In Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) 
news this week, the iPhone frenzy continues ... or perhaps it's just getting started. The company continues to snag partners left and right all over the globe ahead of the next-generation 3G iPhone, which a lot of Apple watchers predict will be announced June 9 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Predictions, tidbit news and iPhone sleuthing are all over the blogosphere.
Meanwhile, Apple is still a computer company, too -- the Mac maker released OS X 10.5.3, the latest update to its Leopard operating system.
iPhone Everywhere
Apple has been signing business partners all around the globe in an effort to help sell and provide service for its expected 3G iPhone. Stockholm-based TeliaSonera announced that it will bring the iPhone to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia later this year. Hutchison Telecommunications announced it would bring the iPhone to Hong Kong and Macau in 2008. Also, at the end of last week, Orange, which already sells the iPhone in France, announced that it will bring the iPhone to Austria, Belgium the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland and Orange's African markets ... again, "later this year."
While some outlets have expressed the idea that Apple might not be able to sell 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008, with so many new markets getting signed so quickly now, it seems hard to imagine that number could still be out of reach.
Simply put, Ken Dulaney, a mobile and wireless analyst and vice president for Gartner (NYSE: IT) , told MacNewsWorld, "I think they could sell more than this."
Whatever the Case May Be
MacNN published photos of a Griffin-made silicone case mold that seems to confirm the next-generation iPhone's shape, according to a Chinese Web site. "The images appear to confirm a thinner, more rounded back on the iPhone, and consequentially a new position for the camera," MacNN reported.
On a MacRumors.com post on the subject, commenter Virgil-TB2 noted, "This is what rumour mongering is all about, trying to figure out which is true and which is not. These mold pictures are pretty much a solid confirmation of a new iphone, what shape it is, when it's coming out and even some of the internal details."
Not everyone was impressed; others like Pwned wrote, "YAWN, next rumor please!"
As for other cases hitting the Web, Exo seems to have a case with a wider ear speaker slot, lending at least some small semblance of credibility to one another.
Upgrade Confusion
Sparking speculation and confusion, Orange reportedly sent out offers to its iPhone customers in France for discount trade-ins on the next model of iPhone, reducing the price of a new iPhone to 50 euros (US$77.59).
"Ohhhhh .. I really hope O2 in the UK offer something like that, depending on the tariff of course!" commented AdiFish on the AppleInsider.com post on the subject.
On the One More Thing blog post on the Orange upgrade offer, commenter Vegaman_Dan noted, "I'll be curious to see what a 2G iPhone will be worth on June 10th, the day after the announcement. Will people be able to sell their old and obsolete phones in order to buy the latest and greatest? If you wanted to buy an iPhone and don't care about 3G, or just wanted to have a phone that you don't care about unlocking, then the market should be ripe for dirt cheap older models of the iPhone."
Back to the Mac
Lest anyone forget that Apple builds computers and the software to drive them, the company's latest OS X software refresh, 10.5.3, came in at a whopping 420 MB for the downloadable combo update, which fixed 70 issues.
The update, Apple said, includes general operating system improvements that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of the Mac -- but the company also publishes a more detailed list online.
Fixes range from relatively minor issues, such as one in which the Helvetica Narrow font could be used in applications instead of Helvetica, to a security fix in iCal that now prevents maliciously created events from crashing iCal or executing code. For most, though, this update seems more business-as-usual than must-have.
"Nothing really jumped out for me," Sven Rafferty, founder of hyperSven, an IT and Web solutions company, and editor of the SvenOnTech.com blog, told MacNewsWorld.
"Scanning the changelog, I did like RAW and Aperture 2 updates, but [there's] nothing really that would make me get this and install it like 10.5.2 did," he added. Spaces and Time Machine users will likely appreciate the updates related to those applications, he noted.
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