Apple

Maybe iPhone users won't have to covet one of those shiny new features in Google's Android operating system after all: Google Maps Street View.

The driver's-eye view is a prominent part of the first Android phone, T-Mobile's G1, which goes on sale October 22. But according to Mac Rumors on Monday, Apple has snuck Street View into the iPhone 2.2 firmware beta release.

Other new features described in the report include the ability to disable the typing autocorrect feature and the inclusion of 461 small icons called Japanese emoji characters.

The iPhone 2.2 firmware … Read more

Has Apple really sold its 10 millionth iPhone? That's what several bloggers are saying. But a closer look suggests that it might be a bit too early to pop open the champagne.

A joint project of AFB and Investor Village's AAPL Sanity has been collecting data about iPhone inventory. Using a Google spreadsheet, the group has been unofficially tracking iPhone production estimates using International Mobile Equipment Identity, or IMEI, numbers that are used to uniquely identify every GSM, UMTS, or iDEN mobile phone.

According to the spreadsheet, AFB is reporting that 9,190,680 iPhone units have been … Read more

Apple's iPhone 3G apparently created a summertime switch itch: 30 percent of all the smartphone's buyers bailed on their existing carriers in order to purchase the device, according to an NPD Group report released Monday.

AT&T has been the iPhone 3G's exclusive carrier in the U.S. since the smartphone was released in June.

According to the report, which covers June through August, 47 percent of those switching to AT&T to get the iPhone 3G came from Verizon Wireless, 24 percent from T-Mobile, and 19 percent from Sprint.

"While the original iPhone … Read more

It looks like either somebody drinks a lot of coffee and talks really fast, or somebody diddled with the results of the phone recruitment feature in the Barack Obama campaign's iPhone application.

When I tried the application before 8 a.m. PDT Thursday, only 12 calls had been made, and the top-ranked caller had made 6 of them. But 30 hours later, the top caller had made 9,648 calls, according to the application.

That works out to more than five calls per minute, which means somebody would have been spending less than 12 seconds per call on average. … Read more

Apple has denied a rumor posted on CNN's iReport page that Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack Friday morning.

The unsubstantiated rumor, posted on the "citizen journalism" section of CNN called iReport, caused a sharp drop in Apple's stock price around 7 a.m. PDT before company representatives were able to deny the charge. Blogs such as Silicon Alley Insider initially published the rumor as written on CNN with the 21st century fig leaf--a question mark at the end of the headline--but updated its story after hearing from Apple representatives. CNN has since removed the post … Read more

Apple has missed a self-imposed deadline for bringing background-processing capabilities--of sorts--to the iPhone.

When Apple revealed that iPhone applications would not be allowed to run in the background during its March iPhone SDK event, developers, as they are wont to do, grumbled about the slight. So in June 2008 at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple promised to give developers a workaround that involved using Apple's own servers to notify iPhone users running one application when fresh data was available for another application not in use.

However, as Macworld notes, Apple had promised to deliver that capability by September. It'… Read more

Claims that Apple's Mac Pros emit benzene are being denied by the company.

A French newspaper called Libération.fr published the results of a study by a researcher at France's INERIS claiming that odors stemming from certain Mac Pros are the result of benzene emissions. Complaints have surfaced in the past about some sort of weird odor coming from Mac Pros, but it was thought the odor was related to small strips of plastic or material around the heatsink on the processor, depending on where you looked.

The study claims that the benzene fumes won't … Read more

Software development is complicated enough, even when you can ask for help.

Apple's decision to let its nondisclosure agreement on released iPhone software expire had an effect just hours after it was formally announced: developers such as Craig Hockenberry started sharing ideas for iPhone code.

A heavily moderated mailing list for Cocoa developers (Apple's user interface technology) rejoiced at the prospect that they could discuss tips for iPhone development the way they discuss Mac development.

Before Wednesday morning, they simply couldn't do such a thing in public, for fear of getting booted out of the iPhone Developer … Read more

Apple has decided to end the nondisclosure agreement attached to software that has already been released for the iPhone, in the latest sign that it is starting to take developer concerns to heart.

The company put up a notice on the main Apple developer Web page that, effective immediately, says developers are released from the NDA regarding iPhone software that has already been released. The NDA was one of the most frustrating aspects of iPhone development in its first three official months, forbidding developers from discussing their software and throwing into legal limbo the status of programs such as iPhone … Read more