MacRumors

The New York Times reports that former Flextronics executive Walter Shimoon has pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of security fraud over his role in leaking insider information on Apple's iPhone and iPad plans to research firm Primary Global Research.

Flextronics manufactured chargers for the iPhone, giving Shimoon access to nonpublic information on Apple's internal sales forecasts for the device, which he then shared with Primary Global Research in his role as a "consultant" for the firm.

In addition to sales figures, prosecutors said Mr. Shimoon also tipped a cooperating witness to Apple's plans to develop a new iPhone. But later in the call, according to a transcript from prosecutors, Mr. Shimoon leaked word of an even more secret product in development, the iPad, which at the time was referred to as K48.

"So, you can get, at Apple you can get fired for saying K48...outside of a, you know, outside of a meeting that doesn't have K48 people in it," he told a cooperating witness, according to taped calls. "That's how crazy they are about it."

Primary Global Research has been the target of a federal investigation into "expert networks" that solicit employees offering insider information and provide that nonpublic information to Wall Street money managers to facilitate insider trading. A number of arrests have been made over the firm's collection of insider information on Apple, Dell, AMD, and other tech companies.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is indeed preparing a new iPhone for a launch during the third quarter of this year, with an initial production target of 25 million units through the end of the year.

"Apple's sales estimates of the new iPhone is quite aggressive. It told us to prepare to help the company meet its goal of 25 million units by the end of the year," said another person at one of Apple's suppliers. "The initial production volume will be a few million units... we were told to ship the components to assembler Hon Hai in August."

Countering claims that the next-generation iPhone will be nearly identical in appearance to the iPhone 4, the Journal's sources indicate that the new device will be "thinner and lighter" and that Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn/Hon Hai is having difficulties with yield rate on the new device due to it being "complicated and difficult to assemble."

Two of the people, however, cautioned that shipments of the new iPhone could be delayed if Hon Hai can't improve its yield rate as the new iPhone is "complicated and difficult to assemble."

Reports over the past few months have been pointing to a September release for the next-generation iPhone, which has been said to carry Apple's A5 processor found in the iPad 2, an 8-megapixel rear camera, and a baseband chip from Qualcomm to support both GSM and CDMA networks.

The JailbreakMe.com website has returned to offer an entirely browser-based jailbreak tool for iOS devices including (for the first time) the iPad 2.

Jailbreaking is a process by which Apple's iOS devices can be opened up to allow for installation of non-Apple-approved applications, customizations and file access. Apple officially disapproves of jailbreaking and has even warned users that these unauthorized modifications can cause "instability, disruption of services, and compromised security." Still, a large and active jailbreak community has emerged over the years since the iPhone's introduction.

A Dev-Team blog post outlines the supported configurations for JailbreakMe:

- iPad1: 4.3 through 4.3.3
- iPad2: 4.3.3
- iPhoneGS: 4.3 through 4.3.3
- iPhone4: 4.3 through 4.3.3
- iPhone4-CDMA: 4.2.6 through 4.2.8
- iPod touch 3g: 4.3, 4.3.2, 4.3.3
- iPod touch 4g: 4.3 through 4.3.3

The JailbreakMe site is unique in that it allows users to jailbreak their devices entirely using the Safari browser and without downloading any additional software. The site itself also offers a Frequently Asked Questions page that reassures users that the jailbreaking process is fully reversible with a simple restore and that there is no risk for any permanent damage. Still, we'd recommend users proceed with caution. The installation process involves simply visiting JailbreakMe from a supported iOS device and tapping "Free/Install" button to initiate the jailbreak.

The browser-based jailbreak process again exploits a flaw in Apple's PDF renderer that allows the tool to open up the device. Just like the previous vulnerability, Apple is expected to patch this one shortly. This same vulnerability could be exploited by malicious parties as well. The programmers of JailbreakMe are also providing a patch to close the security hole behind them for jailbroken users. Users of non-jailbroken iOS devices, however, will have to wait until Apple provides a fix.

More information and answers can be found in our respective "Hacks" forums for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

The authorized biography of Steve Jobs, announced earlier this year and scheduled to be released by Simon & Schuster in March 2012, has a new title.

According to Fortune, the old title, iSteve: The Book of Jobs, chosen by the publisher's publicity department, wasn't a favorite around author Walter Isaacson's household. Isaacson has succeeded in getting a new title approved:

(Photo by Flickr/Joi Ito)

Even before the iPhone launch on Verizon earlier this year, the carrier had announced that the unlimited data plans being offered with the device were a temporary program, set to be discontinued as soon as this summer in favor of tiered data packages.

Just two weeks ago, Verizon confirmed that it would be dropping the unlimited data plan in July, with leaks pinpointing the new data plans and a debut date of July 7th. Existing unlimited plan subscribers were said to be grandfathered in and thus able to keep their current plans after that date, even after upgrading their devices.

FierceWireless now reports that Verizon has confirmed the new offerings as previously leaked, with the new plans indeed set to go into effect this Thursday, July 7th.

Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney told FierceWireless that new smartphone customers will choose from one of four options: $10 for 75 MB per month, $30 for 2 GB, $50 for 5 GB or $80 for 10 GB. There will be an overage charge of $10 per GB of data. AT&T Mobility charges $15 per month for 200 MB and $25 per month for 2 GB.

Verizon has also confirmed that existing customers on the unlimited plan who upgrade their devices on or after July 7th will be able to keep their data plans.

Both Verizon and AT&T have confirmed that they are also looking into rolling out shared data plans across devices, following the lead of other international carriers already offering the plans. Under those plans, customers can draw from a single data allotment using multiple devices such as an iPhone and iPad, but Verizon and AT&T have yet to announce specific timeframes for rolling out such plans.

Update: FierceWireless has edited its story to clarify that the $10 plan offering 75 MB of data is available for feature phones and not for smartphones such as the iPhone.

As HP has sought to take on Apple in the tablet market with its webOS-powered TouchPad tablet, the PC giant has been dinged with a number of lukewarm reviews that suggest a fair amount of potential for the platform and device but with only a mediocre initial implementation.

Former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, who led the development of the original iPod before leaving the company in 2006 to head up Palm's webOS effort and eventually moving to HP with that company's acquisition of Palm, has reportedly weighed in with a message to HP employees regarding the reviews, published by PreCentral. In the note, Rubinstein makes an interesting comparison between the TouchPad and the original Mac OS X as it debuted ten years ago.

We still have work to do to make webOS the platform we know it can be, but remember...it's a marathon, not a sprint.

In that spirit, Richard Kerris, head of worldwide developer relations for webOS, reminded me yesterday of the first reviews for a product introduced a little over ten years ago:

"...overall the software is sluggish"
"...there are no quality apps to use, so it won't last"
"...it's just not making sense...."

It's hard to believe these statements described MacOS X - a platform that would go on to change the landscape of Silicon Valley in ways that no one could have imagined.

Rubinstein is naturally optimistic in encouraging his staff to keep pressing forward to help webOS and its associated hardware meet expectations, and his unique perspective in having played key roles at Apple, Palm, and now HP enables him to see the parallels and offer conviction that webOS can overcome its challenges.

Palm's webOS has received a fair amount of praise for some aspects of its functionality, but the platform has yet to be a hit with consumers. But with HP putting significant weight behind the platform and moving it into the tablet space while considering licensing it to other major manufacturers, some have seen webOS as a strong contender to become a potential third major smartphone and tablet operating system for the future behind iOS and Android.

Last week, DigiTimes reported that Apple would be targeting shipments of 12-14 million iPad 2s during the third quarter of 2011, and a new report backs up that conclusion with claims that Apple's touch panel suppliers pushed out five million units in June and plan to produce another five million in July.

Five million touch sensors for the iPad 2 will be shipped in July, according to sources with Apple's supply chain.

Shipments in June were also five million, with TPK Holding and Wintek supplying 1.4-1.6 million units each and the remaining by Cando, Sintek Photronic and Chimei Innolux (CMI), the sources indicated.

Display production has been one bottleneck for Apple in meeting iPad customer demand, even dating back to the original iPad. Wintek and TPK were Apple's initial suppliers for the touch components, but the company was forced to add additional suppliers such as Cando in order to meet its production goals.

Apple has been said to be soaking up 60% of the global supply of touch panels for 2011, putting pressure on smaller manufacturers who are having a difficult time securing components for their own devices.

The sources pointed out that as the iPhone 5, which does not seem to have any major update from iPhone 4, is already set for shipment in September, they are already started supplying components to Pegatron with Pegatron's plants in Shanghai, China also recently started hiring for manpower.

DigiTimes is a frequent source for production and order rumors from Apple. They had previously predicted that Pegatron received an order for CDMA iPhone 4s for the fourth quarter of 2010. The actual Verizon (CDMA) iPhone was announced in January of 2011 and shipped the following month.

Apple skipped the usual yearly upgrade cycle this year and made no iPhone hardware announcements at this year's WWDC. Instead, the iPhone 5 has been rumored to be launching in September.

Mac Otakara claims that Apple will be adopting a new Toggle DDR 2.0 type of NAND Flash Memory for the basis of the new MacBook Air's SSD drive. The Japanese website cites an "Asian electronics component person" as the source of the information. (via AppleInsider)

Current SSD device Blade X-gale supporting SATA 2.6 will be abolished and new 19nm flash memory will be packaged into smaller chip and will be soldered on base circuit directly.

The move would be a rapid departure by Apple from the current SSD stick format that was just introduced in last year's MacBook Air. Instead of a replaceable part, the new Flash chips would be soldered directly onto the MacBook Air's motherboard.

The new format supports speeds of 400Mb/s and in conjunction with a new ONFI 3.0 standard will allow future controllers to run faster or similar performance to today's SSDs with "half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings".

Samsung also touted another major feature of this new technology last year, claiming that a low-power mode could extend a notebook's battery life for an hour or more.

The resulting power throttling capability enables the drive’s high-performance levels without any increase in power consumption over a 40nm-class 16Gb NAND-based 256GB SSD. The controller also analyzes frequency of use and preferences of the user to automatically activate a low-power mode that can extend a notebook’s battery life for an hour or more.

Given the market positioning of the MacBook Air, the potential battery improvements and cost savings may be driving Apple's adoption of this technology more than the performance advantages.