MacRumors

Mobile executives at a Silicon Valley roundtable discussion exchanged some colorful comments about the iPhone and its impact on the mobile space. Some application developers, in particular, have been very pleased with the distribution model provided by Apple.

Pandora Media's free Radio application [App Store] acheived 350,000 installations on the iPhone within the first 6 days. Pandora plans on monetizing their iPhone application through ads in the future. In contrast, over the past 18 months, Pandora has only achieved 12,000 paid monthly subscriptions through all other mobile platforms. Apple is apparently the only provider that will allow developers to offer a free ad-supported distribution model.

Facebook and Loopt have also seen impressive adoption over the course of a week. Loopt claims the average iPhone user is 47 times more active on their network than other platforms.

When discussing the promise of Google's Android mobile platform, some developers were skeptical about the experience:

"I need Android like I need a hole in the head," said Pandora's Conrad, picturing it as "another OS platform that sits on top of buggy firmware, with devices with hundreds of manufacturers, with different characteristics."

Meanwhile, Loopt's CEO was optimistic at the relative openness of the Android platform, as compared to the iPhone platform.

Apple has been undergoing considerable criticism from developers about the ongoing non disclosure agreement (NDA). The NDA is preventing developers from publicly discussing iPhone development and is also holding up a number of iPhone programming books from being published.

Businessweek explores the possibility of Apple introducing some sort of touchscreen laptop in the near future. While most of the article rehashes circulating rumors, the author did get some insight from iSuppli analysts regarding the feasibility of introducing a multi-touch screen into a future Apple laptop.

According to the analysts, adding a multi-touch screen onto a MacBook Pro would add 50-80% to the cost of the existing screen and would likely make it too expensive. However, introducing a multi-touch screen into a 9 inch screen would be a "relatively easy leap from a cost perspective".

Given this, the author speculates that a small (9" or so) inexpensive (sub $800) multi-touch notebook is a more likely possibility than a full-size multi-touch notebook.

Adobe announced today the release of Lightroom 2, a competitor to Apple's Aperture photo software.

A worldwide community of photographers provided valuable insight and feedback, as part of the Lightroom 2 public beta program, ultimately helping us deliver a better product, said Tom Hogarty, senior product manager for Lightroom and Camera Raw at Adobe. Weve considered their requests which helped us develop useful features that make it easier than ever for our customers to quickly refine, enhance and present brilliant photographs.

Adobe lists new enhancements including dual-monitor support, advances in non-destructive localized image correction, and streamlined search capabilities. A detailed list of changes can be found on Adobe's Lightroom blog.

Lightroom 2 also represents Adobe's first Mac OS X application with full 64-bit support. Lightroom 2 is available from http://www.adobe.com/store for $299 for new users or a $99 upgrade price for existing users.

Apple just released a minor update to Aperture to bring it up to version 2.1.1.

AppleInsider claims that Apple will forgo the use of Intel's Montevina chipset in their next generation laptops. Instead, Apple will either design their own chipsets or could adopt 3rd part chipsets from AMD or Via.

It should be said however, this does not mean that Apple will be moving away from Intel's processors. The chipsets are simply the support chips required to interconnect the processor and the rest of the computer. Intel's Montevina platform (now known as Centrino 2) consists of a Penryn processor, the Montevina chipset and wireless networking interface. Future laptops will continue to use Intel's most recent Penryn processors which provide improved bus-speeds (1066MHz).

To the customer, Apple's decision to use 3rd party or custom chipsets is not of great significance, as all the chipsets should be functionally identical. However, AppleInsider speculates that Apple must believe there is some competitive advantage in pursuing alternative chipsets, such as improved power consumption.

Seth Weintraub, the author of 9to5Mac, publishes more information at ComputerWorld about what he has heard about the upcoming MacBook updates.

According to Weintraub's sources, the new MacBooks will be thinner than the current MacBook and MacBook Pro designs while slightly more rounded. The case is said to be made of one piece of aluminum and bears some similarities to the MacBook Air. The trackpad on the new notebook is to be made of glass and support multi-touch and the use of gestures, but the notebook will not incorporate a multi-touch screen.

Finally, Weintraub expects the new MacBook to be released at the end of September.

Based on the description, it appears these new MacBooks will be an evolution on existing laptop designs and not a radical departure into tablet designs. Of course, no one expected Apple to abandon the traditional notebook design, but the use of the term "MacBook Touch" may have confused some. Of course, these rumors don't preclude the possibility of some sort of tablet based device as well.

With persistent rumors of some sort of tablet-based Mac, it is interesting to see what other device manufacturers are working on in their labs. Toshiba revealed last week a prototype device which relies on an on-screen keyboard. The device resembles the Ultramobile PCs that never saw mainstream adoption. This prototype, however, uses Intel's new Atom processor, a 64GB Solid state drive and GPS. Toshiba admits that this version of the device is not commercially viable since it is "too small" but they are continuing to explore the technology.

Atom is Intel's new low-power processor line that was formerly known as Silverthorne. Intel hopes these processors will power a new line of mobile internet devices (MIDs). The Atom processor shares the instruction set as the Core 2 Duo so Mac OS X could theoretically run on these new processors unaltered. Intel is expected to be releasing a 1.6GHz dual-core version of its Atom processor on September 21st.

Apple has been rumored to be adopting Intel's Atom processor for "multiple products" in 2008.

The topic of Steve Jobs' health has become a hot topic amongst blogs and newspapers over the past few weeks. In 2004, Steve Jobs underwent surgery for a rare and curable form of pancreatic cancer. Jobs was reportedly cured of the disease.

The issue of his health, however, was recently raised again after his appearance at WWDC 2008. While MacRumors had previously avoided speculating about this topic due to its personal nature, a New York Times article by Joe Nocera now provides first hand information from Steve Jobs, himself.

In an unusual sequence of events, the author of the article reports that Steve Jobs called him directly, and divulged details about his recent health problems but only if it was kept "off the record". In the end, Nocera does reveal that there was nothing that contradicted his previous article on Steve Jobs' health and that "while his health problems amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug,' they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer."

This is likely to be the most official response about Steve Jobs' health that will be publicly disclosed.

Apple has finally posted an update regarding the extended MobileMe email outage that has affected approximately 1% of users. Their updated support document reports that they have restored web-access to affected MobileMe accounts. This will allow affected users to see emails that they have received since July 18th, the day the outage started.

As a first step toward restoring service, we restored web access to a portion of your MobileMe Mail account at 10:00 p.m. PDT, July 25. You can now log into me.com, and use the Mail web application to access all the messages you have received since the July 18 service outage. You can also compose, send, and receive new messages as normal. Please note that this interim solution does not provide access to any email messages received or saved before the outage began on July 18.

As Apple details, users still do not have access to emails prior to that date and are unable to access their email from their desktop email clients. This functionality will presumably be restored over time. This temporary web-access is meant to allow users to access their recent mail that has been unavailable.

Apple warns that users should not make changes to their MobileMe password, email aliases, or storage allocation while this temporary solution is in place. Doing so could result in technical errors.

Apple also admits that while the majority of email messages will be fully restored, approximately 10% of messages received between 5:00 a.m. PDT on July 16th and 10:20 a.m. PDT on July 18th have been lost. Additional details can be found in their tech note.

Update: Apple has started posting daily updates about the MobileMe email outage at the request of Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day or so to let everyone know whats happening with MobileMe, and Im working directly with the MobileMe group to ensure that we keep you really up to date. In the 14 days since we launched, its been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering. Be assured people here are working 24-7 to improve matters, and were going to favor getting you new info hot off the presses even if we have to post corrections or further updates later.

The writer explains that he or she will be updating again this weekend to report on progress.

Speculation about a possible Apple tablet has started infiltrating the mainstream media with an article on ABCNews summarizing public reaction to this possibility. The buzz about Apple's next product kicked into high gear after Apple's Peter Oppenheimer uncharacteristically described a new product during the Q3 2008 financial results conference call.

Rumors about an Apple tablet have been ongoing for years with credible claims that had originally pointed to a 2003 release. Since then, it has been revealed that Apple had been working on a tablet called Safari Pad but this was later morphed into the iPhone.

Shortly after the financial results call, MacDailyNews published an unconfirmed report about a "MacBook Touch" with a laundry list of possible features. While the exact details of the report remain up for debate, an earlier rumor from Jason O'Grady did point to a Mac OS X tablet launching this September or October. O'Grady believes this sort of iTablet is exactly what Oppenheimer was referring to.

This, to me, means that Apple is going to leverage the more than 100 patents (like MultiTouch) that theyve filed for iPhone in a larger screen device that borrows heavily from iPhone. Think of a larger, media playing, eBook reading iTablet with 3G, GPS, and Bluetooth. Now think of it in 6, 8 and 10-inch screen sizes. This is when things get interesting.

Indeed, Apple's extensive multitouch patent library has depicted multitouch control panels intended for use in Mac OS X and not just the iPhone OS.

Many believe that if Apple were to introduce a Tablet-based computer, they would have addressed the issues that have prevented mass adoption of existing Tablet PCs. Based on the "Safari Pad" codename of their previous tablet project, it seems obvious that Apple once considered web browsing to be the killer app of such a device.

The new iPhone 2.1 Beta Firmware that was released to some iPhone developers yesterday has been found to have hints at an upcoming Copy and Paste feature. According to MacNN:

One notes that in exploring the Localizable.strings entry under English.lproj in the current iPhone WebKit framework, there are entries for several commands the firmware does not currently support, including cutting, copying and pasting.

Apple's Greg Joswiak recently said that a copy/paste feature has simply not been high enough on the priority list so far, but suggested that there it could be coming in the future. Previously one engineer had revealed that Apple had been working on iPhone copy/paste but that the exact implementation had not been decided.

Now with the introduction of 3rd party iPhone applications such as WordPress for iPhone, basic copy and paste functionality has become even more important.

Update: There's a suggestions that these string findings may be meaningless as they appear Leopard's webkit as well.

Virginia Tech is building another Mac-based supercomputer, this time out of Mac Pros. According to ArsTechnica, Virginia Tech's Center for High-End Computing System is building a new cluster using 324 Mac Pro towers that will have a theoretical computing capacity of 29 teraflops.

The system will be used to study two main areas: power-aware software systems that can adjust performance automatically to maximize efficiency, and distributed shared memory systems that can run existing threaded code on high-performance clusters "as if they were scaled up versions of multi-core desktops."

Virginia Tech made headlines in 2003 when they assembled a cost-efficient supercomputer named System X out of Power Mac G5s. System X ranked as the third fastest supercomputer in the 22nd edition of the of the Top 500 list, performing at over 10 teraflops. The system was upgraded to 2.3 GHz Xserve G5s approximately a year later. Ars notes that if System X were to be upgraded to current generation Xserves, the result would be a "8800-core monster that could push as much as 100 Tflopsat least in theory coming close to Top 10 territory."

The school is using Mac Pros instead of Xserves because Xserves would require more robust cooling requirements; System X uses a hybrid liquid and forced air system whereas the Mac Pro cluster would only require a conventional air-cooled room. Also, the additional PCI Express 2.0 slots provided by the Mac Pro were deemed desirable for use in other research projects.

Correction: The System X cooling system is not located in a separate building.