A 15-year old Belgian by the name of Salvatore is the latest victim in a series of mysterious iPhone explosions that have captured the attention of France’s and the European Commissions’ consumer affair watchdogs. Details are scarce for the moment, but according to local news reports the teenager was holding his iPhone in his hand, about to make a call, when the device suddenly ‘imploded’. The incident didn’t cause any serious injuries but reportedly gave Salvatore a headache for a couple of days. He has been promised a free replacement unit by Apple but hasn’t yet received a new phone.

There have earlier been numerous reports of exploding iPhone devices in the United States, United Kingdom and France, with most recently about ten cases having emerged in France where the official competition, consumer affairs and fraud watchdog DGCCRF has now launched an investigation to find out whether the popular Apple smartphone could pose a threat to consumers. Apple, which has sold 26 million iPhones and 200 million iPods to date, said it had been informed of the French cases, but would not comment until it had closely examined the damaged phones.

Update: Apple has now said iPhones turned in by customers in France and elsewhere in Europe with shattered screens showed external pressure that would have caused the cracking. More on Bloomberg and Techmeme.

via Tech Crunch

Snow Leopard. Even the name seems to underpromise -- it's the first "big cat" OS X codename to reference the previous version of the OS, and the list of big-ticket new features is seemingly pretty short for a version-number jump. Maybe that's why Apple's priced the 10.6 upgrade disc at just $29 -- appearances and expectations matter, and there's simply not enough glitz on this kitty to warrant the usual $129.



But underneath the customary OS X fit and finish there's a lot of new plumbing at work here. The entire OS is now 64-bit, meaning apps can address massive amounts of RAM and other tasks go much faster. The Finder has been entirely re-written in Cocoa, which Mac fans have been clamoring for since 10.0. There's a new version of QuickTime, which affects media playback on almost every level of the system. And on top of all that, there's now Exchange support in Mail, iCal, and Address Book, making OS X finally play nice with corporate networks out of the box.




So you won't notice much new when you first restart into 10.6 -- apart from some minor visual tweaks here and there there's just not that much that stands out. But in a way that means the pressure's on even more: Apple took the unusual and somewhat daring step of slowing feature creep in a major OS to focus on speed, reliability, and stability, and if Snow Leopard doesn't deliver on those fronts, it's not worth $30... it's not worth anything. So did Apple pull it off? Read on to find out!

The concept mashed together iPhone-esque qualities along with modern sliding technology. The design is slender, sleek and soooooo smooth. A ridiculous feature that is ingrained into the concept is that the iPod can be controlled by thermal sensors. In my opinion, I don’t see myself using an iPod that I had to slide open every time I wanted to use it, but the concept is so ill, cant front"

Very reliable sources familiar with the product have said speculation of the tablet being introduced during the September event are flat out wrong. The Apple tablet, they said, would not see the light of day until the first part of 2010.

Instead, I’d bet on Apple doing another special event in the first quarter of 2010, focused around this new device and maybe previewing the iPhone 4.0 SDK which this thing may have something to do with (just a guess there). Remember, Apple isn’t doing Macworld this year, so it doesn’t necessarily even have to be in January, but rather they’ll wait until they’ve perfected it.

Cover creation from Peter Belanger on Vimeo.

FIRST: Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple’s board of directors this morning.

SECOND: FCC has released a statement commending Schmidt and Apple’s mutual decision for him to step down (check the quote below)

“We have been investigating the Google/Apple interlocking directorates issue for some time and commend them for recognizing that sharing directors raises competitive issues, as Google and Apple increasingly compete with each other,” said Bureau of Competition Director Richard Feinstein. “We will continue to investigate remaining interlocking directorates between the companies.”

ADD TO THE FACT:


Any Ideas how this will end, possible mergers or Apple and Google finally patch things up (Who Knows) . Despite all these problems, its business as usual, I like the fact that Mr. Schmidt step down for the benefit of the company. At the end of the day the greater good of the company out weighs that of the individual.

"Right about now, Apple probably wishes it had never rejected Google Voice and related apps from the iPhone. Or maybe it was AT&T who rejected the apps. Nobody really knows. But the FCC launched an investigation last night to find out, sending letters to all three companies (Apple, AT&T, and Google) asking them to explain exactly what happened."

Hopefully, the FCC will share Apple’s answers with the rest of the us. It is all a bit absurd, though. Why does it take a formal request from a government agency to get Apple (and AT&T) to explain what the rules are to get on the wireless Internet? More importantly, why are these companies allowed to be the gatekeepers to the wireless Internet? The iPhone needs to be smashed open, and the FCC is swinging the hammer.