MacRumors

PinchMedia announced that they had started detecting the "iPod 3,1" version number in their analytics reporting from App Store applications. The details are as follows:

- the first time an application using Pinch Analytics was run by a iPod3,1′ device occurred in late April 2009;
- applications using Pinch Analytics were run by iPod 3,1′ devices very infrequently until late May 2009, when the pace picked up slightly;
- As of this date, a few dozen distinct iPod 3,1′ devices have run around two dozen different applications using Pinch Analytics;
- The applications being run on iPod 3,1′ devices have all been the larger, more popular applications using Pinch Analytics, with hundreds of thousands to millions of unique users other than their size, the applications have little else in common.

This is not the first time we've heard of the "iPod 3,1" which is believed to represent the next generation iPod Touch. Previous references to the model have been detected in the 3.0 firmware. The currently shipping iPod touch has a model number of "2,1".

The most recent rumors have placed a camera in this 3rd generation iPod Touch which is expected to be released in September.

Apple's plans for a $1 billion server farm in North Carolina has been officially announced.

:This opportunity is fabulous, Catawba County Economic Development President Scott Millar said at a joint meeting of county commissioners and Maiden town council. We went after it very hard.

In order to attract Apple to the location, North Carolina offered a $46 million tax break over the next 10 years. Negotiations over the data center have been ongoing since September. The benefits to the local economy include 50 full time jobs, 250 indirect jobs, as well as an impact of up to 3,000 jobs in related industries.

The location will involve the construction of a 500,000 square foot building and is expected to be completed in 2010. The exact usage for the location has not been revealed. While Apple makes the bulk of its income through hardware sales, the company has increasingly been positioning itself as a services company that may require large server farms to support.

Fudzilla reports that the graphics performance of the integrated graphics in Intel's next-generation mobile processors (Arrandale) will exceed the performance of the current Intel mobile platform (Montevina).

As always, Intel codenames can be hard to follow. The Arrandale processors represent the mobile versions of Intel's Nehalem processors that were recently introduced into the Mac Pros. Intel then packages these mobile processors into "platforms" which combine a mobile chipset, mobile processor, and wireless network. The platform for Arrandale is called Calpella. Notably, Arrandale is the first mobile processor from Intel to come with integrated graphics processor built-in. As Arrandale represents the next generation mobile processor from Intel, Apple is expected to adopt it in its MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and iMacs in late 2009/early 2010.

According to Fudzilla, Intel has been "very quiet" about the performance of Arrandale's graphics core, but is telling partners that it "should end up faster" than the existing platforms. Exactly how fast that is remains up for debate. While they may be faster than Intel's previous offerings, Apple has since moved on to NVIDIA-based chipsets which offer much faster graphics performance. The news of Intel's plans, however, have taken on more importance, as it's unclear if NVIDIA will be able to offer its own chipset designs to support the Arrandale processors due to an ongoing licensing disagreement.

Apple, of course, is free to add-on discrete graphics cards to its designs, though this is typically reserved for its high-end models due to the additional cost. Meanwhile, Intel is prepping a separate project (Larrabee) that promises to boost graphics performance dramatically and is slated for launch in 2009. Apple is said to be planning on utilizing Larrabee in the future, but in exactly what combination of hardware remains unknown.

MacRumors readers "waiting for Arrandale" have been organizing in this thread.

Apple has started celebrating the first anniversary of the App Store with a special section on iTunes [link] highlighting their favorite applications and games. While the App Store officially launched on July 11th 2008, many MacRumors readers were able to access the App Store early after the 2.0 firmware was inadvertently leaked by Apple.

The special page lists several of Apple's favorite apps, though the lists seem to vary by country. Some of the favorites in the U.S. listings include (links to iTunes):

- MLB at Bat ($9.99)
- Brushes ($4.99)
- Ocarina ($0.99)
- Things ($9.99)
- Real Racing ($9.99)
- Toki Tori ($0.99)
- Eliss ($0.99)

The App Store has come along way in a year with over 56,000 apps now available in the App Store. While all of Apple's choices have their merits, the last game listed above, Eliss, in particular is an iPhone original game that makes use of iPhone specific multi-touch features to allow you to pinch and push together objects (video) to create the right size. The remainder of the lists contain more well know games such as Sims and Fieldrunners as well as useful web-companion applications such as Facebook and eBay Mobile.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a preliminary inquiry into potential anti-competitive practices by the country's largest wireless carriers. One of the major issues being investigated is the existence of handset exclusivity contracts such as that between AT&T and Apple for the iPhone.

Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people. In recent weeks lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T's exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone in the U.S.

AT&T and Verizon are expected to be the prime targets of the inquiry, as the two companies control a combined 60% of the U.S. wireless market and an additional 90 million landline subscribers.

The inquiry comes several weeks after several U.S. Senators issued a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to investigate the exclusivity arrangements between handset manufacturers and wireless carriers.

In a brief note, DigiTimes reports that Taiwanese firm Foxlink is currently developing micro projectors for use in mobile phones, with Apple being one of the companies expected to launch devices with built-in projectors later this year. The projectors would allow the iPhone and possibly the iPod touch to directly project video output onto an external surface.

International brand vendors, including Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Apple, reportedly all plan to launch handsets with built-in micro projectors by the end of this year, indicated the sources, adding that Foxlink is likely to benefit from the emerging trend due to its strong business relationships with Nokia and Apple.

Foxlink has long been a supplier for the iPhone and iPod, providing the proprietary connectors used in many of Apple's devices.

Micro projectors are just making their way into phones, although the resulting products are relatively bulky by mobile phone standards. Introduction of a new iPhone containing a micro projector by the end of this year would also be a significant deviation from Apple's usual product cycle that has seen the company release new iPhone models on a yearly basis each June or July.

TechCrunch now claims that they too have heard evidence that the next generation iPod Touch will have a built in video camera.

One of our sources in Asia say that Apple has placed an order for a massive number of camera modules of the type that they include in the iPhone. These are inexpensive cameras, in the $10 range. And the size of the order, our source says, means they can only be used for one thing - the iPods.

The rumor that the iPod Touch would get a camera first appeared in May from HardMac. The rumor, however, now makes more sense since the introduction of the iPhone 3GS which features video as a major new feature. When Apple does update the new iPod Touch, it seems likely that they will also upgrade the device to the more powerful processor and graphics chips that were introduced in the iPhone 3GS.

Meanwhile, TheAppleLounge points to another 3rd generation iPod Touch case design at DealExtreme which again shows off a centrally mounted camera hole:

The next generation iPod Touch is expected to be released in September.

Two new images of cases for the upcoming iPod Touch and iPod Nano have begun circulating. The new cases suggest that the next generation Touch and Nano will indeed include a camera.

The first image from Uxsight is listed as a "New iPod Touch 3G" with "hold for a camera in the back" and comes with the following image:

The second case design was posted on DealExtreme and shows an "iPod Nano 5" case with another hole in the back that is presumably again for the camera:

The reliability of these early case designs has been mixed in the past. While they have been accurate with the iPhone 3G design, they were also responsible for many of the iPhone Nano claims which never came true.

Still, the design of the iPod Nano's camera location is consistent with sketches provided by iLounge in May. iLounge also reported that the iPod Nano would be getting a camera with its next revision.

Reports of overheating and discoloration on the new white iPhone 3GS have been circulating over the past week or so, but a new report [Google translation] from frenchiPhone (via Hardmac) claims that the discoloration is due to contact with some third-party cases and not associated with overheating. The discoloration reportedly can be removed by wiping the back of the iPhone with alcohol.

- After numerous calls to Apple technical service and maintenance of contact with a level 3 (engineer) the problem seems to come not from a hot 3GS but contact with some covers! This was evident by ourselves on a device with a small sticker (a warning not to listen to music too loud) remained stuck, part of the hull below remained white.

- A simple solution to the problem is to clean the back of the iPhone with alcohol, tested by myself I can confirm that it works and reassure you it is safe for your precious

No details have yet been revealed on which third-party cases may be responsible for the discoloration.

FixYourThinking.com (via Cult of Mac) reports on a "sketch-looking" non functional white iPhone that is being sold on eBay as a prototype iPhone 3GS.

The seller says theres a problem with restoring the software: This device is not eligible for the requested build, iTunes says when he tries to restore it.

The seller, vofffka, of Ocean City, New Jersey, says an Apple genius at his local retail store verified the iPhone as an Apple product, but cant service it, because its never been sold.

For those curious, the additional photos of the device's casing show that it does not have the rumored matte case that was thought to be destined for the iPhone 3GS. We can't be sure the auction is real, but prototype Apple devices have been known to find their way onto eBay. A prototype of the original iPhone was also sold on eBay.

Update: Based on the model numbers inscribed on the case, it seems at best this is a prototype 3G, not 3GS.

Fudzilla has heard from industry sources close to NVIDIA that a recent report claiming that Apple will be dropping NVIDIA-based designs for future Macs is false and that the companies' relationship is "just fine."

Apple is still buying Nvidia notebook chips and chipsets and nothing has changed in the last few weeks. Nvidia and Jensen [NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang] himself have a lot of respect for fuss maker Apple, and therefore this relationship has top priority for Nvidia people.

According to the earlier report, Apple's dissatisfaction with manufacturing defects in NVIDIA's chipsets for a number of MacBook Pros had led Apple to drop NVIDIA for future Macs.

The future of NVIDIA's chipsets in Macs remains in question, however, as Intel and NVIDIA have filed lawsuits against each other over licensing of Intel's Nehalem architecture, which is expected to make its way into Apple's mobile line later this year.

Last week, Nowhere Else began receiving reports [Google translation] from owners of the white iPhone 3GS that had experience significant overheating, leading in some cases to distinct pink or brown discoloration on the iPhone's back case. A later report from Wired suggested that faulty battery cells may be the cause of the overheating and could lead to a significant recall of the affected iPhones.

A number of reports today have pointed to an Apple support document providing advice on how to keep iPhones from overheating as an acknowledgement of the problem on the part of Apple. As Macworld points out, however, the document was originally posted many months ago, and was recently updated only to add references to the iPhone 3GS to the existing ones for the iPhone 3G. According to the Apple document, an overheating iPhone will display a warning screen and become inoperable with the exception of allowing emergency phone calls to be made. Apple also describes several situations that can lead to activation of the temperature warning screen.

- Leaving the device in a car on a hot day.
- Leaving it in direct sunlight for extended amounts of time.
- Using certain applications in hot conditions or direct sunlight for long periods of time, such as GPS tracking in a car on a sunny day or listening to music while in direct sunlight.

While heat is definitely a concern for any electronic device, particularly ones like the iPhone that pack a significant amount of power into a small space, Apple assures its iPhone 3G and 3GS customers that the devices do meet international safety standards for such devices. At this time, Apple has made no official response to these latest reports of overheating and discoloration on the new iPhone 3GS.