MacRumors

As announced earlier this month, Sprint prepaid subsidiary Virgin Mobile USA is launching the iPhone tomorrow, and the carrier has begun taking orders ahead of the official launch.

As noted by Bloomberg Businessweek, Virgin Mobile is seeking to capitalize on the publicity generated by the iPhone to remake itself as a major player in the market, in part by opening its first ten retail stores in Chicago to coincide with the iPhone launch. Should the stores prove successful, the carrier would seek to expand the initiative nationwide.

The new stores also mark a strategy shift for Virgin, which has previously relied on retailers such as RadioShack Corp. and Best Buy Co. to market its service, said Jeff Auman, a vice president at the carrier.

Pay-as-you-go companies, which let customers get mobile- phone service without credit checks and long-term contracts, are trying to reinvigorate the market by offering the iPhone and other popular smartphones. The industry has seen its growth slow in recent years, hurt by major carriers rolling out better phones and more flexible payment plans.

Sprint CEO Dan Hesse indicates that he expects "the iPhone will do very well on Virgin" based on pre-orders of the device so far, and giving customers dedicated retail stores for purchase and support could help extend the brand that has already found a loyal following among prepaid phone users.

Virgin is the second U.S. prepaid carrier to launch the iPhone, following Leap Wireless, which launched the device through its Cricket brand last weekend. Leap has declined to disclose iPhone sales so far, but its move to add the iPhone has certainly brought the carrier significant publicity.

According to today's report, MetroPCS may also add the iPhone to its lineup once Apple launches an LTE-compatible model, which is expected later this year. MetroPCS carrier Tom Keys acknowledge that the carrier has had talks with Apple about the iPhone and would "certainly be interested" once LTE is included.

Earlier this month, we noted that Microsoft was making a major push into the living room, seeking to use its Xbox hardware as the hub for new streaming video content and a "SmartGlass" app for various platforms that will allow two-way Airplay-like wireless streaming between devices and an Xbox connected to a television.

Bloomberg now reports that Microsoft is also making a substantial push on the music side, talking to labels about launching a hybrid music service that would offer both iTunes-like downloads and Spotify-like streaming content.

The Redmond, Washington-based software maker is in talks with major record companies for the needed rights, and plans to begin service later this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions aren’t complete.

By combining the best features of competing services, Microsoft seeks to build a digital product that lets customers consume music any way they like. The maker of the Xbox console is building the new music business after its unsuccessful effort with the Zune service, which will close and move customers to Xbox Music, the company said on its website.

Microsoft's music service will reportedly also include a digital locker similar in some respects to iTunes Match, allowing users to host their entire music collections in the cloud for access from multiple devices. Talks with labels are still underway, and Microsoft may yet find itself unable to obtain all of the rights it is seeking, but it is clear that the company is once again working hard to compete with Apple in the digital media arena.

Google announced today that it is releasing a version of its Google Chrome for the iPhone and iPad. The company says it will go live on the App Store later today. Macquarie analyst Ben Schacter predicted last month that Google Chrome was coming to iOS.

While Chrome for iOS will include a number of key features, including incognito mode and tab syncing across devices, the browser will still use Apple's WebKit-based engine required by the App Store developer guidelines. It also will lack the Nitro JavaScript engine that Apple uses to speed Safari's performance. But, there is one main obstacle to Chrome on iOS, as noted by The Next Web:

The biggest hurdle that Chrome features, of course, is that it cannot be set to be the default browser on iOS devices, a capability that Apple also reserves for Safari. So, while you can use the browser to your heart’s content, it will not be the default handler for any URLs clicked. That’s a huge hurdle to overcome.

Update: Chrome for iOS is now live on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Five and a half years ago, a company by the name of Axiotron unveiled the Modbook, a MacBook that had been converted into a pen-based tablet by repackaging the internals into a new casing to yield the one-piece tablet form factor. Two years later, Axiotron introduced the Modbook Pro based on a similar concept, but delays in delivering its products ultimately led Axiotron to fade away.

Earlier this year, one of Axiotron's founders returned with a new company carrying the Modbook name, and today the company is announcing the new generation of Modbook Pro products.

Built from a unique enclosure conversion kit, the Modbook Pro incorporates and completely encases the original hardware of a new Apple MacBook Pro 13.3-inch base system. Its Wacom digitizer delivers 512 levels of pen pressure sensitivity — more than any other tablet computer on the market. And its ForceGlass screen provides an etched, paper-emulating drawing surface.

The result is a sleek tablet computer run by a powerful Mac base system, with a highly sensitive pen interface and a natural drawing surface, all fused into one device you can take with you and use anywhere.

The Modbook Pro components connect to the original MacBook Pro through one of its two USB 3.0 ports, with the entire assembly being enclosed in a new casing for an integrated OS X-based tablet solution that also supports Windows 7.

The Modbook Pro is scheduled to launch in "early fall 2012", with pricing and retail partners yet to be announced.

A new website at FinallyOnTheMac.com has just gone live, teasing a major announcement from an undisclosed company. The site currently consists of a single YouTube video entitled "Countdown to a revolution", with the site containing an additional eight blank slots where other videos will presumably be posted in the coming days.

The video offers the following tag lines suggesting that it is indeed an existing software product that is being rebuilt from the ground up for the Mac:

- The wait is over
- Rethought. Reshaped. Recreated.
- Reinvented for the Mac

No timeframe for an official announcement or launch has been given, with the website and video description simply mentioning that the product will be "coming soon".

BlueStacks announced a public alpha version of their Android App Player for the Mac today at Google I/O.

The company had originally released a beta version of their App Player for Windows back in March. The software allows users to run Android apps directly on their Windows PCs, and the newest version begins to extend that functionality to the Mac.

While the Windows version allows you to run any Android app without modification, the early Mac version seems to be limited to 15 initial apps that comes bundled with the download. The bundled apps include Air Control Lite, Alchemy, Basketball Shot, Drag Racing, Elastic World, Facebook, Glow Hockey, Guns'n'Glory, Paper Toss, Pulse, Robo Defense, Seesmic, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Zebra Paint.

Their support page claims that "in the very near future", they plan on opening the Mac version up to over 400,000 Android apps:

The BlueStacks App Player for Mac OSX (alpha) supports both Lion and Snow Leopard. You can test drive a fixed set of curated apps for the first release (alpha-1). In the very near future, BlueStacks will let you select from over 400,000 Android apps to play on your Mac.

The alpha version is available as a free download from the BlueStacks website.

Bloomberg reports that Apple is preparing a major overhaul of its iTunes software to more closely integrate its iCloud services and add new features for sharing music.

With an increasing amount of content available on the store, the overhaul is intended to improve how people manage all their files, one person said. That includes changes to how users find new material and how they access what they already own on different Apple devices, said one person.

One of the main ways Apple will attempt to improve discovery is by making it easier for people to share songs, a popular feature of Spotify Ltd.’s music-subscription service. Apple has been negotiating with major record labels for rights that would let a user listen to a song sent to them from a friend for free, one person said.

Apple's iCloud efforts will improve organization of users' own content while also the company is also considering splitting out some functions of iTunes as it did yesterday on iOS with its new Podcasts app.

Apple is also looking to include more multimedia content in the iTunes Store, requesting more photos and music videos from artists to help broaden its offerings.

The revamped iTunes application is set to launch before the end of the year and is said to be one of the largest sets of changes since the iTunes Store's debut in 2003. As announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, Apple is also working to improve the iTunes experience on iOS, revamping its digital store apps in iOS 6 to aid users in discovering new content.

Earlier this week, The Next Web noted that some early purchasers of the Retina MacBook Pro have been experiencing "ghosting" on their machines' displays, with remnants of previously-displayed screen contents remaining visible for some time afterward.

Some readers on the ASC forum have reported the image retention issue with as little as 20 minutes worth of use. However it’s well worth noting that the problem isn’t happening to everyone, and image retention isn’t uncommon on IPS panels such as the one used in the new Pro.

Apple has reportedly been replacing machines affected by the issue, but tight supplies of the Retina MacBook Pro could result in waits for the replacement units.

Ghosting on Retina MacBook Pro display (Source: Mac Performance Guide)

It used to be much more common, but now it's unusual to see it in a display. The cause varies: an electrostatic build up, a chemical impurity build up, a thermal imbalance, or an electronic levels issue within the panel. Depending on the cause it can be better to leave the display on with a dark uniform image, on with a bright uniform image, or turn the display off all together.

Apple continues to cite shipping estimates of 3-4 weeks for new Retina MacBook Pro orders amid high demand, and the company is apparently delaying some early custom-configured orders from business customers by up to a month from their original estimates.

At its Google I/O conference today, Google unveiled several new products intended to compete in the tablet and home entertainment markets, squarely targeting Apple's iPad and its rumored push into the living room for which the Apple TV has served as a foothold.

Google's presentation began with a spotlight on Android, noting that it is now activating more than one million Android devices per day and showing off Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean". The new version of the operating system offers a number of enhancements, including a faster interface, cleaner home screen design with resizable widgets, offline voice dictation, a new camera app, enhanced notifications, Siri-like voice search, and more.

A new "Google Now" feature keeps tracks of users' locations to automatically offer information relevant to their real-life experiences, whether it be information on subway schedules, menu recommendations at a restaurant, or other situations.

As for Google's hardware announcements, they leaked out ahead of time through the company's own Google Play site, which confirmed that the Google Nexus 7 will be an ASUS-manufactured tablet priced at $199 for 8 GB of storage and $249 for 16 GB of storage. The device's 7-inch IPS display offers 1280x800 pixels and a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera is included. The Nexus 7 will use a quad-core Tegra 3 processor and incorporate Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC connectivity.

On the home entertainment front, rumors from earlier this year are coming to fruition today with the introduction of the Google Nexus Q, a spherical $299 "social streaming media player". The Nexus Q will allow users to wirelessly stream music, video, and YouTube content to their home entertainment systems. Also serving as an amplifier, the Nexus Q can be connected directly to speaker systems such as Google's new $399 Triad speakers.

Google's keynote is still ongoing, and we will update this post with additional information as it is released.

While Apple first showed off the original iPhone at Macworld San Francisco in January 2007, the device did not launch until six months later, officially arriving on June 29, 2007. With the iPhone's fifth birthday coming later this week, research firm Strategy Analytics published a brief press release noting that Apple has now sold 250 million iPhones that have generated roughly $150 billion in revenue for the company over the product's lifetime.

According to the latest research from Strategy Analytics, Apple has generated US$150 billion of cumulative revenues for its iPhone family in the first five years since launch in June 2007. A quarter of a billion iPhones have been shipped cumulatively worldwide.

Neil Shah, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said, “Apple’s first iPhone was launched commercially in the United States on June 29, 2007. Between June 2007 and June 2012, we estimate the iPhone family of models has generated US$150 billion of cumulative revenues worldwide for Apple. This is an impressive achievement and it illustrates just how popular the iPhone has become during the past five years.”

With iPhone sales continuing to accelerate, more than 100 million of those unit sales have come during the past year. The iPhone 4S has marked a significant part of the surge, with over 35 million units sold in each of the past two quarters.

Business Insider summarizes some of the iPhone's impact on business, noting that the device now generates more quarterly revenue than Microsoft's entire business, generates more profit than GE, Microsoft, or Google, and has remade the technology industry with its dominating position.

MacRumors has received word today from several customers who have received emails from Apple indicating that their launch-day purchases of Retina MacBook Pro machines through Apple's enterprise sales channel have been delayed by up to a month. The customers had been quoted shipping estimates of 7-10 business days at the time of ordering, but today's emails from Apple cite new shipping dates of on or before July 25.

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for your recent order.

Purchase Order#: xxxxxxxxxx
Sales Order#: xxxxxxxxxx
Ship-to Zip Code: xxxxx

Due to an unexpected delay, we are unable to ship the following item(s) by the date that you were recently quoted:

Z0ML, MBP 15.4/CTO
will now ship on or before
Jul 25, 2012

Please note that product availability can change rapidly, and it is possible that your order may ship much sooner than we anticipate. You may even receive a shipment confirmation between the time we send this email and the time that you read it.

It is unclear exactly what is triggering the delays in shipping estimates, although all of those who contacted MacRumors about the delay indicated that they had customized the high-end model with 768 GB of solid-state storage but did not upgrade from the stock 2.6 GHz processor.

The Retina MacBook Pro has been in high demand since its introduction during the keynote of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this month, with shipping estimates slipping to 2-3 weeks within hours of launch before settling at 3-4 weeks a day later. Estimates have remained at that 3-4 week timeframe since that time.