Apple

Apple might let one of its retail stores in swinging London get in on the iPhone 3G fun after all.

Ars Technica is reporting that Apple's Regent Street retail store in London has iPhone 3Gs in stock, and plans to sell them to new iPhone users on Friday. At the moment, Apple's "Where to buy" page for the iPhone 3G in the U.K. still says that wireless carrier O2 and reseller Carphone Warehouse will be the only places to pick up the iPhone on Friday.

A discussion thread on Apple's own Web site reveals … Read more

Fake Steve Jobs is no more.

Dan Lyons, the former Forbes writer and soon-to-be Newsweek writer, announced Wednesday in a rambling post that he's shutting down the tech industry phenomenon known as The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. After it launched in 2006, the blog quickly became a must-read for anyone intrigued by Apple, its mercurial founder, and Silicon Valley in general.

Lyons played up some of the well-known traits of Jobs and Apple, such as the CEO's preference for mind-altering substances earlier in his life and the company's obsession with secrecy, to great comic effect. But … Read more

Rogers Communications, Canada's dominant wireless carrier, has responded to the outcry over its iPhone rate plans with a new option for nearly unlimited data.

The company announced a $30-a-month data plan for the iPhone 3G that subscribers can add to their voice plans. With it, they can consume up to 6 gigabytes of data a month.

Before Wednesday, Rogers drew the ire of many a Canadian with its plan to offer a maximum 2GB voice-data plan at $115 a month. Lots of other carriers are offering unlimited data plans for the iPhone, which generates much more Web traffic on … Read more

The first iPhone 3G reviews have been released, and if you've been paying attention to the news for the past month, you won't be surprised.

Walt Mossberg of All Things Digital, David Pogue of The New York Times, and Edward Baig of USA Today were the chosen few selected to review the iPhone 3G ahead of its launch on Friday. There wasn't nearly as much suspense about the reviews this year, since we already knew the iPhone 3G was--with the exception of the faster networks, GPS, and third-party applications--essentially the same phone.

Still, some interesting details … Read more

Apple has revealed how it plans to handle the iPhone 3G crowd on Friday at its retail stores: about 30 iPhone buyers at a time.

In an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Ron Johnson, Apple's retail chief, explained the company plans to admit iPhone customers into its retail stores starting at 8:00 a.m. local time on Friday. There will be an orange-shirted "concierge" at each store, according to Apple, who will herd iPhone 3G buyers approximately 30 at a time to the "iPhone bay" for processing.

Apple did something similar last year, when … Read more

While Rogers, Canada's largest wireless carrier, has made few friends with its iPhone 3G rate plans, it's not the only foreign carrier that will have to go it alone with iPhone sales on Friday.

The Internet was all atwitter Tuesday with reports that Apple had decided to pull iPhone 3Gs from its six Canadian retail stores for Friday's launch, apparently in protest over Rogers' decision to not offer its iPhone 3G customers an unlimited data plan. Appleinsider said that Apple made the decision in a Monday night conference call after it grew "disgusted" with the rate plans, … Read more

If the online demand for the iPhone 3G in the U.K. is any indication, Apple, O2, and U.S. carrier AT&T could be in for a long weekend.

O2, the U.K. carrier of the iPhone, had hoped to deflect some of the expected demand for Apple's new iPhone, scheduled to launch Friday, by taking preorders for the phone. It sent text messages to existing O2 customers Monday morning informing them of a chance to upgrade to the iPhone 3G. But that prompt overwhelmed O2's Web site Monday, forcing the carrier to halt the upgrade process … Read more

You've got to wonder whether Apple and AT&T are excited or worried about a repeat of last year's iPhone mania.

Even though a few people have already started lining up outside Apple's Fifth Avenue store in New York, the buzz surrounding Friday's launch of the iPhone 3G has been far less prevalent on our shores this year than last year, when I thought I was going to lose my mind writing about Apple's first mobile phone.

That makes some sense, since, in many ways, the iPhone is old news. But a new activation … Read more

Updated 2 p.m. PDT Monday to clarify that Apple has cut the price of a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive and faster processor by $500 total.

Apple has quietly reduced the price of the flash-memory version of the MacBook Air.

Appleinsider tipped us to the new price, which can be found at the online Apple Store. Before today, you would have paid a $999 premium if you wanted a MacBook Air with a solid-state hard drive, but Apple has reduced that premium to $599. It's also now cheaper to upgrade the processor from 1.6GHz to … Read more