MacRumors

Apple will be launching the iPhone in the UK and Germany this Friday, November 9th.

A press release details the launch details for Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse. The iPhone will be available from more than 1,300 Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse retail locations across the UK starting at 6:02pm. O2 has hired and trained hundreds of new iPhone specialists who will be in all 450 O2 stores. The UK iPhone will be sold for ?69 and require an 18 month contract with O2. Only two iPhones may be purchased per person.

Despite some early comments indicating that there would be a data cap on the O2 network for EDGE-data, a recent Telegraph.co.uk article states that O2 has scrapped plans to limit web usage on the iPhone -- instead allowing users to download as much as they like.

''Customers find 'unlimited with limits' confusing, plus most people don't speak in megabits or understand what they equate to," said O2 UK chief executive Matthew Key. ''So we've taken the decision to remove the fair usage cap so that 'unlimited' really does mean 'unlimited' ?this is a market first."

The iPhone is also launching in Germany on November 9th through Telekom Shops of Deutsche Telekom as well as the T-Mobile web shop starting at midnight. The German iPhone requires a new 2-year T-Mobile rate plan and will be available for 399.

We've reopened our iPhone Purchaser Meetup forum to allow MacRumors members coordinate with others.

Existing iPhone users should also find interest in the the UK/German iPhone launch as it will likely coincide with the release of the 1.1.2 iPhone Firmware which is said to offer a number of bug and security fixes along with international language support.

Primate Labs posted benchmark results comparing the new Santa Rosa MacBooks that were quietly updated last week to the Santa Rosa chipset along with the new GMA X3100 integrated video card.

In terms of pure processor speed, the MacBook updates seemed negligible (2.0GHz -> 2.0GHz, 2.16GHz -> 2.2GHz), though the underlying bus speed was increased to 800MHz from 667MHz.

The published benchmarks compared the 2.16GHz previous MacBook to the 2.2GHz new MacBook, and did significantly boost memory performance by 15% and stream performance by 25%, reflecting the increased bus speed. Integer, floating point, and overall performance, however, was only marginally improved.

Graphics performance was not tested, but the GMA X3100 should also provide performance boosts over the previous integrated video card (GMA 950).

There is news today on potential data loss vulnerabilities in Mac OS and in Apple's notebook drives manufactured by Seagate.

The vulnerability involving the Mac OS was first documented by Tom Karpik.

Leopards Finder has a glaring bug in its directory-moving code, leading to horrendous data loss if a destination volume disappears while a move operation is in action. I first came across it when Samba crashed while I was moving a directory from my desktop over to a Samba mount on my FreeBSD server.

Ive now run tests on a Windows XP SP2 SMB mount, as well as a local HFS+ formatted USB drive, and the bug surfaces every time the destination disappears while the Finder is moving something to the destination.

The bug is claimed to have existed as far back as Mac OS 10.3 Panther, though the site focuses mainly on Mac OS 10.5 "Leopard."

The other data loss vulnerability surrounds Apple's MacBook and MacBook Pro computers that utilize certain Seagate drives. UK data recovery firm Retrodata discovered a flaw where the read/write head fails and causes gouges in the hard drive platter.

The faulty drives are all Seagate 2.5" drives that are manufactured in China, with a Firmware revision of 7.01. They are also all SATA interface. No other drives seem (at this stage) to be affected.

Retrodata discovered the flaw due to the sheer volume of recovery requests of the particular drive, and strongly suggests that Apple take appropriate action, possibly including a product recall.

Shortly after posting the original iMac Software Update 1.2 for Tiger, Apple quietly pulled the update off their site.

Today, Apple has posted a new iMac Software Update, now at version 1.2.1.

This update is for 20-inch and 24-inch aluminum iMac computers with 2.0, 2.4, or 2.8 GHz processors running Mac OS X Tiger.

It improves the performance and reliability of graphics-intensive games and applications and fixes an issue that some customers encountered when installing Mac OS X Leopard after applying iMac Software Update 1.2.

It appears that this may only address the Leopard upgrade bug that was introduced in the original 1.2 update, and several users still claim their iMac exhibits freezing behavior.

Crave revives a long-running rumor that Apple may be working on a Tablet Mac.

The latest claim comes from "friends at Asus" who told Crave that "Asus is helping Apple build a Tablet PC." Further information from their source indicated that it will not be based on existing Asus designs and will come from a completely new blueprint.

While Apple Tablet rumors have been running for years, the possibility of it seems more likely now than ever with all of Apple's research into touch-based interfaces. The last rumor of an actual "Tablet Mac" came from Smarthouse.com.au in late 2006 in which Apple was said to be working on an Intel-based Tablet Mac with docking station and HDMI output. More recently, however, Appleinsider described a project inside Apple that was described as a PDA but would carry a form factor about "1.5 times the size of the current iPhone" which we could see as early as January at Macworld San Francisco 2008.

Rumors of a Tablet Mac hit an all time high in 2003 when multiple sources pointed to the existence of a Tablet device from Apple, but for whatever reason was never released.

With Mac OS X Leopard a little over a week old, Apple has already begun making preparations for seeding the next revision of Mac OS X (10.5.1) to testers.

No details on the revision are yet available, but Apple has traditionally pushed out updates quickly after initial release. Apple released the first .1 update to Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) less than three weeks after its initial release.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for the Mac OS X 10.4.11 update which has been expected any day now. Apple even references the unreleased update in a number of technotes.

Google, along with over 30 other companies, today announced the formation of an "open phone coalition" for the purpose of developing a mobile platform for future phones. From their website:

Welcome to the Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies who have come together to accelerate innovation in mobile and offer consumers a richer, less expensive, and better mobile experience. Together we have developed Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform.

The core of the platform will be a Linux-based system alongside Java and is said to deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: the operating system, middleware and key mobile applications. An early look at the Android software development kit will be provided on November 12th. Android's developer's kit is open and does not differentiate between core phone applications vs third party applications. All applications are said to be created equally with full access to the phone's capabilities. User customization is featured as a big feature:

With devices built on the Android Platform, users will be able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos.

The aliiance consists of over 30 companies, including T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel, Motorola, and Samsung. Notably absent are Apple, Palm and AT&T.

Commercial handsets based on the Android platform are not expected to come to market until the second half of 2008.

Some relevant details from Engadget's transcript of the press event:

- "minimum reqs is about a 200MHz ARM9, software is compatible with small screens, large screens, QWERTY, non-QWERTY..." so apparently it's hardware flexible"
- "This one is open. In two ways: devs can put apps on top of it, and the whole OS is open source, so anyone can take it and modify it to their needs."
- Q: "Eric, I want to go back to the Gphone -- what's the deal?" Eric: "The deal is we don't pre-announce products... if there WERE to be a Gphone, it would run Android."

In all, many details remain unanswered, but more information should be coming on November 12th.

Released via Software Update are new versions of iTunes (7.5) & Quicktime (7.3). Updates are as follows:

iTunes 7.5 - 41.3MB
iTunes 7.5 features the ability to activate iPhone wherever service is offered and support for Phase, a new interactive music game designed exclusively for iPod nano (third generation), iPod classic, and iPod (fifth generation). This release also includes bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

Quicktime 7.3 - 51.8MB
QuickTime 7.3 addresses critical security issues and delivers:
- Support for iTunes 7.5
- Updated support for creating iPhone-compatible web content
- Updated JavaScript support in the QuickTime Web Plug-in
- Numerous bug fixes

For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.

MacWorld.co.uk points to to a Telegraph interview with O2's chief executive Matthew Key who provides some details on how O2 became Apple's iPhone partner in the UK. After meeting with Steve Jobs in Cupertino, Key had come to a decision:

''When we left two hours later, I said to Cesar, 'that's a device I've got to offer. In the UK market, where the top four networks have pretty much equal shares, it offers a great way for me to get a hell of a lot of high-value customers on to O2 and drive up data usage [to help offset pressure on voice call revenues]'."

According to FT.com, Key expects "a couple of hundred thousand" iPhones to be sold in the first two months in the UK. FT.com also claims that the 3G version of the iPhone is due in the second half of next year, though the exact source is not cited. Regardless, Key appears confident that O2 would also get rights to the 3G iPhone when it arrives.

The iPhone will be launching in the UK on Friday, November 9th.

T3.co.uk claims to have seen a forthcoming update to the iPhone -- firmware version 1.1.2. According to T3:

First off, there's support for dozens of languages, so if you happen to be a fluent Cantonese speaker, the phone has all the relevant character sets so you can display your language properly.

There's full support for French and German, with special keyboard lay-outs on the ready to tackle accented characters - perfectly understandable, of course, what with the phone heading for launch across the channel this month too.

MacRumors had also independently heard that iPhone Firmware 1.1.2 is destined to arrive upon the European launch of the iPhone later this week. According to these sources, the release will be mainly bug and security related with some European language localizations, and will require yet-unreleased iTunes 7.5 to sync.

Our source also mentioned that 3rd party SIM unlock software will be once again broken as well as some 3rd party applications. iToner was specifically mentioned as being broken by the update, though readers should note that Ambrosia has released a free update for every firmware release thus-far.

Readers may remember that the iPhone 1.1.1 update disabled all native 3rd party applications and even "bricked" some iPhones that had undergone certain SIM unlocks, which lead to a somewhat rough public reaction and aftermath. Nevertheless, workarounds were discovered and methods have once again been developed to jailbreak the iPhone in one step.

Apple has released iMac Software Update for both Tiger and Leopard.

As always, the release notes are a bit sparse and simply states that "this update provides important bug fixes and is recommended for 20-inch and 24-inch iMac models with 2.0, 2.4, or 2.8GHz processors." An analysis of the update packages indicates that updated graphics drivers have been delivered.

Some had hoped this would fix the intermittent Freezing problem that Apple had promised to address, but a couple of reports in our forums claim this problem persists even after applying the software update.

A report from AppleInsider points to a release of iTunes 7.5 as early as next week. The release will contain a host of small improvements and bug fixes according to the site, though no radical changes should be expected.

Better management of duplicate video and song entries will be included as well as a more stable experience for users upgrading their songs to iTunes Plus purchases.

Currently in late-beta, the site expects that the software could be released within the week, however notes that such high-impact releases such as iTunes can occasionally see unforeseen setbacks. Nonetheless, the release should be out by mid-November at the latest.