MacRumors

Apple has posted the 2.0.1 iPhone firmware update tonight.

Apple only lists "Bug Fixes" amongst the changes. Early claims:

- Backup process for the iPhone is much faster.
- Netshare still works
- SMS typing faster

Apple.pro has posted new photos (via Engadget) of what are claimed to be the new MacBook casings. Apple.pro was the Taiwanese blog that previously posted photographs of prototype MacBook Pro casings that were later believed to be real.

The latest collection of photos reportedly depict the upcoming MacBook revision which is expected in late September. The photos depict the top half of the MacBook's casing without any electronic components. The glow-in-the-dark Apple logo remains in place in these images. The case is made of aluminum and resembles the MacBook Air casing.

English translation provided by Ken:

From the picture below we can see that the MacBook has also entered the world of aluminum cases.

Along with its two big brothers it has changed to an aluminum case. Everyone can also pay attention to the corners. Right now Apple loves to do stuff like this. Everyone wants to know if the Apple logo on the cover lights up. The picture below should make this clear, without needing me to say much.

Of note, the case is almost identical to the MacBook Air casing.

Computerworld reports on comments made by Psystar's attorneys who suggest that anti-trust issues may arise in their defense of the Mac-clone company. Apple sued Psystar in July after Psystar had begun selling a Mac-compatible computer almost two months prior. Apple's lawsuit not only asked for the cessation of sales but also for a recall of all computers sold. Such a move would, of course, bankrupt the small clone company.

Some other intellectual property lawyers agree that Psystar "would be smart to play the antitrust card".

"What Psystar might say is, 'What we would like to do is use the Mac operating system's unique features more broadly on a variety of hardware,'" said Handler then. "I think it's a very, very hard argument to make, but I wouldn't be surprised if they tried.

Carr & Ferrell LLP, the law firm that is representing Psystar, has gone up against Apple before in another intellectual property case involving Burst.com. Colby Springer, one of Psystar's lawyers, promises "This will be an interesting case."

TechCrunch claims that Apple has ramped up iPhone 3G production to a massive 800,000 units per week. They cite a source "with direct knowledge of the numbers".

If true, this would bring Apple's iPhone 3G production and sales well above previous estimates and expectations. An early report claimed that Apple would produce 24-25 million iPhones throughout the life of the product. At a rate of 800,000 iPhones per week, Apple would produce over 40 million devices over the next year. This would also put them well ahead of their goal of selling 10 million iPhones in calendar years 2008.

Apple did sell 1 million of the iPhone 3Gs on its opening weekend, but has not yet offered additional sales numbers. Stock for the iPhone has remained tight weeks after its launch and Apple is expecting to launch the iPhone 3G in 20 additional countries on August 22nd (including Singapore).

Intel has started releasing some details about their upcoming GPU project code named Larrabee. New graphics cards based on this technology will compete with NVidia and ATI video cards that currently dominate the market. Larrabee appears to be a hybrid design between existing CPUs and GPUs, according to Extremetech:

Each of these Larrabee cores is quite distinct from the execution "cores" in many current graphics processors. It's not the x86 instruction set that makes it special (though that is certainly unique as well). Rather, it is the support for full context switching and preemptive multitasking, virtual memory and page swapping, and full cache coherency. These are features developers have come to expect in modern x86 CPUs, but don't yet exist in modern GPUs.

The advantage of such a design is said to be improved scalability as additional processor cores are added. Intel claims an almost linear improvement in gaming performance as the number of processor scores increase:

Intel also explains that existing programming APIs such as DirectX and Open CL can be used so existing games should be able to take advantage of Larrabee. While Apple has made no announcements surrounding the adoption of Larrabee, Arstechnica's Jon Stokes claims that Apple will be adopting it:

And I've heard from a source that I trust that Apple will use Larrabee; this makes sense, because Larrabee, as a many-core x86 multiprocessor, can be exploited directly by GrandCentral's cooperative multitasking capabilities.

Intel is quick to point out that describing Larrabee as just a GPU is misleading, in that they expect Larrabee multi-core processors could be used in a number of applications outside of gaming.

Larrabee is expected to be released in 2009-2010 and will be initially targeted at "the personal computer market". Apple should be well equiped to leverage this technology with the introduction of Snow Leopard sometime in 2009. Snow Leopard will incorporate tools such as Grand Central and Open CL to harness both multi-core and GPU processors.

DailyMail.co.uk revived rumors of an "iPhone nano" this weekend with a report that claimed that a "nano" version of the iPhone would be shipping in time for Christmas.

The product will be launched in the UK at up to 150 for pay-as-you-go customers by O2, the mobile phone group owned by Spain's Telefonica. 'This will be a big one,' said an industry source.

This rumor has circulated before in almost identical form about one year ago.

At that time a JP Morgan analyst claimed that Apple would be planning on launching a cheaper version of the iPhone in the 4th quarter of 2007. This was based on liberal interpretation of some of Apple's patent applications which resulted in JP Morgan retracting the report and whispers that the analyst responsible for that report had been fired.

Local readers familiar with The Daily Mail have relayed that the paper is known for its "sensationalist reporting" and have expressed doubts about the article's credibility. With this in mind, however, we should also note that more reliable sources have indicated that Apple has been working on a smaller iPhone, but there is no expected time-frame for that product's release.

USA Today has published an article highlighting AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson's contributions to the Apple-AT&T relationship. Of particular note, the article cites unnamed sources who claim that in exchange for offering Apple subsidies of up to $300 per iPhone, AT&T has been awarded an extra year of iPhone exclusivity in the United States, extending into 2010.

In exchange for its payout, AT&T got a year extension, into 2010, on its exclusive distribution deal with Apple, people familiar with the matter say. Sources asked to not be named because the terms are confidential.

Under the original iPhone contract, Apple had the right to offer the device to other carriers beginning in 2009. If Apple exercised that clause, AT&T would have lost one of its biggest points of leverage with customers exclusive access to the iPhone. Nailing the extension "is a very big deal," Entner says.

Stephenson declined to discuss the contract, saying only that he is "very happy" with the arrangement.

USA Today had previously claimed that AT&T's original exclusivity agreement with Apple was to run for five years (into 2012), although other sources had reported that the agreement would extend only until 2009.

After an unusual sequence of events, Nullriver, Inc.'s NetShare app has reappeared on the iTunes App Store.

The $9.99 application promises to allow you to share your iPhone's network connection with your computer.

Share your iPhone's EDGE or 3G Internet connection with your computer using NetShare. NetShare provides a SOCKS5 proxy for your computer to connect to.

The application appeared briefly last night but was pulled for unknown reasons. Note that the tethering application does not appear to work with all traffic (such as mail, AIM requires configuration), but does work for Safari web browsing. The App is available in iTunes: App Store link.

Screenshots of the instructions were posted in our original story and a forum user has written up a detailed tutorial.

Notes: To get Firefox or Camino working, you can follow these instructions. It is reportedly possible to route all network traffic through the iPhone, but may require another application.

Notes 2: Windows XP instructions.

Update: NetShare has again been removed from the App Store without explanation from Apple.

On Thursday, Apple provided iPhone developers with their first look at daily sales numbers. One developer generously shared her sales numbers with 9to5Mac.

Eliza Block is the author of a well reviewed crossword puzzle game called 2 Across [App Store]. To her surprise, the part time developer found that she had earned almost US $1800 on Wednesday alone for her crossword application. Daily stats are only available for the past few days, but the included screenshot reveals 428 sales of her game on July 30th. At an average sales price of $5.99 USD, she earned about $1797.60 that day. Sales figures for the other days available (3 total) were said to be comparable.

Three days of data, of course, is not enough to determine a long term trend, and the sales were likely partially skewed as 2 Across is currently listed amongst Apple's Staff Favorites in the iTunes Store. Also interesting is that Block's app was ranked 39th in the App Store, which means the developers for the 38th most popular app, TapeMeasure [App Store] must have been making over $300/day (428 x $.70) for their $0.99 application.

Now, the sales rate of these apps may not be sustainable depending on how much of their popularity is due to the newness of the App Store. Still, at least one major developer has acknowledged the potential of the App Store. Other Ocean, the developers behind the iPhone version of Sega's Super Monkey Ball, has announced that they have created a specialized iPhone division to dedicate resources for future iPhone development. Super Monkey Ball initially held the top spot amongst paid iPhone apps, but has since dropped to a respectable 7th.

Apple has released Security Update 2008-005 via Software Update. The update patches several vulnerabilities including a much-publicized DNS/BIND server vulnerability where an attacker could cause a Mac OS X DNS server to direct clients to forged websites.

The update is available in the following versions:
- Mac OS X Leopard (65 MB): Requires 10.5.4
- Mac OS X Tiger (Intel) (143 MB): Requires 10.4.11
- Mac OS X Tiger (PPC) (88MB): Requires 10.4.11
- Mac OS X Server (Intel) (180 MB): Requires 10.4.11
- Mac OS X Server (PPC) (135 MB): Requires 10.4.11

Nullriver, Inc. has released NetShare onto the iTunes App Store this evening (via iPhone Alley). The $9.99 application promises to allow you to share your iPhone's network connection with your computer.

Share your iPhone's EDGE or 3G Internet connection with your computer using NetShare. NetShare provides a SOCKS5 proxy for your computer to connect to.

NetShare's inclusion in the App Store is a curiosity, as Apple must have manually approved its inclusion. It's unclear if the Application would go against AT&T user agreements. AT&T typically charges Smart Phone users $30/month extra to use tethering applications. Screenshots of the application's instructions have been included here:

This application has been confirmed to work by multiple users. NetShare is available on the iTunes App Store.

Update: The application appears to have gone missing from the App Store. While the application listing still appears, if you try to purchase it now, iTunes says "The item you tried to buy is no longer available".

Update 2: For those who were fortunate enough to get the app, forum user Mac-Addict has posted a detailed tutorial.

Update 3: Developer reply:

We're not quite sure why Apple took down the application yet, we've received no communication from Apple thus far. NetShare did not violate any of the Developer or AppStore agreements. We're hoping we'll get some feedback from Apple tomorrow. Sorry to all the folks that couldn't get it in time. We'll do our best to try to get the application back onto the AppStore if at all possible. At the very least, I would hope Apple will allow it in countries where the provider does permit tethering.

Update 4: NetShare is back in the App Store.

Apple has seeded the first version of Mac OS X 10.5.5 (Build 9F5) to developers tonight. This is the first new seed of Mac OS X since the released of Mac OS X 10.5.4 on June 30th.

Apple instructs developers to focus on testing a number of areas including Time Machine, AirPort, Networking, Spotlight, and many others. Apple details over 83 other bug fixes and issues addressed including a few potential kernel panic scenarios.

At this early stage, there appear to be some major issues as Apple warns developers not to install this seed on the MacBook Air, MacBook, Mac Mini, iMac (with Intel integrated graphics).

Apple is now offering registered iPhone developers with daily download statistics on how well their applications are doing in the App Store.

Before today, most developers had been left in the dark about their applications performance, and had to wait until the first of the monthly reports. Apple had originally posted download numbers publicly but quickly removed this feature once it became clear that you could easily estimate a particular developer's revenue. Registered iPhone developers can find their daily stats at iTunes Connect.

Daily reports may help developers more quickly find proper price points. Larger developers must have already had access to their download stats, as Sega's president said that he expected that Sega would sell 1 million downloads for Super Monkey Ball, though no time-frame was given.

Other developers have already been making pricing adjustments due to the high level of competition in the App Store. Most recently, Pangea Software dropped the price of their Cro-Mag Rally racing game from $9.99 to $5.99.

IEEE has approved a new version of IEEE 1394, better known to Apple users as Firewire. The standard, known as 1394-2008, encompasses all prior Firewire technology and provides complete specifications for speeds of 1.6 Gigabits/second and 3.2 Gigabits/second, which TG Daily notes utilizes the existing 9 pin cables of Firewire 800.

Firewire 400 devices have become widespread in the computer industry, though the faster Firewire 800 specification has seen slower adoption. Currently MacBook Pros, Mac Pros, and iMacs each feature both Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 ports.

IEEE says the new standard is expected to be available in October.