MacRumors

Engadget reports that Apple's US online store has started taking orders for direct shipments of the iPhone 3G. Previously, the iPhone was available only in retail stores when purchased from Apple, although AT&T offered sales both in its own retail stores and through its online store.

The new distribution method is valid only for customers new to AT&T, while existing AT&T customers will have to pick up their iPhones at local Apple retail stores. New customers are taken through a series of screens in which they must submit their enter their billing address to allow AT&T to run a credit check, select their rate plan, and either reserve an iPhone for pickup at a local Apple store or complete the purchase and have the iPhone shipped directly to them.

Apple today issued a press release announcing that the keynote address for its upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference will be held on June 8th at 10 AM Pacific Time. The keynote will be given by a team of executives led by Phil Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing.

Apple will kick off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 8 at 10:00 a.m. A team of Apple executives, led by Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the keynote. WWDC will offer in-depth sessions on both iPhone OS 3.0, the world's most advanced mobile operating system, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard, an even more powerful and refined version of the worlds best desktop operating system and the foundation for future Mac innovation.

Apple also announced that it will be issuing a final Developer Preview version of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard at the event.

"Last June, we gave developers an early look at the powerful new technologies that form the underpinnings of Mac OS X Snow Leopard," said Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. "At WWDC, we will be giving our developers a final Developer Preview release so they can see the incredible progress we've made on Snow Leopard and work with us as we move toward its final release."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is currently taking a medical leave of absence until June, and many have hoped that he will make his first public reappearance at WWDC. While today's announcement does not preclude an appearance by Jobs, it does appear that, unless plans change, he will not play his traditional keynote role.

The Chromium web browser project which serves as the basis for Google's Chrome has started releasing early builds of the Mac version. While not complete, the builds work well enough to get an impression of the browser. CNet took a quick look at a build:

The software, available for download from the Chromium Web site, is incomplete and definitely buggy, as one would expect for a developer version that reflects all the latest changes programmers are making with the project. But for Mac users who've been clamoring for the software, I can tell you that overall, it works, and it shows glimmers of what I liked about the open-source browser on Windows.

The latest builds are kept in this directory in sequential order. If you are interested in testing it out, you should download the most recent build that you find. Updated builds are being added all the time.

Apple's latest "Get a Mac" ads seem to be taking direct aim at Microsoft's recent "Laptop Hunters" ads in which a customer is given money to pick out a laptop that suits their needs. Microsoft specifically criticizes Apple on price during these commercials.

Apple's latest ad, called "Elimination" (direct .mov link), shows PC trying to provide buying advice to a potential customer, Megan, who wants a computer with a large screen and fast processor. Megan, however, also wants a computer without "viruses, crashes or headaches," which sends the customer to the Mac.

Apple also released two other ads ("Customer Care" and "PC Choice Chat") with a similar theme.

Given all the drama from the circumstances surrounding the SlingPlayer Mobile launch, we felt it newsworthy to post about the availability of Sling Media's app.

SlingPlayer Mobile is now available [iTunes link] in the App Store. The $29.99 application allows you to watch and control your home TV and DVR from your iPhone and iPod touch. This is accomplished though the use of one of SlingMedia's media devices. Unfortunately, due to concerns about network congestion, the application will only stream video over Wi-Fi connections and does not support 3G or EDGE.

Macenstein provides an extensive review from the beta version:

Even without 3G support, Slingbox's SlingPlayer Mobile app is truly a must have app for Slingbox owners, and one of the few $29.99 apps I would have no problem paying for. However, AT&T's decision to single out the iPhone version of SlingPlayer Mobile and ban it from its network certainly give one reason to pause on what should have been a clear cut decision.

App Store Link: SlingPlayer Mobile, $29.99

Earlier today, we reported on the impending release of SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone. To the disappointment of many who had been eagerly awaiting release of the application and contrary to announced plans, it appears that video streaming will be limited to Wi-Fi only.

Engadget is now reporting that AT&T has released a statement regarding the lack of support for 3G and EDGE streaming in SlingPlayer Mobile. Briefly, AT&T will not permit SlingPlayer Mobile to operate on its network due to the potential for overwhelming demands on network capacity.

Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network. The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.

That said, we don't restrict users from going to a Web site that lets them view videos. But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.

The Slingbox application for the iPhone runs on WiFi. That's good news for AT&T's iPhone 3G customers, who get free WiFi access at our 20,000 owned and operated hot spots in the U.S., including Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, hotels, and airports. AT&T is the industry leader in WiFi.

As Engadget points out, however, AT&T fails to address the fact that SlingPlayer Mobile is currently available on a number of other smartphone platforms, all of which support streaming over 3G. That difference suggests that AT&T's close relationship with Apple, which maintains tight control of app distribution via the App Store, has given the carrier significant leverage regarding applications that it believes could negatively affect its network performance.

Apple has launched the long-awaited 10.5.7 Mac OS X update to customers today through Mac OS X's Software Update utility. The new update is said to provide general fixes to the operating system:

The 10.5.7 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3397.
For detailed information on security updates, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222 .

Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update (442 MB) - Requires OS X 10.5.6
Mac OS X 10.5.7 Combo Update (729 MB) - Upgrade from any version of OS X 10.5 Leopard
Mac OS X Server 10.5.7 (452 MB)
Mac OS X Server Combo 10.5.7 (951 MB)

Some highlights include:

- Improves performance of video playback and cursor movements for recent Macs with NVIDIA graphics.
- Improves Finder search results for network volumes that may not support Spotlight searching
- Addresses a situation that may cause issues when logging into Gmail
- Improves consistency with Parental Controls and application restrictions

Apple also released security updates for OS X 10.4 Tiger users:

Security Update 2009-002 (Tiger Intel) (165 MB)
Security Update 2009-002 (Tiger PPC) (75 MB)
Security Update 2009-002 (Server Universal) (203 MB)
Security Update 2009-002 (Server Tiger PPC) (130 MB)

Along with the operating system updates, Apple released updates to Safari 3 for Leopard, Tiger, and Windows:

Safari 3.2.3 for Leopard (40 MB) - Requires OS X 10.5.7
Safari 3.2.3 for Tiger (26.29 MB) - Requires OS X 10.4.11 and Security Update 2009-002
Safari 3.2.3 for Windows (19.69 MB) - Requires Windows XP or Vista

Finally, Apple released an update for Safari 4 Beta, bringing security changes outlined in this support document. The Safari 4 Beta update is currently available via Software Update for those users who have upgraded to OS X 10.5.7.

Microsoft is continuing its attacks on Apple pricing, this time with the launch of a commercial for Zune Pass, Microsoft's monthly subscription plan for digital music. In the commercial, financial planner and former The Apprentice contestant Wes Moss contrasts the $14.99/month Zune Pass with iTunes Store purchases for Apple's 120 GB iPod classic, which at $1.00 per track would cost on the order of $30,000 to fill if all content was purchased from the iTunes Store.

Ars Technica presents an analysis of the numbers and describes how Microsoft neglects to mention the differences between "owning" and "renting" music.

Of course, it's not exactly $15 versus $30,000. The $15 is a monthly fee, so you're likely going to be paying more if you plan on playing music for more than a month. That said, it would take you 166 years and 8 months to shell out $30,000 for the Zune Pass; many of us won't be living that long.

As of November 2008, the Zune Pass allows its users to keep any 10 songs per month. In other words, if you wanted 30,000 songs for keeps, just like the iTunes Store, you would have to wait 250 years. The cost would be a whopping $45,000, however. In other words, it's only really worth it if you're OK with the fact that you have to keep paying the monthly fee to keep access to the songs that you don't yet own. Otherwise, iTunes (or any other la carte model) is the way to go.

Microsoft also avoids mentioning in the commercial the fact that substantial portions of most users' digital music libraries are simply converted from previously-obtained music sources free of charge.

Price comparisons between Microsoft/PCs and Apple have been a focal point of recent Microsoft ad campaigns, beginning in earnest about six weeks ago with the launch of the "Laptop Hunters" series of TV commercials, as well as associated Web advertising.

Digitimes reports that Intel has targeted the launch of their next-generation Calpella notebook platform for Q3 2009.

Intel's next-generation Calpella notebook platform will launch as scheduled in the third quarter 2009 and targeting models in the 14.0-, 15.6-, 17.1- and 18.4-inch segments at retail prices of above US$1,200 initially for high-end market. Meanwhile, Intel will also reduce the price of the Montevina platform to clear out inventory.

Calpella will replace the Montevina platform that is used in current Intel notebooks. The new Calpella platform will support the long anticipated mobile Nehalem processors and architecture which are said to offer dramatic performance boosts over existing designs. Apple adopted the Nehalem processors for the Mac Pro in March.

Intel, however, is said to be only launching three mobile Nehalem processors this year -- all Quad core but with slower processor speeds from 1.6GHz, 1.73GHz and 2.0GHz.

The Core 2 Extreme XE, Core 2 Quad P2 and Core 2 Quad P1, will be priced at US$1,054, US$546 and US$364 in thousand-unit tray quantities, the sources revealed.

It won't be until the 1st quarter of 2010 that we'll see mobile Arrandale processors which have been widely expected to be used in the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

While it's possible Apple could use some of these Quad-core processors in a notebook, it would mean a drop in raw processor speed which, depending on your usage, may not be made up for with the additional cores. These sort of tradeoffs became apparent when Apple refreshed the Mac Pros with various multi-core options. While Apple has been positioning themselves to take better advantage of multi-core chips with their upcoming Snow Leopard, the real-word impact remains to be seen.

Note that while Apple has transitioned to an NVIDIA-based chipset for their current notebooks, they may be forced to switch back to Intel to be able to offer Nehalem processors. Intel and NVIDIA are in legal battle regarding the NVIDIA's right to produce Nehalem-based chipsets.

MacRumors has heard that Sling Media's long awaited SlingPlayer Mobile may finally appear on the App Store tonight.

In addition to full support of current Slingboxes (PRO-HD and SOLO), legacy Slingboxes, which include the Classic, AV, and TUNER, will work with the application but will not be officially supported. However, the application will be limited to streaming only over Wi-Fi connections.

Previous demonstrations of the application by Sling Media had promised EDGE and 3G support, however it appears as though this will not be the case. Pricing is said to be set at $29.99.

This information has been confirmed by multiple sources.

We've been keeping an eye on some reports coming out of Chinese forum Weiphone over the past couple of weeks, and it appears the reports are starting to spread. In early May, a forum poster from the Chinese site posted specs and a screenshot from what is claimed to be the next generation iPhone.

The image above was uploaded and seems to depict a new iPhone model number "MB717LL" with 32GB of Storage. If the original poster's claims are to be believed, the new iPhone will contain the following features:

- 600MHz CPU Speed (up from 400MHz)
- 256MB RAM (up from 128MB)
- Digital Compass and FM
- 3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus
- 32GB size
- No major changes in battery, screen and external casing.

As far as we can tell, the original poster has no track record for accurate information, though the Chinese web/forums have been a common source of early photos of recent Apple releases including the unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro casings.

At this point, we're posting it for interest alone, though the information seems believable. It's certainly expected for the next iPhone to contain a digital compass and better camera. Increases in processor speed and RAM are also feasible.

One tidbit that we failed to mention during our coverage of the newest Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 developer release last Friday is the fact that it appears that Apple has stated that no further application programming interface (API) changes are planned for Snow Leopard. There was some debate in our mind if this referred to the entirety of Snow Leopard or a subportion, but others have interpreted it as the entirety of Snow Leopard.

The API's are the hooks that developers use to take advantage of the various features of Mac OS X. If true, this means developers can feel comfortable moving forward with their own applications with less concern that a future version of Snow Leopard will break their applications.

Apple is expected to release more information about Snow Leopard at WWDC next month. The release of Snow Leopard is expected roughly mid-year.

Amazon today announced the launch of an iPhone-optimized Kindle Store accessible via the iPhone's Safari browser. The store is accessible through the "Get Books" button on the free Kindle for iPhone application made available in early March.

Amazon.com, Inc. today launched a Kindle Store optimized for the Safari Web browser on iPhone. Now when users of the Kindle for iPhone app click on "Get Books," the new Kindle Store tailored for the size and shape of the iPhone and iPod touch screens automatically opens in Safari. This optimized Kindle store offers iPhone and iPod touch app users quick and easy access to the Kindle Store's 280,000 books, including 106 of 112 New York Times Best Sellers and most New Releases that are available for $9.99 or less.

In the press release, Ian Freed, vice president of Amazon Kindle, noted that the ability to easily purchase Kindle content from the iPhone had been a frequent request from users.

"The most common feedback we heard from customers was that they wanted a better experience for purchasing new Kindle books from their iPhones. We've been working hard to respond to that feedback with a new web site optimized for Safari on iPhone and we're excited to do that today."

iLounge points out that while Apple's iPhone OS 3.0 due this summer will be introducing "in-app purchasing" that would allow Amazon to offer eBook sales from within the Kindle for iPhone application, such sales would be subject to Apple taking its traditional 30% cut of the proceeds.

Amazon has been aggressively expanding its Kindle offerings in recent months, introducing the upgraded Kindle 2 in February, followed by Kindle for iPhone in March and the large-screen Kindle DX announced just last week.

Citrix made a number of announcements last week related to Mac and iPhone. While most of these announcements were targeted specifically towards IT/enterprise customers, one announcement has more potential mainstream significance.

To start, Citrix released a free iPhone app called Citrix Receiver [App Store] which is a secure client application that allows you to run Windows applications over a Citrix network. It offers a more efficient method of transmission than VNC and should offer better performance. The app is available for free in the App Store and is intended for existing Citrix customers. Citrix also unveiled an "App Store" for IT applications called Dazzle allowing managers to offer specific applications to their clients on both Mac and Windows. Dazzle and the Receiver application for Macintosh won't be available until the second half of this year.

Perhaps most interesting, however, was Citrix's demo of their new virtualization solution XenClient for the Mac. Virtualization is the process by which you can run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single computer. It has been frequently used on the Mac to run Microsoft's Windows in conjunction with Mac OS X. Citrix first started publicizing their plans for a new kind of Virtualization called "Type 1 hypervisor" back in January.

The technology promises to offer a faster and more secure virtualization environment than existing solutions. Parallel's and VMWare's solutions are considered "Type 2 hypervisors" which must run under a host operating system such as Mac OS X. While this simplifies the implementation, it also results in potential security vulnerabilities as well as a performance penalty due to the added level of abstraction. In contrast, "Type 1 hypervisors" run directly on the "bare metal" hardware.

This video (above) shows this software running on a PC and naturally focuses on security and IT usage, but does touch on the fact that each virtual environment has full access to the 3D hardware. Traditionally, these features have been handicapped on virtual machines, requiring Mac users to reboot to take full advantage. A video from the Citrix keynote event showing a brief Mac demo is available and starts at 42 minutes in. Citrix did not give an exact release date for the Mac version of XenClient.

What this means to the average consumer, however, isn't entirely clear. The creation of such a low-level virtualization solution apparently required a close partnership with Intel and we're not certain if other solutions will be able to easily mimic the functionality.

Apple has seeded developers with a new version of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) tonight. The build (10A354) adds one particularly interesting new feature to Apple's Mac operating system: Chinese handwriting recognition specifically for multi-touch capable machines.

Apple recently acquired Chinese handwriting technology for use in the iPhone, and appears to be incorporating this same technology into Mac OS X. Most interesting, however, is the fact that it is specifically enabled on multi-touch capable machines. We presume this to include Apple's notebooks which include multi-touch trackpads. While Apple does offer an English handwriting recognizer based on old Newton technologies, it is only available when you have a drawing tablet connected to your Mac. This could open the door to more novel uses for Apple's multi-touch trackpads or even suggest a more robust full-screen multi-touch screen as has been rumored.

Meanwhile, those who were waiting for the release of Mac OS X 10.5.7 today were likely disappointed. Apple has, however, seeded a new version (9J61) to developers tonight as well.