MacRumors

Continuing a pattern of biweekly releases, Apple tonight seeded the fourth beta version of iPhone OS 3.0 to developers. Apple also issued a developer pre-release version of iTunes 8.2, which is required to activate the new beta. No new features in the fourth beta version have been revealed as of yet.

The iPhone OS 3.0 was first demonstrated at a media event in mid-March and will bring over 100 new features to users. The iPhone OS 3.0 is expected to be a major focus of Apple's sold out Worldwide Developers Conference to be held in San Francisco in June.

Update: One forum poster points out that the latest iTunes 8.2 beta carries references to Blu-Ray data from Gracenote, suggesting that iTunes could support the reading/recognizing of Blu-Ray discs. This note is not present in the current version of iTunes:

Apple quietly posted a notice on their WWDC site that the developer's conference had sold out for 2009.

The news should come as no surprise to most as Apple's WWDC sold out last year as well. With the massive success of the iPhone App Store this past year, many expected interest in this year's conference to exceed last year's.

WWDC takes place between June 8-12th in San Francisco, CA. Apple is expected to reveal more information about the iPhone 3.0 SDK and Mac OS X Snow Leopard at the conference. Rumors also suggest that we'll also see an announcement about the next generation iPhone.

In a brief report (subscription required), The Wall Street Journal claims that Microsoft and Verizon are in talks to launch an iPhone rival in early 2010. MarketWatch summarizes the report:

The Microsoft phone, code-named "Pink," is expected to appear by 2010 and would extend the tech giant's Windows Mobile cellphone operating system, according to the Journal.

Similar to Google's Android platform, Microsoft will reportedly work with a third party who will manufacture the device, but Microsoft will play an integral role in design and development.

Verizon has been linked to several rumors regarding the iPhone from mainstream news sources in recent days, first with renewed claims that the iPhone may be making its way onto the carrier's network sometime next year, and earlier today with rumors that Apple and Verizon are developing two new products, an "iPhone lite" and a larger "Media Pad", also slated for release as early as 2010.

Apple and Verizon partnership rumors seem to have taken on a life of their own with multiple reports that the companies are planning to work together as early as 2010. Businessweek provides the most intriguing report yet with claims that Apple could be working on releasing two different devices with Verizon: an iPhone Lite and a Media Pad.

One device is a smaller, less expensive calling device described by a person who has seen it as an "iPhone lite." The other is a media pad that would let users listen to music, view photos, and watch high-definition videos, the person says. It would place calls over a Wi-Fi connection. One of these devices may be introduced as early as this summer, one person says.

BusinessWeek was able to confirm with Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam that Verzion had been in talks with Apple but could not get any details from McAdam.

Instead, the magazine cites "two people familiar with the subject" as the source for these two possible Apple devices. The Apple media pad is said to be smaller than Amazon's Kindle ebook reader but its touchscreen is bigger than the Kindle's. The source predicts that this new product will be a category defining breakthrough device:

"The media pad category might go to Verizon," said the person who has seen the device. "We are talking about a device where people will say, 'Damn, why didn't we do this?' Apple is probably going to define the damn category."

Meanwhile, the iPhone Lite is said to be thinner, smaller, and cheaper than the current iPhone. Most of the cost savings are said to come from a new system-on-chip that has reduced costs.

The Inquirer reports that former ATI chip designer and executive Bob Drebin is apparently now a Senior Director at Apple. Drebin was formerly the Chief Technology Officer for the Graphics Products Group at AMD, assuming the position as part of AMD's acquisition of ATI in 2006. As detailed in his still-active AMD profile, Drebin brings extensive experience in graphics chip design.

Bob Drebin is the chief technology officer of the Graphics Products Group within AMD. In this role, he oversees the technical strategy and direction for AMD's graphics related businesses.

Mr. Drebin joined AMD with the ATI acquisition in 2006. At ATI, Mr. Drebin led the architecture and design of many of ATI award-winning graphics processors. Before ATI, Mr. Drebin managed the architecture and design unit of ArtX, where he was instrumental in development of the graphics component for the Nintendo Game Cube. Prior to joining ArtX, Mr. Drebin was a chief engineer in Silicon Graphics' Advanced Graphics Division, where he spent nine years developing high performance graphics systems.

While the details of Drebin's new role remain unknown, his experience in graphics hardware suggests that he may have a similar focus at Apple, which is known to be focused on development of OpenCL, a key component of Apple's upcoming OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that will allow the operating system to take greater advantage of parallel processing across multi-core CPUs and graphics chips.

Notably, Drebin appears to have left AMD in January 2008 and did not assume his position at Apple until earlier this year, possibly due to non-compete clauses in his employment contract. Similar non-compete terms delayed the appointment of Mark Papermaster to his new position of senior vice president of Hardware Devices Engineering at Apple and triggered a lawsuit from his former employer, IBM. Apple announced in January that the dispute had been settled, and that Papermaster would assume his new position as of April 24th. As noted by CNET, Papermaster did indeed begin work on Friday, and his biography has been added to Apple's list of executives.

Apple today announced that it has filed an amended Form 10-Q with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, correcting errors in the reported vote totals for shareholder-submitted proposals at its most recent annual shareholder meeting.

Last week's filing incorrectly reported the voting percentages for shareholder-submitted proposals because abstentions were counted as "No" votes. Very shortly after the original filing, the company learned that these votes had been incorrectly tallied and an internal investigation confirmed the mistake was due to human error, which Apple regrets. Today's amendment correctly reports the voting results.

The correction affected the outcome of one shareholder-submitted proposal, known as "Say on Pay," which successfully passed with approximately 51.63% of votes cast under corrected counting procedures.

As a result of the corrected vote count, Shareholder Proposal No. 5 Regarding Advisory Vote on Compensation, known as "Say on Pay," was approved with a majority of votes cast. The Compensation Committee of Apple's Board of Directors has been closely following the Say on Pay issue, and anticipates that new laws or regulations will require some form of Say on Pay vote at all public companies in the near future. Even if that does not occur, Apple is committed to implementing an advisory Say on Pay vote next year.

As noted in shareholder materials for the annual meeting, the "Say on Pay" proposal will allow shareholders to cast advisory votes regarding compensation for Apple's senior management at each annual meeting. The referendums would be non-binding, but would allow shareholders a greater voice in communicating with Apple management. Apple had formally opposed the proposal as an ineffective means of offering shareholder input.

Executive compensation has become a popular topic among shareholders throughout the corporate world, with several countries recently passing laws requiring such opportunities for shareholders and the U.S. considering similar legislation.

AppleInsider reports that QuickTime X Player, slated for release as part of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard later this year, will feature integrated uploading of supported video files to YouTube and MobileMe.

In particular, the application will let users take any supported video file and upload it directly to YouTube. Users will be prompted to enter their YouTube username and password, and QuickTime X Player take care of the rest. This includes converting the movie into a file optimized for the video sharing service and then uploading it to the appropriate user account.

Of course, Apple will also offer a similar option for users of its own MobileMe service that will take video files and upload them to a MobileMe Gallery. Both options are reportedly accessible via a new "Share" menu in the QuickTime X Player interface.

The new "Share" menu will reportedly also provide a more prominent location for existing options for export to formats optimized for the iPhone and Apple TV. The report also points out that the change will bring integrated YouTube offerings to all three of Apple's platforms, with a standalone iPhone application available since the device's launch, and YouTube functionality added to the Apple TV in a software update just months after the device's 2007 debut.

Last week, Forbes published the full text of Steve Jobs' deposition to the Securities and Exchange Commission. While a number of stories have been circulating around the internet about Jobs' take on the stock options scandal, perhaps most interesting was Jobs' attitude and state of mind surrounding his return to Apple and the role of Apple CEO.

Back in 1996, after Apple announced that it would purchase NeXT, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as the "interim CEO" while a replacement was sought. Most casual observers felt that Jobs would certainly remain as CEO despite the interim title. Jobs finally dropped the interim title at the 2000 Macworld Expo. TechCrunch provides a good summary of quotes from the deposition about Steve Jobs' thought process during that time and that transitioning to Apple as full-time CEO was not as obvious a decision as one might have suspected:

Q: And did you take on the role then as CEO?
Jobs: Well, no, I did not. I was very concerned that Pixar was a newly public company with shareholders, employees, and I felt that - - to my knowledge there had never been a CEO of two public companies before. So I felt if I took the job, the Pixar shareholders and employees would think I was abandoning them.
Q. Mm-hmm
Jobs. And I decided I just - - that I couldn't do that. So I took the title of interim CEO and agreed to come back for 90 days to help recruit a full-time CEO.

Jobs, of course, was later unable to find a suitable candidate and eventually slid into the position himself.

Jobs also explains that the reason for the stock options was that he felt unappreciated by Apple's board despite the amount of work he put into the company during those years. Jobs, of course, was cleared of wrongdoing with respect to the stock option investigation.

USA Today revives rumors that Apple is considering bringing the iPhone to Verizon's network as early as 2010. According to "people familiar with the matter," high-level discussions were initiated between Apple and Verizon a few months ago and are continuing. AT&T is presently the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone, but that exclusivity expires in 2010.

This is just the latest in a series of reports that Apple may open the iPhone up to other U.S. carriers. AT&T has been said to be working on trying to extend their exclusivity into 2011. It's no wonder, since AT&T's most recent financial results showed that they had 1.6 million activations of the iPhone 3G in the 1st quarter of 2009 and 40% of those customers were new to AT&T. If Verizon were to also offer the iPhone, it would likely reduce the number of customers switching to AT&T.

USA Today speculates that even if Apple did open the iPhone up to Verizon, it would likely also remain available to AT&T customers.

First posted over at TouchArcade.com, a YouTube video depicts what could be World of Warcraft running on the iPhone.

World of Warcraft is an incredibly popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with over 11 million subscribers.

While there have been sketchy rumors in the past that this game could find its way to the iPhone, the video seems believable as it shows the game running within the Vollee client application. Vollee is a company that develops software to allow mobile 3G phones to play CPU intensive PC applications over the network. Their first demonstration in 2008 showed Second Life on a mobile device. The software works by essentially streaming video of the game rather than rendering it by the handset itself:

The companys VolleeX engine adapts applications for screen size and key layout, and then streams the original application to mobile devices. Vollees interactive video streaming platform optimizes compression to minimize bandwidth requirements and also leverages the 3G mobile networks in such a way that gamers can easily and smoothly navigate virtual worlds. Vollees technology is also extensible to fast paced, high quality video games previously impossible on mobile.

Vollee has also previously announced upcoming iPhone support as well as a partnership with ActivisionBlizzard which would make this client a distinct possibility. The company, however, has been rather quiet lately and their website is currently not resolving.

AppleInsider reports on one new feature that has been found in the latest Snow Leopard developer seeds: screen recording.

Similar in many ways to a feature long offered by Ambrosia Software through its Snapz Pro X utility, the option will allow users to capture in motion video their Mac's screen -- essentially video screenshots.

Such a feature will be particularly useful for software developers and educators, as it will simplify the process of creating video tutorials, software demonstrations, and anything else best captured in live motion as opposed to still shots.

The feature does step on the toes of some 3rd party developers (Snapz Pro, Screenflow) who have been offering a similar feature set as commercial applications.

Apple has been continuing to seed Mac OS X Snow Leopard builds to developers. The latest build (10A335) was delivered just yesterday. Early reports of that build indicate it's become even more stable and "polished" but no other new features have been noted.

Arstechnica reports that Apple has been ordered to pay $19 million to Opti Inc. for patent infringement on a technology called "predictive snooping":

The patent -- its full name is "Predictive snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses" -- describes a method to more efficiently transfer data among the CPU, memory, and "other devices." The patent was issued to Opti in June of 2002, and the company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple in January of 2007.

Apple, of course, has been the target of many patent infringement lawsuits. Many lawsuits, however, never come to fruition. The most recent high profile lawsuit comes from Elan who who claims Apple has infringed on their multi-touch technologies. It may be years before we hear the conclusion of that claim.

We tend to avoid reporting on all lawsuit claims, instead holding out for the ones that actually seem to stick.