Sales of Apple's iPod touch, once discounted as a pricey niche product, have more than doubled over the past 12 months to rates nearly in line with the iPhone, fueled by an explosion of attractive gaming titles on the App Store that are boosting overall multi-touch device shipments into Nintendo DS territory.
Apple may be looking to give web surfers using its Safari browser relief from a growing number of social networking and other websites that often thrust undesired audio playback into the browsing experience.
Asked Wednesday about his company's exclusive relationship with AT&T — cited by some as a barrier to further iPhone penetration — Apple interim chief Tim Cook responded by praising the carrier as 'the best wireless provider in the US,' explaining that its GSM foundation gels with Apple's goal of providing 'one phone for the entire world' while rival CDMA technology 'doesn't really have a life to it.'
Although it appeared that Apple was close to wrapping up development of Mac OS X 10.5.7 late last week, a new pre-release distribution of the software was dropped on developers Wednesday afternoon with a handful of additional tweaks added to mix.
Apple on Wednesday announced a mixed second quarter, providing its best-ever earnings and iPhone sales for a March quarter but relatively weak Mac numbers. It just concluded a financial conference call with analysts and members of the media. Several notes of interest from the call follow:
Apple said Wednesday that second-quarter profits rose more than 15 percent to $1.21 billion, or $1.33 per diluted share, on record non-holiday quarter sales of $8.16 billion for the three-month period ended March 28, 2009.
The next version of the Bluetooth short-range wireless protocol officially launched this week, promising an eightfold speed increase to boost the low power protocol into the same performance range as WiFi wireless networking, while allowing Bluetooth 3.0 devices to fall back to lower power mode when not actively transferring data.
AT&T said Wednesday that although first quarter profits slipped 9 percent, its wireless data revenues grew nearly 40 percent as it was able to achieve its third consecutive quarter of double-digit postpaid net subscriber additions on the back of 1.6 million new iPhone 3G activations.
A mobile analytics firm has published new findings which show the iPhone taking the majority of the app market — especially when it comes to the sheer number of users.
Apple sometime this week is expected to tap its developers to begin testing a new pre-release copy of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, signaling a clear acceleration of the beta test process.
A new report is backing rumors of Voice Dialing support inside betas of Apple's iPhone 3.0 Software but adds that capability may be just one of several features included in a new Voice Services framework that may also facilitate voice control of the new OS.
Apple following the close of the stock market on Wednesday will report results of its fiscal second quarter of 2009 ended March. Bullish Cross analyst and AppleInsider contributor Andy Zaky is readjusting his outlook on Apple to a view that is more commensurate with the increasingly bleak economic environment.
An AT&T executive has confirmed in a new interview that the US iPhone service provider is currently performing a variety of upgrades on its 3G network that should combine to double capacity in the coming months.
Filling a void for a true professional video card on the Mac platform, NVIDIA on Monday announced plans to begin shipping its Quadro FX 4800 ultra-high-end solution for the Mac Pro next month.
Oracle Corporation said Monday it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Sun Microsystems in a cash deal valued at $5.6 billion, paving the way for the enterprise software maker to deliver the industry's first fully integrated suite of hardware and software systems for some of the world's largest data centers.
Long-time Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn is amongst the frontrunners to receive a contract to build a Mac netbook, according to a new report.
In a near-repeat of an issue that plagued the aluminum iMac early on, owners of new iMacs equipped with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphics chipset are encountering frequent system freeze issues.
Apple's reputation has been polished with a new customer experience study from Forrester Research that shows happiness and overall satisfaction with Macs being much higher than for several major Windows PC builders.
Apple authorized reseller Best Buy will soon add its name to a growing list of firms bidding for a slice of the online movie download business, according to a new report.
Developer sources familiarizing themselves with betas of Apple's iPhone 3.0 software have uncovered a handful of additional tweaks and improvements to the system in recent weeks, including changes to Safari's window handling, new battery status indicators and notification preferences, as well as the advent of data detectors in certain apps.
Although his company snubbed Apple on the first go-round, Verizon's chief executive Ivan Seidenberg now says the chances of an iPhone on his network will be greater once a 4G cellular network is in place.
Price increases that took effect on Apple's iTunes Store last week reportedly hurt unit sales of some of the most popular songs but ultimately managed to drive marginal increases in overall revenues for the digital download service.
An apparent delay in the approval of SlingPlayer's release on the App Store, coupled with unconfirmed reports that AT&T isn't keen on seeing the device make its way to the iPhone, has led to speculation that the wireless carrier is seeking to have the software rejected in its current form.
Apple announced Thursday that movies from five major film studios and a handful of independent movie production houses are now available for rent or purchase on the iTunes Store in Germany.
Patent requests from Apple continue to provide clues as to where the company may take its iPhone interface in the coming years, such as a new filing which depicts a version of the handset with a front-facing video camera and a software interface capable of adjusting itself for more precise interaction when the user carrying the phone is in motion.
Apple's share of the U.S. computer market fell to 7.4 percent during the first calendar quarter of 2009 from 8.0 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008, market research firm Gartner said Wendesday.
Apple as early as this week could announce the release of Mac OS X 10.5.7, a seventh maintenance and security update to its Leopard operating system scheduled to deliver over a 100 minor tweaks and bug fixes.
Observations made at more than two dozen Apple retail stores over the last few weeks show Apple to be maintaining healthy sales of Macs and iPhones that aren't far off from rates seen during the lead-in to last year's holiday shopping season.
Having locked down the iPhone for at least three years, AT&T is now expected to take one more shot at an exclusive deal for the Apple handset and may keep it away from competitors until 2011.
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Katie Marsal
Sam Oliver
Prince McLean
Slash Lane
AppleInsider Staff
Andy M. Zaky, Bullish Cross, Special to AppleInsider
Katie Marsal and Aidan Malley
Kasper Jade
