Ed Oswald

Among the changes in AT&T's updated deal with Apple are the end of revenue sharing and special plans for the iPhone, as well as a new requirement for phones be activated in-store.

The carrier, while confirming it will maintain its exclusive rights to the iPhone 3G, also confirmed Monday that it will no longer share revenues with Apple. Instead, as was rumored, the cost of the phone will be subsidized by AT&T.

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While Amazon is not disclosing what exactly caused its site to fail for two hours on Friday, the world's largest online retailer may find its problem comes from the site design itself.

Amazon.com first failed around 1:25 pm EDT on Friday. For a two-hour period, customers attempting to access the site were greeted with an error message. Once the site began to return, portions of Amazon remained largely inaccessible.

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AR Communications Senior Vice President Carmi Levy sits down with BetaNews' Ed Oswald to make sense of Apple's announcements at WWDC 2008. In the first of two parts, the enterprise and data features of the iPhone are discussed.

Ed Oswald, BetaNews: Carmi, thanks for taking the time to help us sort through the news today. It's been a big day for Apple, especially when it comes to the distribution. What do you make of that?

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Confirming months of speculation, Apple has announced that it will begin shipping two 3G versions of the iPhone. A 16 GB version will feature your choice of black or white backing, and will sell for $299 through AT&T.

To raucous applause, Apple CEO Steve Jobs debuted the 3G model of the iPhone, which he said is thinner than the previous version while sporting all metal buttons and a black plastic backing, much like the rumored specs had shown.

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Calling it "Exchange for the rest of us," Apple debuted MobileMe, which allows users to push e-mail, contacts, and calendars directly to devices.

The new service will apparently replace .mac, and will work much the same way. However, now the iPhone and PC have been added to the mix, enabling personal information to be exchanged in a network consisting of an iPhone and a Mac or PC.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs began his keynote at WWDC at Moscone Center in San Fransisco, with a discussion on the new firmware for iPhones, complete with enterprise support, the final release of the SDK, and new end-user features.

To a packed hall, Jobs said that the iPhone 2.0 beta program has been a huge success: In the 95 days since the SDK was first released, it has been downloaded some 250,000 times. About 25,000 applied for the beta, however Apple only accepted 4,000 of them.

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Data protection company PGP says that increased usage of the Mac platform has prompted it to deliver a port of its pre-boot authentication scheme for those users.

PGP cited analyst data that shows a marked increase in enterprise adoption of Apple systems. Long a sector where the Cupertino company has struggled, support from a software maker like PGP certainly goes a long way.

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With Verizon's fiber-based FiOS product becoming more of a threat, cable provider Comcast said that by early 2010 much of its coverage area will be able to access the net at speeds of 100 Mbps.

At those speeds, a high definition movie can be downloaded within minutes (provided it's not in torrent form). The rollout for the technologies required to make 100 megabit-per-second cable internet has already begun, and will be in a fifth of Comcast households by the end of the year.

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With Gmail finally nearing the end of its nearly four year long beta, Google is looking to test out a few new features before it goes live.

A new tab has been added in the settings menu of Gmail called "Labs." Included there are 13 features that the user can either enable or disable, as well as links to provide feedback on the functionality.

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The FCC had hoped to vote on a proposal that would require the winner of a spectrum auction next year to build out a free wireless broadband network in June, but those plans have been hindered yet again.

US Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin has been one of the key proponents of the plan within the agency, which seems to borrow a lot from a plan first proposed by M2Z Networks last year.

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Yahoo said it will join CBS' Audience Network on Wednesday, continuing the close relationship of the two companies.

With the addition of Yahoo to the list of outlets from which its off-air programs are streamed, CBS claims it will reach about 92 percent of US Web households -- by far the most of any content provider.

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While Wal-Mart seemed to be firmly in the HD DVD camp early in the format war, it's now gearing up for a nationwide promotion to drum up interest in the format war's survivor.

With HD DVD out of the way, the world's largest retailer is now turning to Blu-ray and marketing it aggressively, even though the price of its players may be out of reach for a significant portion of its budget-conscious consumers.

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Korea's fine against Intel ends a two-year-long investigation by the Korean Fair Trade Commission into allegations of abuse of Intel's dominant position in the CPU market.

On Wednesday, the Korean FTC announced it will fine Intel 26 billion won ($25.4 million USD), for giving rebates to two Korean computer manufacturers in exchange for promises from them not to purchase chips from rival AMD.

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While much of the buzz surrounding Apple's annual developer event has been about the iPhone, news reports indicate the company may also debut the newest release of its operating system at WWDC.

Hints of the next major OS upgrade first surfaced in the iPhone SDK, where Mac OS X 10.6 is reportedly referred to within the code. Additionally, Apple's invitation has dubbed this year's WWDC "a landmark event in more ways than one," suggesting that the iPhone won't be the sole topic.

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Confirming market speculation, the two companies released a joint statement Thursday that said Verizon would acquire the equity of Alltel as well as assume its debt.

Verizon Wireless is jointly owned by US telco Verizon and European telco Vodafone, which yesterday was the first to confirm that talks between VZW and Alltel were taking place.

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