MacRumors

While today's big news has been the release of iPhone OS 3.0, AT&T today also announced that it is expanding the eligibility window for determining which customers are eligible for upgrade pricing on the iPhone 3G S. Customers who previously would not have become upgrade eligible until July, August or September of this year will instead qualify for AT&T's lowest upgrade pricing as of tomorrow, making them eligible to purchase the iPhone 3G S at the $199 (16 GB) or $299 (32 GB) price point at launch. Affected customers will save $200 on the purchase of a new iPhone 3G S as a result.

Importantly, we want our customers to better understand our wireless device upgrade program. Like most U.S. carriers, we offer a variety of phones that we sell below our actual cost when customers agree to sign service agreements. In general, the more a customer spends with us, the quicker they become eligible for a price break on a new device. For example, iPhone customers who spend more than $99 a month per line with us generally are eligible for an upgrade between 12 and 18 months into their contract.

We also currently offer early upgrade pricing only for iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G.

All of that said, we've been listening to our customers. And since many of our iPhone 3G customers are early adopters and literally weeks shy of being upgrade eligible due to iPhone 3G S launching 11 months after iPhone 3G, we're extending the window of upgrade eligibility for a limited time.

We're now pleased to offer our iPhone 3G customers who are upgrade eligible in July, August or September 2009 our best upgrade pricing, beginning Thursday, June 18.

Newly-eligible customers who have already pre-ordered the iPhone 3G S at the higher prices will receive credits for the difference in price. Users can check their upgrade eligibility status by visiting AT&T's iPhone page, calling *NEW# (*639#) on their AT&T device, or visiting any AT&T store.

Reminder: The new pricing will not appear in the eligibility tools listed until Thursday, June 18th.

Apple today released the long-awaited iPhone OS 3.0 (Build 7A341) for both iPhone and iPod touch via iTunes. Users should sync their devices with iTunes and check for updates in order to access the new version. iPod Touch owners will need to purchase the new firmware for $9.95 while iPhone owners will get the firmware downloaded automatically.

While many of the features of the new operating system have been detailed over the past few months, a large list of features are detailed by Apple:

- Copy and Paste: Quickly and easily cut, copy, and paste text from application to application. Select entire blocks of web text with a tap. Copy and paste images from the web, too.
- Landscape Keyboard: Want more room to type? Rotate iPhone to landscape to use a larger keyboard in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari.
- Spotlight Search: Find what youre looking for across your iPhone, all from one place. Spotlight searches all of your contacts, email, calendars, and notes, as well as everything in your iPod.
- Safari: Enjoy faster performance, autofill user names and passwords, and more.
- Auto Wi-Fi login: Log in to a Wi-Fi hotspot and iPhone automatically logs you in when you connect again
- Find My iPhone: Find your iPhone if you lose it and protect your privacy with Remote Wipe.
- Shake to Shuffle: Give iPhone a shake and it shuffles to a different song in your music library.

Other sites have provided detailed walkthroughs of the many new features, including some handy tips:

- Mac|Life: 16 Tips to Become an INSTANT iPhone OS 3.0 Power-User

Select Text then delete it

What happens is you hold the delete button, and it starts removing offending characters -- and then it goes on to removing whole words. Next thing you know, you've deleted too many words, and you have to start over. To avoid this, use tap and hold to show the Select|Select All pop-up. Select what you need deleted, hit the delete button and -- poof! -- you've gotten rid of the offending text without trying to judge the speed of the delete button.

- Fortune: The 4 new iPhone features I use most

Safari Autofill

Any browser worth its salt ought to be smart enough to remember the name and password you use on the sites you go to most often. I dont know why this wasnt available on the iPhone from Day 1, but now that it is I find myself visiting sites I had avoided because I was either too lazy to enter the password or too absent-minded to remember it.

- iSmashPhone: How To Use The Best 40 Features of iPhone 3.0

Undo

No matter what application you are using, you can undo typing by shaking your iPhone. If you want your text back, simply shake again. If you had something else written before you started writing the sentence you chose to undo, it reverts back to that. If this was the first thing you wrote, it simply erases it.

- iLounge: Apple iPhone 3.0

Snappier General Performance, with Offsets

Though its hard to quantify, iPhone OS 3.0 feels a little more responsive than its predecessors when it comes to certain tasks: snapping pictures, opening Safari pages, and loading certain apps all seemed to be a little faster, though the specific improvements were sometimes difficult to quantify. Some of the web pages we loaded over Wi-Fi on a 2.2.1 iPhone loaded just as quickly as on a 3.0 iPhone 3G; others loaded faster on the new iPhone. iPhone OS 3.0 is a little quicker at taking still images than before, and appears to be a little better at producing sharpened, higher-contrast snaps of black text on white paper. Lens differences or software, were not 100% certain, but we think its the software.

The first YouTube videos claimed to have been recorded by the iPhone 3G S have started to appear. The quality of the recording is, of course, also affected by YouTube's compression but should give a feel for what the device is capable of in casual usage:

A second video has also appeared from the same uploader though this video appears to have been edited with music and multiple clips cut together. The aspect ratio is also different, raising some questions about the actual source of the video.

Meanwhile, iFun.de also posts some comparison shots between the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3G S cameras. The images depict the iPhone box in close-up, accentuating the improvement with the new iPhone's auto-focus camera. The example seems to show a particularly poor quality example of an iPhone 3G photo, but still shows a notable improvement in the 3G S image quality.

Several readers are reporting that their potentially early iPhone 3G S shipments are being intentionally delayed by Apple. The actual delivery date may still be early (the 18th) but the information is continuing to change. While originally scheduled for delivery as early as Wednesday, June 17th, many individuals have noted the following message appear on their shipment tracking:

The receiver requested a hold for a future delivery date. UPS will attempt delivery on date requested

Apple has done similar things in the past to time shipments with official launch dates.

Daring Fireball highlights a new support document from Apple addressing the issue of "unsupported third-party digital media players" syncing with iTunes. The brief document warns users that Apple does not test its software with such devices and thus their ability to sync with iTunes may be broken by future software updates.

Apple is aware that some third-parties claim that their digital media players are able to sync with Apple software. However, Apple does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players and, because software changes over time, newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with non-Apple digital media players.

The new Palm Pre has received a significant amount of attention for its ability to sync with iTunes despite the lack of support from Apple. The Pre has been discovered to accomplish this feat by emulating an iPod by transmitting Apple-specific vendor and product IDs to iTunes.

One MacRumors reader has discovered an iTunes page that appears to offer the iPhone OS 3.0 software update for iPod touch for download for $9.95. While iTunes permits the transaction to go through and prompts the user to connect their iPod touch to check for updates, iTunes subsequently reports that iPhone OS 2.2.1 is still the current version and does not download iPhone OS 3.0.

Interestingly, the Purchase History displays the purchase as "iPhone 2.0 Software Update" despite the purchase screen having clearly advertised iPhone OS 3.0.

iPhone OS 3.0 for iPhone and iPod touch is scheduled to launch tomorrow (June 17th) in most of the world. While Apple initially announced that iPhone OS 3.0 would be available on that date for "all customers", within the past few days Apple has updated its iPhone software update pages for Australia, New Zealand, and a number of East Asian countries to reflect that iPhone OS 3.0 will not launch in those countries until the 18th. Differences in time zones, however, mean that those countries may still receive the new operating system at the same time as the rest of the world.

Update: Apple has reverted its changes to the iTunes page, which once again refers to the iPhone OS 2.2 update.

Apple today announced the details of its Mac OS X Snow Leopard Up-to-Date Program, which allows U.S. customers who purchased or will purchase a qualifying Mac after June 8th, 2009 with OS X Leopard installed to upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard upon its September release for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95 plus tax. Similar programs are available in a number of other countries. While Apple announced general information related to the program in its initial press release covering Snow Leopard's launch, today's update provides full details for customers looking to upgrade.

Apple has provided lists of new and refurbished Mac that qualify under the program, which requires customers to submit their completed order forms within 90 days of purchase or by December 26th, 2009, whichever is earlier. Customers who have multiple qualifying Macs on a single invoice may purchase an upgrade kit for each system as a cost of $9.95 for each system or purchase a single upgrade kit for $9.95 and request additional "Right to Copy" licenses at no charge. Regardless of the method chosen, the total number of licensed upgrades may not exceed the number of qualifying systems on the invoice.

Apple is also offering a similar program for customers purchasing Xserves who wish to upgrade to OS X Snow Leopard Server. The Snow Leopard Server program also costs $9.95 plus tax for each upgrade kit, and an upgrade kit is required for each qualifying machine for which an upgrade is requested.

A new augmented reality app called Layar is making the rounds on the web as an example of what can be done with Augmented Reality. Layer (via 9to5Mac) is described as the world's first mobile augmented reailty browser.

Layar shows you what is around you by displaying realtime digital information on top of reality through the camera of the mobile phone. Just flip through the directory of layers and find ATM's, bars, houses for sale, hotels and other cool stuff around you.

The app accomplishes this through the use of the Compass, camera and GPS embedded within the phone. The developer's video shows it running:

The app is first available for the Android devices but they are working hard on porting it to other platforms "with a prime focus on the iPhone 3G S.". The iPhone 3G S is the first Apple iPhone to contain a digital compass which is required for such applications.

CNet reports that ARM will be delivering multi-core ARM chips in 2010, making multi-core iPhones and other smart phones possible.

"You'll definitely see handsets shipping with a dual-core A9 in 2010," James Bruce, wireless segment manager for ARM, said in a phone interview earlier this week, referring to the next-generation Cortex-A9 processor from ARM.

The iPhone currently is believed to use the ARM Cortex A8 processor. While still a notable improvement over the previous generation ARM chips, it remains a single core device. The move to dual-core ARM chips is expected to happen "relatively quickly" and should be seen in about a year.

An ARM representative reassured CNet that the dual-core ARM A9 is actually more power efficient than the A8.

"What we've done on the A9 is actually make it more power efficient than the A8. The dual-core A9 will be coming out on 45-nanometer rather than the (current) 65-nanometer process," Bruce said. Generally, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power-efficient the processor is.
Bruce continued. "With the dual-core running at maximum load there's probably going to be an increase of about 10 to 20 percent in power consumption but in general day to day use you're actually going to see better battery life."

Several readers have reported that their early iPhone 3G S orders will be arriving as early as June 17th (Wednesday), two days earlier than expected. The official launch day for the iPhone 3G S is Friday, June 19th.

Meanwhile, a Brazilian site (MyDock.com.br) has posted an unlocked iPhone 3G S. The video shows the new iPhone as well as the new Compass app in action:

Meanwhile, we have gotten a few hands on tdibits of the new iPhone 3G S. According to a first hand account of the iPhone 3G S:

- 2048 x 1536 is the resolution of the pictures from the camera
- The olephobic screen of the new iPhone is noticeable and does seem to make a difference with fingerprints.
- "Speed is impressive"
- Video recording quality is just ok, dependent of ambient light.

Apple today released updated versions of its Java for OS X for both OS X 10.5 Leopard and OS X 10.4 Tiger. The updates address several vulnerabilities that could allow maliciously crafted Java applets to gain elevated privileges leading to arbitrary code execution.

The updates come less than a month after former Apple engineer Landon Fuller released a proof-of-concept exploit demonstrating the vulnerabilities in order to bring attention to the issue. While the vulnerabilities Fuller highlighted were discovered last August and patched by Sun last December, Apple had yet to address the issues in its own implementation of Java until today's releases.

- Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 (158 MB)

Java for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 4 delivers improved reliability, security, and compatibility for Java SE 6, J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.5.7 and later.

This release updates Java SE 6 to version 1.6.0_13, J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_19, and J2SE 1.4.2 to 1.4.2_21.

Please quit all web browsers before installing this update.

- Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 9 (80.11 MB)

Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 9 delivers improved reliability, security and compatibility for J2SE 5.0 and J2SE 1.4.2 on Mac OS X 10.4.11 and later.

This release updates J2SE 5.0 to version 1.5.0_19 and J2SE 1.4.2 to version 1.4.2_21.

Please quit all web browsers before installing this update.

Further information is available in Apple's security documents (Leopard, Tiger) associated with the updates.

A number of MacRumors readers have reported that Apple and AT&T have begun updating order statuses and providing UPS tracking numbers for their iPhone 3G S orders. In the case of orders placed with Apple, shipments are being dispatched from Shenzhen, China and are due for delivery on Friday, the official launch date for the iPhone 3G S. Orders made through AT&T are appearing as "in progress" on customers' order status pages and have been assigned tracking numbers, although the shipments do not appear to have yet been picked up by UPS.

Visible signs of AT&T's and Apple's preparations for the launch of the new iPhone, as well as the corresponding release of iPhone OS 3.0 for older devices this Wednesday, have begun appearing in the days leading up to the new releases. Over the weekend, AT&T also sold out of its initial iPhone 3G S pre-order allotment, meaning that those who wish to obtain an iPhone 3G S from AT&T on launch day will have to do so in-person at an AT&T retail store.

Apple and AT&T have been making preparations for the launch of iPhone firmware 3.0. Here is a compilation of the changes and preparations that have been noted:

- The new MobileMe Find My iPhone feature has been live this past week.
- Push Notification support is beginning to appear in the App Store. Tap Tap Revenge [App Store] specifically has been updated to provide push notifications.
- The iPhone 3G S Firmware 3.0 has already appeared on Apple's servers. This firmware is specifically for the new iPhone 3G S (iPhone2,1) so is not recommended to be installed on older iPhones.
- AT&T has posted a FAQ (PDF) about the iPhone 3G S and comments on MMS and tethering:

Later this summer, as part of the 3.0 software, AT&T will make multimedia messaging (MMS) available at no extra cost to customers with a text messaging bundle. And, in the future, AT&T will offer tethering capability for iPhone 3G S and iPhone 3G.

- The iPhone 3.0 re-download charging message has been removed and was a bug according to AppAdvice. Re-downloading apps in 3.0 should be the same as the current firmware ( which means free).
- A couple of YouTube videos have appeared walking through the features of the new iPhone 3.0 operating system. Video 1, Video 2.

The iPhone 3.0 firmware is officially launching on June 17th.

As first described in our forums, Apple seems to have quietly downgraded the SATA Interface from 3.0Gbit to 1.5Gbit speeds in some of the new MacBook Pros introduced last week. Readers are reporting that both the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pro models are affected while the 13" MacBook (white), 17" MacBook Pro and 13" MacBook Air retain the 3.0Gbit SATA interface. SATA is the interface between a computer and its hard drives.

The slower SATA interface is unlikely to affect the bulk of users as even the fastest traditional hard drives are unable to saturate even the 1.5 Gbit interfaces. However, if you are planning on buying a fast Solid State Drive (SSD), it could affect the drive's performance. The downgrade of the interface in the new MacBook Pro has also been confirmed in early benchmarks using a fast enough SSD. Forum user fpnc provides an excellent summary of the findings so far:

1.) It appears nearly certain that the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pros are all reporting a SATA interface running at 1.5Gb and not the faster 3.0Gb rate that has been in pretty common use for the last few years. These new models have the Secure Digital (SD) slot and also appear to have redesigned motherboards.

2.) Those who are using standard hard disk drives will probably see no difference in performance. If that is you, you can stop reading now.

3.) Benchmarks on FAST solid-state drives (SSDs) are showing a decrease in RAW disk i/o transfer rates on these same systems (in comparison to the previous generation MacBook Pros and MacBooks).

4.) The largest differences in the benchmark results seem to be in large, sequential disk READS (one of the traditional strengths with SSDs).

5.) To the best of my knowledge, no one has done any test with REAL-WORLD operations to show that the user experience (i.e. "performance") will be decreased with the 1.5Gb SATA interface. That is to say that thus far we've only seen benchmarks done with RAW disk i/o benchmarking tools.

6.) No one really knows why this has been done and no one knows whether it can be fixed with a software/firmware update (it may or may not be able to be fixed).

While there is a lot of speculation about if this could be "corrected" by software in the future, there are no definitive answers. At a minimum, it should serve as a caution for those customers who were planning on upgrading to fast SSD drives in their new 13" or 15" MacBook Pros. While you may still see performance benefits over traditional hard drives, the total benefit may be blunted.

AnandTech takes a look at the new MacBook Pros released at WWDC last week and focuses on the new non-removable battery design. Apple first introduced the non-removable battery into the 17" Unibody MacBook Pro last fall with mixed reactions from the community. Apple's reasoning behind making the battery custom and non-removable has been the ability to incorporate a larger battery that will provide even longer battery life. They've also argued that most laptop owners do not carry spare batteries.

Anandtech does a good job exploring the technology behind the design:

Apple did some clever work on its own here. Standard lithium ion batteries are made up of cylindrical cells, similar to AA batteries. The problem with these batteries is that they waste a lot of space within a notebook (try cramming a lot of cylinders into a box, you end up with wasted space). This wasted space translates into larger batteries than are necessary, which makes for larger notebooks.

They found the 15" MacBook Pro got an additional 46% of battery capacity with no additional weight. Improvements were dramatic in their benchmark testing:

The new 15" MacBook Pro clocked in at over 8 hours in their light load benchmark. The findings did carry over proportionately in their more intensive tests compared to the older models. Andandtech concludes with a very positive impression of Apple's latest revision:

Ever since I first looked at the power consumption specs of Nehalem I thought it didnt make any sense to buy a new, expensive notebook before Arrandales launch in Q4 2009/Q1 2010. While performance will definitely increase considerably with Arrandale, Apple just threw a huge wrench in my recommendation. The new MacBook Pro is near perfect today. If you need a new laptop now, thanks to its incredible battery life, I have no qualms recommending the new MBP.

BoyGeniusReport claims that the initial batch of iPhone 3G S shipments have already been allocated to pre orders, so if you haven't ordered yet, you will have to wait.

To make a long story short, if you did not pre-order an iPhone 3G S from AT&T yet, (were not talking about Apple because we dont have information on their pre-ordering/stock levels, etc) your iPhone 3G S wont be shipping to you/your store until 7-14 days after the order date. It seems that all AT&Ts pre-order stock is depleted leaving only iPhone 3G Ss for dying-in-line purchasing on this coming Friday, and all pre-orders going forward wont be fulfilled until after the June 19th launch date.

There is a chance that Apple stores will have a larger supply of the iPhone 3G S on launch, as they did with the iPhone 3G during its launch.