MacRumors

Apple issued a press release today indicating that the iPhone has seen a few improvements since it was first introduced in January.

iPhone will feature up to 8 hours of talk time, 6 hours of Internet use, 7 hours of video playback or 24 hours of audio playback. In addition, iPhone will feature up to 250 hoursmore than 10 daysof standby time.

The press release also reports that the 3.5" display has been upgraded from plastic to "optical-quality glass" for superior clarity and scratch resistance.

The iPhone will be available on June 29th at Apple Retail and Online stores as well as AT&T's select retail stores.

German Magazine Focus is reporting (Google translation) that Apple is working on car navigation and sound systems. Apple is said to be working for an introduction in 2009, working with Mercedes exclusively for 6 months.

The system is reported to include "entertainment, communication, and navigation," similar to devices already on the market.

According to FOCUS-sources, the device, that the computer maker is presently developing combines entertainment, communication and navigation in a single device.

Mercedes will exclusively offer the new Apple device for six months, with an expected market introduction targeted for 2009. It is still unclear whether Apple - as in the case of the iPhone - will rely on Google Maps for navigation help.

Focus is a popular German magazine, though its track record in Apple rumors remains unproven.

Apple's iWork suite is a bit overdue for an update. Many expected Apple to update the iWork suite on its usual schedule in January of 2007... but no update arrived.

People then speculated that Apple would release iWork (and iLife) updates alongside Leopard, but Steve Jobs made no comment about the productivity suites during the WWDC keynote.

A new job posting posted by Apple on June 13th 2007 reveals that Apple is seeking software engineers for the "next generation of iWork". Specifically, they are looking for a programmer to work on 3D specific features with experience in "openGL and other 3d technologies".

Apple's iWork suite currently consists of Pages and Keynote but there have been persistent rumors of a spreadsheet application in the works.

iPhoneChat is the latest iPhone-aimed web applications that we should expect to come out for Apple's iPhone.

iPhoneChat allows you to log into your iChat/AIM instant messaging account with buddy list support.

Use your mouse to flick (drag and release) your buddy list up and down like you're supposed to on the iPhone. Click a buddy to start a conversation. You can open multiple conversations... flick left/right to change conversations.

As an early version, it has some limitations, but does offer an good example of what might be possible with iPhone web-apps.

Wired posted and then removed screenshots (Google cache) from the WWDC Developer's Build of Mac OS X Leopard.

Installation of the Leopard went smoothly on their Quad-Core Xeon Mac Pro, and their first impressions were solid:

Leopard already looks very sleek -- the reflective dock, translucent menu bar and deeper drop shadows behind active windows give the desktop more space-aged gloss. Animated behaviors like Stacks, Spaces and Cover Flow in the Finder rendered super-smoothly on our fast test system. There are new screen savers, updated remote desktop management settings and some of the core applications (Mail, Safari, iCal, etc.) have been redesigned.

The screenshots that were removed depicted iCal, Screen Sharing, and the new Screen Savers.

Engadget reports that Apple has received FCC approval for its first iPhone accessory, a miniature wireless Bluetooth headset.

Apple has not yet released pricing for its headset, and has kept a low profile on the device, only casually mentioning it on its iPhone pages.

Raw Data: FCC Link

A Vnunet.com article claims that European mobile operators are unwilling to concede to Apple's iPhone partnership demands.

"Operators consistently told us, not for attribution, of course, that they had spoken to Apple and found the company 'unbelievably arrogant', making demands that 'simply cannot be justified no matter how hot the product is'," Avi Greengart, a principal analyst at Current Analysis, wrote in an advisory on Monday.

Several operators went as far as to say they "will never offer the iPhone." It's been widely publicized that Apple has made several unconventional demands of their cell phone carriers. In the U.S., Verizon is reported to have rejected Apple's deal due to the terms of the agreement. Apple's terms with AT&T are rumored to include revenue sharing of the monthly subscriber fees for the iPhone.

The other option is for Apple to sell the iPhone directly to consumers without a Sim card, allowing users to later install one from their mobile provider. This, however, would require Apple to somehow bypass the provider's voicemail to enable their "Visual Voicemail" feature which requires server-side support.

We don't have the backstory on this ad, but iPhoneNewYorkCity.com hosts an unofficial iPhone television advertisement created by Alec Sutherland, Anthony Hechanova, and Todd DosSantos.

The ad flashes between different people from different cultures and languages in New York City discussing the iPhone.

"No buttons, huh?" ... "Just touch the screen" ... "zoom in just by stretching your finger across it"

The ad ends with "Coming June 29 2007". The ad is clearly the result of a the casting call in April which called for "people of diverse ethnic backgrounds discussing different functions and attributes of the unreleased phone in their native tongue while participating in everyday activities" to participate in an iPhone ad.

Apple has released a new iPod + iTunes ad featuring Paul McCartney singing "Dance Tonight" (iTunes link).

In May, Apple announced that Paul McCartney would be distributing his music on iTunes.

Apple today announced (via a news release) that more than 1 million copies of Safari for Windows were downloaded in the first 48 hours since the free public beta was made available on Monday.

Many see Apple's release of Safari for Windows as an opportunity for Apple further attract customers to the Mac, while also raising usage of its Safari web browser, which would theoretically require more website developers to ensure that their sites work properly with Safari.

In related news, Apple today updated the Safari for Windows beta to 3.0.1, which patches some of the security flaws that were recently discovered in the software.

After security concerns about Apple's new Safari Beta for Windows arose earlier this week, Apple has issued an update to Safari for Windows.

According to Macworld, the update addresses a number of security issues:

The security improvements in Safari Beta 3.0.1 include correction for a "command injection vulnerability," corrected with additional processing and validation of URLs that could otherwise lead to an unexpected termination of the browser; an out-of-bounds memory read issue; and a race condition that can allow cross-site scripting using a JavaScript exploit

The new version is available through Apple's software update or downloaded from Apple's site. The Macintosh version of Safari 3 is not vulnerable to these issues.

Amazon has begun offering Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) for pre-ordering on their website.

Amazon first offered Leopard for presale on June 12th, a day after Apple's WWDC keynote announcing Leopard's new features. It is already ranked as the 51st most popular software item on Amazon (as of this writing).

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is scheduled to ship in October 2007.

Update: Leopard is now ranked #1 amongst best selling software.

Update 2: Leopard Family Pack also available.

With WWDC in full swing, few first hand reports of Apple's Mac OS X Developer Build of Leopard have been leaked. The reason for this is that beyond the keynote, the remainder of Apple's conference is under a strict non disclosure agreement. A few tidbits, however, have been posted publicly online:

First Hand with Leopard

One blogger posted these positive impressions

Mail is really great, seems super fast
Spotlight much more responsive, no pauses as you type
Safari seems faster and now has that styled text editor as in FireFox (used in blogger for example)
New Finder, not as new as I had expected, seems solid and sensible.
Coverflow everywhere, yeah, whatever..
Quickview is useful I think, certainly seems fast.
Time Machine looks like it works really, really well.

The blog post, however, has since been removed.

Meanwhile, a few forum posts (unverified) report the following about the new Leopard beta:

Completely new mail client. Much faster, better calendar support, keep notes
Stacks are fantastic.
Dock works fine on the sides, 3D but the icons are sideways (proper) with shadow. Looks awesome on the side.

Benchmarks

A Geekbench submission benchmarked new Developer Preview of Leopard on a 3.0GHz Mac Pro (Score 5335), which didn't show a substantial difference compared to results from similar configurations on Mac OS X 10.4.9.

Requirements?

This post lists the requirements of Leopard that are listed in the ReadMe that comes with the developer's preview:

an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor
a DVD drive
built-in FireWire
at least 256 MB of RAM for a Power-PC based Mac and 512 MB for an Intel-based Mac (additional RAM is recommended for development purposes)
a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
at least 6 GB of disk space available, or 8 GB if you install the developer tools

As a developer build, this may or may not reflect the final requirement set for Leopard.

Build your Own

Finally, for those who want to pretend that they are running Leopard now, you can download the background image or you can download these applications to approximate the Leopard desktop.

While Steve Jobs gave us an exact time (6 p.m.) to line up for buy an iPhone, he didn't go into many details.

As it turns out, the iPhone will be sold on June 29th at 6 p.m. local time -- so East Coasters will get a full 3 hour head start over their West Coast counterparts.

A memo sent by AT&T confirmed this today:

The iPhone will go on sale on at AT&T retail stores June 29 at 6 p.m. local time in each market.

In May, forum user neven had correctly predicted that Web applications might be the only way to get apps into the iPhone. He developed and posted a demo application to the forums to get feedback.

OneTrip
OneTrip is an iPhone-optimized web application (a simple shopping list). Since third-party apps won't be available on iPhone for a while, I thought I'd create a website you could load in Safari on iPhone to approximate having a custom widget.

With Apple's announcements that web-based/AJAX applications are the only way to develop on the iPhone, this example application has been making the rounds.

Now that Intel has moved their processor line primarily to multicore, most of Apple's shipping Macs have at least 2 cores (and as many as 8). According to Apple's Leopard pages, Apple has introduced significant performance improvements into Leopard to take advantage of all these multicore processors.

The new Leopard scheduler is very efficient at allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. So Leopard spends less time managing tasks and more time performing computations. A new multithreaded network stack speeds up networking by handling network inputs and outputs in parallel.

Apple's applications such as Mail, Address Book and Font Utility have been updated to be multicore ready:

Each of these apps breaks up processor-intensive actions into a series of more manageable steps that execute one by one on single-CPU computers and in parallel on newer, multicore systems. Cocoa uses that same technology to speed up Spotlight searches and Dictionary lookups.

Apple also introduced a new API (NSOperation) which makes it easier for programmers to take advantage of multicore processing: "You simply describe the operations in a program along with their dependencies. Cocoa takes care of the rest."

According to one unverified first hand report, the new finder has also seen improved performance:

The new finder is absolutely the best part. How many years have we wanted a cocoa finder? ... Proper multi-threaded support. ... No more beachball so far.