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This week, The Boy Genius Report published what they claimed to be an internal AT&T document that stated the following: AT&T does not require a new two-year agreement for existing customers who upgrade their current iPhone to a new iPhone. When a current iPhone customer first tethers their new iPhone, they will be required to accept a new two-year agreement. An automated fix for this issue has...

Walt Mossberg posts a preview of Lenovo's forthcoming ThinkPad X300, a competitor to Apple's MacBook Air. Walt Mossberg generally had good things to say about the MacBook Air when he reviewed it in January, however he did note several limitations such as built-in battery, lack of optical drive, and lack of other connectivity ports as being possible deal-breakers for some. On the other hand, ...

Apple has announced iTunes Live: London Sessions (via Macworld UK). Over 11 magical evenings, starting on Thursday February 21st, 2008, iTunes will host a series of unique recording sessions. More than 25 of the worlds most talented musicians including KT Tunstall, Jos Gonzlez, Tom Baxter, Rosn Murphy, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Spiritualized and many more will perform solo and collaborative...

Apple has released iLife Support 8.2 This update supports system software components shared by all iLife 08 applications to improve their stability and performance. The update also includes iLife support for recently released Aperture 2....

iLounge and MacRumors forums member logicalnoise have noted that iPod Classic Firmware 1.1.1, which is now available via iTunes, has corrected a hissing problem that had been plaguing users when their classics were placed into standby mode. Before the update when I went into standby my speakers would pop and I'd hear some soft static then when I switched on the button lock my speakers would pop...

Apple's largest competitor in the smartphone market, RIM, today experienced a data outage that spanned multiple carriers. RIM said BlackBerry subscribers "may be unable to send or receive messages and may also be unable to "register their device, roam in another location, or use other services such as Internet browsing." The outage began at roughly 3:30pm and affected all North American carriers, ...

At this year's International Solid State Circuits Conference, Intel is giving additional details regarding its upcoming Silverthorne ultra-mobile processor (via News.com and AppleInsider). According to the reports, Silverthorne will include dual in-order pipelines in order to keep power consumption at a minimal .5-2 Watts. Most modern chips use out of order pipelines for performance benefits, ...

Speculation regarding Apple's photo applications hit an all-time high this past week when Sr. Product Line Manager for Photo Applications Joe Schorr posted in Apple's Discussion forums the following: As I'm sure many of you know, it's not Apple's policy to provide a public "ETA" on future releases, so I can't post anything like a timetable for when support for the newest RAW camera formats will...

Erica Sadun over at TUAW has found evidence in the latest iPhone firmware that Apple had built in table support for to-do tasks. CREATE TABLE Task (ROWID INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, summary TEXT, priority INTEGER, due_date INTEGER, completion_date INTEGER, calendar_id INTEGER); Erica notes that as of now, the support is left unused, as the firmware does not have the capability to sync or...

HardMac claims that one of its sources is citing February 12th as the next launch window for hardware releases, namely the rumored MacBook Pro updates. HardMac is not a typical rumor source, with their most recent rumor falling a bit short. However, this claim is not entirely outside of the previously rumored launch window....

In possibly one of the more ambitious outlooks for Mac market-share increases, Gartner is forecasting that Apple will double its market-share in the US and Western Europe by 2011. The reason for the dramatic increase is said to be two-fold: Apple continues to do well in its Macintosh unit and competitors aren't meeting Apple's competitive pressure. Apple is challenging its competitors with...

When I was on line for the Macworld keynote, I talked to some folks around me (everyone had iPhones it seemed). Almost everyone said they had jailbroken their iPhones at some point, but some said they had reverted theirs to a clean install for various reasons. With the recent 1.1.3 jailbreak news and the upcoming SDK, we invite you to a poll (in the thread) on what iPhone software you are...

Apple has added to its website with a new subsection dedicated to video tutorials called "find out how." The section includes video tutorials for Mac OS X, Photos, Movies, Web, Music, and Documents. In all, over 30 short tutorial videos are presented along with many additional text tutorials. The videos present an addition to Apple's guided tours of Mac OS X Leopard and iLife 08....

Some users are beginning to realize that iTunes Store Movie Rentals may not be compatible with their iPods (via Wired). While Apple does state in its movie rental FAQ that a "iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic, or iPod nano (3rd generation)" is required for mobile movie rental access, other more prominent references only mention "iPhone or iPod." This distinction has left users of video-capable ...

Britain's O2 is bumping up the call and text allowances for its iPhone plans (via Macworld UK). Users on the cheapest plan will now receive three times the call allowance (now 600 minutes) and be able to send 500 SMS messages (up from 200) as part of the new deal. Other iPhone plans have seen similar bumps. The allowance hikes apply to both existing and new customers. O2 says the new...

One of the most anticipated features of Mac OS X Leopard amongst the technical community was the port of Sun's DTrace utility for application and system profiling. DTrace is a powerful, low-level dynamic tracing framework that allows system administrators and developers to trace applications for tuning or troubleshooting purposes. Recently, Adam Leventhal, one of DTrace's initial developers,...

Users hoping to buy a MacBook Air USB Superdrive accessory for use with another Mac or PC other than the MacBook Air may be disappointed to find out that the accessory requires a MacBook Air to run. Electronista explains that the requirement is due to the drive's higher power consumption. While external optical drives have existed that rely on the USB port alone, the particular power demands of ...

Apple posted revenue of $9.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share during the 1Q 2008 (ending December 29th). These results compare to revenue of $7.1 billion and net quarterly profit of $1 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.7 percent, up from 31.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted...

IBM is clearing the air from an AP report last week that it would be introducing an iPhone/iPod Touch compatible version of Lotus Notes this week. News.com has more: "It's not something that (is) ready to go out and market or launch," an IBM spokesperson told ZDNet Australia. IBM explains that the confusion may have been spurred by an earlier demonstration of the software. The release will be...

Apple will be announcing their financial results for their first fiscal quarter of 2008 (4th calendar quarter of 2007) and answering questions during a conference call today at 2PM PT, 5PM ET. As usual, the call will be webcast live via QuickTime. Please note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that actual...