MacRumors

Today, Intel announced their Centrino 2 (Montevina) platform which incorporates a faster Penryn Core 2 Duo processor, faster bus speed, faster integrated graphics (GMA X4500) and the option of WiMax support.

The new Penryn chips will run from 2.26 GHz up to 3.06 GHz with a 1066MHz Front Side Bus. This is an improvement over the existing processors which range from 2.1 GHz to 2.8 GHz with a 800 Mhz Front Side Bus which currently power Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro. Apple is expected to incorporate the new processors in the next version of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. Historically, Apple has not adopted Intel's platforms in their entirety, so, for example, they may choose not support to WiMax, a next generation wireless broadbrand standard.

Apple's laptops were last upgraded in February with only modest speed bumps. While Montevina's speed upgrades are also said to be modest, it has also been rumored that Apple will be revamping the physical design of their next notebooks to bring them in line with the current iMac and MacBook Air. Recently leaked photos depicting a more tapered design of the MacBook Pro are believed to be real. Apple's next laptops are rumored to arrive sometime during Q3 2008 (July-September).

Meanwhile, Intel's next major processor revision starts in late 2008 and continues into 2009 with Nehalem. Nehalem promises dramatic speed increases and increased multi-threading and multi-core designs. Nehalem processors suitable for notebooks, however, will not likely arrive until well into 2009.

ExtremeTech reports that they were able to talk to Apple's head of iPod and iPhone marketing, Greg Joswiak, on launch day. They asked two very common questions about possible features of Apple's iPhone.

When asked about the iPhone's lack of copy and paste functionality, Joswiak stated that they were not specifically against the feature, they have a prioritized list of features and were only able to get down the list so far with this product release. As a result, it seems copy and paste may still be a possibility in a future software update.

The author also asked about David Pogue's suggestion that the iPhone's GPS antenna was too small to accommodate a turn-by-turn navigation application. According to Joswiak, this is untrue. Instead he points to "complicated issues" surrounding driving applications but promises "It will evolve. I think our developers will amaze us." Indeed, TeleNav has already claimed that they are working on this exact product for release in the App Store.

Apple announced that they had sold over 1 million iPhone 3Gs this weekend. There continue to be long lines at Apple Stores across the country for the iPhone. Despite some early complaints about price plans in Canada, Rogers announced today that they nearly sold out of the iPhone and had "the best weekend sales of a handset" in their history.

Despite long lines and activation troubles, Apple announced today that they sold its one millionth iPhone 3G on Sunday, only three days after its initial launch on Friday, July 11th. In the press release, Steve Job points out that it took 74 days to sell the same number of the original iPhone. The iPhone 3G is now available in in 21 countries. When the iPhone was first announced in 2007, Apple had announced a goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008.

In addition, Apple announced that the newly launched App Store has had over 10 million iPhone and iPod touch applications downloaded over roughly the same period of time.

"The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days," said Steve Jobs, Apples CEO. "Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly."

Apple's MobileMe services are working for most, though there are still sporadic reports of misbehavior. One point of contention, however, has been the exact behavior of their advertised "Push" services.

At the moment, the Mac OS X updater for MobileMe is available only for Leopard, and Tiger users will continue to use their ".Mac" control panels. In order to use the advanced Push capabilities of MobileMe from your Mac, you need to enable "Automatic" synchronization by selecting it in the MobileMe control panel:

Doing so will allow updates from your iPhone and Me.com to be pushed to your Mac near-instantaneously. Similarly, push services also work from many other combinations for Calendar and Address Book data. (The Mac OS X mail client remains sync only):

Changes to Me.com -> Mac (push)
Changes to Me.com -> iPhone push)
Changes to iPhone -> Me.com (push)

The point of contention comes when changes are performed on your Mac. These changes do not trigger an automatic sync and instead waits until the next scheduled sync which is every 15 minutes:

Changes to Mac -> Me.com (15 minute sync)

Apple has confirmed that this is expected behavior in a Knowledgebase article which has generated some complaints in our MobileMe forums. Alternatively, users can hit the "Sync" menu option at any time on their Mac to trigger a sync at any time.

TouchArcade.com (rss) is a new site dedicated to iPhone and iPod Touch gaming. Cofounded by myself, Arnold Kim (blog, twitter), and Blake Patterson (home, twitter), the site hopes to become the definitive resource for gaming on Apple's new handheld platform.

We've already highlighted some hidden gems in iPhone gaming and compiled excerpts from some recent articles in this early iPhone gaming roundup:

Dizzy Bee (iTunes link) - Its a fun time to be an iPhone owner when a gem like Igloo Games Dizzy Bee appears out of nowhere as a pleasant and inexpensive surprise.

Tilt and turn your iPhone to guide a friendly bee to rescue fruit while avoid obstacles and baddies. The game provides a remarkable level of polish throughout and provides an excellent value at only $2.99.

Aurora Feint: The Beginning (iTunes link) - 23 year old developers Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron have been slaving away at this game for only 10 weeks, but have already won the praise of early App Store commenters who are amazed that the game is free.

Some have compared the game to Pokemon Puzzle League where the basic gameplay is to arrange three blocks in a row, either vertical or horizontal. But whats unique is the Role Playing component to the game along with level-ups which provide you with useful skills such as Time Stopper and Strategist. These level-ups can aid in gameplay and increase your multipliers. The graphics and music are also of impressive quality.

A couple of other fun and free games introduced to the App Store include Cube Runner (iTunes link) and Tap Tap Revenge (iTunes link) and other related topics include the effectiveness of alternative input controls and the iPhone's built in rumble pack.

Visit TouchArcade.com for more gaming news and reviews.

After a few days of growing pains, it appears that MobileMe is now online at Me.com. The service has been up and down over the past few days while under heavy load. While Apple had initially released a MobileMe updater for Mac OS X, they had temporarily pulled it during the ongoing server issues.

Today, the MobileMe updater appears to have returned to Software Update as version 1.1:

The Mac OS X Update For MobileMe is recommended for users running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.4 and includes general system fixes that enhance your Mac for MobileMe.

The web-based service replaces .Mac and offers web-based email, calendar, addressbook, online storage as well as "push" sync services.

We've opened a MobileMe forum to handle questions and discussion about this new Apple service.

When Apple announced the iPhone Developers program in March, they made it clear that during the beta period that they would limit the number of approved developers. At WWDC, Steve Jobs revealed that of the 25,000 applicants interested in the program, only 4,000 had been accepted. From these 4,000 developers, Apple was able to launch the App Store with over 500 applications.

Based on reports from developers, it seems Apple has opened the program up and dropped the "beta" designation. Multiple developers have reported that they have been accepted into the $99/year developer program which allows them to install their applications directly onto their iPhone and also submit their apps for inclusion into the iTunes App Store.

The opening up of the program should motivate more developers to start serious development on the iPhone. It should also eliminate the non disclosure agreement which prevented developers from discussing their future applications.

We have added a new iPhone Developer forum to encourage developer participation and discussion. Meanwhile, Mac developers are also welcome to participate in our long standing Mac Developer forum.

After a long day of waiting, Apple has finally posted the official iPod Touch 2.0 Firmware update. The update is a $9.95 download that is available through the iTunes Store (link).

iPhone 2.0 Software Update for iPod touch includes many enhancements for Mail, Contact, and Calendars, as well as support for MobileMe, Microsoft Exchange Active Sync, new languages, a scientific calculator, and more. This update also includes all January Software Update applications and features.

The 2.0 Update also allows the iPod Touch to download and run applications from the App Store. Apple first posted the link to the update at 7:30a.m. EST, but the software only just became available.

Touch owners should visit our iPod touch forums, App Store forum or TouchArcade for App Store game coverage.

With the worldwide release of the iPhone complete, numerous publications are releasing their reviews of Apple's latest gadget.

Gizmodo provides some interesting observations about the iPhone 3G. They comment on the plastic backing, and acknowledge that the device feels cheaper than the original aluminum backed iPhone. This "cheaper" feeling, however, has been somewhat debated by individual observations. The trade-off in using plastic, of course, is improved signal strength. Gizmodo found that Wi-Fi reception was a bit better in the new iPhone. In their testing, they were able to walk up to 120 feet away from an access point before losing a connection. In the same test, the original iPhone dropped the connection at 100 feet.

The screen is also described as warmer, slightly brighter and better for daylight viewing. This "warmer" quality has generated some complaints about a yellow-tint to the 3G's screen that is most noticeable when compared directly to the first iPhone.

Audio quality in the 3G phone has been said to be much clearer, with Gizmodo describing it as the difference between "someone with their hand over their mouth and with their hand taken away." This improvement was also mentioned by a number of earlier reviewers. iLounge had a dissenting opinion on this and found that with the exception of Bluetooth calls, in which the iPhone 3G was superior, the handset and speaker audio were comparable.

Engadget notes that the GPS acquisition is "surprisingly fast for a cellphone" and credits this to the iPhone's use of both GPS, cellphone towers and Wi-Fi access points to help determine location.

One point of confusion is whether or not 3rd parties will be able to offer a turn-by-turn GPS solution for the iPhone. Questions about SDK conditions and antenna size have been raised in previous reviews, but TeleNav confirmed to Gizmodo that they will be launching a 3D moving map GPS application with turn-by-turn voice guidance.

Additional iPhone 3G first impressions have been posted by MacRumors readers in this discussion thread.

Despite activation issues, the iPhone 3G appears to have had strong sales with reports of it selling out in Europe as well as AT&T stores. Apple is again providing an iPhone Availability tool that will be updated at 9 p.m. nightly.

Yesterday, we published a link to what appeared to be the release version of the iPhone 2.0 Firmware. This version of the firmware was successfully installed on a number of original iPhones and readers were able to start using Apps from the iTunes App Store.

Today, Apple released the official 2.0 Firmware. While it carries the same build number, the file sizes are different and the iPhone model designation is different. One unconfirmed poster explains that the "iPhone1,2" firmware that was leaked yesterday was only intended for use on the iPhone 3G.

The details of the post are up for debate, as the current iPhone 3G will download and use the "leaked" 5a347 firmware upon restore. Still, due to this possibility, we recommend all readers who upgraded to the pre-release firmware to take the time to upgrade to the official firmware. The process is exactly the same. Remember, with any firmware upgrade, there is the possibility that you may lose your data, and we can't take any responsibility.

Before you begin, remember that the phone will have to be reactivated after firmware installation. This normally takes a few seconds when connecting to iTunes, but with the high number of activations today, Apple's iTunes servers have been unresponsive, leaving many waiting to activate. It appears activations have just now started to run smoothly, but you may want to wait even longer before "upgrading" just to be safe.

1. Sync your iPhone with iTunes 7.7 to make sure all data is backed up.
2. Download iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw (Official firmware). You should get a single ".ipsw" file. If your browser renames it to a .zip file, you should rename it to ".ipsw"
3. In iTunes click on the "Check for Updates" while holding the Option key on the Mac (Shift key on Windows)
4. Select the firmware you downloaded in step #2
5. Wait for your iPhone to update and restore.

All your App Store applications and data should be moved over, and all applications should run.

Unrelated to this procedure, there have been sporadic reports of people having Applications quitting immediately after launch. This has happened both with original iPhone and iPhone 3G versions. The solution is to simply delete the application and redownload it from the App Store. Apple allows you to re-download any application for free.

Note: This is not for the iPod Touch. Touch owners need to wait until Apple releases the official Touch 2.0 firmware.

Note 2:: If you never installed the pre-release firmware, you can upgrade to the latest firmware just by clicking on "Check for Updates" in iTunes 7.7. iTunes will take care of the rest.

The official iPhone 2.0 Firmware is now available through iTunes 7.7. The new upgrade file carries the same build number (5A347) as yesterday's early leak:

iPhone1,1_2.0_5A347_Restore.ipsw

The "1,1" designation is different, however. The significance of this difference is not entirely clear. Despite the same build numbers. the file sizes of the two builds are different. For those who are concerned, you will likely be able to crossgrade to the official release using the same technique as yesterday. We'll post details of this after some testing. The iPhone 2.0 Firmware provides a number of new features and also provides support for the App Store.

Update: Readers should NOT upgrade to the 2.0 Firmware until Apple resolves their server activation issues. If you do upgrade and are unable to connect to the iTunes servers, your iPhone will be left in an unusable state.

Apple has updated their iPod Touch App Store page with a link to the iTunes Stores for iPod Touch owners to upgrade to the 2.0 Firmware. The $9.95 upgrade brings all of the 2.0 Firmware features to the iPod Touch.

For iPod Touch owners who never upgraded to the previous January pay update, Apple announced that the latest $9.95 update includes the January update as well.

On June 9, 2008, Apple announced the iPhone 2.0 Software Update for iPod touch which includes all features previously included in the January Software Upgrade, the App Store, and much more (also on June 9, the iPod touch January Software Upgrade was also removed from the store). For information about iPhone 2.0 software, visit www.apple.com/ipodtouch/appstore.

The 2.0 iPod Touch firmware link currently does not lead anywhere.

Some iPhone owners were able to download the free iPhone 2.0 Firmware early, but Apple has asked us to pull the link. We expect the official iPhone 2.0 Firmware upgrade (which is free) will be distributed shortly.