MacRumors

A MacTalk.com.au forum thread reveals that the unreleased "iPhone2,1" model that has been previously referenced actually includes its own icon within the iPhone 3.0 SDK. The icon, however, appears identical to the iPhone1,2 model which represents the current iPhone 3G.

While some may dismiss the fact that very few details can seen in such a small icon, the iPhone1,1 (1st Generation) icon does appear distinct and physically accurate in the images. Readers may also remember that the iPhone 3G's icon was also spotted before its release with only slight differences. In retrospect, an argument can be made that it was an accurate (though low resolution) rendition of the iPhone 3G.

While not a groundbreaking finding, it is consistent with rumors that next generation iPhone would keep a similar form factor to the current model.

Last week Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster claimed that an Apple tablet computer was in the works though it would not arrive until the first half of 2010 due to the complexity surrounding the operating system.

"We expect the development of such an OS to be underway currently, but its complexity, along with our conversations with a key company in the mobile space, leads us to believe it will not launch until CY10," Munster says.

Apple Tablet rumors have been circulating for years, so weren't entirely sure what to make of this particular analyst report. One reader has since pointed out, however, that Businessweek's Peter Burrows was also able to get "confirmation" of this Apple tablet from another source said to be familiar with Apple's product plans. If this source is to be believed, we may finally see an Apple Tablet as early as next year.

Rumors of an Apple Tablet have been a recurring theme here at MacRumors. In 2003, the rumors accelerated to a point where multiple credible source were pointing to the imminent release of a Mac tablet. We believe that such a project had clearly been in the works and may have even evolved into today's iPhone. Now, in the past few months, there has been an increasing number of reports that Apple is working on a device that fits somewhere between their laptops and iPhones.

A couple of reports have indicated that Apple may be launching their Back to School promotion as soon as this Tuesday. Apple's Back to School promotion is traditionally offered throughout the summer and has offered students and faculty free or discounted iPods when purchasing a new Mac. Last year's promotion kicked off on June 3rd.

According to one unconfirmed report, Apple will again be offering a free 8GB iPod Nano or 8GB iPod Touch to eligible customers who purchase a qualifying Mac. In addition, however, Apple is said to be extending the offer to the 8GB iPhone as well. These iPhone customers, however, are still obligated to also sign up for the 2 year contract with AT&T, though would get the handset itself for free.

The Charlotte Observer reports that North Carolina lawmakers are working on special legislation to give Apple, Inc a multi-million dollar tax break in order to entice the company to build an East Coast server farm to the state.

The tax breaks could be worth about $46 million in the next decade, assuming the company reaches its $1 billion investment target within nine years of starting, according to a memo by legislative fiscal staffers that does not identify the company. The memo said no current company meets the criteria to receive the tax break and the Commerce Department knows of just one with the potential to qualify.

Apple is identified as the company in question by a state official with knowledge of the recruitment efforts. The plan would target $1 billion in investments over the next 9 years which could be easily covered by Apple's nearly $29 billion in cash reserves.

While Apple makes the bulk of its income through hardware sales, the company has increasingly been positioning itself as a services company that require large server farms to support. Apple's iTunes service, of course, is likely the most demanding, but Apple has also worked to expand their MobileMe web services over this past year. The MobileMe launch was marred by outages and poor performance during the initial launch demonstrating the importance of the underlying infrastructure.

There have been reports that Apple may further expand their online services in the future with the possibility of web versions of some of their existing applications.

The latest computing survey results from the University of Virginia's freshman class show evidence of continued Apple marketshare growth in the higher education market (via Daring Fireball). The chart above shows that Apple has made steady gains since 2003 in the percentage of incoming UVA freshman who own a Mac. The latest year (2008) shows that 37% of incoming students owned a Mac while the percentage owning a Windows computer had shrunk to 62% from a peak of 96% in 2001. The growth tracks closely with the trend towards laptop ownership amongst the Virginia freshman. In 2008, 99% of the incoming students owned a laptop.

The data adds to a number of anecdotal reports that Apple has been making major strides in higher educational marketshare. Last year, Tim Cook confirmed that Apple had become the #1 laptop supplier in higher education for 2007.

According to AreaMobile.de, T-Mobile Austria briefly began advertising the "iPhone 32GB" on their website but was quickly corrected.

Meanwhile, MacTalk.com.au reports that according to their sources, Vodafone has sent out an email to retail staff indicating that the 16GB iPhone has been marked "end of life" by their supplier.

With WWDC just weeks away, these could represent legitimate leaks pointing to an imminent iPhone refresh.

Digitimes reports that Wintek has been selected as the LCD panel module supplier for "Apple's upcoming e-book form factor netbook product".

That description seems pretty broad as to what kind of device Apple is actually coming out with. Both netbook and tablet possibilities have been the topic of speculation for months. Some sort of hybrid touchscreen netbook has also been described which seems most consistent with the circulating rumors.

Despite all the buzz surrounding this device, most rumors don't pinpoint its release until late 2009 or early 2010.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball weighs in with his sources about what the upcoming iPhone revision will entail. His list of details corresponds closely with many of the circulating rumors.

Gruber believes the next iPhone processor will indeed be a "next generation" processor that will be disproportionately faster than clock speed alone would have you believe. Indeed, we've heard that the next iPhone will use the Cortex processor.

Let's say the rumors are right -- and I believe they are -- that the next-generation iPhone's CPU will be running at 600 MHz. In the same way that, say, a 90 MHz Pentium was more than 1.5 times as fast as a 60 MHz 486, the 600 MHz CPU in the next iPhone will be more than 1.5 times as fast as the current 400 MHz iPhone CPU.

Along with an additional 128 MB of RAM (256 MB total), this should result in faster app launches, faster web browsing, and better overall performance. Storage will, of course, increase to a max of 32 GB, also in line with rumors.

On case design, he suggests that the new case changes will be subtle and retain the current iPhone's form factor. Circulating rumors of a magnetometer and video editing are also believed to be true:

What the new iPhone's video capabilities might lack in terms of image and sound quality will be made up for by two things: convenience and software. Convenience in that the best camera is the one you have with you, and if youve always got your iPhone, you've always got a camera; software in that iPhone OS 3.0 is set to include basic video editing (think: selecting just the good parts) and uploading features that regular cameras, which aren't computers and which aren't networked, just can't match.

Other interesting tidbits include:

- Minor laptop refresh with branding change calling all aluminum-based notebooks "MacBook Pros" and leaving "MacBook" for the plastic units.
- "Heard things" about an iPhone mini 3/4 the size of existing iPhones but not necessarily at WWDC.

While much of what Gruber reports has been circulating for the past few weeks, he is known to have had accurate sources in the past. Apple is widely expected to announce the new iPhone at WWDC, which takes place June 8-12th in San Francisco.

CNet reports that Sony is talking with major recording companies about providing downloadable music for the PlayStation Portable gaming device.

The sources said the talks are only preliminary and no deals have been struck. But apparently, Sony is considering offering music on the PlayStation Network, the company's nascent multiplayer gaming and digital download service. Such a move could place the PSP in direct competition with other multiuse music players, most notably the iPhone.

While primarily a gaming device, the PSP has always offered multimedia capabilities such as movie and music playback. The device, however, has been hampered by rather closed standards such as the Universal Media Discs (UMDs) required for movies.

"If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple," Stringer told Nikkei Electronics Asia recently. "Sony hasn't taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its Connect music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads.

If true, the move would increasingly align the PSP directly against Apple's iPod Touch and iPhone platforms. Apple's iPod touch and iPhone have become a surprise success in the mobile gaming market leading many industry observers to believe that both Nintendo and Sony are very concerned about the Apple's early success. Anecdotal reports peg the iPod Touch and iPhone demographics right up against the PSP's. This direct competition could explain this attempt by Sony to further expand the appeal of the PSP beyond gaming.

AT&T executive Ralph de la Vega confirmed earlier reports that the company is considering discounted monthly data plans for the iPhone.

The executive said it would be costly for AT&T to cut the price of its unlimited Web surfing service. The minimum plan for iPhone users is $70 a month, which includes unlimited Web surfing and a certain amount of voice calls.

The cheaper rates, however, would come with limits on the amount of data that can be transfered. The current iPhone plans provide unlimited bandwidth. While such a move may make some sense for the price conscious consumer, much of the iPhone's success as a mobile net device seems directly related to the unlimited nature of its data plan.

De la Vega dismissed the possibility of an iPhone with no data plan as AT&T makes the bulk of its income from selling these add-on services.

Silicon Alley Insider reports on a note from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster claiming that Apple's rumored "media pad" or tablet computer will not arrive until sometime in the first half of 2010. Munster also claims that the device will be more dramatically different from the iPhone and competing netbooks than most analysts and investors are expecting. The complexity of the operating system, reported to be a hybrid between the iPhone OS and full-blown Mac OS X, is apparently the primary factor holding up release of the device.

Don't get your hopes up for one of those devices this year, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster writes in a note today. While Munster thinks Apple is indeed working on these sorts of devices -- running a third version of OS X "more robust" than the iPhone but optimized for multi-touch screens -- he thinks they're not going to launch this year, as some had predicted.

"We expect the development of such an OS to be underway currently, but its complexity, along with our conversations with a key company in the mobile space, leads us to believe it will not launch until CY10," Munster says.

AppleInsider provides additional detail on Munster's report, revealing that the tablet is expected to be priced in the $500-$700 range and thus bridging the gap between the iPod touch and the entry level MacBook. The tablet would utilize a display somewhere between 7- and 10-inches and would be well differentiated from existing netbook offerings, which Apple has repeatedly said it has no interest in duplicating due to the poor user experience such devices offer.

More specifically, the analyst said these investments will likely culminate with the launch of a touch-screen tablet with a display somewhere between 7- and 10-inches at a special event sometime in the first half of 2010. Such a move, he added, would be consistent with management's comments that Cupertino-based company has no interest in catering to the existing segment for "cheap" miniaturized notebooks and its spoken desire to differentiate in a market currently dominated by cramped computers with razor thin margins and a subpar user experience.

A recent Apple job listing that we just discovered reveals that Apple is looking for a low level iPhone programmer with detailed knowledge of the ARM processor including its NEON vector unit.

The successful candidate will have excellent understanding and knowledge of processor architecture, specifically ARM and its vector unit NEON. Additional Intel SSE or PowerPC AltiVec is also very helpful. Being able to use processor micro-architecture to write and deliver fast routines is an essential attribute.

NEON is an extended instruction set similar to Intel's SSE or PowerPC's AltiVec which can accelerate multimedia applications. What's interesting is that NEON is the marketing term for the most recent version of these extensions specifically for the ARMv7 Cortex processors. Apple presently uses the ARMv6 processor in the iPhone and iPod Touch which does not appear to offer NEON. The obvious reason for Apple to be seeking a programmer with this expertise is that they must be optimizing the iPhone OS for the new Cortex processors.

We've previously speculated that the Cortex processor would be the most likely candidate to power the next generation iPhone. The Cortex is also capable of multi-core variants though its not entirely clear how soon these will be commercially available. Palm's Pre is also based on a version of the Cortex processor. The presence of these sort of extensions could also be leveraged to provide users with faster/better multimedia functions including the rumored video recording, processing and editing capabilities.

In fact, another job listing reveals that Apple is also hiring for someone to deliver "cutting edge embedded video processing". They are specifically looking for someone with experience in real-time media and networking applications over Wi-Fi and cellular networks which would suggest an iPhone implementation. Obviously, all of these listings reflect unfilled jobs but can provide a hint into what Apple is presently working on.