MacRumors

Bloomberg reports that Adobe's Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen has revealed that Adobe is working with Apple on bringing Flash support to the iPhone:

Its a hard technical challenge, and thats part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating, Narayen said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.

Flash is a very popular web plug-in that is used to deliver animation and video content on the web. Apple's iPhone has notably not supported Flash since its launch.

In March, Steve Jobs even said that the the current version of Flash performed too slowly on the iPhone. It's not clear what might have caused the change of heart, though Adobe announced in November that they were partnering with ARM to create an optimized implementation of Flash specifically for the ARM11 family of processors. Apple's iPhone is based on these processors, so it may be seeing the benefit of this collaboration.

Several forum users have reported that that they have been told by various resellers that iMac availability is currently limited. Meanwhile, another user reports that their orders for 20" iMacs have been unexpectedly delayed:

This certainly falls in the realm of speculation, but I ordered a number of baseline 20" iMacs for work, with no custom configuration, and I've had my order delayed for a week, followed by this message today:

"Due to an unexpected delay, we are unable to ship the following item(s) by the date that you were originally quoted:

MB324LL/A, IMAC 20/2.66/2GB/320GB/SD-USA will now ship on or before Feb 05, 2009"

AppleInsider was able to confirm from their reseller sources that supply of Apple's iMacs are indeed "constrained" for the immediate future. The rumor site believe that this means that new models are nearing production.

Apple is said to have braced its partners for limited availability of the remainder of the iMac line in the coming weeks, a sign which this late in the product's life-cycle "only means one thing" -- namely that the company is drawing down inventory levels ahead of new models.

Reseller supplies tend to be rather crude in predicting product revisions, but many have been expecting iMac revisions early in 2009.

Apple has quietly updated their pages for the new 17" unibody MacBook Pro to reflect a change from accepting pre-orders to offering shipment in 7-10 business days for new orders. In addition, several international Apple online stores have added a "Now Shipping" badge to the 17" MacBook Pro ad on their front pages.

The new 17" MacBook Pro was announced at Macworld San Francisco with availability planned for "late January". The updated machine adopts many of the design changes introduced in the 15" MacBook Pro and 13" MacBook in October 2008, but notably features a non-user-replaceable battery designed to provide 8-hour battery life and to retain up to 80% of its original capacity for up to 1000 charge cycles.

Users are encouraged to visit our MacBook Pro forum for the latest updates from users awaiting delivery of the new machines.

After yesterday's story that we had found evidence of an unreleased iPhone had been spotted in recent firmware as well as ad delivery networks, PinchMedia follows up with what few details they have about the usage of the device.

- 1st spotting of the "iPhone 2,1" device occured in early October 2008
- Usage picked up in mid-December 2008
- A few dozen distinct "iPhone 2,1" devices have been detected
- Almost exclusively located in south San Francisco Bay Area
- Both AT&T and Wi-Fi connections

PinchMedia provides iPhone developers with ad serving and analytic tracking software to embed within iPhone applications. This is how the the iPhone 2,1 devices have been detected. The iPhone 2,1 model is also found in the firmware of the iPhone 2.x firmware releases as we reported yesterday.

Macworld notes that Apple has instituted a new feature that allows iTunes Store users to upgrade their music libraries to iTunes Plus tracks on either a per-track or per-album basis.

At Macworld San Francisco, Apple announced a number of changes to the iTunes Store, including the immediate removal of digital rights management (DRM) from approximately 80% of available songs and the option for owners of songs containing DRM to upgrade to the DRM-free versions for a fee. At the time, Apple touted the ability for users to upgrade their entire libraries with a single click, but this method was the only one provided by Apple for users to upgrade their music libraries. This generated a number of complaints from users who only wanted to upgrade a portion of their libraries, but were faced with an all-or-nothing option.

This new policy provides users with additional flexibility to upgrade portions of their libraries, but does require that album purchases be upgraded as an entire album rather than allowing upgrades of individual tracks from a purchased album.

Macworld readers have also noted a few problems that have resulted in users being charged full price instead of the upgrade price, and they have recommended turning on 1-Click purchasing until Apple addresses this issue.

PocketGamer.biz reports that Apple is planning on introducing a dedicated section in the iTunes App Store for premium games priced at $19.99.

However, the initiative will only be open to a restricted number of large publishers, rather than the thousands of smaller developers currently selling their titles on the main App Store.

PocketGamer's sources had no details on when this might happen, although Apple's WWDC conference in June was suggested as a possible launch venue.

The move may help Apple combat the natural trend towards low priced Apps, and would also indicate that Apple may be listening to long-running developer complaints that the Top 100 lists tend to reward cheaper but higher volume apps.

Being able to sustain higher priced apps in the App Store is, of course, in Apple's best interest. This is not the first time Apple has tried to promote these premium apps. In November, Apple invited select app developers to a press event highlighting many $9.99 apps and games. While several high profile have been introduced at the $9.99 price point, many have quickly seen price drops in the highly competitive App Store market.

Games are the most popular type of app the iTunes App Store making up almost 25% of all titles. TouchArcade.com covers the growing market of iPhone games.

MacRumors has discovered that Apple's iPhone 2.x Firmware has evidence of the next generation iPhone which has been designated "iPhone2,1".

Apple uses these models numbers to distinguish between different hardware models. The original iPhone carries the model number of "iPhone 1,1" while the 3G iPhone is labeled "iPhone 1,2". These numbers do not change for simple storage increases and instead represent functionally different devices. Similarly, the iPod Touch was originally introduced as the "iPod 1,1" and the most recent hardware revision was labeled "iPod2,1". The 2,1 iPod Touch added a speaker, volume controls, microphone support and a much faster processor than the 1st generation model. This new model number can be found in the USBDeviceConfiguration.plist in an unencrypted firmware.

Meanwhile, at least one developer has noticed actual "iPhone2,1" models in use based on PinchMedia ad serving reports. (Other numbers blurred out).

Rumors of the next generation iPhone point to the support of Multi-Core CPUs and possibly Multi-Core GPUs from Imagination Technologies. Apple has been building a team of chip engineers over the past year to participate in their own ARM processor designs that will presumably be used in future iPhones. Schiller previously outlined Apple's natural product timelines and acknowledged that June is the usual timeframe for major iPhone revisions, although storage increases could happen at any time.

AT&T has been exploring the possibility of heavily subsidizing the cost of netbooks by bundling 3G data contracts. The sales model has been well established amongst mobile phones, including Apple's own iPhone 3G. Consumers who agree to the two-year 3G data contract could find their netbooks discounted to $99 or less. AT&T explored this model in a deal with Radio Shack who offered an Acer netbook for only $99 over the holidays:

As president of AT&T's new Emerging Devices division, [Glenn] Lurie hopes to do a lot more of those deals. His mission is to get just about everything except phones connected to AT&T's broadband network -- laptops, GPS devices, cars, games, medical equipment, "all the way to dog collars," he quips.

AT&T's Lurie reports that they are in talks with "lots of folks" and specifically says that he "would very much like to do more business with Apple."

While AT&T presently provides exclusive service to Apple's iPhone 3G, Apple has yet to support any built-in data services with their notebooks. If Apple were to introduce a netbook (a possibility they've downplayed) with built-in 3G networking, such subsidies could bring customers' up front costs down by several hundred dollars.

AT&T today reported financial results from the fourth quarter of 2008 and announced that they had activated 1.9 million new iPhones during the quarter. That number was down from 2.4 million activations in the third quarter, its first full quarter of availability, but was still sufficient to play a significant role in AT&T subscriber growth, which saw an overall net gain of 2.1 million subscribers.

While iPhone activations result in an up-front hit to AT&T's earnings due to the subsidy provided to Apple, AT&T values new iPhone customers for their extended contracts at a higher average monthly rate than typical wireless subscribers. AT&T also reported that 40% of iPhone activations were to customers who were new to AT&T, a figure consistent with previous results.

Fortune analyzes how the iPhone has helped drive AT&T's wireless growth:

1. AT&T has activated 4.3 million iPhone 3Gs since its launch, 1.9 million in Q4 alone -- more than double its iPhone activations one year earlier.

2. The average revenue from Phone users is 60% higher than the typical AT&T customer -- thanks to that $30 per month data fee. Their heavy use of Web services helped drive AT&T wireless data use up 51.2% year to year, which as reader Jon in Brentwood, Calif., points out is not necessarily a good thing.

3. About 40% of the iPhone activations this quarter were new AT&T customers, either buying their first cellphone or switching from another carrier.

4. The churn rate -- the percentage of customers who drop AT&T's service -- among iPhone owners is significantly lower than the rest of the network, sharply reducing marketing costs.

Overall, AT&T's wireless revenue rose 13.2% year-over-year and made up 41.4% of AT&T's total revenue, up from 37.4% in the year-ago quarter.

iLife '09 was officially released yesterday and people are getting their first experiences with Apple's latest updates to iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband. Apple has detailed the biggest changes in iLife '09 in a series of Guided Tours:

- iPhoto '09 Guided Tour
- iMovie '09 Guided Tour

A few early impressions include:

- Mixed reactions about iPhoto's new facial recognition feature with some that are having better results than others.
- Apple's iPhoto facial recognition does not officially support pets such as cats and dogs, but Roberto Baldwin managed to get iPhoto to recognize and tag his cats. The results don't seem consistent, however, as at least one of our own forum members was unsuccessful at the same task.
- Macworld and Beau Colburn both have posted example videos of iMovie's new video stabilization feature.

The end result seems to add a certain weight to the video, in that it has the feel of being shot with a heavier camera that wouldnt shake so much in your hand, versus the superlight Mino. Its not going to eliminate all shakes, but it can certainly minimize them in the right situations.

- iMovie HD 6 has been removed from Apple's site, though a direct download [link] is still accessible for now.

Apple has announced that Mark Papermaster will begin work at Apple as Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering on April 24th, 2009.

Apple today announced that Mark Papermaster will be coming to Apple as senior vice president of Devices Hardware Engineering, reporting to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, on April 24. Papermaster, who comes to Apple from IBM, will lead Apple's iPod and iPhone hardware engineering teams.

Papermaster was recruited to Apple from IBM in October 2008, but IBM filed a lawsuit to block the hiring, claiming that Papermaster had violated his employment contract with IBM by leaving to work for a competitor. A U.S. District Court judge issued an injunction in early November that has prevented Papermaster from beginning work at Apple until the lawsuit was resolved.

In today's press release, Apple reports that the litigation between Papermaster and IBM has been resolved, clearing the way for Papermaster to assume his position at Apple. Papermaster replaces former iPod Division chief Tony Fadell, who stepped down in early November 2008, although he remains an advisor to Apple.

Apple has released a 2.2.1 update for the iPhone today. Available from iTunes, the update relays the following improvements:

iPhone 2.2.1 Software Update

This update contains bug fixes and improvements, including the following:
- Improved general stability of Safari
- Fixed issue where some images saved from Mail do not display correctly in the Camera Roll

Products compatible with this software update:
- iPhone
- iPhone 3G

A 2.2.1 update for the iPod Touch is also available.

Early Notes

- 2.2.1 (Build 5H11)
- Modem Firmware 02.30.03
- Emoji "hacks" still seem to work.

Macworld reports that the first high-definition video downloads have appeared on the UK iTunes Store. The first two episodes of the fifth season of the hit TV show Lost are now available at a cost of 2.49 per episode, with a season pass available for 41.99. Macworld also notes that a free "Lost Starter Kit" is available in high-definition as well.

High-definition TV show downloads were introduced as part of iTunes 8 at Apple's "Let's Rock" media event, but availability has been limited to the US iTunes Store since that time.