Apple released Aperture 2.1.1 today.

This update supports general compatibility issues, improves overall stability, and addresses a number of other minor issues. Aperture 2.1.1 is a free update and is available via the Software Update application or as a download at the Apple Support Web site.

Apple released a beta of its iPhone 2.1 software to developers this week, fixing some of the shortcomings that reviewers and users had pointed out.

That’s not all. Apple has also issued a new SDK for the iPhone, though the new SDK can’t be used to publish applications to the App Store.

During Apple’s Q3 2008 Earnings conference call with analysts, Apple’s Peter Oppenheimer (CFO) and Tim Cooke (COO) both mentioned a “product transition”.

Someone tells me that Apple will announce a 12 or 13-inch tablet in the fall of this year. Most likely in the September or October time frame. It will run the full Mac OS X and have a slot loading SuperDrive, an “iPhone-type” GPS chip and an Intel Core Duo processor.

The Apple iTablet PC rumor has been around for a long time. Lots of people think they would love a big iPhone type device to surf the web. They have to wait some little time!

The day we launched MobileMe, we had a lot more traffic to our servers than we anticipated, with the result that access to the web versions of the MobileMe applications — Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, iDisk — was temporarily unavailable.

Strange, an surge in traffic at an unexpected level? With the world waiting for months for this service, what did they expect?

The team has also fixed over 70 bugs including one that was preventing MobileMe IMAP mail folders from syncing correctly between the web app and Mac OS X Mail or Outlook, plus others correcting display issues in Calendar and in general enhancing the performance of our web apps.

It looks that MobileMe launched as an unofficial beta. We don’t know the severity of all these bugs - Apple has no transparency on these kinds of issues - so it’s hard to evaluate fully and fairly. But this is not the Apple way of doing. That’s for sure.

A frequent point of discussion during the hour-long call, the mystery transition will drop Apple’s gross margins from 34.8 percent in the spring quarter to just 31.5 percent in the July-to-September window in which the update takes place, ultimately settling at about 30 percent during Apple’s fiscal 2009.

Oppenheimer is deliberately short on details, not wanting to pre-announce the product or allude to its nature, but explains that cost will be a driving factor.

The new, unnamed product will continue to have “technologies and features that others can’t match,” according to the CFO.

So what does this mean? Obviously lower margin products are coming, but will they be entirely new products or lower prices on existing products? There’s a big chance Apple will introduce redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros at a lower price and slightly redesigned iPods.

A Brazilian blog, TechGuru, posted the first report of it. Gizmodo checked it out, and said the method involves using a special SIM card adapter. It tricks the phone into thinking it’s on an approved network.

If you are a .Mac subscriber, Apple appears to have activated the corresponding @me.com email addresses. If your email address was username@mac.com previously, you can now use username@me.com and emails should arrive in your .Mac mailbox. In the near future, Apple will be migrating all the email services over to Me.com, but users will be able to keep their @mac.com email addresses:

Apple has also published Frequently Asked Questions about the .Mac to MobileMe transition.

The @me.com transition is part of Apple’s shift to MobileMe, a new web-based service that offers “desktop class” email, calendar and address book functionality. MobileMe is set to officially launch in early July.

HBO will begin selling some of its most popular television series on Apple’s iTunes Store, the companies announced on Tuesday.

HBO will offer The Sopranos, Sex and the City, Deadwood and Rome, as well as Flight of the Conchords and The Wire.

The deal marks the first time that Apple has agreed to a separate price structure for a content provider, one of the employees said. NBC pulled its programming from iTunes last summer after Apple refused to charge more than $1.99 for that network’s shows. In May, NBC struck a deal with Microsoft to sell its shows on the Zune website.

From mow on, NBC is the only major channel currently not offering its shows through iTunes. The store currently carries 800 different shows and has sold more than 150 million episodes.
The iTunes store isn’t a big cash cow for Apple, making up less than 10% of Apple’s $24 billion in sales last year, but is a big driver of iPod and Macintosh computer sales.

Those with Apple TVs can download and install the update by choosing Update Software from the General screen within the Settings entry. Over a 3Mbps DSL broadband connection it takes about 10 minutes to download the update. Installation (which, as before, can be performed at a time of the user’s choosing) took another three or four minutes.

Apple was joined in the top ten by ZTE and Research in Motion with its popular BlackBerry device.

Nokia is leading the way in mobile phone sales with a 37.8 percent market share, followed by Motorola (14.3 percent), Samsung (13.4 percent), Sony Ericsson (8.8 percent) and LG (6.8 percent). Total worldwide phone sales increased by 16 percent from 2006, according to Gartner.

Apple introduced the iPhone last June and has sold over 4 million units since including 2.3 million units in the last quarter alone.