Apple rumor roundup: iPhone discounts, early Leopard release, NAND-based laptops

No, we haven't been spending our spare time playing with the Apple Rumor Generator -- this latest batch of Apple rumors comes to us fresh off the Internets, from some sources of varying reliableness. First up comes a tantalizing bit of information from blogger Derek Punsalan, who recently traded in his Sprint BlackBerry 8703e for a Cingular BlackBerry Pearl only to later notice that "iPhone for DEREK PUNSALAN" was printed on his receipt, followed by the line "2 YR Agreement SAVINGS $150.00." Evidence of a discount for those opting for long-term service agreements? Possibly, but more likely than not a simple glitch. Our next rumor comes to us from Prudential Equity Group analyst Jesse Tortora, who speculates that Mac OS X Leopard could be launching sooner than expected, with the OS rolling out at the end of this month. What's more, he says Adobe's also set to jump the gun, releasing its Creative Suite 3 to coincide with the OS's release. Exactly what inspired this bit of prognostication is unclear, but he assures us that this "powerful one-two punch makes a great deal of sense." Lastly, we have yet another report of a forthcoming flash-based Apple sub-notebook (NAND flash memory, specifically), which is supposedly on track to be released in the second half of this year. The report from American Technology Research analyst Shaw Wu further speculates that we'll also "inevitably" see NAND-based iPods and, of course, a widescreen video iPod, although it apparently "won't likely" ship until after the iPhone's launch in June.

Read: 5THIRTYONE, iPhone with Cingular receipt (Rumor likelihood: 20%)
Read: Business Week, Leopard ahead of schedule (Rumor likelihood: 10%)
Read: AppleInsider: NAND-based sub-notebook, iPods (Rumor likelihood: 40%)

[EDawg @ Mar 7th 2007 12:50PM]

Friggin' Sweet

[jeffw @ Mar 7th 2007 5:00PM]

all cingular phones come with a 150$ savings so the 8g will at a no commitment price will most likely be arround 750 to get the 599 price with a two year aggreement.

[EDawg @ Mar 7th 2007 12:51PM]

...but I really, REALLY wish the iPhone would open documents and my work Outlook email. Because I like not being in my office and able to do stuff. And if I'm dropping 5 or 6 Benjamins, I really need to have that capability, knowwhatimsaying?

[paloooz @ Mar 7th 2007 12:57PM]

It's YOUR fault for using Microsoft products, not Apples. I use a Mac at work, and I plan on checking my email and opening my iWork documents like none other on my iPhone.

[shelterpaw @ Mar 7th 2007 1:55PM]

Why not use Google Office? It's ideal for a mobile situation. Wont matter if you're on your PC, Mac, linux, or iphone. You'll have access to them anytime anywhere. That's my plan, Stan.

[elan @ Mar 7th 2007 12:56PM]

March 24, 2007. Leopard.

[MTCatFan41 @ Mar 7th 2007 1:08PM]

I just bought a new Samsung phone yesterday @ a Cingular store and I also saw a $150.00 savings on my receipt. It did not say iPhone, but when I asked, the guy told me the Cingular system was screwed up and printing non-existent discounts on receipts.

[EDawg @ Mar 7th 2007 1:02PM]

No way palooz! I HAVE to use MS at work... the company does and I have no choice. I own a Macbook Pro for home. Tell me more though... iPhone is going to open iWork docs? Seriously? I hadn't heard that.........

[gateway @ Mar 7th 2007 1:08PM]

to bad cingular still sucks, their data system in place thats 'currently' avail is crap compared to EDVO, so while you may have a cool phone all the data access is really going to bring your exp down :(

http://ibareitall.com

[Bad Beaver @ Mar 7th 2007 1:14PM]

EDawg, that's exactly the kind of attitude that made Bill very rich. Once people/companies start believing that they have no choice, they are truly beyond hope.

[EDawg @ Mar 7th 2007 1:19PM]

Um, I don't know where you guys work, but at my company we use the equipment they tell us to use, or we don't work there. As I said, I have a Macbook Pro I love for personal use. At work, however, if I want to keep getting paid, I have to use MS. I suppose I could tell my CEO that I choose to use Macs and they can accomodate me, but my guess is he'd tell me to pound sand.

Just a guess.

Although my comments were on the iPhone and document suppoort (smartphone capabilities) and now I am a soulless drone with no hope ..... LOL

[Tom @ Mar 7th 2007 1:23PM]

Who said that the company believed that they have no choice??? He doesn't because he's an employee. And seeing as how most of the business world runs on PCs, it's a smart decision to remain using PCs. I've run into the "a mac didn't put a file extension on this file" problem before, and that's just transferring Photoshop work from the lap to my PC. I can't imagine the repercussions for something so little in the business world. And I like the bit you added at the end - the part about PC users being beyond all hope. Cute!

[Geoffrey Sperl @ Mar 7th 2007 1:36PM]

His point is: Work uses Outlook (probably an Exchange server). If he's going to buy it he will probably want to say he's buying it for work in order to write a portion off on his taxes next year. If the iPhone doesn't pull mail from Exchange (and it is currently being shown as not having said feature) then it won't work for him.

Now, if the Exchange server can do POP or IMAP connections, or his company is using Outlook with a regular mail server, then he's fine and can buy the iPhone with no worries.

[Revrant2394 @ Mar 7th 2007 8:11PM]

Rightfully so too, for you who likes obtuse befuddling interfaces the rest of the office would stagnate with their workload figuring out why the mouse has one button and why it's hard as hell to get to anything via the menu system.

As for this, I don't care either way, but I'm getting sick of these NAND based computers, NAND should never be used for hard drives, it just doesn't have the life for that.

[Joshua @ Mar 7th 2007 1:22PM]

Does anyone know when the last update to 10.4.9 was seeded to developers? If it's been quite a while, that could support an imminent release of 10.5.

[Bad Beaver @ Mar 7th 2007 1:33PM]

If you read carefully, I stated that people or institutions who willingly render themselves choiceless are beyond hope. This by no means includes all PC-Users. Also, structures that define the preferences of employees as meaningless per se just so that some people can keep up their budgets servicing a monoculture of problem-prone products are somewhat questionable. But what do I know, I have no life :)

[Dacari @ Mar 7th 2007 1:23PM]

GET A LIFE!!

[Frankenstein Black @ Mar 7th 2007 1:28PM]

iPhone at $350.4gb/$450.8gb, wt 2 yr contract? NOW WHERE TALKING! (If true). That initial $500/$600 price point was a bit much, yes? And OOOOH how cool it would be if these puppies came pre loaded with Skype. Over night you could potentially have Millions of Skype enabled portable devices (sorry D-Link and Belkin, for $50 bucks more than your $300 WiFi only Skype phones I get an iPhone, iPhone dudes!).

Oh, and did I mention that Skype to Skype calls are FREE?! That means when at home at office or a café with WiFi I can make calls for FREE! So much for “frends and family”, “my favs” and all of that other balderdash (that's fancy talk for rubbish/garbage). Nothing beats FREEEEE!

Must admit if this Skype thing happens Cingy (er at&t) gets props for being ok with it. Verizon would never have let that happen. Could this have been one of the items Apple was pushing that caused those “fabled Verizon talks” to, um, fall apart? Riiiiight ;^)...

[rcfa @ Apr 9th 2007 8:38PM]

Forget Skype! It's proprietary, belongs to eBay and is every bit as evil as Microsoft, eBay, etc.

What we really need is a standards based VoIP client, i.e. something that can use SIP, H.323, and maybe IAX2.
There are tons of service providers, such as Vonage, GalaxyVoice, etc. that all use these protocols, and with ENUM lookup (all that stuff could be transparent in a softphone), there would be free IP to IP calls in the first place.

Skype should die a quick and miserable death, don't fall prey to its seductive marketing.

[John Doe @ Mar 7th 2007 4:18PM]

BB Take your fanaticism somewhere else. The rest of us have real work to do. Work that doesn't revolve around OMG MS THE EVIL ONE!!!! OH NOES!!! MS has an industry built up around their wares. This can't be overlooked in business decisions. Until the gov breaks the monopoly you aren't going to see shit happen with Windows market share. Businesses will not switch simply because of that industry. You have 10x more techs that know Windows, and as such they are a dime a dozen. there are 10 more people who are certified to do HP/Dell/Tosh repairs over Apple. You have a bagillion developers on Windows to make those tasty proprietary apps that only run..yep you guessed it. On Windows.
Fanbois need to get a clue. Microsoft is entrenched. Apple's small market share climb is impressive but it doesn't spell the end for MS. There has to be a breakup of MS for any real change to occur. A split between OS and app software needs to occur.

[rp @ Mar 7th 2007 1:36PM]

Look, I'm a mac fan and have been using them since I can't remember (I also hate Apple at the same time), but I don't think it's as simple as "don't use MS products because you are sheep if you do." Some of their software is really not THAT bad. Sure, you can do a lot of the stuff that the Office suite can do with iWork or Appleworks, but it's just not as powerful. IMO, Pages is actually a step backwards from Appleworks. Too much GUI, not enough functionality.

[beanspants @ Mar 7th 2007 1:46PM]

I think Derek is subtly trying to tell us he is from the future. What was that about John Connor, sir?

[Jim Jonze @ Mar 7th 2007 1:48PM]

Anyone consider the possibility that maybe the $150 discount is legit, but perhaps the real price of the phone is $649 and the $150 is the amount that of the carrier subsidy that gets it down to the announced $499 price point?

Edawg is right, though. Exchange or Blackberry Connect integration is too important a feature for the iPhone to fly with corporate users. It'll be a hit with the teenagers and college crowd, but anyone with a managerial type job is going have to go for a Windows Mobile, Blackberry or Nokia E-Series device. I personally have a Nokia E62 myself, and I simply can't live without my Mail for Exchange. The Yahoo! push e-mail oh the iPhone just won't cut it for my needs, so I'm going to be looking at an E90 as my next phone over the iPhone. It'll be pricy, but with corporate e-mail, user-replacable memory, built-in GPS, and real honest to god buttons it is much more attractive to me (even though it is a bit of a brick in the pocket).

[Jeff @ Mar 7th 2007 2:16PM]

The Google Office apps need a full-featured browser to work, my Nokia N800 doesn't even handle most "web 2.0" websites and it has a fairly decent implementation of Opera and Flash 8.

[shelterpaw @ Mar 7th 2007 2:25PM]

I meant if you bought an iPhone you could use Google Apps. The iphone does come with a full featured browser.

[TeoNYC @ Mar 7th 2007 2:13PM]

I had a series of email exchanges with Cingular, since I'm up for an upgrade. They stated that the prices were with 2-year contract and implied that a retail unit without contract would cost more. NOT that the announced prices would be less.

[Jeff Costantino @ Mar 7th 2007 2:52PM]

How do you know? There has been a handful of extremely brief reviews and no solid information on what the iPhone is and isn't capable of. I seriously doubt that the "It runs OSX" comment by Jobs means that it is a full desktop environment with real apps. More like a basic shell, a watered down Safari app and some java Widgets

[shelterpaw @ Mar 7th 2007 4:36PM]

I know because Steve Jobs stated it in his Speech. However you wont believe that regardless since you feel that OS X couldn't possibly be enabled for a hand held device. So there's no point in arguing with you because you don't believe the CEO of the company that's making the product, so there's no way I could convince you.

[alan westbrook @ Mar 7th 2007 2:39PM]

If Leopard is so close, why has Apple seeded developers with version 10.4.9 recently? http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2324

I think that this is what is probably comming soon.

Alan

[sadTad @ Mar 7th 2007 3:26PM]

Because the that's how it works. The Tiger team has a certain number of updates to get out, and 10.4.9 is the last update for Tiger (except for any security updates) The two teams and schedules aren't connected.

[kjemtrud @ Mar 7th 2007 3:27PM]

There is no way leapord is coming out at the end of the month. The last beta released still has a ton of bugs. It will be here in May before WWDC in June.

[Nick @ Mar 7th 2007 10:35PM]

maybe they are deciding to go the route of MS and release software buggy as hell and just continue to fix it after its on the market. Works for MS, right? LOL

[Miker @ Mar 7th 2007 6:19PM]

Rather worryingly the latest release of OSX Leopard (9A377A) as of 2nd March still had dozens of documented known issues remaining with the operating system, including crashes in Safari, problems with Spotlight reindexing, various bugs in the Finder, crashes in sleep mode on some PowerBook G4s, and the inability to play purchased iTunes movies in iTunes itself...

..and they want to RUSH out it's launch date to the end of this month?! I am all for getting my heads on a new operating system, but I would like it to WORK PROPERLY before I get it!

[mike @ Mar 7th 2007 7:22PM]

Tell me more though... iPhone is going to open iWork docs? Seriously? I
--

It opens everything, if you think having Pages on there is useful, then put it on there.. That's an if..

It's OS X with Inkwell

[Juls @ Mar 7th 2007 7:22PM]

It looks like the new Adobe CS should be dropping later this month. Leopard shipping around this dates kind of makes sense.

[KC @ Mar 8th 2007 11:40AM]

I can't wait for Apple to charge "$1.99 to enable the '2' key" on the iPhone.

[Kelmon @ Mar 9th 2007 5:14AM]

Anyone who thinks that Leopard is going to be released before June is barking mad. A March release is absolute insanity. If Apple DOES release the OS this month then there's no way that I'm going to touch it until the disaster assessments have been sent in by the early adopter/lemmings. Given that there's still show-stopping bugs in the current beta release it's fair to say that they must either be fixed (complete with another beta release to confirm this) or it will release with those bugs and absolute havoc will ensue.