MacRumors

Boy Genius Report notes that it has received a tip claiming that Sprint is set to launch the ZTE Peel on November 14th. The Peel is a 3G hotspot device designed as a wraparound case for the iPod touch, providing mobile data access for the device that is typically limited to Wi-Fi-only connections.

According to the report, service for the Peel will be priced at $29.99 per month for 1 GB of data on a no-contract plan, but the price of the Peel itself remains unknown.

We don't have any details on how much the actual device will sell for, but we do know Sprint plans on charging $29.99 per month for 1GB of data usage with no contract.

According to the Peel's user manual that leaked from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission earlier this year, the case would be able to function as a traditional mobile hotspot, providing cellular data access for up to five nearby Wi-Fi devices.

Update: BGR has now received a screenshot appearing to confirm the November 14th release and noting a retail price of $79.99 for the Peel.

For several months, Adobe has been thinking about how it can involve the iPad and other tablet devices in the workflows of Photoshop users, asking users for feedback on what sorts of capabilities they might like to see.

Building on that feedback, the company has now taken its first steps in that direction, as evidenced by a pair of brief demos at last week's Adobe MAX conference in which Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch showed off the company's content-aware fill tool running on a Samsung Galaxy Tab and a color-mixing paint palette application running on an iPad.

Adobe's John Nack has also noted that the company's designers have begun mocking up other tools that could allow the iPhone and iPad to serve as extensions of Photoshop running on a desktop or notebook computer.

In a nutshell, you get:

- groups of task-based tools & commands (e.g. all your photography/retouching tools & buttons on one page, or all your painting ones, 3D ones, etc.)
- interactive, task-based tutorials that drive Photoshop, helping you get things done

Among the ideas presented in a PDF summary of the team's efforts are custom toolsets accessible by tapping on a companion iPhone application, tutorials with tool accelerators to help quickly walk users through certain tasks, and companion iPad applications housing many of the commonly-used tools for easy access while also allowing for limited image editing (such as liquifying, painting, and drawing) using the multi-touch interface.

All of these latter concepts appear to simply be mockups at this point, but Adobe is clearly thinking about how best to take advantage of multi-touch functionality to enhance the Photoshop's functionality without attempting to replicate a full Photoshop experience directly on the touch device without the precision and power available on a traditional desktop or notebook.

Apple has long touted the role the iPhone can play in the business world, frequently pointing to the percentages of top companies using or piloting the device in their businesses. Bloomberg reports today that two of the biggest U.S. banks, Bank of America and Citigroup, are engaged in pilot testing that could open the door for their employees to adopt the iPhone for corporate usage as an alternative to their existing BlackBerry-dominated systems.

Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are considering whether to let employees use the Apple Inc. phone as an alternative to Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry for corporate e-mail, said three people familiar with the plans. The banks are testing software for the iPhone that's designed to make it secure enough for company messages, said the people, who didn't want to be named because the plans aren't public.

The news marks yet more evidence of Research in Motion's weakening position in the corporate world, following strong growth by Apple in the most recent quarter which saw the iPhone surpass the BlackBerry line in sales.

Bank of America, which has about 284,000 employees, and Citigroup, with 258,000 workers, are also testing Android smartphones, one person said. The efforts are intended to widen the choice of devices employees can use, rather than replace the BlackBerry, the person said.

The trials at Bank of America and Citigroup involve more than 1,000 employees, two people said. Testing, which typically takes four to six weeks, is advanced at Bank of America and will be followed by a pilot project before potentially wider implementation, one person said.

The report points to a survey showing 83% of U.S. companies now permitting employees to use devices other than BlackBerry phones, with many companies finding that they can cut costs by allowing additional options as employees become increasingly willing to pay for iPhones out of their own pockets.

One item of interest that was overlooked in this morning's news that Apple is discontinuing the Xserve is that the company has added a new standard configuration to its Mac Pro lineup. The new "Server" configuration offers an entry-level 2.8 GHz quad-core processor with 8 GB of RAM, two 1 TB hard drives, and Mac OS X Server for $2999.

The specs on the Mac Pro Server configuration can be boosted with a full range of build-to-order options, including processor options up to dual 2.93 GHz six-core Westmere chips, up to 32 GB of RAM, additional hard drives, a second optical drive, RAID card, Fibre Channel PCI Express card, and Xsan storage area network software.

While Apple's "non-server" Mac Pro options could (and still can) be configured with Mac OS X Server, the new Server configuration offers an optimized starting point for building a machine to focus on server tasks rather than act as a workstation.

As noted by MacGeneration, Apple has announced it will be discontinuing the Xserve as of January 31, 2011. The note appears on Apple's site and links to a PDF titled "Xserve Transition Guide". In the guide, Apple explains that they will not be developing a future version of the Xserve.

Apple will not be developing a future version of Xserve. Xserve will be available for order through January 31, 2011. Apple will honor and support all Xserve system warranties and extended support programs. Apple intends to offer the current ship- ping 160GB, 1TB, and 2TB Apple Drive Modules for Xserve through the end of 2011 or while supplies last. Apple will continue to support Xserve customers with service parts for warranty and out-of-warranty service..

The two alternative server solutions include the Mac Pro with Snow Leopard Server and the Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server. Apple provides transition considerations for customers migrating from the Xserve to these products.

The Xserve was Apple's rackmount line of Mac servers which was first introduced in May, 2002. Apple has kept up with mostly annual updates to the line. The last update for Xserve was April, 2009.

In a rather unusual move, Apple today seeded the first developer version of Mac OS X 10.6.6, known as Build 10J521, even before the company has publicly released Mac OS X 10.6.5.

As 9 to 5 Mac notes, there are no documented known issues in the build and the seed notes mention a focus on support for the forthcoming Mac App Store.

- Contains developer support for fetching and renewing App Store receipts. See "Validating App Store Receipts" for more details.

Interestingly, the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update is only 3.7 MB in size, suggesting only very minor tweaks at this point.

The unusual early seeding of Mac OS X 10.6.6 relative to its predecessor and the apparent requirement of Mac OS X 10.6.6 for certain Mac App Store functions suggest that Apple is likely fast-tracking the operating system update for release in the not-so-distant future.

Apple announced during its October 20th media event that the Mac App Store would launch on Mac OS X Snow Leopard within 90 days, and just yesterday the company began accepting submissions from developers for inclusion in the Mac App Store.

Apple today released iPhoto 9.1, an update to the iPhoto application included in the company's new iLife '11 suite. The update restores support for the photo calendars that had gone missing in the initial iPhoto '11 release, and also fixes several other bugs and introduces new holiday-themed letterpress card options.

This update adds several new print product options to iPhoto '11. It also improves overall stability and addresses a number of other minor issues.

- Provides the ability to create and order calendars in iPhoto.
- Additional letterpress holiday greeting card themes are now available.
- Fixes an issue that prevented videos downloaded from MobileMe or Flickr from importing correctly into iPhoto events.
- The update is recommended for all users of iPhoto '11.

The update is the second to be released for iPhoto '11 since its debut just over two weeks ago, as the company quickly pushed out iPhoto 9.0.1 late last week to address issues with data loss when upgrading from iPhoto '09 to iPhoto '11.

We've received word that Apple has begun to deploy iAd availability on a worldwide basis, with developers reporting that they are beginning to see ad impressions rolling in from locations around the globe. Previously, developers had seen ad requests from those countries go unfilled as Apple limited the program to North America and the United Kingdom.

The change opens up additional revenue streams for developers and new audiences for advertisers as the company prepares to extend the iAd service to the iPad with the release of iOS 4.2 sometime this month. With Apple having released the golden master version of iOS 4.2 to developers earlier this week, a public release could occur at any time.

Just as rumors of Intel pushing forward on its Light Peak connectivity standard surface, LaCie has announced support for USB 3.0 on Mac OS X with the release of a free driver to support the company's USB 3.0 hard drives.

LaCie announced today a major breakthrough, introducing industry-leading performance to Mac users with the availability of a USB 3.0 driver for Mac OS. The driver brings the fast speeds of LaCie's USB 3.0 hard drives to Mac computers and laptops - delivering transfer rates that are more than two times faster than FireWire 800!

With Apple yet to support USB 3.0 hardware and CEO Steve Jobs suggesting that such support is not likely to appear anytime soon, users will need to purchase either a PCI Express Card ($49.99) or ExpressCard/34 ($59.99) to add two USB 3.0 ports to their Mac. Consequently, LaCie's USB 3.0 solutions are only compatible with Mac Pros offering a PCI Express slot and MacBook Pros offering an ExpressCard/34 slot.

USB 3.0 offers a theoretical maximum of 5 Gb/s, topping the 3 Gb/s available through eSATA. Real world burst performance on LaCie USB 3.0 hard drives is on the order of 130 MB/s for single hard drives and 220 MB/s for dual hard drives.

Update: For clarification purposes, LaCie is not the first manufacturer to deliver USB 3.0 drivers to Mac, as CalDigit released a Mac-compatible SuperSpeed PCI Express Card and SuperSpeed ExpressCard, to support the company's line of AV Drive external hard drives, in early September.

CNET reports that Intel is preparing to launch its Light Peak high-speed computer connection standard as soon as early next year, paving the way for 10 Gbps connections.

Light Peak is now on track to appear in products in the first half of 2011--and likely earlier in the year than later, according to an industry source familiar with the progress of the technology. Light Peak is significantly faster than even USB 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously.

Apple is expected to be an important participant in the deployment of Light Peak, as the company was said to have played a key role in the development of the technology.

. . .Apple is expected to back Light Peak, if past comments from Intel still hold. Shortly after its annual developer conference in 2009, Intel said that it had showed the technology to third parties, got feedback, then incorporated the feedback into the next design, adding, at that time, that "Apple is an innovating force in the industry." (Apple has reportedly claimed that it conceived the idea for Light Peak.)

If Apple implements Light Peak, it would be a safe bet that the company will have a lot to say about the technology--maybe with a catchy name in tow. And it would probably not be wild speculation to say that Apple would want to be the first to use it.

The apparently-imminent release of Light Peak technology could explain the reluctance of Intel to adopt support for USB 3.0 in its chipsets and Apple CEO Steve Jobs' recent claims that the company doesn't see USB 3.0 "taking off". With the two companies reportedly collaborating on the even faster Light Peak standard envisioned as a replacement for USB, FireWire and various display connector standards, they may simply have decided to bypass USB 3.0 entirely.

Popular VoIP and video calling firm Skype today announced the release of a beta version of Skype 5.0 for Mac, bringing a single-window design, group video calling, Address Book integration, and a number of other new and improved features to the company's software.

It was worth the wait - the new Skype 5.0 is now available for Mac today in beta, introducing a revamped look and feel that simplifies navigation and provides a more Mac-like experience. For example, the Skype app has been brought together in one window for ease-of-use, and the Mac address book has been integrated, making it possible for you to call, IM and SMS your contacts when they are online or offline.

According to Macworld, group video calling will be free for users during the beta period but will require a paid plan once the feature officially launches. There is no word yet on what Skype plans to charge for the feature.

Skype 5.0 Beta for Mac is a free download available from Skype's website.

Earlier this week, we noted increasing reports of video distortion and other issues being experienced by users of Apple's new MacBook Air. According to BGR's new tipster with access to Apple's internal support documentation, the company is aware of the issue and will address it in a forthcoming software update.

According to the support documents captured by the tipster, Apple has identified both "horizontal flickering" and "fading dark to light colors" as symptoms users may experience.

Until the software update is rolled out, support staff are advised to force a display power cycle on the customer's computer by closing the display and allowing the computer to sleep for ten seconds in an effort to address the issue.

Have the customer put the computer to sleep by closing the lid, wait 10 seconds, then open the lid to wake the computer. This should force a display power cycle, and the display should return to normal. Do not process an EFFA capture if the issue is resolved after this sleep and wake cycle.

The issue has been isolated and will be fixed in an upcoming software update.

No timeframe for the release of the software update is known at this time.

Apple has started accepting Mac Apps for their upcoming Mac App Store. The Mac App Store was announced in October as part of Mac OS X Lion's feature set. Apple quickly revealed that the Mac App Store would also be coming to existing Mac OS X Snow Leopard users as well and would launch in 90 days from the time of the announcement.

The Mac App Store mirrors many of the submission guidelines and policies as the iOS App Store. The Mac App developer program is $99/year just like the iOS App developer program.

BGR has received a screenshot of a purported internal Apple support document outlining the company's policies regarding bad pixels on the displays of its products.

According to the document, Apple allows for repair or replacement with as little as one light or dark pixel on the company's iPhone and iPod touch, moving up to as many 16 required as a minimum for repair or replacement on displays 22 inches and larger.

Notably, Apple's policies do allow for some leeway to permit its support staff to offer customers repair or replacement with fewer anomalies than that listed as required. The customer is to be made aware, however, that his or her replacement device could have more anomalies than the product they are returning, and if the new product does not meet the documented threshold for replacement, a second exchange will not be permitted.

At a media event held today, Facebook announced a new push into mobile, bringing updates to the company's Android and iOS applications and rolling out a new single sign on service that will allow users logged into the company's applications to also access other applications such as Flixster, Groupon, and Loopt. Single sign on is currently available on a handful of Android applications, with support for iPhone apps coming soon.

On the iOS front, Facebook announced an update to its application for the iPhone and iPod touch, bringing support for the enhanced "Groups" functionality rolled out recently and new features for the "Places" functionality, including the ability to find deals and a new option to "star" friends in the Places list to make it easier to check in with them.

Using Places on the iPhone already lets you share where you are and find nearby friends. Now with the iPhone 3.3 application, you can also find nearby deals from your favorite businesses--from restaurants down the block to major retailers. Deals are only available from Places in the U.S, for now, and we'll be expanding them to more merchants over time.

The updated Facebook application should be available in the App Store later today, although the the application currently appears to be entirely unavailable.

When asked about Facebook's plans for an iPad application, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the company does not consider the iPad to be a mobile device. When pressed on the issue, Facebook executives noted that they are still trying to understand the best approach to take for tablet devices like the iPad.

The real hint to Facebook's iPad plans, though, is that Tseng focused on the form factor and not iOS. This could mean that Facebook's looking to build an HTML5 version of its website optimized for tablets. At the very least, Facebook seems intent on keeping a consistent experience across all tablet devices.

In the meantime though, Tseng points out that Facebook is accessible via the iPad through the official website (which is pretty darn functional) and through touch.facebook.com.

Zuckerberg then clarified that Facebook was attempting to keep the focus of the event on mobile, and the company simply doesn't see the iPad as being in the same class as "mobile" devices like the iPhone and Android.

Update: The new version of Facebook has now gone live [App Store] as Version 3.3.1.

Yesterday, we noted that Skyfire would be bringing its Flash conversion browser to the App Store later this week. While the release was scheduled for tomorrow, Skyfire Web Browser [App Store, $2.99] has just gone live in the App Store.

Skyfire Web Browser allows users to access Flash video content on iOS devices by sending the Flash content to the company's servers for conversion to HTML5. Not all Flash video is supported, however, with one notable exception being Hulu, which has not permitted Skyfire to convert its content.

FEATURES:
- Play millions of Flash videos - everyday, with no limits!
- All-new 'Skybar' toolbar gives one-click access to video and related content
- Be social: Share via Facebook and Twitter.
- Stay in touch: Unique Facebook 'Quickview' allows you to see your wall and feeds with one click.
- Standard browser elements: Tabs, search, sharing, bookmarks, history, etc.
- Video search, with safe search option helps you quickly find videos about your favorite topic
- 'Desktop' option loads pages as on a desktop browser, giving a greater selection of video (vs. mobile sites)
- Private Browsing option: Browse with no history and cookies left behind
- Click the 'Explore' button for related videos, news trends, photos and tweets!

NOTES:
- Flash VIDEO content is supported, but Flash Games and Apps are NOT supported (aren't there enough games on iPhone already?)
- Hulu NOT supported (they don't allow it), but scores of other premium sites available
- List of supported sites grows daily (request new sites via Settings >> Feedback menu)
- It may take 15-25 seconds for videos to load: Preparing goodness takes time...

Skyfire Web Browser is currently offered at an introductory price of $2.99, although it is unclear for how long the offer will be available and what the regular price of the application will be. The application requires iOS 3.0 and is compatible with the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, although no iPad-specific version is available.

Update: Due to overwhelming demand, Skyfire has pulled Skyfire Web Browser from the App Store until it can beef up capacity to support the demand.

The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade.

Thus we are effectively 'sold out' and will temporarily not accept new purchases from the App Store. We are working really hard to increase capacity and will be accepting new purchases from the App Store as soon as we can support it.