Apple has posted a job opportunity for a position it calls “iPhone Security Engineer.” An “exceptional individual” will get the chance to “have a major impact on Apple’s embedded operating system products,” according to the job posting.

Job requirements and useful experience include “passion for developing “proof of concept attacks, industry exposure to and knowledge of OS security and UNIX internals” and “involvement in reverse engineering and security communities.”

The company appears to be taking seriously recent criticisms of its nonchalance toward patching iPhone security holes and its less-than-full-embrace by the enterprise community.

Who says crime doesn’t pay?

Via Ars Technica

Microsoft is taking a leaf from Apple’s playbook and re-organizing its major online services division to create a tighter link between hardware and software.

Microsoft has reorganized it’s Platforms and Services Division, responsible for products like online search and Internet Explorer, to more closely follow Apple’s “whole widget” approach of closely tying hardware to software and online services.

In a memo to employees, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explains:

“In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.”

It sounds like Microsoft is going to try and replicate what it’s done with the XBox and the Zune — exert more control over hardware, software and cloud services.

For decades, Microsoft has thrived by selling its software to third-party vendors who build with commodity components and compete fiercly on price. This model works well when selling to businesses, whichare concerned with price and interopability, but increasingly, ordinary consumers are the grwoth market for the PC industry, and consumers care more about ease-of-use, reliability and good design. These of course, are Apple’s strengths.

Ballmer doesn’t seem to be suggesting that Microsoft bring hardware in-house, but rather initiate a tighter pairing between Microsoft’s software and the company’s third-party hardware partners. Examples of this kind of hardware/software alliance include Real Networks and Sandisk, which have teamed to make MP3 players; and Netflix and LG, which are collaborating on an online movie service integrated into LG’s TVs.

Ballmer specifically mentions phones, which are increasingly becoming mobile computing devices that could threaten Microsoft. Microsoft is rumored to be working on a Zune phone to rival the iPhone (and soon, Google’s Android).

The Computer Science Department at Stanford University will offer a course in iPhone programming in the Fall Semester, according to its latest course schedule.

It is unclear at this point whether Apple will object to the course offering under the terms of its SDK confidentiality agreement.

Via TUAW

Mock up via Flickr

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Muntster wrote for his clients today “We believe there is an 80% chance Apple will introduce redesigned MacBooks and possibly new MacBook Pros at lower price points. Specifically, Apple may re-enter the $999 price point (currently $1099) with the MacBook, or test the $1,799 price point with the MacBook Pro (currently $1999).” Thus, the news from yesterday’s stellar earnings report is all about Apple’s future - new products on the horizon and facelifts for old friends.

The consensus appears to be that Apple will be slashing prices on on Macs in an effort to increase market share that has moved Mac into third place in the US and has Apple knocking on the door of 10% among all US computer buyers.

Additional speculation about new products in the pipeline - Oppenheimer referred in yesterday’s hour-long earnings report to Apple’s penchant for introducing “state of the art new products at price points our competitors can’t match” - has people salivating about a multi-touch Mac, a new iPhone-like PDA, new mid-to-low priced Mac workstations and more.

Whatever it is - whatever they may be - Apple’s new products are likely to follow in the mold of the company’s decade-long success introducing, in Oppenheimer’s words, something with “technologies and features that others can’t match.”

Mock up via Flickr

Apple, Inc. is expected to report strong second quarter earnings after US markets close on Monday and the company will do so without recognizing a single iPhone sale, according to a Bloomberg report. Instead of including sales of first generation iPhones that came at the end of the second quarter before the release of the wildly successful iPhone 3G, the company will report an increase in earnings on rising sales of Macintosh computers and iPod media players alone.

“The Mac is the primary reason we own Apple shares,” said Michael Obuchowski, a portfolio manager at New York-based Altanes Investments LLC, which began buying Apple shares in 2006. “For several quarters, we’ve seen an incredible acceleration in Apple’s PC business.”

There could be even more good news ahead for Apple shareholders, who will undoubtedly receive another boost next quarter, when Apple tells the story of its hugely successful iPhone 3G release, which has nearly completely sold out in the United States, Germany and other worldwide locations in its first 10 days on the market.

Apple filed suit against Florida-based computer maker Psystar on July 3rd, alleging copyright infringement, inducement of copyright infringement, trademark infringement and other legal claims. It seeks any profits earned by Psystar from sales of its Open Computer, triple damages for willful acts, a permanent injunction against the sale of the product and a recall of units already sold.

Despite a seemingly definitive ruling against Apple clone-makers in a landmark 1983 copyright decision, Psystar has lately continued selling what it calls “open source” computers with copies of OS X, while Psystar owners and managers admitted in public statements their knowledge of the existence of Apple’s software license agreement and its terms, according to the suit.

Legal experts speculate Psystar has almost no credible defense against the suit and believe this may truly be the end of Apple clones after the last major knock-off shop, Franklin Computers, closed its doors in the wake of the 1983 case.

Via CNet.

Updated below - Apple CEO Steve Jobs pronounced the iPhone 3G’s worldwide reception “stunning,” according to AppleInsider.

Noting the 1 million phones sold in its “opening weekend” (as the lines between commerce and entertainment grow ever more blurred), Jobs trumpeted the fact that “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start.”

Of course, its availability in more than 20 countries helped iPhone 3G sales, whereas the original phone was first offered only in the United States, but consumers’ embrace of the new model is sure to heat up the smartphone market. The sales numbers are impressive by any measure, especially given widespread activation issues that slowed down the purchase process and caused much grumbling among opening weekend buyers.

Apple’s sales figures are the subject of some debate in the wake of the company’s press releases this morning, according to a post at Fortune’s Apple blog. While sales at Apple retail outlets are counted at the register, sales to partner carriers such as AT&T are counted by the company when they leave the loading docks in Asia. “In other words, some of those 1 million iPhones recorded as sold by Apple (AAPL) may still be in transit,” says the Fortune report.

Also today, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster put sales at around half the 1 million reported by Apple and said he thinks it will take two weeks or more to hit the 1 million served mark.

It’s iPhone launch day in the US and early reports from several sources indicate a scene of controlled chaos across the country as Apple Retail and AT&T employees work to satisfy the demands of people who must have a new phone today. It’s nothing like the mayhem that attended demand last summer when the first gen iPhone made its debut, but AT&T’s on-site activation requirement seems to be making the purchase of of a new iPhone much longer process than the 15 minutes touted earlier in the week as the time it would take to get in and out with a phone.

Steve Wozniak was quoted in MacWorld admitting gadget lust would keep him in line overnight down in San Jose to get a new phone this morning, but said,”"A lot of the people I know just aren’t going to upgrade yet.”

The AppStore went live this morning, included in the iTunes 7.7 release available through Software Update.

Though this is surely to change over time, only a handful of applications are available in the Applications pane of iTunes this morning. More than 500 titles are included in the initial launch, according to a piece in the New York Times, in which Steve Jobs is quoted, saying of the AppStore, ““We are not trying to be business partners [with developers].” Instead, he said, the goal is to “sell more iPhones.”

Twenty-five percent of the first 500 applications at the store will be free, according to Jobs. Of the commercial applications, 90 percent will be sold for $9.99 or less, he said in the Times article, adding that a third of the first wave of applications will be games.

As of this morning, if you already know of a game or application that is or should be in the AppStore, it may be available through a search by name.

Here’s another screenshot showing apps in the layout. It should also be noted that the AppStore is currently available only for your browsing pleasure. Until the iPhone 2.0 firmware is released (perhaps later today?), you won’t be able to download any applications to your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Former Forbes writer Daniel Lyons, uncovered last year by The New York Times as the man behind the blog The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, posted news today that his often hilarious and always outrageous character “Fake Steve Jobs” is sailing into the sunset.

Lyons wrote “Fake Steve is not really going away. He’s just taking on a new form.” But in a fashion true to form, the post left threads untied and destinations open to the imagination. Lyons begins work as a Newsweek columnist in the fall and is publishing a novel inspired by his work on the blog, according to a post today in the Times’ Technology blog.

Three of the mainstream media’s most influential technology writers have published their initial reviews of the iPhone 3G and the consensus opinion seems to be “well, why not?”

Edward C. Baig gives the phone 3 3/4 stars out of 4 for USA Today and says “it’s cheaper, faster and a lot friendlier for business.”

Walter J. Mossberg writes for the Wall Street Journal that he found Apple’s upgrade “a more capable version of an already excellent device. And now that it’s open to third-party programs, the iPhone has a chance to become a true computing platform with wide versatility,” but notes the access to speed promised by AT&T’s 3G network seriously degrades the phone’s battery life.

The New York Times writer David Pogue has the least glowing of the three reviews and says that while there are notable, if small improvements in the 3G model, “unfortunately, most of the standard cellphone features that were missing from the first iPhone are still missing.” He cites lack of voice dialing, video recording, copy-and-paste, memory-card slot, Bluetooth stereo audio and phone-to-phone photo sending (MMS) capabilities as reasons to think twice about getting the phone.

All three reviewers praised Apple’s upgrades to the sound quality on the new model, an important consideration for those who might view its price in terms of the savings realized from not needing to purchase a new iPod, and always a welcome improvement to any portable multi-media device.

Blogger Erica Sadun, writing for The Unofficial Apple Weblog, says there are several good reasons not to bother getting swept up in iPhone 3G fever.

Calling the phone “horribly priced,” especially in view of pricey carrier data plans that run upwards of $30 per month “to visit a few websites,” Sadun says everyone waiting in the rain right now outside the Apple Store in New York, the hordes of people in the UK who have already bought out O2’s supply of pre-orders, and the masses of customers worldwide who are expected to make Friday Apple’s biggest retail day ever - will be paying “the early adopter tax” for something that will be better and cheaper soon.

Acknowledging the upgrade to browsing speed promised by connectivity to the 3G network, Sadun believes unless “the speed issue [is] do-or-die for you, this is the upgrade to skip.”

Photo by JoLin via flickr

Apple retail outlets in Canada will not be selling the iPhone 3G when it makes its global debut on Friday, according to a report at AppleInsider. Speculation has been rampant that Apple Corporate is disgruntled by the PR fiasco created by Rogers Wireless service plan offerings for the new phones in Canada, which so far have attracted more than 50,000 signatures to a petition decrying the company’s pricing as predatory.

Rogers and its partner stores will be the only places to buy an iPhone 3G in Canada come Friday. Canadian Apple retail stores will, however, have demo units on hand for the July 11 launch.

Business must be pretty good at iFixit. The California-based Mac and iPod parts and upgrades site is sending tweeters and technicians to New Zealand to be the first people in the world to disassemble an iPhone 3G. iFixit reps plan to liveblog the disassembly of an iPhone 3G immediately after its worldwide debut at 12:01 AM NZST, July 11 (5:01 AM PST, July 10) and post live images and descriptions of the disassembly as it unfolds.

“Our technicians will also be analyzing the internals and posting component descriptions and design analysis,” said Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, in a press release issued by the company yesterday. “We’ll be posting internal photos as fast as we can take them.”

J. Douglas Field, Segway CTO

We’re not sure if Steve Wozniak had a hand in the negotiations, but Apple has lured Doug Field, Segway’s chief technical officer, to join Jonathan Ivie’s design team as Vice President of Product Design, according to a post Friday on the SegwayChat forum.

As blogger Jason D. O’Grady notes, writing for ZD Net the move is curious, given Field’s background as an engineer and Segway’s not-so-glorious reputation for product design. Asked about his reaction to the Segway’s original design, Steve Jobs famously said, “I think it sucks.”

Here’s hoping Field gets a better grade from Jobs at his first Apple executive review.

Photo via Fortune

My AT&T account tells me I’ll be eligible for a hardware upgrade on August 16th. I’ll probably wait at least until then to pick up a new iPhone 3G. And something tells me I won’t be disappointed.

Then again, I don’t have a sustainability agenda to push, as do a quintet of twenty-somethings calling themselves alternatively TheWhoFarm and Waiting for Apples, who began queuing up in front of the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan on Friday. The group is going for the Guinness Book of World’s Records entry for “longest time waiting in line to buy something,” according to Fortune, and hopes to persuade the next President of the United States to transform the White House’s 17-acre lawn into an organic farm.

It’s not clear what effect the group’s affinity for Apple may have on the company’s efforts to gain acceptance with Enterprise users.

Image by Gail Ahlers

Two Apple shareholders have filed a class-action lawsuit against present and former Apple officials including Steve Jobs and four members of the Board of Directors, as well as former CFO Fred Anderson and former General Counsel Nancy Heinen. The lawsuit charges Apple officials with fraud in connection with the company’s practice of backdating stock options, the subject of an SEC investigation in 2007, in which the regulatory agency cleared Jobs of any wrongdoing.

That’s not enough for Plaintiffs Martin Vogel and Kenneth Mahoney, according to a story published by Information Week, which details the allegations against Jobs and company. Vogel and Mahoney are seeking to recover losses stemming from a drop in Apple’s share price that reduced the company’s market cap by over $7 billion in the wake of Jobs admitting to “irregularities” in the granting of options to company executives and to the existence of an internal investigation into the matter in 2006.

Ahead of Apple’s 3rd Quarter earnings report due later this month, fans of the Cupertino, CA computer company have reason to believe Big Mo is on their team, according to reporter Charles Jade at Ars Technica. Citing information available from the web metrics firm Net Applications, Jade reports significant increases in market share for both Mac OS X and Apple’s Safari web browser over the past year. Based on recent trends, the percentage of Mac OS X users should break the 8% mark in July, having gained nearly 2 full percentage points in the past year. Intel Macs posted gains as a percentage of Macs in use as well, possibly accounting for much of the reasoning behind Apple’s decison to make its Snow Leopard OS update, due in the spring, an Intel-only affair.

Apple’s chosen wireless carrier for the United States revealed pricing details for the iPhone 3G models, set to debut on July 11, according to information posted to the company’s website. New customers signing a two year service contract with the Dallas-based phone company can purchase the new phones for $199 and $299 for the 8GB and 16GB models respectively. Current AT&T customers who are eligible for an upgrade will also be able to purchase at the fully subsidized pricing while those not eligible for an upgrade will pay $399 and $499 for the two models. In typically cryptic AT&T style, the company’s upgrade eligibility requirements are not made public but only to logged in users requesting information specific to their account. The company’s generic message on upgrades reads “Device offers are made available from time to time based on a number of factors: service tenure, spending levels, payment history, usage practices and other factors,” though existing customers nearing the end of a two-year service contract cycle will presumably be able to purchase a new iPhone at the fully subsidized pricing with a commitment to a new two year contract.

In a somewhat puzzling development, AT&T issued a statement today saying it will sell the new phones “in the future” without a service contract for $599 for the 8GB phone and $699 for the 16GB model. Previously, neither Apple nor AT&T had indicated any intention to make the phones available without a service contract. Customers seeking to purchase phones on and near the July 11 launch date will be required to activate AT&T service at either an Apple store or an AT&T outlet, unlike the original iPhones released one year ago, which users could activate for service from their home computers. Existing AT&T customers will pay an $18 activation fee to get service on new iPhones; new customers will pay $36 for service activation.

Photo by Peter Payne

The Naked Bikers, a global protest vehicle for raising oil dependency awareness, rode through London on a sunny day in June. Photographer Peter Payne’s arresting image at panoramas.dk shows the stunning visual capabilities of QTVR, Apple’s 360˚ and CubicVR photo viewing technology.