MacRumors

AT&T today announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2009, and among the highlights was the announcement that AT&T had activated 1.6 million iPhone 3Gs during the quarter. Continuing a trend seen in previous quarters, customers new to AT&T accounted for 40% of iPhone 3G activations.

In the first quarter, AT&T's iPhone 3G activations totaled more than 1.6 million, more than 40 percent of them for customers who were new to the company. AT&T's U.S. iPhone exclusive continues to deliver subscribers with ARPUs (average monthly revenues per subscriber) that are approximately 1.6 times higher and churn rates that are significantly lower than the company's overall postpaid subscriber base.

While AT&T's 1.6 million activations were down from 1.9 million in fourth quarter of 2008 and 2.4 million in the third quarter of 2008, the decline was not unexpected given the iPhone's product cycle. Overall, AT&T saw a net gain of 1.2 million wireless subscribers for the quarter. Wireless revenue rose 9.8% year-over-year and made up 42.1% of AT&T's total revenue, up from 38.5% in the year-ago quarter.

Apple will release its earnings report for the second fiscal quarter (first calendar quarter) of 2009 later today.

9to5Mac cites their "favorite Apple source" who claims that Apple will be delivering minor updates for MacBooks and MacBook Pros at WWDC. The source speculates that this could involve 3G or speed bumps or battery changes, but this is entirely speculative. Also expected are updates to Apple's Pro Apps including Final Cut Pro, Aperture, Logic, and Shake.

Such updates at WWDC would be somewhat uncharacteristic for Apple who has not historically focused on these products during the developer's conference. Looking back at previous WWDCs, Apple has focused on iPhone, Mac OS X and Mac Pros/PowerMacs at the annual event.

WWDC 2009 takes place in San Francisco between June 8th and 12th.

Several weeks ago, we mentioned in passing that configuration files for a feature called "Voice Control" had been unearthed in the iPhone OS 3.0 beta. Ars Technica now provides a few additional details about the feature, although the specifics remain unknown. Chiefly, the feature is apparently code-named "Jibbler" and will enable both voice synthesis and voice recognition on the iPhone OS 3.0.

Not much information is known at this time, but according to our own people familiar with the matter, Jibbler appears be an enhancement to the iPhone SpringBoard application, the Finder-esque app that acts as a launcher and will support the newly announced 3.0 Spotlight search. Jibbler may be controlled via the iPhone headset -- button squeezes could be used to record short voice segments from the user, which Jibbler will then interpret. Voice synthesis can then be used to give the user a response, similar to the latest generation iPod shuffle, which can "read" playlists and track names -- the difference being that the iPhone hardware itself could handle real-time voice synthesis.

Ars Technica notes that the evidence allows for the possibility that "Jibbler" could be made available via the SDK to third-party developers for use in their applications. There is also no indication whether the feature would be limited to the next-generation iPhone or if existing devices would also be able to take advantage of it.

The big industry news on Monday was the announcement that Oracle Corporation would acquire Sun Microsystems for approximately $7.4 billion. The acquisition would bring Sun controlled technologies such as Java, MySQL and Sun's workstations under the control of Oracle. The New York Times points out that Oracle sees Sun as a "software gem, skillful in computer design and ripe for cost-cutting."

The combined company, according to Oracle and Sun executives, will be able tweak and integrate its software to reduce costs and bugs, and to tighten security. Suns computer designers, they said, can tailor hardware to the combined companys software, promising further gains in efficiency.

Some are even calling the buyout an Apple-like maneuver with hopes to control the entire user-experience through tight software and hardware integration:

Jobs showed that locking the software to the hardware and focusing relentlessly on building a perfectly integrated system aimed at the customer, was the superior approach. He gave consumers a first-class experience and got to command premium pricing, protecting Apple's margins along the way.

The move will put an end to long-running rumors and speculation that Sun may acquire Apple or vice-versa. Apple and Sun had reportedly been in talks over the years and come close to merging on two separate occasions.

NVIDIA announced the release of the Quadro FX 4800 professional graphics card for the Mac Pro today.

With its sophisticated GPU architecture and industry leading features, the Quadro FX 4800 delivers a substantial boost in graphics performance and capabilities, allowing users to continue to push the boundaries of realism and performance in markets such as: architecture, content creation, science and medicine.

The new video card will be on display at the 2009 NAB conference and will become available for purchase in May. The $1799 card carries a number of features targeted at professional uses including:

- Interactive Visualization of Large Models - Offers a massive 1.5GB frame buffer and memory bandwidth up to 76.8 GB/sec. to deliver high throughput for interactive visualization of large models; high-performance for real time processing of large textures and frames; and the highest quality and resolution with full-scene antialiasing (FSAA)
- High-performance Visualization - NVIDIA's(R) CUDA(TM) parallel computing architecture for NVIDIA Quadro GPUs enables breakthrough application performance to enhance creative expression in areas such as video, animation, photography and production
- Dual Dual Link DVI and Stereo Connectors - Outfitted with a dedicated 3 pin min-din connector for stereo glasses support and up to two dual-link DVI digital connectors to drive the highest resolution digital displays available on the market
- Boot Camp Support - Access to native Quadro GPU accelerated professional Windows 3D graphics performance and features when using Apple Boot Camp

According to NVIDIA's site, the card is only compatible with the 2008 or 2009 Mac Pro (MacPro3,1 or MacPro4,1).

Telephony Online reports that AT&T is in the process of upgrading its 3G wireless network from the current 3.6 Mbps download standard to 7.2 Mbps. Several recent rumors have suggested that the next-generation iPhone due this summer will be able to take advantage of the higher speeds.

AT&T is increasing the downlink capacity on its high-speed packet access (HSPA) from 3.6 megabits per second to 7.2 Mb/s through software upgrades at the base station, said Scott McElroy, AT&T Mobility vice president of technology realization. AT&T currently has the enhanced networks running in two test markets but plans to extend those capabilities to its entire network.

Furthermore, while the HSPA standard has the capability of supporting 14.4 Mbps through future upgrades, AT&T appears to be planning to bypass that step and move later this year directly to the HSPA+ standard, offering download speeds of up to 21 Mbps and a number of other upgrades.

The next obvious step would be for AT&T to further upgrade its 3G networks and devices to its full 14.4-Mb/s potential, but McElroy said AT&T will most likely skip the final HSPA iteration for two reasons: There have been technical difficulties implementing the final step, and HSPA+ is now ready for prime time. There's little point in migrating to 14.4 Mb/s if AT&T can go straight to 21 Mb/s, McElroy said.

These upgrades to AT&T's 3G network are designed to serve as intermediate steps until AT&T rolls out its LTE (4G) network, currently slated to debut in 2011.

Apple today issued a media alert announcing details for the April 22nd release of its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2009. The results will cover sales from December 28th, 2008 through March 27th, 2009, and will be released at the close of trading (4:00 PM Eastern / 1:00 PM Pacific) on Wednesday. Apple's conference call discussing the results will follow at 2:00 PM Pacific and will be available via a live audio webcast.

At Macworld Expo 2009 early in the quarter, Apple announced the new 17" MacBook Pro, iLife '09, and iWork '09. In early March, Apple introduced new Mac Pros, as well as updated models of the iMac, Mac mini, AirPort Extreme Base Station, and Time Capsule. The iPod shuffle also saw a significant redesign near the end of the quarter.

For the quarter, analysts are predicting net earnings of $1.09 per share on revenue of just under $8 billion, near the high end of or slightly above Apple's guidance of $0.90-$1.00 profit on $7.6-$8.0 billion of revenue. Apple's year-ago results for the second quarter of 2008 included net earnings of $1.16 per share on revenue of $7.51 billion.

The Inquirer recaps the latest netbook rumors coming out of the Commercial Times. The Chinese-language publication is citing sources from within the component supply chain that Apple has already signed a netbook deal with Foxconn:

These are whispering that Cupertino has sealed the deal with contract electronics manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry - or Foxconn - to bang out Apple netbooks.

Netbooks have been a hot topic in the computing industry as much of the recent sales growth has been attributed to the inexpensive portable devices.

Apple has so far resisted the release of such a device and has publicly denied interest in the market. Rumors, however, persist that Apple is planning a 10" netbook with a possible touch screen. If Apple does release such a device, it's unlikely to be priced in-line with currently shipping netbooks from other manufacturers which can run in the $400-$600 range. During a previous Q&A session, Apple has said that "[they] don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk."

A report from PhoneNews.com last week claims that Apple may be planning on integrating High Definition playback in their future iPhones and iPod Touches.

The phone site believes that Apple's recent clearance of Apple Composite AV Cables and Apple Component AV Cables are to make way for a new consolidated cable that will ship ahead of the next generation iPhone.

Apple will remedy this with a cable, which is known simply as the Apple AV Cable. The cable will function similar to the Xbox 360 Component AV Cable. The consolidated cable will support both component and composite output, allowing users to plug in to both HDTV and SDTV displays without the need for multiple cables.

PhoneNews claims the reason for this consolidation will be the incorporation of HD display capabilities on the devices as well as HD video output (720p and 1080i).

What this could mean is that the iPhone or iPod Touch could act as a make-shift Apple TV. They envision plugging your iPhone into an Apple AV Dock connected to your HDTV. This would then be able to stream video over Wi-Fi from your computer's iTunes library. This added functionality would skip the time-consuming step of syncing HD videos to the device itself and replicate some of the behavior of the Apple TV.

We're not sure what to make of this report though the possibilities are intriguing. PhoneNews.com has not been a regular source of Apple rumors and their last try wasn't accurate.

Last week, Steve Capps released an iPhone game to the App Store called AliceX [App Store]. This $1.99 game, however, carries special significance for long time Mac users as AliceX is based on the very first Mac game: Alice: Through the Looking Glass.

Folklore.org has documented the story behind Through the Looking Glass which started as a Lisa game.

"You've got to see the new game that Steve Capps wrote", he told me while he was connecting his hard drive up to my Lisa. He booted up into the Lisa Monitor development system, which featured a character-based UI similar to UCSD Pascal, and launched a program named "Alice". Steve Capps was the second member of the Lisa printing team, who started at Apple in September 1981. I had seen him around but not really met him yet.

The game was even featured in the original Steve Jobs Mac announcement (2min 40sec) back in January, 1984. The iPhone version of the game contains the "classic" Alice pieces as well as "hip hop" and "bush memorial" pieces. Instructions, video and a simple javascript version of the iPhone adaptation of the game is available.

Steve Capps is perhaps most well known for his part in programming the Finder for the original Macintosh and subsequent work on the Newton OS. Capps has since founded a user interface design company called onedoto.

App Store Link: AliceX, $1.99 [Note: not compatible with 1st generation iPod touches]

Apple has released the first new series of 'Get a Mac' ads since Microsoft began it's pointed ad campaign targeting Apple's prices.

Apple continues with the "Mac" and "PC" characters pointing out flaws in Windows with their latest series of ads. The new ads are titled: Biohazard Suit, Legal Copy, Stacks, and Time Traveler. All the videos are also available on Apple's site.

The ads cover "PC" problems such as Windows viruses, increased maintenance, and worse stability as compared to the "Mac". Meanwhile, the Stacks commercial highlights iPhoto's new facial recognition features that come included with the Mac.

Over the past couple of days, users have been digging through the latest iPhone OS 3.0 beta for signs of new features, and World of Apple and AppleInsider have put together some nice screenshot galleries illustrating a number of the findings.

World of Apple's gallery shows a number of features primarily related to music and podcast functionality, including several notable ones:

- Variable scrubbing speed during iPod playback. Provides users with four options to allow them to fine tune navigation within a track.
- Variable playback speed for podcasts. Options include 1/2x, 1x, and 2x speeds.
- Single-tap jump back for podcasts. Tap a single icon to rewind podcast playback by 30 seconds.
- Additional data for podcasts saved on iPhone. Saved podcasts now display run time, time left, and publication date.

AppleInsider highlights several other changes observed in the iPhone 3.0 beta:

- Ability to close all open Safari windows. Previously there was no ability to close the last remaining Safari window, but a red "x" is now functional in the page navigation, allowing users to close the final window, replacing it with a blank page.
- Battery percentage indicators. Allows users to view their remaining battery life as a percentage rather than just as an icon.
- Push notifications preferences. Allows users to toggle whether they want to allow push notifications as sounds, alerts, and/or badges.
- Expanded Data Detectors. Increased ability to automatically detect text such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and addresses and activate appropriate actions such as initiating a phone call or adding info to the Address Book when the items are touched.

The Wall Street Journal reports on comments made by Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg on a broad number of topics surrounding the company.

Of interest to readers, however, is the fact that Seidenberg addressed the possibility of Apple's iPhone coming to the Verizon network.

Mr. Seidenberg also addressed the notion of Apple Inc.'s iPhone ever coming to the Verizon Wireless network, saying it is more likely that Apple would be willing to work with the carrier under the fourth-generation, or 4G, network, which follows the same technology standard as AT&T Inc.'s 4G plans. He said Apple never seriously considered making a CDMA version of the iPhone because it didn't have as wide a distribution opportunity.

CDMA is the technology behind Verizon's current cellular network and prevents the current Apple iPhone from running on their network. In order to accommodate Verizon, Apple would have to release a modified (CDMA) iPhone which Seidenberg seems to think was never likely.

Verizon plans to launch their 4G network in 2010, conveniently near the time AT&T's exclusivity expires.