MacRumors

AppleInsider reports that the latest Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard developer builds have broken out "WWAN" (Wireless Wide Area Network) into its own category within the System Profiler. Previously, 3G USB add-on's would appear under the USB category, according to the rumor site.

This suggests that WWAN services (which include 3G wireless networking) may become an Apple-standard technology in future machines. Rumors have previously suggested that Apple is planning on incorporating 3G wireless networking into future Mac notebooks. Further evidence this week includes a 3G-related job listing that was subsequently pulled by Apple.

What might be interesting is that if Apple does incorporate 3G wireless networking into future Apple notebooks, it's likely that we'll see substantial upfront subsidies against the cost of the machines. This could result in significantly discounted hardware when subscribing for 1-2 years of 3G service. While purely speculative, it's possible that this may be related to recent rumors that Apple may introduce cheaper Macs as early as this spring.

TheStreet.com reports on comments from analyst Michael Cote suggesting that AT&T is considering reducing the basic monthly iPhone plan from $69 to $59 alongside an announcement of the next-generation iPhone at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference.

AT&T is considering a $10 price cut for the iPhone's monthly service plan when Apple introduces the newest version of the phone next month.

There is a "strong possibility" that AT&T will drop the entry-level price to $59 from $69, says Cote Collaborative analyst Michael Cote, an industry pricing strategist. The announcement, he said, will probably accompany the launch of the new iPhone on June 8, during Apple's World Wide Developers Conference.

Cote reports that iPhone sales through Wal-Mart have failed to meet expectations, giving Apple concerns about pricing barriers. While Cote does not see Apple introducing a lower-cost "iPhone nano" as has been rumored for some time, his comments indicate that AT&T is also recognizing the pricing difficulties and is willing to work to make iPhone contracts more affordable, thereby stimulating demand.

Recent sales success for Research in Motion's BlackBerry models, as well as increased competition from the upcoming Palm Pre and forthcoming touchscreen handsets from Nokia, are placing pressure on Apple to continue to find ways to generate new customers.

Finally, Cote points to an approaching "fashion milepost" for the iPhone, as popular phones and other gadgets tend to lose their appeal in their third year on the market, although Apple would certainly argue that continued innovations on both the software and hardware fronts should allow the iPhone to remain at the head of the pack.

Unauthorized Mac clone manufacturer Psystar remains embroiled in legal battle with Apple after initiating sales of their first Mac clone back in April 2008. ZDNet Asia summarizes the case today which remains in the discovery process:

Psystar emerged a year ago as a small independent system builder, the likes of which can be found in any medium-sized town in the United States. What provoked the interest and ire of the Mac community was Psystar's decision to ship so-called "white box" systems with Mac OS preinstalled alongside systems with Windows Vista and Linux, in defiance of Apple's licensing policies for that operating system.

The legal battle hasn't kept Psystar from continuing to sell their Mac OS X compatible machines and even introduce new models including rackmount servers.

With all the recent attention on the netbook market, one curious reader asked Psystar if they had plans to introduce a Mac OS X "netbook" in the future. Pystar's response confirmed that did have a mobile Mac computer in development. This unannounced product may simply be an extension of their laptop initiative that has previously been revealed. Any sort of miniaturized laptop, however, could be very appealing to a certain segment of the Apple's installed base.

Since Apple has neglected this market, running Mac OS X on existing netbooks has become a popular hobby. BoingBoing charts which netbooks can run OS X (though not without some difficulties). Apple has been rumored to be working on their own version of a netbook possibly with the inclusion of a touch screen.

Apple tonight seeded the fifth beta version of iPhone OS 3.0 (Build 7A312g) and a new version of the iTunes 8.2 pre-release to developers. As with the previous beta, iTunes 8.2 is required to install the latest iPhone 3.0 beta software. No new features in the fifth beta version have been revealed at this early time.

Today's release is a bit of a surprise, coming just eight days after the release of the fourth beta when Apple had consistently been releasing beta versions to developers at two-week intervals. With only a month to go until Apple's sold out Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco where the iPhone OS 3.0 is certain to be a featured topic of discussion, Apple may be increasing the pace of developer releases to begin polishing things for the public showing.

Engadget has just wrapped up live coverage of Amazon's press event introducing the Kindle DX, the next generation of Amazon's eBook reader. The Kindle DX, now available for pre-order at a price of $489 for shipment this summer, contains a 9.7" screen and is being positioned as a device for reading documents such as newspapers, textbooks, and research journal articles whose formats have not worked ideally with the smaller 6" screen of the current Kindle 2 model.

The Kindle DX features a built-in accelerometer that allows for auto-rotation of content between portrait and landscape orientations, and increased storage over the Kindle 2 of 3.3 GB, which provides space for up to 3,500 books periodicals, and documents. Like the Kindle 2, which will remain available at its current price of $359, the Kindle DX offers free 3G access through Sprint's network to allow downloading of content on the go. Native PDF support is also included.

The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Washington Post are all planning to offer long-term subscriptions for Kindle newspaper editions at discounted prices.

Many people have viewed the Kindle as a competitor to the iPhone's eBook capabilities, with a Kindle for iPhone application also offering compatibility with Amazon's service on the iPhone. Rumors of an Apple "media pad" that could provide more direct competition to the Kindle on the eBook front have also been circulating in recent weeks.

Mobile advertising company AdWhirl issued a report (PDF) that details the success of some of the top ad-supported iPhone apps. AdWhirl serves 250 million ad impressions monthly to over 10% of the top 50 Apps in the App Store.

According to their data, developers who break into the top 100 Free iPhone Apps can make as much as $400-$5000 a day. These seem to represent "peak" revenues at the height of an app's success but revenue for this application depicted does appear to reach a consistent level over time.

The findings are somewhat contradictory to previously published reports from Pinch Media who believes that the majority of apps would do better as paid applications as usage drops precipitously over time. AdWhirl's examples, however, appear to represent some of the highest earners rather than necessarily a broad cross sample.

Still, it provides some hope for an alternative revenue streams for developers.

MacRumors has learned that Apple's Boot Camp utility under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will include Windows HFS+ drivers, which will allow Windows installations to read Mac OS X HFS+ formatted partitions.

Boot Camp is Apple's software package that allows customers to boot Microsoft's Windows operating system on their Intel Macs. The Boot Camp package includes the necessary Windows drivers to support each Mac's hardware. Windows, however, does not routinely recognize Mac formatted hard drives and is unable to read or write to them without special drivers. The newest version of Snow Leopard's Boot Camp appears to include these special drivers to allow read access to Mac data even under Windows.

The move should make it easier for customers to switch between Windows and Mac operating systems by allowing files to be more easily transfered back and forth. Up until now, customers would have to rely on third-party utilities such as Mediafour's MacDrive to accomplish the same task.

Despite yesterday's claim that Apple is targeting Friday as the release date for Mac OS X 10.5.7, Apple has seeded developers with a new build (9J60) according to World of Apple with seed notes reporting only one known issue: the Safari 4 Beta will not install on 10.5.7.

We're not sure if this means it's less likely that Apple may reach the rumored Friday goal.

Mac|Life claims that OS X 10.5.7, the next update to Leopard, will be released on Friday.

If you've been champing at the bit for the magic of 10.5.7, according to a super-secret Apple source, your champing can cease on Friday. The newest version of Leopard is slated to fix a slew of networking, syncing and bluetooth issues.

Mac|Life also reports that there is speculation that this will be the final update to Leopard before the launch of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which appears to be slated for a release later this year.

Development on Mac OS X 10.5.7 has appeared to be winding down for quite some time now as Apple has made very few changes in each incremental build released to developers for testing purposes. The most recent seed was released to developers in the middle of last week.

Computerworld has discovered an Apple job posting for a "Communications QA Engineer" position within the Mac Hardware Group that mentions among its duties the testing of "3G Wireless WAN".

The Comms Software QA team within the Mac Hardware Group is seeking a motivated QA engineer to perform quality assurance testing for new Apple CPU Products.

Duties for this position include, but are not limited to:

- Testing and reporting hardware, software, and device driver bugs for Communications technologies including AirPort (802.11a/b/g/n), Bluetooth v2.0, gigabit Ethernet, and/or 3G Wireless WAN in a detailed, timely manner.

While it is possible that the job duties described in the listing may be referring to testing of third-party 3G cards, there has been speculation that built-in 3G connectivity could make an appearance in future notebook revisions.

AT&T has also been exploring the possibility of subsidizing notebooks with 3G connectivity and has said they would like to work with Apple.

Apple now has nearly $29 billion in cash reserves which has generated ongoing speculation about what Apple could or should do with that money.

"I think the pressure is definitely mounting," said Scotia Capital analyst Gus Papageorgiou. "It's just too big a number ... the cash belongs to the shareholders, the shareholders don't need Apple to invest the cash, they need Apple to generate the cash."

Apple's official response to questions about the money came from Apple's CFO Peter Oppenheimer in April when he said "We are investing it very conservatively, I'm comfortable with our investment portfolio and in these times having the cash feels very good to us."

The rumor mill it seems has other plans for Apple's cash reserves. Yesterday, two somewhat questionable acquisition targets emerged from various sources. We originally reported them on our Page 2 but summarize them here for interest:

Apple to Acquire Twitter for $700 million? - Twitter.com is a social messaging platform that allows users to broadcast short messages to "followers". It's seen a massive growth in usage recently due to a number of celebrity participants. Sources on this rumor seem inconsistent and the reason why Apple might even be interested in Twitter is unclear.

Apple to Take Over Electronic Arts? - EA is long time gaming company. Again, Apple's interest in such a company seems questionable and the source is described as "sketchy, at best".

Gizmodo reports on findings by Russian site iPhones.ru which found that the iPhone 3.0 firmware may improve iPhone photography based on some testing.

iPhones.ru took side by side photos with new iPhone firmware and old iPhone firmware. That lead comparison photo is not the result of a single snapshot, but 30 that produced similar results: Firmware 2.2.1 blurred the cat, then 3.0 blurred the cat ever so slightly less.

A second set also shows similar results. (iPhone 3.0 left vs 2.2.1 right)