MacRumors

Even before the iPhone launch on Verizon earlier this year, the carrier had announced that the unlimited data plans being offered with the device were a temporary program, set to be discontinued as soon as this summer in favor of tiered data packages.

Just two weeks ago, Verizon confirmed that it would be dropping the unlimited data plan in July, with leaks pinpointing the new data plans and a debut date of July 7th. Existing unlimited plan subscribers were said to be grandfathered in and thus able to keep their current plans after that date, even after upgrading their devices.

FierceWireless now reports that Verizon has confirmed the new offerings as previously leaked, with the new plans indeed set to go into effect this Thursday, July 7th.

Verizon spokeswoman Brenda Raney told FierceWireless that new smartphone customers will choose from one of four options: $10 for 75 MB per month, $30 for 2 GB, $50 for 5 GB or $80 for 10 GB. There will be an overage charge of $10 per GB of data. AT&T Mobility charges $15 per month for 200 MB and $25 per month for 2 GB.

Verizon has also confirmed that existing customers on the unlimited plan who upgrade their devices on or after July 7th will be able to keep their data plans.

Both Verizon and AT&T have confirmed that they are also looking into rolling out shared data plans across devices, following the lead of other international carriers already offering the plans. Under those plans, customers can draw from a single data allotment using multiple devices such as an iPhone and iPad, but Verizon and AT&T have yet to announce specific timeframes for rolling out such plans.

Update: FierceWireless has edited its story to clarify that the $10 plan offering 75 MB of data is available for feature phones and not for smartphones such as the iPhone.

As HP has sought to take on Apple in the tablet market with its webOS-powered TouchPad tablet, the PC giant has been dinged with a number of lukewarm reviews that suggest a fair amount of potential for the platform and device but with only a mediocre initial implementation.

Former Apple executive Jon Rubinstein, who led the development of the original iPod before leaving the company in 2006 to head up Palm's webOS effort and eventually moving to HP with that company's acquisition of Palm, has reportedly weighed in with a message to HP employees regarding the reviews, published by PreCentral. In the note, Rubinstein makes an interesting comparison between the TouchPad and the original Mac OS X as it debuted ten years ago.

We still have work to do to make webOS the platform we know it can be, but remember...it's a marathon, not a sprint.

In that spirit, Richard Kerris, head of worldwide developer relations for webOS, reminded me yesterday of the first reviews for a product introduced a little over ten years ago:

"...overall the software is sluggish"
"...there are no quality apps to use, so it won't last"
"...it's just not making sense...."

It's hard to believe these statements described MacOS X - a platform that would go on to change the landscape of Silicon Valley in ways that no one could have imagined.

Rubinstein is naturally optimistic in encouraging his staff to keep pressing forward to help webOS and its associated hardware meet expectations, and his unique perspective in having played key roles at Apple, Palm, and now HP enables him to see the parallels and offer conviction that webOS can overcome its challenges.

Palm's webOS has received a fair amount of praise for some aspects of its functionality, but the platform has yet to be a hit with consumers. But with HP putting significant weight behind the platform and moving it into the tablet space while considering licensing it to other major manufacturers, some have seen webOS as a strong contender to become a potential third major smartphone and tablet operating system for the future behind iOS and Android.

Last week, DigiTimes reported that Apple would be targeting shipments of 12-14 million iPad 2s during the third quarter of 2011, and a new report backs up that conclusion with claims that Apple's touch panel suppliers pushed out five million units in June and plan to produce another five million in July.

Five million touch sensors for the iPad 2 will be shipped in July, according to sources with Apple's supply chain.

Shipments in June were also five million, with TPK Holding and Wintek supplying 1.4-1.6 million units each and the remaining by Cando, Sintek Photronic and Chimei Innolux (CMI), the sources indicated.

Display production has been one bottleneck for Apple in meeting iPad customer demand, even dating back to the original iPad. Wintek and TPK were Apple's initial suppliers for the touch components, but the company was forced to add additional suppliers such as Cando in order to meet its production goals.

Apple has been said to be soaking up 60% of the global supply of touch panels for 2011, putting pressure on smaller manufacturers who are having a difficult time securing components for their own devices.

DigiTimes claims that Pegatron Technology has received orders for 15 million iPhone 5 devices from Apple and is set to start shipping in September 2011.

The sources pointed out that as the iPhone 5, which does not seem to have any major update from iPhone 4, is already set for shipment in September, they are already started supplying components to Pegatron with Pegatron's plants in Shanghai, China also recently started hiring for manpower.

DigiTimes is a frequent source for production and order rumors from Apple. They had previously predicted that Pegatron received an order for CDMA iPhone 4s for the fourth quarter of 2010. The actual Verizon (CDMA) iPhone was announced in January of 2011 and shipped the following month.

Apple skipped the usual yearly upgrade cycle this year and made no iPhone hardware announcements at this year's WWDC. Instead, the iPhone 5 has been rumored to be launching in September.

Mac Otakara claims that Apple will be adopting a new Toggle DDR 2.0 type of NAND Flash Memory for the basis of the new MacBook Air's SSD drive. The Japanese website cites an "Asian electronics component person" as the source of the information. (via AppleInsider)

Current SSD device Blade X-gale supporting SATA 2.6 will be abolished and new 19nm flash memory will be packaged into smaller chip and will be soldered on base circuit directly.

The move would be a rapid departure by Apple from the current SSD stick format that was just introduced in last year's MacBook Air. Instead of a replaceable part, the new Flash chips would be soldered directly onto the MacBook Air's motherboard.

The new format supports speeds of 400Mb/s and in conjunction with a new ONFI 3.0 standard will allow future controllers to run faster or similar performance to today's SSDs with "half the number of channels, providing both a cost and space savings".

Samsung also touted another major feature of this new technology last year, claiming that a low-power mode could extend a notebook's battery life for an hour or more.

The resulting power throttling capability enables the drive’s high-performance levels without any increase in power consumption over a 40nm-class 16Gb NAND-based 256GB SSD. The controller also analyzes frequency of use and preferences of the user to automatically activate a low-power mode that can extend a notebook’s battery life for an hour or more.

Given the market positioning of the MacBook Air, the potential battery improvements and cost savings may be driving Apple's adoption of this technology more than the performance advantages.

Robert Cringely claims to have some details of the deals that were in place for the $4.5 billion acquisition of Nortel's patent portfolio. The patents were ultimately won by a consortium that included Apple. The auction drew interest of many of the major players in mobile today due to Nortel's large portfolio of Long Term Evolution (LTE, also known as "4G") related patents.

Reuters recapped some of the behind the scenes maneuvering amongst the players. The bidding began with 5 different parties: Apple, Intel, Google, a consortium of Ericsson, RIM, Microsoft and EMC, and a consortium led by RPX. As the bidding increased, partnerships formed and Apple joined up with the Ericsson/RIM/Microsoft/EMC consortium. Meanwhile, Intel partnered with Google whose bidding "tapped out" over $4 billion. The patents were ultimately won for $4.5 billion.

Cringely claims that within the consortium were different arrangements for each party. RIM and Ericsson reportedly put up $1.1 billion together and includes "fully paid up" license rights to the portfolio. Microsoft and Sony also put up another $1 billion with unspecified terms, while EMC contributed $400 million for a subset of patents.

Meanwhile, the largest contributor of the consortium was said to be Apple who put up $2 billion "for outright ownership of Nortel's Long Term Evolution (4G) patents as well as another package of patents supposedly intended to hobble Android." Apple obviously has a large interest in LTE/4G for future iPhones and iPads. Apple recently settled with Nokia and agreed to a license of their patents for use in Apple's mobile devices. Nokia is also said to have a significant number of LTE related patents. Ownership of such patents could give Apple leverage and/or provide licensing fees from other mobile manufacturers that offer LTE technology.

With Apple having seeded the Golden Master (GM) version of OS X Lion earlier today, users are finally getting a look at what the OS X Lion experience should be like in the shipping version.

One staple of Mac OS X installations over the past several versions has been the welcome video that displays at first boot, displaying an animation of the word "Welcome" in a number of different languages and set to the song "Exodus Honey" by Honeycut [iTunes link]:

Unfortunately for fans of the video, neither the previous welcome video nor a new one appears to be included in the GM version of OS X Lion. While a welcome video could conceivably still be added at the last minute, previous OS X releases have seen the video included in GM seeds.

Instead, OS X Lion boots straight into Setup Assistant to help users get up and running. And one new addition to Setup Assistant is an introduction to Multi-Touch scrolling, offering users a glimpse at the enhanced Multi-Touch features included in the new operating system.

The text and image are customized depending on the input device being used, such as a Magic Mouse or built-in trackpad.

OS X Lion is set to be released to the public later this month and will be available exclusively through the Mac App Store for $29.99.

For the first time, Apple is allowing owners of OS X (client version) to run multiple virtual copies on the same machine. Previously, Apple extended this ability to Mac OS X Server only. Running separate instances of Mac OS X should be possible under virtualization solutions such as VMware Fusion and Parallels. This functionality allows you to deploy different sandboxed installations of OS X, typically for enterprise purposes. As reported in 2007, Apple first extended this capability in Mac OS X Server 10.5:

[The 2007 Mac OS X 10.5 Server EULA] permits OS X Server to run in a virtual machine (VM) as long as each VM is stocked with a different license and the physical system is Apple-made. The new rules don't apply to the client edition of Apple's operating system, which is still barred from being virtualized.

The Golden Master version of OS X Lion (10.7) just released to developers includes the final end-user licensing agreement (EULA) which reveals that users can run up to two additional instances of OS X Lion on their same machine without a need for extra licenses. From the 10.7 EULA:

(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software.

The shift in policy likely reflects the blurred distinction between OS X Server and OS X Client starting with Lion. OS X Server will be sold as an App Store add-on pack for OS X Lion.

Yesterday, we noted that Apple's new rules for in-app purchases and subscriptions for iOS were going into effect, and certain high-profile apps such as Amazon's Kindle app had yet to be updated to comply with the new terms. But with the calendar now having rolled over to July 1st and Kindle and other similar apps still apparently out of compliance, some have been wondering what Apple's plans are.

Macworld now reports that Apple is indeed planning to enforce the requirements, but has provided some additional time as it works with some high-profile developers to ensure that their apps are updated.

Macworld's sources can confirm that Apple has been working with various prominent developers to help them ensure their apps comply with the in-app content policies; expect to see updates to these apps in the near future.

Some less prominent apps will likely be pulled from the App Store as Apple starts to enforce the rule changes, but developers ought to be able to return to the store simply by updating their apps to comply.

Last week, Hulu updated its Hulu Plus application to comply with Apple's new rules by removing an external link to sign up for the subscription service. And Macworld notes that Netflix appears to have complied by leaving in a notice about visiting Netflix.com to sign up for the service but formatting it as plain text rather than a link. And earlier today, The New York Times activated in-app subscriptions for its content.

Apple appears almost ready to released OS X Lion to the general public. A Golden Master (GM) release of OS X Lion was seeded to developers this afternoon, with a build number of 11A511, according to 9to5Mac.

A GM release is typically the final build before a piece of software ships to consumers. If no major bugs are found, Lion should be ready for customers. Rumors have suggested that Apple has been waiting for OS X Lion to reach its final state before launching new MacBook Airs. The new MacBook Airs are also expected in July.

Update: Apple has also seeded a GM version of the OS X Lion Server components, Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 7, and iCloud for OS X Lion Beta 3. Finally, Apple has pushed out a Java for Mac OS X 10.7 release via Software Update.

Update 2: 9 to 5 Mac is reiterating its earlier claim that Lion is tentatively scheduled to launch on Thursday, July 14th, potentially alongside the updated MacBook Air.

The New York Times has begun offering digital subscriptions via Apple's in-app subscription feature. The subscription offering puts the Times app in compliance with Apple's revised in-app subscription guidelines. The Times rolled out its digital subscription offerings earlier this year, but they couldn't be purchased directly in an app until today.

The Times is now the highest profile app to work with Apple's requirements surrounding subscriptions. Current NYT subscribers can login and access their content, and non-subscribers can quickly sign up using their iTunes accounts.

For new users signing up through the app, the Times is charging $14.99/month for NYTimes.com + iPhone App access, $19.99 for website + iPad, and $34.99/month for website + iPhone + iPad. Apple will receive a 30% cut of these subscriptions.

These prices are similar to those offered via the Times website, though NYTimes.com offers a $0.99 promotional price for the first month. In-App subscribers will receive a week-long subscription for free if they share their name, email address and ZIP code with the Times.

Though the deadline for compliance with the new In-App Subscription guidelines came and went yesterday, Apple is reportedly helping developers update their apps to work within the guidelines and allowing some additional time for them to come into compliance.