MacRumors

Apple's West 14th Street Store in New York will have its grand opening tonight at 6 pm EST.

"We are thrilled to open our third and largest store in Manhattan on West 14th Street," said Ron Johnson, Apple's senior vice president of Retail. "We think New Yorkers will love this stunning new location and the incredibly talented team we've assembled to make the Apple Store West 14th Street a place where people can shop, learn and truly be inspired."

The store is Apples first three-story store with two floors dedicated to products and a third dedicated to services, including a 46-foot Genius Bar and specially designed areas for workshops and personal training.

ifoAppleStore is on location, and reports on rumors that Apple will be giving out free laptops to the first 10 people in line (there were 62 in line as of their post).

How the giveaways work:

...visitors will be given a mystery gift, and upon opening it they will learn if theyre a winner. Prizes are entirely random over the entire evening.

With the West 14th Street store, there are now 3 New York City stores, including the glass-cube 5th Avenue store and the original SoHo store.

Photos of the new Apple Store.

A Fortune blog explores what Apple could be doing with their $15 billion cash reserve that they have accumulated in the past few years.

When asked about Apple's plans, chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer simply stated that having a few billion on hand helps to fund big projects, though there reportedly had been discussion about buying back shares or issuing dividends to Apple stock holders.

Apple could use the money to make strategic acquisitions. In the recent past, Apple has acquired a number of companies, including PowerSchool, Emagic, Nothing Real, Zayante, and Fingerworks. Apple also has plans to expand into a new campus which could take up to $500 million to fund.

Forrester Research, Inc has released a new research study that is critical of Apple's iTunes video attempts, and states there is room for competition in the industry.

The iTunes video experiment of selling TV shows for $1.99 and movies for upwards of $9.99 although a great service to the 4% of online adults who regularly buy video on iTunes is not a mainstream model. Importantly, it wont translate into what Apple really wants: increased demand for sophisticated hardware like the iPod touch and Apple TV.

Forrester conducted an online survey of 5,379 US and Canadian individuals aged 18 to 88. Forrester believes that only 4% of the online population buys iTunes videos, in contrast to 19% iTunes store usage. Forrester acknowledges that while those 4% are satisfied with their service, the iTunes video store will remain a curiosity rather than a game-changer.

One of the pitfalls mentioned is that there are currently easier ways to get [free] TV shows, including consumer DVR's and services like NBC Direct. Furthermore, Forrester calls out Apple's lack of a catalogue of hit movies. One result of Apple's video misfortunes is that although awareness of the AppleTV is at 45%, the purchase intent is only at 3%.

In an open letter to Apple, Forrester suggests it's time to change their video game plan, including winning NBC back (background), adding a movie rental model (rumored), funneling more web content into iTunes, and supporting an advertising model for TV shows.

Editor Update: The validity of the 4% video usage is in question, since both U.S. and Canada customers were surveyed. Canadians do not have TV or Movies available to them in the iTunes store. This would skew the results.

Apple has filed a patent application for techniques for providing input to interactive and multitasking applications, especially in regards to gaming.

The application appears specifically applicable to portable devices, where screen real estate is a premium. From the application:

A location on the input area can be designated, for example, for a gaming application if input is received in a particular manner different than that designated for the non-gaming application (e.g., tapping or touching the region would send input to a gaming application, but pressing would result in a media player function)

In general, Apple focuses on being able to control background applications via the same input surface without having to navigate away from the foreground application. For the iPhone/iPod touch, the patent is similar to the home button double-click functionality, but the touch screen would be utilized.

The application was originally filed in September 2006 and was published today.

Raw Data: Patent Application #20070279394

CNBC's Jim Goldman reports on rumors from "a very good source of [his] with good connections to Apple's Asian manufacturing partners."

Goldman has heard that Apple will be making headlines in the next weeks-to-months related to the iPod Touch, iPhone and ultra-portable laptop.

- iPod touch is said to have had its manufacturing increased substantially to 5.1 million units for the holiday shopping season.
- 3G iPhone expected to hit store shelves by May or June.
- Finally, the rumored Ultra portable laptop will arrive at Macworld San Francisco 2008.

On the laptop, the specs differ slightly from circulating rumors, and pegs the price point at $1500:

The blogs have speculated about this, but he says he now has hard evidence that the smallest laptop ever from Apple is only weeks away. He says the device will feature a 12-inch screen and will be 50 percent thinner--and lighter--than current versions of the MacBook Pro. He says the product will not have a hard-drive, but rely on Flash memory instead and likely retail for around $1,500.

Previous rumors of the ultra-portable laptop have described it as a 13" aluminum sub-notebook. A video clip of his segment is also available. Apple, of course, declined to comment on rumors. Macworld San Francisco kicks off on January 15th with a keynote speech from Steve Jobs. As always, MacRumors will be providing live coverage.

According to CNet France (English summary provided by Electronista), iPhone 1.1.3 is set to arrive as early as this weekend, and will pack some commonly-requested features such as voice memo recording and disk mode.

The disk feature behaves like the equivalent for iPods and will still block users from simply dragging and dropping content to load the phone with playable music, CNET says. Enabling disk mode should still allow knowledgeable users to browse the content on the phone, though this is not expected to be of any use to the hacking community, which has already gained access to the phone's software.

Apple released iPhone/iPod Touch Firmware 1.1.2 on November 8th, although it did not become available through iTunes until Monday, November 12th.

In August, a rumor circulated that Apple and Volkswagen were in early meetings to work on incorporating Apple products into Volkswagen compact cars. The most recent reports, coming from PressPortal.de indicate that the project is "shaky" but that Apple has been in talks with other car manufacturers.

Translation via Jalopnik:

The exploratory talks on a cooperation of the Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen Group with the US computer maker Apple advised for information of the business magazine 'Capital' (issue 26/2007, EVT 6 December) to a halt. In September, VW chairman Martin Winterkorn had confidential talks with Apple CEO Steve Jobs in California. Because of this, there was speculation of the development of a so-called "i-Car", a compact car equipped with Apple products. VW had confirmed the talks. "The project is shaky," said 'Capital'. Other car manufacturers have had talks with Apple talks on cooperation.

Orange launched the iPhone in France last week and has sold 30,000 iPhones since that time. Due to French law, Orange is required to allow the phone to be unlocked 6 months after its purchase. In the meanwhile, however, they are allowing customers to pay an additional 100 euro to unlock their iPhone, no matter what plan they choose.

To recap, you can purchase the iPhone in France a number of ways:

399 euro = iPhone + 2 year "iPhone" Orange contract
549 euro = iPhone + any Orange contract
649 euro = iPhone with no contract

And for the first six months, a 100 euro add-on allows you to unlock your iPhone. Unlocking the iPhone allows it to accept SIM cards from any other network, though you would still be bound by the contractual obligations listed above. The early stats from Orange provides interesting information about customer interests.

Apparently, 20% of early iPhone purchasers have opted for this unlocked option. Meanwhile 1500 (~5%) paid for the 649 euro contract-less version. It's unclear how many of those paid for the official unlock, or opted for one of the many free hacks available. Finally, 48% of customers buying iPhones were new to the Orange network.

Google announced that they have launched a new web-based application for the Apple iPhone that integrates its multiple services into a single interface. The new application is based on AJAX/Web 2.0 technologies and is launched when an iPhone user visits http://www.google.com.

To accomplish this, Google is taking advantage of browser technologies (like AJAX) that made Gmail and Google Maps possible on the desktop. In supporting these advances in web technology, the iPhone's Safari browser not only delivers an excellent mobile Internet experience; it enabled our product and engineering teams to create an optimal Google experience on a mobile device.

The Google web-application offers iPhone-optimzed versions of Gmail, Calendar, Reader (RSS) and other services.

While Web-based applications have been the only Apple-sanctioned method to deploy applications to the iPhone, Steve Jobs has announced that a native iPhone developer's kit will be released in February 2008. This should allow developers to release native applications that do not require the use of Safari to launch.

DailyTech.com pinpoints the release of the upcoming mobile Penryn CPUs on January 6, 2008.

The upcoming mobile Penryn CPUs have been previously summarized and are expected to provide new processors that Apple could use in an upcoming MacBook Pro update.

Macworld San Francisco starts on January 14th, with a Keynote speech to be given by Steve Jobs on January 15th.