Apple will be releasing the iPhone SDK next month and it is already know that Apple has provided early version of the SDK to its close software partners. Officially Apple hasn’t said anything about third party software support in 1.1.3 update. Nate True at cre.ations.net claims to have discovered some great additions for running third party iPhone apps. Springboard no longer requires modifications to recognize and display already existing third-party apps. SpringBoard is the app used to drive jailbroken iPhone’s home screen. The other discovery is that iPhone no longer runs apps as root user. Application and preferences are now stored in /var/mobile instead of /var/root. Apple has made some important changes to the foundation of iPhone’s OS in this update, but whether Apple will release another iPhone OS update when it releases iPhone SDK is everyone’s guess.

The Nanochip has designed a MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) device that has array of tiny probes, less than 25um in diameter and the probes are movable, so they can write more than one location. Since there are many thousands of probes, they have a lot of bandwidth. The chip is basically 2-chip design, one chip that has probes and the other that has media. The chip can be produced in 1-micron Fab also resulting in lower costs and the design is scalable to 1TB on a single chip. There are now working prototype for this design but Nanochip has just received $14 million in funding from Intel to develop a working prototype by end of this year.

Apple has been seeding pre-release builds of the second update to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard at a swift pace to the developers. The total number of documented fixes is over 110 and may go up to 125 by the time the update is released to the general consumers. The total size of the update will cross 350MB. This will be the biggest update both in size and number of fixes Apple has every done. Apple will also release 48MB Leopard Graphics Update 1.0 at the same time. The main features that will be affected by the update are Airport, Dock, Stacks, Finder, Safari, Spotlight, Time Machine, Remote Disc sharing, Menu bar, and System Preferences.

AT&T will soon offer its broadband subscribers unlimited free WiFi access in its hot spots. AT&T will also start offering a supercharged 10Mbps tier of service. The free WiFi will be only available for customers who subscribe to services with 1.5Mbps downloads or higher. AT&T has more then 10,000 WiFi hotspot around US in places like airports, McDonalds, Barnes & noble, coffee shops and sporting venues. Now the bad news, subscribers who only have the company’s wireless service will not be offered free WiFi. So if you were hoping that your iPhone would get free WiFi at AT&T hotspots you are out of luck unless you happen to also subscribe to AT&T broadband service.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2008 first quarter ended December 29, 2007. The Company posted revenue of $9.6 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.58 billion, or $1.76 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.1 billion and net quarterly profit of $1 billion, or $1.14 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 34.7 percent, up from 31.2 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 45 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
Apple shipped 2,319,000 Macintosh® computers, representing 44 percent unit growth and 47 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 22,121,000 iPods during the quarter, representing five percent unit growth and 17 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone sales were 2,315,000. “We’re thrilled to report our best quarter ever, with the highest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We have an incredibly strong new product pipeline for 2008, starting with MacBook Air, Mac Pro and iTunes Movie Rentals in the first two weeks.”