MacRumors

Apple today released Safari 4.0.2, now available on Apple's Safari download page or through Software Update. According to the support document associated with the release, the update addresses two security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by maliciously crafted websites. The update also reportedly improves the stability of the Nitro JavaScript engine used by Safari.

The first vulnerability addressed permits websites to deploy cross-site scripting attacks.

An issue in WebKit's handling of the parent and top objects may result in a cross-site scripting attack when visiting a maliciously crafted website. This update addresses the issue through improved handling of parent and top objects.

The second vulnerability permits arbitrary code execution when visiting certain maliciously-crafted websites.

A memory corruption issue exists in WebKit's handling of numeric character references. Visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue through improved handling of numeric character references. Credit to Chris Evans for reporting this issue.

Safari 4.0.2 is available for OS X Leopard, OS X Tiger, and Windows (XP and Vista).

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is continuing to investigate Apple's disclosures regarding Steve Jobs' health during the early January period leading up to the announcement that Jobs would be taking a six-month medical leave of absence. The report is a follow-up to Bloomberg's January report about the investigation.

"The issue here is: Did Apple or Jobs make misleading disclosures, tested by what they knew at the time?" said Robert Hillman, a securities law professor at the University of California, Davis. "A disclosure could be misleading if it's a partial truth."

Whether the SEC will ultimately be able to take action against Apple or Jobs is unknown, given the uncertainty about the situation and the "murky" laws regarding disclosure of the health of companies' CEOs. Regardless of the extent to which a company has a duty to reveal health matters, it is clear that once a company chooses to speak about an issue, it must do so truthfully.

While there has to be some measure of confidentiality around the health of executives, any disclosures need to be accurate and complete, said Jahan Raissi, a former SEC enforcement attorney.

"Once you open your mouth and start to speak on a topic, you have to say something completely truthful," said Raissi, who is now a partner at Shartsis Friese LLP in San Francisco. "If what you omitted is material, thats a problem."

On that basis, the SEC is focusing its inquiry on what events may have transpired between January 5th, when Jobs and Apple announced that he was suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for which the treatment was "relatively simple" and January 14th, when Jobs announced that he was taking a leave of absence due to the medical issue being "more complex" than originally thought.

Jobs' health issues ultimately required him to undergo a liver transplant, although he was still able to meet his stated timeline in returning to work by the end of June.

Google announced that it is getting into the operating system business with Google Chrome Operating System. The new OS is described as Google's attempt to "re-think" what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS will be an open source, lightweight operating system that is initially targeted at netbooks.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

The new OS will run on both x86 and ARM chips. The first netbooks will begin shipping with the OS in the second half of 2010. In the long term, Google does expect that Chrome OS will work anywhere from small netbooks to full size desktop machines.

While Microsoft has the most to lose from such direct competition from Google, Apple will also be affected by Google's move into this space. In fact, Google's ultimate goal seems to be the same target market as Apple's, and is specifically shooting for ease of use and accessibility.

The Web will be a central part of the new operating system, and demonstrates the importance of supplying a robust browser experience. Google's work on the Chrome browser will carry over into the new OS.

The software architecture is simple -- Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

PinchMedia announced that they had started detecting the "iPod 3,1" version number in their analytics reporting from App Store applications. The details are as follows:

- the first time an application using Pinch Analytics was run by a iPod3,1′ device occurred in late April 2009;
- applications using Pinch Analytics were run by iPod 3,1′ devices very infrequently until late May 2009, when the pace picked up slightly;
- As of this date, a few dozen distinct iPod 3,1′ devices have run around two dozen different applications using Pinch Analytics;
- The applications being run on iPod 3,1′ devices have all been the larger, more popular applications using Pinch Analytics, with hundreds of thousands to millions of unique users other than their size, the applications have little else in common.

This is not the first time we've heard of the "iPod 3,1" which is believed to represent the next generation iPod Touch. Previous references to the model have been detected in the 3.0 firmware. The currently shipping iPod touch has a model number of "2,1".

The most recent rumors have placed a camera in this 3rd generation iPod Touch which is expected to be released in September.

Apple's plans for a $1 billion server farm in North Carolina has been officially announced.

:This opportunity is fabulous, Catawba County Economic Development President Scott Millar said at a joint meeting of county commissioners and Maiden town council. We went after it very hard.

In order to attract Apple to the location, North Carolina offered a $46 million tax break over the next 10 years. Negotiations over the data center have been ongoing since September. The benefits to the local economy include 50 full time jobs, 250 indirect jobs, as well as an impact of up to 3,000 jobs in related industries.

The location will involve the construction of a 500,000 square foot building and is expected to be completed in 2010. The exact usage for the location has not been revealed. While Apple makes the bulk of its income through hardware sales, the company has increasingly been positioning itself as a services company that may require large server farms to support.

Fudzilla reports that the graphics performance of the integrated graphics in Intel's next-generation mobile processors (Arrandale) will exceed the performance of the current Intel mobile platform (Montevina).

As always, Intel codenames can be hard to follow. The Arrandale processors represent the mobile versions of Intel's Nehalem processors that were recently introduced into the Mac Pros. Intel then packages these mobile processors into "platforms" which combine a mobile chipset, mobile processor, and wireless network. The platform for Arrandale is called Calpella. Notably, Arrandale is the first mobile processor from Intel to come with integrated graphics processor built-in. As Arrandale represents the next generation mobile processor from Intel, Apple is expected to adopt it in its MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and iMacs in late 2009/early 2010.

According to Fudzilla, Intel has been "very quiet" about the performance of Arrandale's graphics core, but is telling partners that it "should end up faster" than the existing platforms. Exactly how fast that is remains up for debate. While they may be faster than Intel's previous offerings, Apple has since moved on to NVIDIA-based chipsets which offer much faster graphics performance. The news of Intel's plans, however, have taken on more importance, as it's unclear if NVIDIA will be able to offer its own chipset designs to support the Arrandale processors due to an ongoing licensing disagreement.

Apple, of course, is free to add-on discrete graphics cards to its designs, though this is typically reserved for its high-end models due to the additional cost. Meanwhile, Intel is prepping a separate project (Larrabee) that promises to boost graphics performance dramatically and is slated for launch in 2009. Apple is said to be planning on utilizing Larrabee in the future, but in exactly what combination of hardware remains unknown.

MacRumors readers "waiting for Arrandale" have been organizing in this thread.

Apple has started celebrating the first anniversary of the App Store with a special section on iTunes [link] highlighting their favorite applications and games. While the App Store officially launched on July 11th 2008, many MacRumors readers were able to access the App Store early after the 2.0 firmware was inadvertently leaked by Apple.

The special page lists several of Apple's favorite apps, though the lists seem to vary by country. Some of the favorites in the U.S. listings include (links to iTunes):

- MLB at Bat ($9.99)
- Brushes ($4.99)
- Ocarina ($0.99)
- Things ($9.99)
- Real Racing ($9.99)
- Toki Tori ($0.99)
- Eliss ($0.99)

The App Store has come along way in a year with over 56,000 apps now available in the App Store. While all of Apple's choices have their merits, the last game listed above, Eliss, in particular is an iPhone original game that makes use of iPhone specific multi-touch features to allow you to pinch and push together objects (video) to create the right size. The remainder of the lists contain more well know games such as Sims and Fieldrunners as well as useful web-companion applications such as Facebook and eBay Mobile.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a preliminary inquiry into potential anti-competitive practices by the country's largest wireless carriers. One of the major issues being investigated is the existence of handset exclusivity contracts such as that between AT&T and Apple for the iPhone.

Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people. In recent weeks lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T's exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone in the U.S.

AT&T and Verizon are expected to be the prime targets of the inquiry, as the two companies control a combined 60% of the U.S. wireless market and an additional 90 million landline subscribers.

The inquiry comes several weeks after several U.S. Senators issued a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to investigate the exclusivity arrangements between handset manufacturers and wireless carriers.

In a brief note, DigiTimes reports that Taiwanese firm Foxlink is currently developing micro projectors for use in mobile phones, with Apple being one of the companies expected to launch devices with built-in projectors later this year. The projectors would allow the iPhone and possibly the iPod touch to directly project video output onto an external surface.

International brand vendors, including Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Apple, reportedly all plan to launch handsets with built-in micro projectors by the end of this year, indicated the sources, adding that Foxlink is likely to benefit from the emerging trend due to its strong business relationships with Nokia and Apple.

Foxlink has long been a supplier for the iPhone and iPod, providing the proprietary connectors used in many of Apple's devices.

Micro projectors are just making their way into phones, although the resulting products are relatively bulky by mobile phone standards. Introduction of a new iPhone containing a micro projector by the end of this year would also be a significant deviation from Apple's usual product cycle that has seen the company release new iPhone models on a yearly basis each June or July.

TechCrunch now claims that they too have heard evidence that the next generation iPod Touch will have a built in video camera.

One of our sources in Asia say that Apple has placed an order for a massive number of camera modules of the type that they include in the iPhone. These are inexpensive cameras, in the $10 range. And the size of the order, our source says, means they can only be used for one thing - the iPods.

The rumor that the iPod Touch would get a camera first appeared in May from HardMac. The rumor, however, now makes more sense since the introduction of the iPhone 3GS which features video as a major new feature. When Apple does update the new iPod Touch, it seems likely that they will also upgrade the device to the more powerful processor and graphics chips that were introduced in the iPhone 3GS.

Meanwhile, TheAppleLounge points to another 3rd generation iPod Touch case design at DealExtreme which again shows off a centrally mounted camera hole:

The next generation iPod Touch is expected to be released in September.

Two new images of cases for the upcoming iPod Touch and iPod Nano have begun circulating. The new cases suggest that the next generation Touch and Nano will indeed include a camera.

The first image from Uxsight is listed as a "New iPod Touch 3G" with "hold for a camera in the back" and comes with the following image:

The second case design was posted on DealExtreme and shows an "iPod Nano 5" case with another hole in the back that is presumably again for the camera:

The reliability of these early case designs has been mixed in the past. While they have been accurate with the iPhone 3G design, they were also responsible for many of the iPhone Nano claims which never came true.

Still, the design of the iPod Nano's camera location is consistent with sketches provided by iLounge in May. iLounge also reported that the iPod Nano would be getting a camera with its next revision.

Reports of overheating and discoloration on the new white iPhone 3GS have been circulating over the past week or so, but a new report [Google translation] from frenchiPhone (via Hardmac) claims that the discoloration is due to contact with some third-party cases and not associated with overheating. The discoloration reportedly can be removed by wiping the back of the iPhone with alcohol.

- After numerous calls to Apple technical service and maintenance of contact with a level 3 (engineer) the problem seems to come not from a hot 3GS but contact with some covers! This was evident by ourselves on a device with a small sticker (a warning not to listen to music too loud) remained stuck, part of the hull below remained white.

- A simple solution to the problem is to clean the back of the iPhone with alcohol, tested by myself I can confirm that it works and reassure you it is safe for your precious

No details have yet been revealed on which third-party cases may be responsible for the discoloration.