MacRumors

AlleyInsider publishes an unconfirmed rumor that Apple will be incorporating QuickTime encoding/decoding chips into their products in the coming months. AlleyInsider's Dan Frommer describes it as "pure speculation" but felt it plausible enough to publish for discussion.

Our understanding is that a QuickTime encoding/decoding chip would handle the grunt work of processing video, presumably in the H.264 format, so that Mac computers' processors wouldn't have to do as much heavy lifting. That could be used in any number of cirumstances, such as a live, hi-def iChat AV video chat, watching HD video off the Web, or faster encoding HD video for distribution. (Perhaps the iSight cameras built into MacBooks and iMacs might get a HD upgrade, too.)

The rumor actually mirrors an old claim by Robert Cringely from 2007 that describes the same details:

Now comes the rumor I have heard, that I believe to be a fact, that has simply yet to be confirmed. I have heard that Apple plans to add hardware video decoding to ALL of its new computers beginning fairly soon, certainly this year.

The significance of this rumor is somewhat unclear as many modern day graphics cards already contain dedicated H.264 decoding hardware. The addition of encoding hardware, however, may be of benefit for low end and mobile configurations.

Incidentally, H.264 is one of the codecs used in Blu-Ray high definition video discs which Apple has yet to adopt.

In an interview with Steve Jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports that the iTunes App Store has delivered over 60 million programs to customers over the course of the first month. While most of those applications were free, Jobs does reveal that Apple has sold an average of $1 million a day in applications for a total of $30 million in sales over the first month. Jobs says he's "never seen anything like this in my career for software."

Some of the big winners amongst the sales include Sega's Super Monkey Ball [App Store] which saw over 300,000 downloads in the first 20 days. This represents over $2 million in net revenue for this $9.99 game alone. Meanwhile, the popular medical reference Epocrates [App Store] has seen over 125,000 downloads during its short time in the App Store. This compares quite favorably to Epocrates previously installed base of 500,000 other mobile users.

Also addressed is the recent discussion surrounding application removals. An Apple spokesperson described the pulling of the I am Rich application as a "judgement call".

Finally, Jobs confirms the ability to remotely disable an application:

"Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull"

Intel has announced that the upcoming Nehalem processor will be officially known as the Core i7.

Nehalem has been the code name for Intel's upcoming processors first due in Q4 2008. Nehalem represents a major overhaul of Intel's processor technology and introduces a number of improvements over existing process bottlenecks.

Intel's choice of name seems to be arbitrary but will reportedly fit into the naming scheme for the full line of chips, as explained by TGDaily.com:

Intel told us that i7 was simply chosen because it is short and sweet. The company showed some understanding for our confusion over this name choice and promised that i7 would make sense down the road when additional new identifiers are introduced.

Intel is expected to reveal more information about the Core i7 at the Intel Developer Forum on August 19th. At the conference, Intel will also detail a new energy saving technique in the i7:

Intel would not reveal the nature of the new energy efficiency feature in the Core i7 chips. A company spokesman said it is not a direct evolution of the Intel's SpeedStep technology that automates frequency scaling based on workloads.

While the first of the Core i7 processors will be introduced in Q4 2008, mainstream desktop and mobile versions of the processor will be delayed until well into 2009.

IBM has launched a website previewing their forthcoming version of specialized Lotus Notes access for the iPhone.

Dubbed IBM Lotus iNotes 'Ultralite', the web-based application built on Lotus Domino Web Access will provide corporate email, calendar, and contacts in a specially formatted iPhone version. Several preliminary screenshots are available, though IBM notes they are subject to change. We've mirrored a few here:

The software has been expected since January and will be released later this year.

Moconews.net reports that according to "multiple sources", T-Mobile is planning to launch an app store across their entire lineup of phones.

Think of *Apples* App store, but for the entire carriers handset line-up from smartphone to feature phone. As one developer, who was briefed on the matter, said: The App store was a big deal, but thats one phone. This is an entire carrier.

According to Moconews, developers will submit their applications online and receive a revenue-share agreement based on how much network resources are consumed. A video streaming application, for example, would require a higher percentage to T-Mobile. The site again emphasizes that the store will apply across all different platforms including Android, Java, Sidekick and Windows Mobile.

The store, of course, will draw comparisons to Apple's recently launched App Store which offers developers a fixed 70%/30% split with 70% going to developers.

Despite some early assurances, it appears that Nullriver's NetShare application may not return to the U.S. App Store at all. NetShare was an iPhone application that appeared briefly in the iTunes App Store before its removal. The application allowed users to share their iPhone's cellular internet connection with their laptop over Wi-Fi.

In speaking to Wired.com, the developer reports that Apple is currently reviewing user contracts with their mobile phone providers, including AT&T. Wired got hold of an AT&T spokesperson who confirmed that tethering is not allowed in the AT&T terms of service.

As a result, it seems unlikely that NetShare will return to the U.S. App Store but it does leave open the possibility that it will be available to international customers whose mobile carriers do not have such restrictions. Despite the removal of the application from the App Store, customers who purchased the application prior to its removal can continue to use it on their iPhones.

Infoworld reports (via MacsimumNews) that Samsung has been working with developers to boost solid state drive (SSD) performance in operating systems. Samsung announced Wednesday that it has been in talks with Microsoft to boost performance in Windows:

The speed and way in which SSDs fetch and cache data are different than hard drives, said Michael Yang, flash marketing manager at Sun. Samsung hopes to work with Microsoft to boost SSD performance on Windows by discovering optimal packet sizes for data transfers and the best ways to read and write files, for example.

Of interest to Mac users is that Sun has already been working with Samsung to improve SSD support in their ZFS file system.

Sun is adding capabilities to boost the durability and performance of SSDs on ZFS-based operating systems. For example, Sun may add defragmentation capabilities for SSDs, which organizes data in a particular order to enable quicker data access.

Apple has announced that ZFS read/write support will be in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) server, although there has been no official word on the consumer version. Apple lists the benefits of ZFS:

Snow Leopard Server adds read and write support for the high-performance, 128-bit ZFS file system, which includes advanced features such as storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshots.

Solid State Drives are a new technology that promise faster disk drive performance but are presently at premium prices. Prices, of course, are dropping quickly. Apple recently dropped the price of the MacBook Air 64GB SSD upgrade from $999 to $599. While there were some controversial claims from Tom's Hardware that SSDs actually reduced notebook battery life, a followup report indicates that this is not necessarily the case.

DaringFireball.net clarifies that the published blacklist url likely only blocks malicious apps from accessing the iPhone's Core Location functions. Core Location allows applications to detect the user's location through GPS and Wi-Fi triangulation.

An informed source at Apple confirmed to me that the clbl in the URL stands for Core Location Blacklist, and that it does just that. It is not a blacklist for disabling apps completely, but rather specifically for preventing any listed apps from accessing Core Location an API which, for obvious privacy reasons, is covered by very strict rules in the iPhone SDK guidelines.

This being said, this doesn't change the fact that Apple has suggested they can disable Applications remotely:

Since each iPhone program will be digitally signed by its creator, this gives Apple the ability to turn off the spigot, as Steve Jobs put it, and revoke programs that dont meet its standards.