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This day's Apple: Lawsuits, 'jailbreaks' and Nanos

A roundup of developments in the Apple world reveals more work ahead for the company's lawyers and another attempt by hackers to open up the iPhone.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
2 min read

From time to time, I'll post a brief summary of some interesting items I come across during the day that I don't have time to call out in more detail. If you see anything interesting out there, drop me a line at tom dot krazit at cnet dot com. Take that, you e-mail harvesters.

LEGAL DEPARTMENT: There's some news about a couple of items that will soon await new Apple General Counsel Daniel Cooperman. Information Week notes that the company has been sued over the iPhone--again--this time by a man claiming that Apple is breaking the law by locking the iPhone to AT&T's network. And AppleInsider spotted Apple's name among defendants in a patent case that appears to claim that companies distributing content with DRM technology are violating patents held by an outfit called Digital Reg.

HACKING DEPARTMENT: Erica Sadun at The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports on the progress of the iPhone Dev Team in coming up with a hack for the latest software update to the iPhone, hoping to once again "jailbreak" the iPhone so outside applications can be run on the device. They've made some progress, but it still sounds like there's a way to go before third-party applications can once again be installed.

IPOD DEPARTMENT: New iPod Nano and iPod Classic owners were sent a software update over the weekend, according to Macrumors.com, that fixed a few bugs and improved the Cover Flow method of navigating through album covers. Apparently it also fixes the video-out on the iPod Nanos but now requires an Apple-approved video cord to watch videos on anything but the small 2-inch screen. Macworld also takes a look at the iPod Nano as a gaming device.

INTEL DEPARTMENT: The Inquirer thinks that Apple is calling shotgun on early shipments of Intel's quad-core Penryn processors for new Mac Pros or other unspecified "mainstream" systems. The chips are supposed to be out next month, which could hint at new Mac Pros using the Xeon version of Penryn that could be introduced at Macworld. I'm not sure what the mainstream systems are that would use a quad-core desktop chip, since the new iMacs use dual-core Intel chips, but perhaps they've figured out a way to put a quad-core Penryn in an iMac.