frame of its new movie, Toy Story 3.

Wired's video of the app (video does not appear to support iPad/iPhone):

The Wired Magazine app is presently available in the App Store for $4.99.

Bloomberg reports that Apple has made its first public statement since a series of suicides at manufacturing partner Foxconn's sprawling manufacturing facility in China began gaining public notice, expressing sadness at the events and promising that it is "independently evaluating" Foxconn's response while also continuing its facility inspections summarized in its annual supplier responsibility progress report.

"We're in direct contact with Foxconn senior management and we believe they are taking this matter very seriously," said Steve Dowling, an Apple spokesman. "A team from Apple is independently evaluating the steps they are taking to address these tragic events and we will continue our ongoing inspections of the facilities where our products are made."

Apple is "saddened and upset by the recent suicides at Foxconn," he said.

Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai, has been a key manufacturing partner for Apple for many years and notably produces the company's iPhone and iPad models for worldwide distribution.

According to today's report, there have been nine suicides and two attempted suicides at Foxconn's Chinese facility so far this year. The events come after Foxconn received considerable publicity last year when an employee who reportedly lost a next-generation prototype iPhone also committed suicide.

Foxconn's manufacturing complex in Longhua, China reportedly employs approximately 400,000 people, leading some observers to suggest that the number of suicides experienced at the facility this year is not out of the ordinary considering suicide rates in the general population in that country. Still, general concern over quality of life issues for employees who live and work at Foxconn's facility, as well as for other companies in other locations in China, has led to an outcry over whether companies are treating their employees in an ethical manner.

For its part, Foxconn denies that its facilities should be classified as sweatshops and notes that it has hired dozens of counselors and established other resources to assist its employees. The company has also moved to open its factory to the media in an attempt to provide a glimpse into working conditions on its assembly lines.

In an apparent replay of a 2006 investigation into possible price fixing in the digital music industry dominated by Apple's iTunes Store, The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice is in the early stages of another antitrust inquiry focused on digital music sales.

The Justice Department is examining Apple's tactics in the market for digital music, and its staff members have talked to major music labels and Internet music companies, according to several people briefed on the conversations.

The antitrust inquiry is in the early stages, these people say, and the conversations have revolved broadly around the dynamics of selling music online.

In particular, the inquiry is said to be looking at claims that Apple has been pressuring music labels over their participating in Amazon's "Daily Deal" program in its MP3 download store.

The report notes Apple's dominant position in the U.S. digital download market, where it holds 69% market share. In overall U.S. music sales, Apple leads the pack with 26.7% of the market, more than double its closest competitor.

The new inquiry from the Department of Justice is the latest of a number of recent incidents involving Apple and regulatory authorities. The Department of Justice last year reportedly began looking into an informal agreement between Apple and Google not to poach each others' employees, while in recent weeks Apple has been revealed to be the subject of an Adobe-requested inquiry over its ban on Flash-to-iPhone compilers and additional scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission over its newly-announced iAd mobile advertising system.

VMWare has just launched the latest update to their popular virtualization program for the Mac. VMWare Fusion allows users to run Windows applications alongside Mac OS X applications on their Intel Macs. Version 3.1 represents a major update with a focus on performance. According to VMWare, the new version is 35% faster overall than the previous 3.0 release with 3D graphics seeing up to 5X speed boosts.

Take advantage of faster than ever end-to-end performance and improved 3D graphics. Greatly improved Windows Aero performance and OpenGL 2.1 support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 delivers up to 5X better 3D graphics performance. Experience faster application launching, more seamless scrolling, quicker resume from suspend, and better overall disk performance. Additional improvements to make your experience more simple and Mac-like include support for overlapping Unity windows in Expos and Dock Expos, as well as the new USB EasyConnect feature to easily assign USB devices to your PC or Mac.

A full list of new features can be found VMWare's site. The 3.1 update is free for existing 3.0 customers. Customers with an earlier version of VMWare Fusion can upgrade for $39.99 while the price for brand new customers is $79.99. A free demo is also available.

Note: Purchases through these links financially benefit this site

Just a week after the last seed, Apple has delivered another new version of Mac OS X 10.6.4, designated Build 10F58, to developers. The build is the fifth to be seeded to developers since late April.

Like the last build, Apple lists no known issues with the new version and asks developers to focus their testing on Graphics Drivers, SMB, USB, Voice Over, and VPN. Those familiar with the new build note that Apple has not documented in the seed notes any additional changes since the previous build.

It is unknown when we can expect a public release of Mac OS X 10.6.4, as Apple's development schedule is unpredictable, although the fact that the new build offers no major documented changes and again contains no known issues suggests that Apple may be wrapping up work on the fourth maintenance update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

With Friday's launch of the iPad in nine new countries right around the corner, Apple and others are making preparations for the big day. On Apple's front, the company has announced that its retail stores in the launch countries will be opening at 8:00 AM to accommodate the expected crowds looking to get their hands on the company's tablet device. Eight of the nine countries seeing iPad launches on Friday have Apple-owned retail stores, with Spain being the only exception.

In the UK, a report from Times Online indicates that 139 retail stores owned by DSGi, including Currys, PC World, and Dixons Travel, will also be offering the iPad at launch

Meanwhile, UK wireless carrier 3 has announced two monthly recurring iPad 3G service plans priced at 7.50 (1 GB) and 15.00 (10 GB). Orange and O2 released UK data pricing earlier this month.

Numerous MacRumors readers who pre-ordered iPads in the nine new launch countries have reported over the past few days that their orders have shipped and are expected to be delivered on time.

A pair of announcements from Apple's competitors are making the rounds today, headlined by comments from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos revealing that the Kindle will remain focused on the e-reading market for now rather than branching out into multi-purpose devices like the iPad.

"The Kindle will compete with these LCD devices like the iPad by being a very focused product," Bezos said at the meeting, which was webcast. "Serious readers are going to want a purpose-built device, because it's an important activity for them."

When pressed on when consumers might be able to expect a color Kindle, Bezos noted that competitive color displays using the E Ink technology found in the Kindle are "still some ways out", indicating the company does not plan to move to LCD display technology.

Speculation regarding Amazon's future Kindle plans has been stoked by the company's release of a software development kit to allow developers to create applications for the platform and by its recent acquisition of Touchco, a company specializing in multi-touch technology.

Meanwhile, Dell today officially announced the Streak, a 5-inch mini-tablet running Google's Android operating system. A prototype of the Dell Streak was shown off at CES back in January, with the company now revealing that the device will initially launch in the United Kingdom early next month.

Dell has partnered with wireless carrier O2 to provide service for the device there, although device and data plan pricing have yet to be announced. The Streak is scheduled to come to the United States "later this summer".

The Dell Streak is a hybrid device that lives in the space between a smartphone and other larger tablets or netbooks that you might be using right now. We designed it to provide a wide range of users flexibility to do what they need with a mobile device.

With a 5-inch display carrying an 800 x 480 resolution, Dell positions the device has having a significantly better video and browsing experience than most smartphones. While the Streak may carry a physically larger display than a smartphone, those devices are increasingly coming with higher pixel densities that match or exceed the Streak, as the Motorola Droid shipped last fall with an 854 x 480 display and the next-generation iPhone's display has been rumored to offer as high as a 960 x 680 display.

The Dell Streak will also offer a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 5-megapixel rear-facing camera with autofocus and flash, front-facing camera for future video chat functionality, microSD slot, 3G/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity, and a user-replaceable battery.

DaringFireball's John Gruber appears to have slyly hinted that Apple may be planning to open the door to browser extensions on Safari at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) early next month. Gruber's comments come in the form of an apparent random musing that appears as part of a post on Google Chrome for Mac and Linux advancing out of the beta channel carrying support for thousands of extensions.

The other big thing that's missing (compared to both Chrome and Firefox) is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing.

As is common with Gruber's hints, the tidbit is phrased more as a "what if" statement than an outright declaration that we should expect such an announcement, but it seems reasonable to guess that he may have some inside knowledge of Apple's work in this area.

Browser extensions are software add-ons designed to offer new functionality beyond that offered in the basic browser package or alter the way tasks are handled or content displayed. Application programming interfaces (APIs) for browser extensions provide a means for third-party developers to create their own add-ons, opening the door to significant modification of browsers' capabilities.

Apple has in the past used WWDC has a stage for Safari-related announcements. In 2007, the company announced the first beta versions of Safari 3, extending the browser onto Windows for the first time. A year later, as part of its early ramping of developer previews of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the company began seeding beta versions of Safari 4 during WWDC. And in 2009, Apple officially brought Safari 4 out of beta at the conference.

Google today announced that it has released its first "stable" version of its Chrome browser for the Mac platform, finally deeming the application complete enough and having undergone enough testing to promote a beta version to the top level of the company's three-tier development cycle. Chrome for Linux similarly made its first stable channel appearance today.

Today, I'm happy to announce that Google Chrome for Mac is being promoted out of beta to our stable channel. We believe that it provides not only the stability, performance and polish that every Mac user expects, but also a seamless native Mac application experience that Mac users will feel instantly at home with.

The release brings a number of highly-requested features that have been testing, including access to over 4,500 extensions, full-screen mode, bookmarks management, and bookmark and preference syncing across computers.

As noted in its broader blog posting on the Chrome updates, the new release offers support for a number of new HTML5 features, including geolocation and file drag-and-drop. The company also notes that the integrated Flash Player plug-in currently available in beta versions of Chrome has not been included in the new stable channel release, but will be released alongside the full Flash Player 10.1 when that becomes available.

Fortune notes that Intel's forthcoming Google TV hardware platform to be found in Sony TVs and Blu-ray players and in a standalone set-top box from Logitech utilizes the same PowerVR SGX535 graphics processor used in the iPad.

GoogleTV is manufactured by Logitech and Sony and contains a System on Chip (SoC) designed by Intel. The iPad's SoC is an ARM design made by Apple (though manufacturing is outsourced to Samsung). However, both of these SoCs use a PowerVR graphics processor from a small UK-based company called Imagination.

The same graphics processor is also used in the iPhone 3GS and third-generation iPod touch.

Apple and Intel are both significant investors in Imagination Technologies, the company behind the PowerVR series of graphics processors, so it is not entirely surprising that both companies are tapping Imagination for their products.

Rumors and speculation, backed in part by a job posting earlier this year, have suggested that Apple is considering extending the iPhone OS to new platforms, possibly including the Apple TV. Hardware similarities between Google's television offering and Apple's mobile devices further reinforces the idea that such a transition could be relatively feasible.