MacRumors

CNBC reports that News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-led media conglomerate behind such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and The New York Post, is considering launching a new news unit dedicated to content for tablet devices such as the iPad.

Sources close to the company tell me that the company is considering creating a new purely digital news play that would be designed for the app world and would be available through subscription on devices like the iPad.

This new digital news venture would incorporate text, photo and video, tailored for the iTunes app format .... neither a newspaper nor a news website -- it would not be based on any of News Corp's existing papers.

According to the report, News Corp could announce the new initiative within a month should it decided to officially move forward with it.

While News Corp has already established a precedent for subscription-based iPad content through its Web-administered offerings for The Wall Street Journal, other content providers seeking to deploy subscription-based content, such as Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated magazine, have been butting heads with Apple, possibly over either revenue sharing or subscriber information sharing.

Fortune is another one of Time Inc.'s brands that has not been able to reach a deal with Apple for subscription pricing, as the magazine's iPad application rolled out today using a model similar to that employed by other content providers. The free download comes with a demo issue, but future issues will have to be purchased individually through the application at $4.99 per issue.

Apple has officially announced the grand opening of its new retail store in the Covent Garden district of London, with the store set to open to the public on Saturday, August 7th at 10:00 AM. The store appears to be Apple's largest by total square footage, and will inhabit a restored historic building in the district's popular shopping area.

The London Evening Standard reports that the store will encompass a total of four floors, although a considerable portion of the space is reported to be set aside for meeting rooms and offices for Apple corporate staff.

Plans for the store obtained by the Evening Standard show it will cover four floors, although only two are likely to be accesible to the public. It features a glass roof over a courtyard originally built so horses could make deliveries easily to the building, which dates from 1877. Customers will enter through an eight-bay arcade marked by 20-foot stone arches and lit with restored gas lamps.

The firm has been painstakingly restoring the building for months, even removing a set of brick arches piece-by-piece, photographing and numbering them before rebuilding them onto a floor lowered by just four inches.

Located only about a mile from Apple's existing Regent Street flagship store that has been named the most profitable retail store in London on a per-square-foot basis, the new Covent Garden location is expected to ease some of the heavy traffic and long waits experienced by customers at the Regent Street store.

TechCrunch reports on an overlooked detail from Apple's response to federal legislators earlier this month regarding privacy concerns, noting that the company disclosed that it moved its location services in-house as of the release of iPhone OS 3.2 on the iPad in April. In addressing privacy concerns over the collection of user location data, the company made the following statement:

For devices running iPhone OS versions 1.1.3 to 3.1, Apple relied on (and still relies on) databases maintained by Google and Skyhook Wireless ("Skyhook") to provide location-based services. Beginning with the iPhone OS version 3.2 released in April 2010, Apple relies on its own databases to provide location-based services and for diagnostic purposes.

The change is a subtle one essentially invisible to users, but marks yet another example of Apple's desire to control as much of the top-to-bottom user experience as possible. Even more importantly, it marks a significant reduction in the company's reliance on partner-turned-rival Google for services on its iOS devices.

Apple has made little secret of its desire to move into the mapping and location services arena, first by acquiring Placebase in July of last year. A report from earlier this month indicated that it has also acquired small Canadian mapping firm Poly9. Additional hints came in an Apple job posting that appeared last November seeking a software engineer to help "take Maps to the next level".

Several readers have informed us and we have confirmed that Apple Store representatives are telling potential buyers of the company's new Mac Pro announced earlier this week that the updated models are set to become available for ordering on August 9th. Company sales representatives on both chat and telephone support systems have cited that date for the launch.

While Apple will begin taking orders on August 9th, it is not yet confirmed that machines will actually begin shipping on that date. Representatives have claimed, however, that the August 9th date will be for actual orders and not for a pre-order program, suggesting that orders should begin shipping fairly soon after that date.

Apple's press release from earlier this week and the Mac Pro pages on its website simply state "August" as the availability date for the new Mac Pros, so it has been unclear at what point in the month customers could expect to begin placing their orders.

CNET reports on comments from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today at the company's conference for financial analysts revealing that Apple's longtime rival is continuing to push full steam ahead on Windows-powered tablets, acknowledging Apple's early success with the iPad.

"They'll be shipping as soon as they are ready," Ballmer said, offering few details on the products, which he said will come from partners, not Microsoft itself. "It is job one urgency. No one is sleeping at the switch."

Speaking to financial analysts, Ballmer said the goal is "not just to deliver products, but to deliver products that people want to buy."

As for Apple and the iPad, Ballmer said, "they've sold certainly more than I'd like them to have sold."

Ballmer reports that the tablet hardware is set to be based on Intel processors rather than ARM chips, while running a flavor of the company's Windows 7 operating system rather than Windows Phone 7. The first devices are reportedly set to appear later this year.

At CES in January of this year, Ballmer briefly demoed a slate-style device from HP running Windows, but that device was put on hold with HP's acquisition of Palm. While HP is still sorting out its tablet strategy, it is beginning to appear that it may pursue Windows-based systems for enterprise and tablets running a modified Palm webOS for consumers.

AppleInsider points to a new Apple job listing that appeared on Monday looking for a software engineer to work on a "revolutionary" new Mac OS X feature.

We are looking for a senior software engineer to help us create a revolutionary new feature in the very foundations of Mac OS X. We have something truly revolutionary and really exciting in progress and it is going to require your most creative and focused efforts ever.

While Apple is always very careful to not give away too much information about its product development plans in its job posting and this latest one is sufficiently vague that it is impossible to glean any real details on the new feature from it, the new listing does carry a sense of enthusiasm and intrigue not often found in Apple's job postings.

Are you looking to help create something totally new? Something that has never been done before and will truly amaze everyone? Are you excited by the prospect that what you helped create would be used every day by millions of Apple customers? Then come and work on with the Mac OS X software engineering team to help build a new and revolutionary feature for Mac OS X.

About the only hint of the new feature's focus comes from Apple's qualification preferences seeking engineers experienced in HTTP and related protocols, with suggestions of a large-scale Internet-focused perspective.

Evidence of Apple's work on Mac OS X 10.7 first appeared late last year, with increasing evidence of the OS being used on Apple's campus showing up in web logs beginning in January of this year. Hopes for a developer preview at this year's Worldwide Developers Conference were dashed, however, with the event being primarily focused on the iOS platform amid claims that Apple had diverted resources from the Mac OS X in order to focus on iOS 4 development.

As announced by Apple CEO Steve Jobs earlier this month and confirmed in a company press release earlier this week, Apple has begun its second round of iPhone 4 launches, bringing the device to 17 new countries. Countries in this round of launches include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.

The Sydney Morning Herald offers coverage of the launch in Australia, where a number of Apple's carrier partners one-upped the company's 8:00 AM retail store openings by launching the iPhone 4 at midnight local time.

But in the race to score the most customers, Optus, Telstra and Vodafone/3 bent over backwards to ensure the wait was an event in itself. Singer Kelly Rowland greeted customers at Optus, Vodafone plied its faithful with free booze and Telstra offered fine cuisine.

Sources say each telco has received only about 12-13,000 iPhone 4 units in the first batch, and with Optus alone getting over 100,000 pre-order customers, stock is likely to run out within days.

Things appear to be going less swimmingly in New Zealand, which is two hours ahead of Sydney. According to local reports, Apple's deal with Vodafone has been canceled in that country as all mentions of the device disappeared from the carrier's site yesterday and no launch plans had been announced. We also received word that Vodafone has posted signs in its stores this morning stating that the launch will not be taking place today.

The change would appear to leave customers scrambling, with unlocked iPhone 4 models at unsubsidized prices set to be available through Apple's online site as their only option in that country, although rumors also suggested the device might be available through other retailers there.

A Vodafone spokesman declined to comment and directed questions to Apple, whose representatives have not yet returned nzherald.co.nz's calls.

But it is understood that Apple's deal with Vodafone is off and the gadget won't be available from New Zealand stores tomorrow, only online from Apple.

Then again, another rumour gaining ground on Twitter is that retailer JBHiFi will be selling the iPhone 4 tomorrow.

South Korea had also been originally scheduled to be included in this wave of launches, but Jobs announced at the iPhone 4 press conference earlier this month that the launch there would be delayed as the company continues to seek government approval of the device there. Government officials have disputed that notion, however, claiming that Apple has yet to even submit the iPhone 4 for approval.

At the iPhone 4's introduction at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Jobs announced that 24 unspecified countries would be included in a third round of launches set for August, with an additional 40 countries set to see the iPhone 4 in September, bringing the total to 88 countries. It is unknown, however, whether Apple is still planning to adhere to that schedule.

Update: We've heard that both Vodafone and JB Hi Fi are claiming that a "shipping error" is responsible for the cancellation of today's launch in New Zealand.

Update 2: The New Zealand Herald reports that the iPhone 4 did finally go on sale at selected Vodafone stores there at mid-day, with Apple set to follow with unsubsidized sales later today.

With iPhone mobile provider Vodafone saying it would not launch as promised, backed up by retailers JB Hi-Fi and Magnum Mac who all told nzherald.co.nz that the device wouldn't go on sale today, there was massive confusion over whether Apple fans could get their hands on the device at all.

But this changed late this morning with Vodafone announcing that it would be sold from midday at selected non-partner stores. Apple have since announced that it will be available for purchase on the apple.com/nz/ website this evening. Pricing starts at $1099 to buy the device outright, although Vodafone is offering subsidised on-account plans.

Phone Scoop yesterday discovered new regulatory filings posted by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission showing a new Sprint-branded 3G mobile hotspot device manufactured by ZTE that appears to be in the form of a designed case to wrap around Apple's iPod touch.

The Peel, as FCC photos suggest it will be called, seems to be a carriage sled for a tablet style device like the iPod touch. The Peel does not seem to connect to its host device, and it seems to be a specially designed Wi-Fi hotspot device that could offer EV-DO networking to an iPod touch in a package that could be clamped to Apple's Wi-Fi-only iPod.

In addition to apparently allowing an iPod touch to connect via Wi-Fi to access the case's 3G data capabilities, the user manual suggests that the Peel would serve much like a traditional 3G mobile hotspot, allowing up to five devices to connect to it to share the Internet connection.

The Peel would not be the first time Sprint has tried to tap into the Apple iOS ecosystem to promote its mobile hotspot devices. Earlier this year, the carrier released a television commercial touting its Overdrive 3G/4G mobile hotspot device by claiming that Apple's iPhone could achieve a ten-fold increase in data speeds by connecting through the Overdrive on 4G as opposed to the iPhone's built-in 3G connectivity through AT&T.

Soon after the launch of the Wi-Fi iPad in the U.S., Sprint also rolled out a free "4G case" to hold both the iPad and the carrier's Overdrive hotspot device, promoting the package as a way to achieve high-speed mobile connectivity with the iPad and other mobile devices.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Japanese government is continuing to pursue its long-standing concern over reports of first-generation iPod nanos overheating, following up on a warning to consumers issued by the government nearly two years ago.

The ministry is requesting Apple Japan to explain the cause of overheating, whether similar incidents have been reported domestically and abroad and what prevention and cautionary measures have been taken to counter such incidents, according to Seiji Shimagami, a ministry official who works in consumer product safety.

The order came following an incident in Tokyo that took place on July 13, when sparks flew from a user's device while it was recharging, according to Masahiro Yamazaki, the head of the consumer product safety unit at METI.

According to the report, the Japanese government agency responsible for overseeing trade issues has documented 27 instances of first-generation iPod nanos overheating while recharging, classifying those incidents as "fire-related". Six of those incidents have occurred since the 2008 warning was issued.

"iPods are incredibly well designed and safety is the highest priority for Apple. We are taking METI's letter in regard to the first generation iPod nano very seriously and are working closely with them to answer their concerns," Apple said in a statement.

Similar concerns over the first-generation iPod nano have been expressed in South Korea, where some July 2009 reports claimed that Apple had issued a recall of the device, a fact that Apple denied, although it does continue to acknowledge the possibility of overheating in a support document and encourages concerned customers to contact the company.

With its ultra-thin design and single-use functionality, users might think that a teardown of Apple's new Magic Trackpad would be straightforward and uninteresting. But the experts at iFixit show us in one of their famous teardowns how Apple pulls off the design and puts it all together into a sleek package.

As is becoming increasingly common for Apple's device, particularly its peripherals, disassembly is not for the faint of heart, with a fair amount of prying required and some adhesive to fight through in order to fully access the internals.

Once inside, iFixit discovered a small logic board roughly in the center of the device carrying the same Broadcom Bluetooth chip used in the Magic Mouse and the same Broadcom touch controller found in the iPhone, iPod touch, and MacBook Air, in addition to 256 KB of flash memory. The remainder of the interior surrounding the logic board contains a white plastic spacer designed to prevent damage to the logic board should the device be squeezed.

One of the other interesting design features we previously noted is the Apple's use of the Magic Trackpad's feet to generate the "click" when the user presses down on the device's surface. iFixit's teardown reveals how depressing the surface of the trackpad causes the feet to push up onto a hinged metal plate that runs along the front edge of the device inside the chassis. That metal plate then contacts a small mouse button to activate the clicking functionality.

Last night, Amazon announced an all new Wi-Fi only Kindle that starts at only $139 with a 3G-capable one for $189.

Amazon.com is excited to introduce a new generation of Kindle. The all-new Kindle has a new electronic-ink screen with 50 percent better contrast than any other e-reader, a new sleek design with a 21 percent smaller body while still keeping the same 6-inch-size reading area, and a 15 percent lighter weight at just 8.7 ounces.

Both models are slated for release on August 27th though Amazon has begun preorders. The new Kindle is also said to offer 20% faster page turns, up to one month of battery life, and double the storage to 3,500 books. The 3G Kindle offers over-the-air downloads of books for no monthly fee. The new Wi-Fi model will, of course, require you to be connected to a Wi-Fi network to purchase books.

Amazon's dedicated e-reader has been seen as an overlapping market for the Apple iPad. Amazon, however, has been aggressive about expanding the Kindle platform beyond just the hardware device itself. The company has also released a Kindle-compatible app for the iPhone and iPad.

Yesterday, we noted that Apple's new 27" iMac for the first time allows users to configure their machines with a second hard drive, offering a 256 GB solid state drive as an option for the second bay.

A number of consumers have wondered about the possibility of aftermarket installation of drives into this bay, should they choose to go with the single-drive option at purchase and perhaps add a second drive later as prices drop and/or capacities increase. To answer that question, Other World Computing has opened up one of the new iMacs and unfortunately found that the task would not be a simple one unless the machine originally shipped with dual drives.

The good news is that the SSD bay available in the new iMacs holds a standard 2.5" form factor drive, which means you can install a high-performance OWC Mercury Extreme SSD for the speed advantage over Apple's SSDs.

The bad news is that, unless your Mid 2010 iMac originally came with an Apple SSD, there's no graceful way to install an OWC one. The appropriate mounting bracket and connector cables are nowhere to be found on the non-SSD models.

The report goes on to detail one somewhat inelegant method in which a user of a single-drive iMac could add a second drive, but the solution is certainly not ideal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is "looking into" reports of issues being experienced by iPhone 3G users who have upgraded to the company's new iOS 4. Discussion forums at Apple, MacRumors, and elsewhere have been filling with reports from users experiencing problems with system responsiveness, battery drains, and overheating.

The most common criticism is that the phone is slow after an upgrade. There are also many complaints that the phone drains the battery quickly and becomes excessively hot. Concern about general problems such as slowness and battery life on gadgets isn't unusual, but using iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G seems to make the problems so bad that the phone is nearly unusable for some people.

In venting their frustration, some users have even gone so far as to create parody videos demonstrating the iPhone 3G's inability to run iOS 4 smoothly.

Meanwhile, some reports have indicated that iOS 4.1, currently in beta testing by developers, will address these issues to some degree.

Apple has made clear since the initial introduction of iOS 4 in April that the new operating system is not fully compatible with all generations of the iPhone and iPod touch due to hardware limitations, with only limited compatibility for the iPhone 3G and second-generation iPod touch suggesting that those models are being pushed to their limits with some of iOS 4's features. Users, however, understandably expected that Apple's steps to disable certain resource-intensive features on those devices should have left the remaining features operating relatively smoothly. That does not, however, appear to be the case for some users.

As noted by Ars Technica's Jacqui Cheng, Apple has updated its iAd developer page to invite app developers to advertise their applications through the company's new mobile ad platform.

iAd for Developers. A great way to promote your applications.

You can now purchase iAd advertising to promote your app to millions of users across the iAd Network. With iAd for Developers, users can download apps from the App Store without leaving the app they're in. It's easy to get started, contact us today and learn how you can drive more downloads of your app with iAd for Developers.

Apple's iAd program launched at the beginning of this month with ad campaigns from major brands such as Nissan and Dove, with the company reportedly charging as much as $1 million for placements in the program. But now the door appears to opening for smaller developers, as the company broadens its offerings to include app developers wishing to promote their applications, something we've seen for quite some time on existing ad networks.

Engadget reports that Best Buy is apparently giving away free kits of antenna-shielding strips, known as "invisibleSHIELD 4FIX" from ZAGG, to any iPhone 4 user interested in receiving the product. The offer also includes installation of the seven "invisible" adhesive strips included in the kit that cover only the surface of the stainless steel band around the edge of the iPhone 4 that serves as the device's antennas.

Based on a number of tips that we've received, we're getting the impression that the yellow-tagged retailer could be handing out (and installing) completely free side coverings for any iPhone 4 owner that waltzes into a store, presumably as a proactive measure to fend off returns or to upsell consumers on an entire invisibleSHIELD / separate case.

The invisibleSHIELD 4FIX kit is normally priced at $9.99, and Best Buy's offer provides an alternative to Apple's free iPhone 4 bumper and case program, one that will allow users to receive the benefits of the antenna fix while retaining the appearance of a "naked" iPhone.

Microsoft today posted a blog entry talking a bit about its forthcoming Office for Mac 2011 release scheduled for late this year. A brief behind-the-scenes video of Microsoft developers talking about some of the new features included in the release has also been posted.

The team has a short video (above) and here is a quick look at the new feature they discuss:

- Starting off with the new Template Gallery in Office 2011, this feature allows you to quickly and easily pick a template from the built-in designs to the thousands of templates online - giving you a head start to create great looking, professional documents.

- Core features in Outlook for Mac like the Conversation View help you sort emails easily to keep track of what you need to do. Additionally, the new file-based database is faster and provides more stability with Time Machine support.

- Tying all of the new features together is the Office for Mac ribbon, designed as an evolution of the Office 2008 Elements Gallery while also utilizing the classic Mac menu and Standard Toolbar giving you the best of both worlds. We have put the most commonly used controls at your fingertips making it easier for you to find what you need. You can even minimize the ribbon and the Toolbar for more screen space or for the more advanced users who rely on keyboard shortcuts.

Microsoft has issued several beta versions of Office for Mac 2011 so far this year, which each showing an increasing level of refinement and polish as the company moves toward a public release in the last calendar quarter of this year.