Mark Gurman

Since the iPad’s initial launch on April 3rd and the 3G iPad’s launch on April 30th, customer demand for the product was exceptional and even beat Apple’s expectations. Up until a couple weeks ago the shipping times for all iPad models stood at 7-10 business days until recently changing to 3-5 business days. Up until yesterday the iPads shipping time read 1-3 business days and finally today iPads are said to ship “within 24 hours.”

This begs the question, are Apple’s initial production issues due to very high demand finally over?, Or is customer demand just down overall? So far Apple has sold well over 3.2 million units and announced the 3 million mark back on June 22nd. Let us know what you think in the comments.

via RazorianFly

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Just a classic from John Paczkowski at All Things D. Also, try not to look at El Jobso’s legs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmG9jzCHtSQ&w=650&h=500]

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After being outed by the FCC early, Griffin officially announced their “Party Dock.” This dock essentially is the ultimate iOS device accessory for those into real-personal social interaction and casual gaming. The Party Dock adds four remote controls to your iOS devices, comes with interactive group-style games, and hooks up to your TV. Griffin claims new games for the accessory can be downloaded through iTunes (we’ll see how that works out with the upcoming iTV… “No iTV competition allowed on the App Store”). Griffin even promises to throw in 3 demos and 1 full game with purchase.

The Party Dock will even charge your iOS device (neato!), let you watch YouTube videos, and view your wonderful photographs and movies. The price for this magical accessory for your magical iOS device is yet to be announced and we can’t wait to get our hands on one to review it for you fine folks. Also, this dock totally sounds like that rumored TV thingamabob Apple’s announcing on Wednesday.

Check out the happy Party Dock users after the break:

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The rumors of an upcoming iTunes TV show rental service from Apple are in full swing, and we’re hearing more and more juicy details each day. First we heard that TV show rentals would be $1 per show and good for a 24 hour watching period. This is the same as Apple’s current movie rental service but for television programs at a cheaper price instead. Just the other day we heard that Apple’s in deep negotiations with News Corp., NBC, and ABC in regards to the rumored service.

Today, Cult of Mac’s taking a swing into the action reporting on a tip they believe has merit. The report agrees with the 1$ per show service, but takes the concept even further. This rumored 1$ per show concept supposedly means $1 per show per month. To simplify this, imagine your favorite show. Lets say your show has had 50 episodes so far in its life time. For $1 a month you will have access to the entire 50 show library as well as all new additional shows airing during that month.

Furthermore, to gain access to the entire show library for an entire year it would cost you $12. Looking down the line if you signed up for 10 individual shows, it would cost you $120 to access the complete show libraries for an entire year. This seems sort of sketchy and we are definitely taking this lightly. Let us know what you think in the comments.

The official Netflix application for the iPhone and iPod touch was only released yesterday morning and today is number one in the App Store’s top free section.

And that is before Retina iPod touches have even hit the street.

Just two weeks ago we reported a robbery at the Knox Street Apple Store in Dallas and today it appears that the University Towne Apple Store in San Diego, California was the scene of a late-night smash-and-grab.

In the deep hours of the night around 4:20 AM two robbers dressed in jeans and hoodies smashed down the store’s iconic glass doors and made out with 12 display iPhones. There is no word on the depth of the investigation and if the criminals have been apprehended as of yet.

One thing that seems odd is that the Apple Store is located at a mall yet the criminals were able to get through. Maybe there isn’t 24 hour security at that location. More pictures of the aftermath are on the other side of the break:

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Earlier today, purported 4th-gen iPod touch cases emerged with a slot for a back camera as well as cases for the rumored touch-screen iPod nano without a click wheel. Tonight, iLounge is reporting on more details they have garnered from their well-informed sources.

Supposedly the upcoming iPod touch is confirmed to be carrying a back-camera and this is something we are all pretty certain about. The brand-new details unearthed tonight are a completely new back coming to the iPod touch. This back will lose the contour curvature from recent generations and revert back to something similar to first generation iPod touch design. (Remember: This follows what our sources told us back in early July)

Think of the lid of a MacBook Pro; the direct top/center of the lid is completely flat but the sides are slightly curved. The change will be fairly different from the 2nd/3rd generation touch but similar to the first generation with some unspecified changes (Or as a commenter pointed out, think of the first-gen iPhone’s back). Another point is the hole directly beside the back-camera slot. It is unclear if this is for an LED flash like on the iPhone 4 or for a microphone.

Many signs point to the hole as a spot for a noise-suppressing microphone similar to those on the back of the 5th generation iPod nano, top of the iPhone 4, and the back of prototype 3rd generation iPod touches with cameras. Following the iPod touch design from the beginning, the 30 pin dock port and earphone jack will stay at the device’s bottom.

Going back to cases, a few more designs emerged tonight and you can catch them after the break:

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The Just Mobile Gum Plus is a stylish aluminum battery charger and  can charge your iPhone to 90% within one hour. The device is physically small, but its internal battery-juice storage is massive. The Gum Plus has a battery capacity of 4400 mAh which means it can charge your iPhone up four times. That’s four times on a single charge of the Gum Plus.

The mechanism to display the amount of juice left in the charger is very similar to Apple’s system on the unibody MacBook and MacBook Pro line. You simply press a small mechanical button on top and the LED indicators will light up out of five levels.

The design of this product is fantastic and is quite solid. The materials are of the golden standard in the accessory industry and are certainly built to last. The charger is even one of the few iPod and iPhone certified external charging devices. Connection to your device is via a standard 30 Pin USB cable which is included with the Gum Plus. The charger even comes with a carrying pouch for portability.

We tested this device on an iPhone 4 and iPad, and it worked well with both devices. Both iOS devices met the promised 90% charge within an hour mark and we are overall very impressed. Going back to the build quality it is worth mentioning that the high-capacity 1A battery uses quailty Sanyo batteries rather than short lasting standard batteries.

Just Mobile’s Gum Plus is a fantastic external battery charger for your iPod, iPhone, and iPad. It’s simple, intuitive, and beautifully designed. It’s packed with a high-grade fast and long lasting battery, a quick control to check the juice, a USB cable, and a carrying pouch. We recommend the accessory for anyone in the market for an external battery charger with a great design at a fairly good price. This charger is perfect for anyone who is not able to always get to a charger or for people experiencing bad device battery life.

You can get one here for about $10 off at just around $50. That was the best deal we could find. Additionally there is a pro version in black available for just under $60.

Apple today announced an update to their iTunes Connect Payments and Financial Reporting website. The new site was re-built from scratch in order to provide developers with an easier gateway to information about their payments. The new interface is what Apple calls a “dashboard” setup and features a cleaner layout with four main tabs: Summary, Earnings, Owed, and Payments.

Summary as you can see above provides developers with a full glance at all payment information with large bar and line graphs. The earnings tab provides an in-depth look at payments per region as well as how many units were sold each month per region. The owed tab (surely a fan-favorite) shows how much money you are owed per region and the Payments tab lists which of the financial reports actually get paid to you for a certain month.

Apple today released a security update for Mac OS X that fixes the same PDF-exploit found in iOS a few weeks ago. The update is available for all users who have the latest version of either Leopard or Snow Leopard installed.

Impact: Viewing or downloading a document containing a maliciously crafted embedded font may lead to arbitrary code execution

Description: A stack buffer overlow exists in Apple Type Services’ handling of embedded fonts. Viewing or downloading a document containing a maliciously crafted embedded font may lead to arbitrary code execution. This issue is addressed through improved bounds checking.

Samsung today released a teaser video for their upcoming “Galaxy Tab” touch-screen tablet device. Samsung’s latest entry into the tablet market will feature a 7 inch AMOLED display, video calling (take that, iPad!), Android 2.2 Froyo, e-reading, and HD movie playback. The device looks very interesting in the promotional teaser, and is reportedly lighter than the iPad according to a first-hand account.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flzYD_kfXiw&w=640&h=385]

The device will be officially unveiled at a conference in Berlin on September 2, 2010. Time will tell if this is another JooJoo (Fail) or a true-iPad competitor.

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is in deep negotiations with News Corp. along with other major media outlets to allow for a $.99 per show TV rental service. The service’s launch will reportedly coincide with the release of a new iPod lineup on September 7th along with Apple’s long-rumored iTV device. The iTV is the Apple TV’s rumored successor that will come in an iPhone-like package (sans the screen), run Apple’s iOS, and will sport an App Store. The iTV will also supposedly launch at the key $99 pricepoint making it the perfect product for this rumored rental system.

The rental system will supposedly gives users 48 hours to watch their rented television program on any iOS device or iTunes enabled computer (Mac or Windows). Like Apple’s iTunes TV show service of today ($1.99 a piece), shows will be made available 24 hours after their initial TV debut. The other companies rumored to be in deep-discussions with Apple are ABC (Disney), NBC, and CBS. This rental service will be an awesome gateway for the rumored a la carte services coming to the iTV.

The Wall Street Journal adds that News Corp is actively considering Apple’s offerings, while CBS and and NBC are not so inclined to partner up with Apple’s rumored service. Jobs and Co. seem to have their ways and only time will tell how this all plays out.

Pocket Now takes us through a neat browser comparison between the iPhone 4 and a Windows Phone 7 device (Nexus One too! Meh). Keep in mind the Windows 7 experience you will see below is still in beta form but both of the other platforms should improve during the time it takes Microsoft to ship their product. As you will see in the video, each have their strong points, but I’m still digging that perfect intertial scrolling on the iPhone.   Oh and the Microsoft won’t do HTML5 (or Flash).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgvphQx9MY8&w=640&h=385]

It appears that iTunes accounts are still being compromised, though it isn’t certain if hackers are brute forcing or phishing passwords out of users. Today’s incident involves PayPal who has swooped into the action as hackers are using iTunes to deplete users’ bank accounts.

According to a report by TechCrunch, one user’s account was charged $4,700 after receiving close to 50 $99.99 iTunes charges via PayPal. Luckily for this user, he got PayPal to stop the funds transfer but others, like the Twitter user below, aren’t so lucky.

iTunes users are ranting their disgust and hacking concerns across the Social 2.0 space and here are some quotes from Facebook:

Everybody watch your itunes account closely. I just got hacked for almost $1000.00 worth of software, videos and music. Hopefully paypal will refund it all. . . . This happened within the last few hours. Once transaction after another.

So apple/itunes had a security breach & someone bought over $500 worth of music through my paypal account. just what i wanted 2 b dealing w/ while in San Diego! AWESOME!!!

The issue seems to involve iTunes with PayPal being the hackers money-stealing gateway. Until this is officially resolved it might be a good idea to remove all forms of payment from your iTunes account.

These types of ‘hacks’ usually come down to phishing sites getting your login information from a third party.

Google announced on their mobile blog that the Google Mobile app for iOS will be receiving an update today which enables Google Calendar and Gmail push notifications. The push notifications will work for the Gmail.com domain as well your own custom domain setups. As Fortune points out, this is a big deal for Google-app users as up until now only Yahoo and MobileMe were able to push email to iOS.

The push notification system will work like any other app so you will get to choose what kind of notifications you would like to receive, whether it be an icon badge or one of those obtrusive popups we all love. The app will reportedly also gain real-time search results for stocks, flight info, weather and currency conversions. The free update will be universal for all iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) and hopefully iPhone 4 retina support will join this release.

Update: The update is now available on iTunes. Retina support is a go!

Multifl0w is how we feel Apple should have implemented multitasking into iOS in the first place. It works quickly, beautifully, and efficiently on jailbroken iPhones, iPod touches and… iPads! The app collaborates with the free “backgrounder” app from Cydia and displays up to 9 apps at a time. You can get the app on the Cydia store for $4.99 and you can get more info here via the official site. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcIORhb8NfQ&w=640&h=385]

Facebook for iOS has over 100 million active monthly users, yes, 100 million. As we pointed out the other day, that’s almost as many as iOS devices walking the planet.

In other milestones, the App Store is sitting at almost 250,000 apps and 300,000 apps approved all-time. 50,000 apps have been pulled (by Apple and by choice)?! Apple usually throws up some promotional banners about these huge milestones.

The relationship between the two companies isn’t necessarily cozy.  App Store Chief, Phillip Shoemaker had this to say about the original Facebook app developer, Joe Hewitt:

We’re going to keep these latest Apple patents short and sweet: Multi-touch laptops equipped with IPS displays are being dreamt up in Cupertino. In addition, the latest Apple patents point to IPS displays coming to the iPod touch, which is quite obvious as the latest iPhones and iPads utilize this advanced screen technology. 

What’s surprising is the lack of IPS displays on Apple’s current notebooks and hopefully that new MacBook Air coming any day now has one. Multi-touch MacBooks are self explanatory (right?) and is a concept heavily talked about until around January 27th of this year. 

Hit up Patently Apple for the full rundown of these patents. 

Here’s what appears to be a production white iPhone.  On this model, the LED flash doesn’t have the tell-tale design issue as the white iPhone kits that have been populating the Internet. We’ve re-uploaded the video for you below. This may be an international model scrapped by Apple at the last minute after defects in the white color clarity were found. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7LY5lq9mc&w=640&h=385]

Everyone’s favorite (okay my favorite) iOS game finally got the much needed iPhone 4 Retina Display treatment. The developers, Lima Sky, apparently couldn’t wait to get this update out the door, so only the three most popular (arguably) levels got Retina-ready graphics. The update is a free standard update, and hey, Lima Sky, where’s the iPad version?!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfX_ZQag1BM&w=640&h=385]

Notice the iPhone can’t even pick up service. That is all.