MacRumors

The Android 2.0 platform was officially unveiled today, introducing a number of enhancements to the open source smartphone operating system. Among the notable new features:

- Enhanced contact synchronization options and a "Quick Contact" widget to allow convenient integration of contact access into applications
- Combined inbox to allow viewing of messages from multiple e-mail accounts simultaneously
- Support for Microsoft Exchange
- Increased support for camera features, including flash
- Improved virtual keyboard layout and performance
- New browser features, including double-tap-to-zoom, thumbnailed bookmarks, and support for HTML5
- Minor tweaks to calendar functions, including tools for inviting and viewing the status of guests for events

A video preview of Android 2.0 has also been released.

Android 2.0 has been featured as the operating system behind the Motorola Droid being touted by Verizon for its capabilities that in some respects rival or surpass the iPhone's.

Gizmodo reports that it in its media briefing prior to last week's introduction of new hardware, Apple senior vice president Phil Schiller noted that the company has completed its holiday hardware lineup and will not be introducing any more new products before then.

This time we got official word in the last one-on-one media briefing from Apple, in which they told Brian about the new iMac 27, the new Unibody MacBook, and new Magic Mouse. We were talking casually about about it, and he mentioned something that Phil Schiller told him: There are not going to be any new Apple products this year. Yes, that's what my favorite Apple VP said.

After the initial report, Apple contacted Gizmodo to clarify that Schiller's exact comment was "The holiday lineup is set."

Apple made a similar comment in early November last year, squashing rumors of hardware revisions circulating at that time.

No specific near-frame hardware rumors have been circulating at this time, although the recent discovery of unreleased MacBook Pro models listed in a configuration file in the latest Mac OS X 10.6.2 build has sparked some minor speculation of a possible refresh. Mysterious comments from Apple executives at the company's earnings conference call last week regarding unusual air freight costs in the current quarter had also generated some discussion about possible major product introductions beyond the revised iMac, MacBook, and Mac mini models released the following day.

Hardmac reports that Apple is preparing to launch an updated version of Aperture, branded as "Aperture X", at some point in the relatively near future. The company is reportedly shooting for a release by the end of November, although it may slip into December.

According to our sources, with Aperture X, Apple decided to align its name with Mac OS X, and should release this new evolution of its Pro-oriented photo editing application at the end of November and fore sure before year's end. We did not receive any additional details about this new version, but it seems that it will be able to benefit from Snow Leopard as well as be more multi-core aware.

Last week, French site MacGeneration discovered [Google translation] an Amazon book listing (since removed) for an "Aperture X" guide scheduled for release in May 2010. Book listings are notorious, however, for including "placeholder" items for future planned but uncompleted books carrying estimated or guessed release dates, and thus have not been reliable indicators of upcoming product releases.

Aperture's primary competitor in the field of photo management and post-production comes from Adobe, which just last week launched an early beta version of its Photoshop Lightroom 3 software package.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Apple has approached several Australian media companies about offering their content on the company's much-rumored tablet computer. Understandably, none of the companies have been willing to speak about the device on the record, offering few details about the substance of the conversations.

Apple has sent specifications of the device to Australian media companies in an effort to sound out whether they would be interested in delivering their content to the tablet. None would speak about the device on the record.

The report mirrors rumors late last month indicating that Apple had similarly approached The New York Times about the new device and its plans to redefine print media with it. Just yesterday, comments from New York Times executive editor Bill Keller surfaced that suggested he may in fact have some inside knowledge of the device.

DigiTimes reports on claims from several sources indicating that Apple has recently increased manufacturing orders for the iPhone 3GS by up to 20%, suggesting continued strong demand for the device.

Apple has increased fourth-quarter orders for the iPhone 3GS to its Taiwan-based manufacturing partners Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) and Primax Electronics by 17-20%, noted the sources.

OmniVision, manufacturer of of the image sensors used in the iPhone's camera, has also reportedly notified its customers of tight supply through late November, ostensibly due to Apple's supply requirements.

Apple noted during its earnings conference call last week that it had experienced shortages of the iPhone 3GS throughout the quarter due to unexpected demand, confirming observations in a number of markets over the past few months. The company did note, however, that supplies had come back into balance with demand in most countries by late September or early October.

ifoAppleStore reports that Apple has agreed to spend nearly $4 million to refurbish a run-down subway station adjacent to its future retail store on Halsted Street in Chicago. In exchange, Apple will receive from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) a free long-term lease on an unused bus turnaround dividing the subway station from the Apple store that will allow the company to turn the space into a landscaped public park.

Over the years, the CTA's building has fallen behind on maintenance. The paint is peeling, the windows are filthy, an electrical sign has dangling wires, and metal framing is rusting. Inside the building and underground, the station features white tile walls and fluorescent lighting, with hallways leading to two narrow platforms underground.

In the agreement approved at an August 19th Chicago Transit Board meeting, in exchange for the improvements the CTA will lease the bus turnaround to Apple at no cost for 10 years, with options on four, five-year extensions. The CTA will also give Apple "first rights of refusal" for naming the station and placing advertising within the station, if the CTA later decides to offer those rights.

Apple will reportedly spend up to $1,789,000 on its own refurbishment of the exterior of the station building, while it will pay the CTA up to $2,108,000 to perform upgrades on the station's interior. The timeline calls for the work to be completed by September 30, 2010, suggesting an approximate opening date for the store, for which structural steel has already been erected.

Verizon reported its quarterly earnings before the markets opened for trading today, showing increased revenue and subscribers, but decreased profit as the company worked to complete integration of former wireless competitor Alltel amid uncertain economic conditions. As noted by Digital Daily Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg claimed in the company's earnings conference call that bringing the iPhone to Verizon is entirely Apple's call and that the carrier would be happy to have it on its network.

During a conference call to discuss Verizon's third quarter earnings, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said bringing the iPhone to Verizon is entirely Apple's call. "This is a decision that is exclusively in Apple's court," he said. "Obviously we would be interested if they thought it would make sense for them to have us as a partner. And so we will leave it with them on that score. . . We want to broaden the base of choice for customers, and hopefully along the way, Apple, as well as others, will decide to jump on the bandwagon."

Verizon has recently begun targeting both the iPhone and AT&T in recent advertising campaigns, leading to speculation that the carrier does not foresee an introduction of the iPhone on its network and is thus willing to burn bridges with Apple in the new ads.

Offering the iPhone on Verizon's current network would require hardware modifications, given the difference in technology standards used by Verizon compared to all other carriers Apple has partnered with to offer the iPhone. Seidenberg previously noted that the iPhone would be more likely to come to Verizon next year when the company begins rolling out its 4G LTE wireless network, which will utilize the same standards as AT&T and other global wireless companies. Verizon expects to roll out LTE to 25-30 markets by the end of 2010, with full deployment expected to take until 2013.

A report from Gawker about recent comments by The New York Times executive editor Bill Keller regarding Apple's tablet project has been gaining a significant amount of attention today. While Apple's tablet has been rumored for several years and evidence has continued to mount that a release is likely in the relatively near future, public comments from those likely to have inside knowledge of the device have understandably been scarce.

Keller's brief comment came at an October 16th "all hands" meeting for the newspaper's digital staff at which Keller detailed a number of issues the paper is focusing on in the next few months. Among the issues mentioned by Keller was delivery of content to mobile devices, including the "impending Apple slate".

Sixth, we need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. I'm hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP, or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that.

The Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University has published comments on and a video of the speech, which was reportedly meant to be an "off the record" presentation. Keller's comment on Apple's tablet occurs approximately 8:15 into the video.

A late September report indicated that The New York Times was approached by Apple in June to discuss translating its content for a "new device" as part of the company's efforts to transform print media through the introduction of the new tablet. Provided that the report is true, it is likely that Keller has received information about Apple's tablet, and his recent comment provides public confirmation that, to the extent that he has been informed, the project is still in the works.

Applesfera reports on the discovery of support files for unreleased MacBook Pros in the latest Mac OS X 10.6.2 developer builds. The 10C531 build was first seeded to developers just a few days ago, and appears to include references to MacBook Pro 6,1 and MacBook Pro 6,2 models that have not yet been released.

Meanwhile, the latest shipping MacBook Pros carry a 5,x model number designation. The MacBook Pros were last updated in June 2009 and have not been rumored to see any imminent updates. Previous reports, however, have suggested that suitable Nehalem (Core i7) based processors could be feasible for MacBook Pros by late 2009/early 2010.

Most expect that Apple's next major notebook update will include these next-generation processors that have already found their way into the Mac Pro and iMac product lines. Traditionally, the MacBook Pro and iMac lines have been very closely linked in capabilities due to their similarly slim designs.

A notice posted today on Apple's ZFS open source project page indicates that the project has been terminated.

The ZFS project has been discontinued. The mailing list and repository will also be removed shortly.

ZFS is an advanced file system developed by Sun that had been ported to Mac OS X and released as an open source project on Apple's Mac OS Forge collaboration site in 2007. ZFS had been rumored to become the default file system for Mac OS X Leopard, but ultimately appeared with only limited read-only capabilities.

Apple's continued interest in ZFS was indicated by inclusion of the technology in its early product description pages for Snow Leopard Server, although the information was subsequently removed from Apple's site and support for ZFS was not included in either Snow Leopard or Snow Leopard Server upon release.

Several sources later indicated that the lack of ZFS support in Snow Leopard was due to licensing issues with Sun, leaving the future of ZFS uncertain, although Sun's pending acquisition by Oracle left open the possibility that the issue could be revisited in the future.

The apparent cessation of Apple's support for the ZFS open source project, however, suggests that the company may have given up hope of achieving satisfactory licensing terms for the technology and redirected its resources elsewhere.

Apple yesterday also posted a new job listing for a file system engineer. While the description includes duties related to "maintenance of existing file systems", it also specifies work in the "design, implementation and support of future file system technologies", suggesting that the company may be expanding its in-house team to develop its own file system technologies rather than pursuing ZFS.

Amazon yesterday announced the launch of "Kindle for PC", a free Windows application that will allow users to read e-Books purchased from the company's Kindle Store on their computers. While the news release made no mention of a Mac version of the application, Fast Company reports (via 9 to 5 Mac) that a Mac version is in fact under development.

An Amazon spokesperson told me late Thursday: "Yes, we are working on a Kindle app for Mac."

Amazon has worked to quickly broaden access to its Kindle Store content beyond the original Kindle hardware launched in late 2007. In addition to several new models released since that time, the company has pushed Kindle Store content to the iPhone with the release of a free iPhone application and an iPhone-optimized Kindle Store accessible through Safari. Earlier this month, Amazon also announced an international version of the Kindle hardware that allows global access to Kindle Store content.

Apple has reportedly been looking to pursue e-Book-like capabilities with its much-rumored tablet device, but is rumored to be taking things even further in an attempt to redefine print media by creating interactive experiences for users.

Earlier this week, Verizon began an advertising campaign for the forthcoming Motorola Droid, pitting the smartphone against Apple's iPhone. At the time, Boy Genius Report offered a brief report of its hands-on impressions of the device, calling it "the Android device to beat, and easily the most impressive."

Detailed specs on the Droid, however, were unavailable until product pages for the device apparently appeared prematurely on Motorola's site yesterday. According to the pages, the Droid offers the following notable features:

- 3.7-inch, 854 x 480 touch screen with a pixel density of 267 pixels per inch (ppi), compared to the 3.5-inch, 480 x 320 screen at 163 ppi on the iPhone 3GS.
- Overall device dimensions of 2.4 x 4.5 x 0.5 in, only marginally thicker than the iPhone's 2.4 x 4.5 x 0.48 in. The Droid weighs in at 6 ounces, slightly heftier than the iPhone 3GS at 4.8 ounces.
- 5-megapixel digital camera with image stabilization, autofocus, and dual LED flash, compared to the 3-megapixel autofocus camera found on the iPhone 3GS.
- WebKit-based browser compatible with HTML5 and with support for Flash 10 planned for 2010.
- 16 GB microSD card included, with support for up to 32 GB cards.

Boy Genius Report has also promised a full preview of the Droid for sometime today.

Update: Boy Genius Report has posted its Droid preview, which is full of details regarding the user experience. Overall, BGR is very impressed with the device.

The Motorola CLIQ was a pretty big disappointment for me personally, but oh man does the Droid make up for it. Sure, there's a little hype sprinkled in because this is the first Android 2.0 device I've had the pleasure of using, but once you move past the initial "wow" factor, the Droid really delivers.

BGR hesitates to pit the Droid directly against the iPhone, noting that the only true competitor for the iPhone is the next iPhone, but the Droid will certainly stand out in a growing smartphone segment with room for a number of significant players.

So will the Motorola Droid be successful? Absolutely, we think. It will eat in to BlackBerry sales, Windows Mobile sales, and positively murder any lingering Palm Pre sales. It's that good. Did you notice how Verizon still hasn't announced the BlackBerry Storm2?

We really enjoyed using the Motorola Droid and think you're going to love it. It's not as straight forward as an iPhone and a little more involved than a BlackBerry, but if you're up for the challenge, so is the Droid.

Following through on claims that Apple would launch new advertising targeting Windows 7, the company today posted three new "Get a Mac" commercials to its ad gallery and began airing them on television.

The first commercial, entitled Broken Promises, features PC announcing the availability of Windows 7, stating that it's "not gonna have any of the problems my last operating system had." The ad then progresses through a series of flashbacks of PC, wearing the fashion of the respective dates, making similar promises at the release of previous Windows versions.

The second ad, entitled Teeter Tottering, features a Windows XP user named Annie who is moving to a Mac for a "fresh start" with a computer line-up rated #1 in consumer satisfaction. As part of Annie's rationale for making the switch to Mac, she notes "I could stick with what I know, but what I know is pain and frustration."

The third commercial, entitled PC News, features PC as a news anchor speaking to an in-the-field reporter at the Windows 7 launch. The reporter interviews several excited customers who are switching to Mac, noting "If we have to move all of our stuff, why not move to the computer that's number one in customer satisfaction?"