MacRumors

On July 19th, Apple is opening its first retail store in China in Beijing's Sanlitun entertainment district. The store opens at 10 a.m. local time.

"This is the first of many stores we will open in China," said Ron Johnson, Apple's senior vice president of retail, in remarks at the store. He later added that Apple will open stores "in Beijing, in Shanghai and beyond," and confirmed that another store will open in Beijing's Qianmen area, a shopping street south of Tiananmen Square that has been renovated ahead of the Olympic Games, which begin next month.

The store carries the same design as Apple's other retail stores but with a multilingual Genius bar. Since Apple has not yet negotiated a distribution deal with Chinese carriers, the iPhone will not be available initially. Apple's presence in China was reportedly minimal before the iPod's introduction about 5 years ago, but Apple appears to be continuing to expand their international retail push. This will be their 219th retail store worldwide.

The Wall Street Journal's China Journal provides photos from the new store.

iPhoneAlley notes that AT&T has once again posted information on their website indicating that all iPhone customers have free access to their more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots access across the U.S., including Starbucks locations:

AT&T knows Wi-Fi is hot, and free Wi-Fi even hotter, which is why we are proud to offer iPhone customers free access to the nation's largest Wi-Fi hotspot network with more than 17,000 hotspots, including Starbucks*. Now users can relax and access music, e-mail and web browsing services with their favorite blend in hand from the comfort of their favorite location.

AT&T provides an online tool to find a Wi-Fi spot near you.

We had first reported on this topic back in April when AT&T had turned the feature on at hotspot locations across the U.S. This was quickly disabled just a few days later. Another week after that, AT&T advertised the new feature on their iPhone website, and again quickly removed it. When the service was active, AT&T simply required you to enter your current iPhone phone number as authentication.

There was some speculation that the delay was due to the fact that they had not yet completed their Wi-Fi deployment at Starbucks. AT&T had won the Starbucks contract from T-Mobile in February and is already offering free Wi-Fi access for their DSL and business customers.

Update: AT&T says they made a mistake by posting that page and have made no announcements.

Apple will be webcasting their 3rd Quarter 2008 Financial Results on July 21, 2008. The 3rd fiscal quarter encompasses sales between April 1, 2008 and June 30, 2008. As such, results from the iPhone 3G and App Store sales will not be included in the earnings report.

Recent reports however, have suggested that Apple's U.S. personal computer marketshare continues to increase substantially with 30-40% gains year-over-year.

While the iPhone 3G has been well received, most reviewers appear most impressed with the App Store and the variety of applications that are available. As David Pogue describes:

The App Storeoh, man, the App Store. Its a candy store, dude. Its 550 free or cheap add-on programs that make the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) do absolutely amazing thingsstunts a cellphone has no right to perform.

Impressive apps such as Pandora Radio, BeatMaker, a VNC client and a Role Playing Game have certainly raised the bar for future apps.

A pair of quarterly research reports released today reveal that Apple is continuing to experience growing U.S. market share among PC shipments.

Gartner's report pegs Apple's share of U.S. PC shipments for the second quarter of 2008 at 8.5%, up from 6.4% in the second quarter of 2007. Apple's U.S. shipments increased 38.1% year-over-year, far outpacing the total industry shipment growth of 4.2% and allowing Apple to pass Acer for the third position in the U.S. rankings.

Meanwhile, IDC's report places Apple in a virtual tie with Acer for third place in U.S. market share at 7.8% in 2Q08, up from 6.2% in 2Q07. IDC's estimates yield shipment growth for Apple of 31.7% year-over-year in an overall market growing at only 3.6%.

Despite these gains in the U.S. market, Apple still has not broken into the top five vendors for worldwide shipments in either survey. Toshiba continues to hold the fifth spot with a 4.4% market share in a worldwide PC market that experienced 15-16% growth in shipments year-over-year.

Intel announced that it would be releasing its first quad-core processor for laptops next month.

"We're bringing quad-core to mobile in August," said Sujan Kamran, regional marketing manager for client platforms at Intel in Singapore. Kamran declined to disclose specifics of the quad-core chip, which will carry Intel's Core 2 Extreme moniker.

While the article goes on to say that quad-core "is more about bragging rights than a genuine boost in performance", Apple is working on their next revision of Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) which is expected to specifically focus on multi-core performance.

It's not clear if Apple would use such a chip in their MacBook Pros, which currently use Dual-Core mobile processors from Intel. Apple also uses the Intel's mobile processors in their iMac. The "Core 2 Extreme" version of the mobile chip typically draws more power which may prevent it from finding its way into the MacBook Pro initially.

Today, Apple sent out an email to MobileMe customers apologizing for the rocky transition from .Mac to MobileMe.

We have recently completed the transition from .Mac to MobileMe. Unfortunately, it was a lot rockier than we had hoped.

Although core services such as Mail, iDisk, Sync, Back to My Mac, and Gallery went relatively smoothly, the new MobileMe web applications had lots of problems initially. Fortunately we have worked through those problems and the web apps are now up and running.

Another snag we have run into is our use of the word "push" in describing everything under the MobileMe umbrella. While all email, contact or calendar changes on the iPhone and the web apps are immediately synced to and from the MobileMe "cloud," changes made on a PC or Mac take up to 15 minutes to sync with the cloud and your other devices. So even though things are indeed instantly pushed to and from your iPhone and the web apps today, we are going to stop using the word "push" until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs, too.

We want to apologize to our loyal customers and express our appreciation for their patience by giving all current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension to their MobileMe subscription free of charge. Your extension will be reflected in your account settings within the next few weeks.
We hope you enjoy your new suite of web applications at me.com, in addition to keeping your iPhone and iPod touch wirelessly in sync with these new web applications and your Mac or PC.

Thank you,
The MobileMe Team

Apple also acknowledged that the use of the word "push" with regard to the desktop portion of their sync services was misleading and has changed their documentation to reflect that. They state that won't use these terms "until it is near-instant on PCs and Macs" suggesting that this could come in the future.

Apple will be extending all MobileMe subscribers an automatic 30-day extension.

Fortune reports that the iPhone 3G is still a scarce item to find. Lines continue to form at many stores, and as of this morning, 21 states were sold out of the iPhone.

The states reporting no stock on hand were Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin.

Despite long activation delays, Apple announced on Monday that they had already sold 1 million iPhones over the weekend since its launch on Friday.

Apple has quietly released a 1.1.5 firmware upgrade for the iPod Touch. The 1.1.5 firmware remains a free upgrade path for firmware 1.1.4 users who chose not to upgrade to 2.0 ($9.95).

The 2.0 upgrade was released over the weekend and brings support for MobileMe, Exchange, 3rd Party Applications (App Store) and more. Based on early reports, firmware 1.1.5 appears to add no new features but may improve the speed and stability of existing applications. The update is available through iTunes.

Meanwhile, it appears that Apple is already testing version 2.0.1 of the iPhone and iPod Touch firmware.

MacMall (sponsor) is offering MacRumors readers an exclusive additional 3% off of an iPod Touch using this link (applied at checkout). Does not include $9.95 2.0 update yet.

In April, we reported that a company called Psystar was offering the first Mac clone. Using off the shelf PC parts and a modified version of Mac OS X Leopard, Psystar promised a cheaper alternative to an Apple Mac.

Despite some initial concerns about their legitimacy, Psystar has delivered what they have advertised and later even offered software updates and server models.

Throughout, Apple has remained quiet about the company and many have expected that they would pursue legal action. AppleInsider reports that on July 3rd, Apple filed a formal complaint against the clone manufacturer. Apple's lawsuit is said to on the ground of copyright infringement.

The Mac maker filed a formal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on July 3rd, just one day after Psystar began distributing a modified version of the Mac OS X 10.5.4 Leopard update to customers who had previously purchased one of its unauthorized Mac systems.

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.