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The Friday Apple rumor round-up

Sam Symons   on 22 May 2009 - 23:39 · 11 comments & 5771 views

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Well, it's that time of the week again. Last Friday, Neowin published an Apple rumor collection, and since that time there has been a whole lot of new information, so again, we'll make one article for it all. Without further ado, let's get started.

John Gruber's predictions on the next iPhone:

John Gruber from Daring Fireball has a fairly good track record when it comes to predicting upcoming Apple products; after all, he did speculate the aluminium MacBook and MacBook Pros, so when he speaks, we listen. He's given his thoughts on Apple supposed refresh of the iPhone, regarding specifications and things of the like. What does he have to say? Well, he expects that the list that Neowin published not long ago is pretty accurate. We won't elaborate on this; it's all in the previous post, so it's best to read that instead.

32GB iPhone briefly appeared on T-Mobile Austria's website:

To add further fuel to the fire that a 32GB iPhone is coming, T-Mobile Austria accidentally showed (and quickly removed) an entry for such a device, according to iPhone Buzz.



Again, there's not much else to report on this, so we'll leave it at that.

Asahi Kasei to supply magnetometer for next-gen iPhone:

There's been many rumors about a magnetometer that will be supposedly included in the upcoming iPhone. A magnetometer is essentially a digital compass, and will aid in telling applications on the phone the direction that the user is facing. This could be handy, for example, in the Maps applications.

The source behind this rumor is that a few people with access to the 3.0 beta of the iPhone SDK has uncovered some headers named 'compass'. According to AppleInsider, "the files identify Asahi Kasei's azimuth sensor No. AK8973, a 16-pin leadless IC package measuring 4mm square and 0.7mm thick, as the chip that will help future iPhone users determine their direction. It bundles a master clock oscillator."

The company has been a previous supplier of components to Apple devices, so this is hardly surprising at all. T-Mobile's G1 smartphone has had such functionality for a long time, so that's more reasoning for Apple to do the same with their own device.

Mobile iTunes Store to get access to movies and TV shows:

A website named Open Salon has posted up some screenshot of the iPhone version of the iTunes Store, which reveals new categories for movies and TV shows. There's not much to say about this either, but we've included some screenshots below (the rest you can find on the source website).



Multiple companies low on stock of the iPhone 3G:

As AppleInsider is reporting, AT&T and Vodafone Australia are both low on stock for the iPhone 3G, and AT&T are now offering refurbished products. One customer looking to purchase from AT&T stated, "I just got off the phone with AT&T regarding the death of my wife's iPhone and the customer service rep informed me they are no longer selling new iPhone 3G. They have refurbs for sale."

This is a similar situation to what happened before the 3G itself was available, and Apple is also offering it through its own website, something which also happened before the release of the current iPhone. We're a bit skeptical of this, though: AppleInsider wrote, "AT&T spokesman Brad Mays denies any shortage and claims that sales representatives provided incorrect information, but doesn't elaborate further."

Regarding the Vodafone Australia situation, it appears that they have been told the iPhone 3G is now "End of Life", and there is only a couple weeks worth of stock left. It's perhaps also worth noting that Telecom New Zealand has posted on their Twitter account, "We are in negotiations with Apple... we are very focused on the 3rd gen iPhone.. we will keep u updated."

All pretty standard stuff, but the WWDC isn't far off, so we'll see how truthful these are pretty soon.

Post a comment · Send to friend Comments · There are 11 additional comments
(1 reply) #1 artfuldodga on 23 May 2009 - 01:50
how about drop the 'rumor' stuff, if people want that, go to macrumor ... little tired of seeing it here and Ars, its different if its a rumor say once a month but, weekly, daily...
#1.1 Xion-UK on 23 May 2009 - 11:24
artfuldodga said,
how about drop the 'rumor' stuff, if people want that, go to macrumor ... little tired of seeing it here and Ars, its different if its a rumor say once a month but, weekly, daily...

I've got to agree. I come to Neowin to get other Tech news. If I want apple rumors I go to MacRumors, or other apple news sites. Fair enough the odd one here or there, but Neowin isn't and shouldn't become another rumor site.
#2 andrewbares on 23 May 2009 - 01:58
Yawn. Nothing really exciting.
#3 bluewind_89 on 23 May 2009 - 02:55
'The death of my wife's iPhone' made me laugh for some reason.
#4 boycey on 23 May 2009 - 14:55
Has it been confirmed that the next iphone will be 4G compatible? a whisper told me that the American model would be.
(1 reply) #5 C_Guy on 23 May 2009 - 21:14
Can we please get a weekly Dell rumor post? HP? Acer? Intel? Microsoft? Palm? Research In Motion?

Those would be at least as interesting as an Apple one.
#5.1 Ledgem on 24 May 2009 - 01:10
While I normally consider C_Guy's posts to be intelligent trolls all of the time, this is one that I can actually agree with. I don't love rumors to the point that rumor sites get any traffic from me, but I don't mind seeing rumors on news sites every now and then.

We all know the reason why Apple has loads of rumors and other companies don't, though. Apple is very secretive compared to many other computing companies, and they currently have a reputation for doing revolutionary things. Combine those two and it's clear why people love to get into rumors over it.

What would a Dell rumor list have? "New line of computers - clocked 300 MHz faster than the previous line rumored"? It just doesn't have the same appeal. But if there were jucier rumors than that, I might get into them.
(1 reply) #6 RealFduch on 23 May 2009 - 22:02
If you like to publish Mac rumors, why not publish this one? Holes that allow remote execution of arbitrary code going unpatched for more than 6 months. Isn't it better than some "iPhone predictions"?
http://www.macrumors.com/2009/05/20/unpatc...wing-attention/

Programmer and former Apple engineer Landon Fuller has released a proof-of-concept exploit demonstrating vulnerabilities in Apple's current implementation of Java that allow arbitrary code execution in Java-enabled Web browsers. While the vulnerabilities, first discovered last August, were disclosed and patched by Sun last December, Apple has yet to roll out a fix for its own implementation of Java.
CVE-2008-5353 allows malicious code to escape the Java sandbox and run arbitrary commands with the permissions of the executing user. This may result in untrusted Java applets executing arbitrary code merely by visiting a web page hosting the applet. The issue is trivially exploitable.

Unfortunately, these vulnerabilities remain in Apple's shipping JVMs, as well as Soylatte 1.0.3. As Soylatte does not provide browser plugins, the impact of the vulnerability is reduced. The recent release of OpenJDK6/Mac OS X is not affected by CVE-2008-5353.

With the recent release of OS X 10.5.7 failing to address the vulnerabilities, Fuller decided to create and release his proof-of-concept exploit in order to bring attention to the severity of the issue. The proof-of-concept exploit uses a browser-based Java applet to activate the Unix "say" command on the user's system and recite a statement regarding the exploit initiating an innocuous process.
#6.1 andrewbares on 25 May 2009 - 03:25
And that's why Vista is 3x more secure than Mac OSX.
(1 reply) #7 chisss on 24 May 2009 - 17:01
That "low on stock" is BS... my wife works for ATT and they still have them and sell them like hot cakes... they haven't had any issues with availability whatsoever...

Also they haven't heard any official news from ATT about a new iPhone coming out...
#7.1 dewaaz on 26 May 2009 - 03:51
i disagree... here in australia, all the telcos are advertising like hell and giving out cheap deals, in what i can only see as an attempt to clear out stock before the new ones arrive

this has only happened over the last 1-2 months, so yeh - something's definitely up

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