Apple

Apple has an obsession with elegance. Just look at the line-up at yesterday's annual orgy of consumer desire. A new iPod Nano that looks like a tiny, animated, touch-sensitive, acid-drenched postage stamp - without losing a microgram of cool. An iPod Touch that generates and displays video, plays games and audio, and runs a kazillion apps, all with fewer buttons than a Mark 1 Walkman. An Apple TV that hooks together HD movies, Internet still and moving pictures, hewn from a minimalist block of ebony-black plastic.

Apple announced Wednesday that iOS 4.1 will fix proximity sensor and Bluetooth issues, and will add a new feature allowing users to take high dynamic range photographs that produce stunning pictures. The new software will ship Wednesday, Sept. 8 for the iPhone and iPod touch [Updated with HDR photos and details].

Following Wednesday's keynote, the golden master of iOS 4.1 was issued to developers. The new iPod touch, which will be available next week, comes with iOS 4.1 and Game Center preinstalled.

Is Apple readying an updated iPhone 4 with a new antenna, one without the much-publicized signal attenuation problem of the current model? A recent report by Mexican tech news site Canal MX, first uncovered (well, in English) by MacRumors, suggests a hardware fix for the iPhone 4's well-known shortcoming could arrive by the end of September.

Apple has announced that it will provide a public, live stream of Wednesday's keynote, which will be made available via the company's HTTP Live Streaming open standard to Mac and iOS device users.

The Cupertino, Calif., company made the announcement as a media alert Tuesday evening. The live video stream will be available when the keynote begins Wednesday at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern, at apple.com.

Poor reception and easily disrupted wireless signals are not the only problem with Apple's iPhone 4, users have also complained of a bug in the smartphone's proximity sensor that caused the screen to flicker and accidentally registered screen touches.

The Register reported last week that Apple is looking to fire back at iPhone jailbreakers with an application to patent a system designed to identify the “hacking, jailbreaking, unlocking or removal of a SIM card” from a phone so the device can be located and its data erased. The company has released a new firmware update for the sole purpose of patching a hole that was being used to jailbreak handsets running iOS 4 as well, according to the group of developers that created the first iPhone 4 jailbreak.

Apple on Thursday seeded with developers the third beta of Mac OS X 10.6.5, its latest security and maintenance update for Snow Leopard, with just one known issue.

People familiar with the latest build, reportedly known as 10H531, said the lone issue is associated with VMware. Having it installed can cause USB devices to not work when the Mac is awoken from sleep mode.

This morning, the master jailbreakers known as the iPhone Dev-Team had some troubling news for the JB community: They won’t be issuing a jailbreak for iOS 4.0.2 (or 3.2.2 for the iPad). The update proved that Apple has no problem with pushing out updates with the sole purpose of patching jailbreak exploits.

Apple on Wednesday invited members of the media to its annual media-centric keynote, where it is expected to introduce new iPods and an updated Apple TV, set for Sept. 1 in San Francisco, Calif.

The event will be held next Wednesday and will start at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, 1 p.m. Eastern, and will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Alluding to the music-themed nature of the event, the invitation includes an acoustic guitar with a sound hole in the shape of an Apple logo.

Apple on Thursday seeded the latest beta of Mac OS X 10.6.5, its forthcoming security and maintenance update for the Snow Leopard operating system, with no known issues.

People familiar with the latest beta, dubbed 10H529, said Apple has asked developers to focus on 3D graphics, Mail, printing, QuickTime, and the X Windows X11 subsystems. The Delta Update is reportedly a 558MB download.