Apple

One or more of AT&T's more senior officials have reportedly slipped important details about the next iPhone, including a June unveiling and a continued emphasis on speed.

Confidently declaring that the information he has obtained is "100% confirmed," Boy Genius says he has heard a formal unveiling for the third iPhone is due in mid-June and that AT&T is now familiar enough with the process that a mid-year iPhone update is "becoming a tradition" at the carrier.

While it is still a less-targeted platform, Apple's OS X operating system has seen some interesting Information Research published in recent months.

Of some 100 new features added to Apple Inc.'s iPhone 3.0 software this week, Jorge Mata, CIO for the Los Angeles Community College District, said that one of those alone -- the ability to tether Windows laptops to the iPhone -- could provide a quick boost his operation.

Mata said the updated software, which shipped to upbeat users this week, should give the 200 iPhone users on the college's staff the ability to transform the device into a modem, which could replace $60-a-month air cards now installed on the laptop computers of those users.

As promised, AT&T will begin selling iPhones without requiring a two-year contract, but the devices will be so expensive that few people are likely to want to buy them.

Starting March 26, existing AT&T customers will be able to buy the 8GB iPhone for US$599 and the 16GB iPhone for $699, AT&T said. The news follows days of rumors that the commitment-free phones might hit store shelves soon.

Tucked within Apple's iPhone 3.0 beta firmware are hardware strings that mention not one but two unreleased iPhone models as well as similar changes in store for the iPod touch. An exploration of device strings by the same source that correctly leaked MMS and tethering ahead of Apple's iPhone 3.0 preview event now finds that there are at least four and as many as six new devices in the pipeline that would share OS X iPhone as their foundation.

Once only available through the Apple TV, HD movies can now be purchased or rented directly through iTunes on Macs and PCs.

The company now says that customers of the US iTunes Store can buy new-release movies in 720p directly from iTunes for $19.99 and rent them for $4.99 within 30 days of their being made available for sale. Many older titles are also available for rent in the HD format for $3.99.

One of the features in iPhone firmware 3.0 that Apple strangely didn't announce was support for tethering but provided some details about the feature during the Q&A session.

Irish iPhone developer, Steven Troughton-Smith who had figured out a way to enable Emoji icons in iPhone firmware 2.2 with a simple hack has managed to enable tethering on his iPhone after upgrading to iPhone firmware 3.0 beta which is currently available only to developers of iPhone developer program.

iPhone 3.0 OS, the next generation operating system for the iPhone, iPod touch, and whatever Apple device comes next. New features, new apps, here you will find all the information you need. The new iPhone OS 3.0 adds over 100 new features including—at friggin' last—cut and paste.L33tdawg: Looking at the list of features and improvements, iPhone OS 3.0 is probably going to cause Apple's servers to crash when it's launched - EVERYONE is going to want to upgrade :)

FRUIT-THEMED maker of exploding laptops and expensive gizmos, Apple has denied that a chip it has installed in the ear buds of its ne Ipod Shuffle is anything to do with DRM.

The 8A83E3 chip, found within the control switch of the new Shuffle earbuds was claimed to be a form of DRM by BoingBoing and the Electronic Frontier Foundation which is designed to force users to buy only Apple earphones. Apple admitted that the chip was designed to make sure that third-party headphones work properly with the third-generation Ipod shuffle, but it did not use DRM.

Nothing sets the Web ablaze like iPhone hacking. You can guarantee that the split-second the latest iPhone 3.0 firmware hits, there's going to be a flurry of Internet chatter centered on three key topics: