The closing of the Fifth Avenue Apple Store on Thursday may mark the beginning of a new advertising campaign for an as of yet unknown product. Equipment being brought into the store as well as other reports indicates that film production company Anonymous Content will be producing the advertisement.

AppleInsider reports that director David Fincher, listed as a featured director on Anonymous’s website is tied to the project. Fincher is best known as the director of Fight Club, but is also a popular producer of commercials, including the Gears of War trailer, “Mad World”, and has done work for HP and AT&T. The only other times that the Fifth Avenue Apple Store has been closed were for major product launches, and the only advertisements filmed at Apple store were filmed at this location, for, fittingly enough, the iPhone.

The majority of Apple’s marketing campaigns, including the well received Get a Mac campaign, have been produced by TBWA\Media Arts Labs. However, Apple has in the past used other firms, or allowed third parties to advertise joint product launches using their own ad firms. Anonymous Content fits the bill for this kind of campaign, having produced commercials for a wide variety of corporations, the most relevant being AT&T and Intel. It is rumored that Apple is filming a commercial for the upcoming 3G iPhone. The reasoning behind filming at the Fifth Avenue retail store is still unknown, as an Apple Store could easily be replicated in a studio. The lighting equipment outside indicates that emphasis may be on the 32 foot cube outside the store. More details to come soon!

Reports are coming in the 5th Avenue Apple Store, located in New York City is being shut down. Rumor has it that Apple is filming a commercial for the new, unreleased iPhone inside the store. On the 5th Ave Retail Website, a message reads:

“Please note we will be temporarily closed Thursday, May 29 at 3:00 p.m. and will reopen Friday, May 30 at 9:00 a.m. During this time, please visit one of our other two Manhattan locations.”

The store is normally open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and has only closed on two occasions, for about three hours- the release of Mac OS X Leopard and the iPhone last June. TheiLife regular, Sidney San Martin is en-route to check out the scene, and should be reporting live within the hour- pictures, live blogging and a little investigative reporting to come. If you live in or near New York City, and would like to help contribute to the coverage, please feel free to contact us!

6:31 PM Sidney is off from work and en-route (via Subway) to the 5th Ave store.
7:30 PM Sidney is on the scene confirming that it is indeed commercial- there are booms and a Genie outside the store. He says that lighting is being setup to highlight the Cube and elevator.
7:37 PM Sidney has confirmed that there is filming going on in the store. Director chairs and people mingling around the tables. All computers have the Leopard aurora desktop background showing with no menubar or icons.
7:39 PM He can see into the Apple Store, and there are iPhone tables with cardboard around them. Most of the people are congregating around the iPhone tables. The cardboard is very eerie, very Apple, he notes.
7:52 PM The crew outside is discussing ways to get into the store, appears to be looking at a floorplan.
7:56 PM “I recognize the 5th Ave HR Manager standing outside the store. She is dressed well and clearly happy about this event.”
7:58 PM More lights are being setup around the outside of the Cube.
8:08 PM “Crews are all talking through radios. I wish I had a frequency scanner right now!”
8:11 PM The crews are hooking into the Fire Hydrant now. What the heck!?
8:33 PM BLACK CASES MARKED “Anonymous 5+4” entering store.
8:33 PM More black cases marked “Anonymous 4+3” entering store.
9:33 PM Sidney has to leave as his iPhone has died; the liveblog is over. The servers are being pounded from traffic from all over; including AppleInsider and MacRumors. Thanks to all who have visited!!
9:47 PM Almost the entire sidewalk is blocked off on 5th Ave, with the Apple employees pushing the line back as much as possible. Sidney has left for home.

Pictures after the jump! Read more…

This is the third part in a series of WWDC rumor articles, exploring the various case leaks for the new iPhone model- speculated to launch at WWDC 2008. Click here to check out the first and second articles about the rumored iPhone.

Click on the images to see a larger version.

Yesterday, the Apple rumor mill was abuzz with a story from iDealsChina Insider, an otherwise unknown website who posted leaked pictures of Griffins new case mold for the upcoming iPhone. The pictures, shown above, shows a larger opening for the supposed addition of a front facing camera, which supports the rumored claims of videoconferencing on the upcoming iPhone. The leaked photos are said to be of Griffins upcoming silicon Flex GRIP case.

More after the jump! Read more…

This is a guest post from theDigitalLifestyle.tv.

Whether you know the name from the adorably small yet “Mighty Mouse” who took over kid’s television screens every weekend morning in the forties or you recognize the name from the powerful mouse that graces so many Apple user’s desks, the name “Mighty Mouse” has been fighting a battle all it’s own this past week. Man & Machine Inc., which is a Maryland based company who manufactures water-resistant and hygienic keyboards and mice for medical and industrial environments, sued both Apple and CBS CORP. for trademark infringement. M&M claims that while both their company and CBS hold trademark applications for the name, CBS’s use of the name does not cover such goods as computer products and therefore, if they licensed the name to Apple, it would be in violation of the trademark.

It seems to me that even if Man & Machine Inc. used the name for computer products before Apple (which they claim is true), the use of the name is for completely different niches in the computing world. M&M’s water-resistant, hygienic, and may I also say “wired” mouse design of “Mighty Mouse” is advertised and promoted specifically for medical and industrial use, differing with Apple’s design for a sleek and powerful mouse used mostly for home and office use. Most consumers who would be in the market for Apple’s Mighty Mouse would not, upon seeing M&M’s “Mighty Mouse,” change their mind about their purchase considering the different applications and niches for the product.

Man & Machine, Inc. is seeking money damages and a Court issued order, which will block Apple’s use of the name. A hearing date has not yet been set.

Samsung has just announced their new L870 mobile handset, and several sites are reporting that it will be the first Samsung phone to include a Safari branded mobile browser. Out of left field, this information contradicts previous assumptions that mobile Safari would be an iPhone exclusive application. The L860 runs S60, a Samsung developed Symbian platform. The S60’s default browser already utilized a WebKit based browser, so it is unclear what advancements Safari will bring to the handset’s capabilities. It is worth noting that the S60 browser supports flash mobile.

Safari for Symbian will put Apple in direct competition with development teams including Microsoft’s Window’s mobile team, Nokia’s internet tablet division (which utilizes WebKit) and Opera Software’s Opera Mobile. Many mobile phone companies have utilized WebKit in their offerings due to its relative ease to implement compared with propriety rendering engines such as Microsoft’s Trident, and its easier implementation and less demanding license compared to Mozilla’s Gecko. However, Apple’s mobile Safari browser was universally lauded for its ability to render web pages accurately and quickly using limited resources and screen real-estate. So far, it remains unknown as to whether Samsung has negotiated a contract with Apple for exclusive use of the Safari trademark, or whether Safari is headed to other mobile platforms.

–>Read

Update: Samsung now reports that the Safari reference was a misprint, referring to the S60 browser’s WebKit components.

This is the second part in a series of WWDC rumor articles to come, exploring the possibilities of the new second generation iPhone speculated to launch at WWDC 2008. Click here to look at the first article reviewing the possibilities for the new iPhone.

The next iPhone to have GPS built in?

Over the past week, the new iPhone has seen a fair share of new rumors, findings and speculation.

Today, AppleInsider is reporting that TeliaSonera just announced a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia later this year. TeliaSonera is the dominant carrier in those regions, with over 106 million subscribers. This adds to the ongoing list of new international deals for the iPhone:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Italy, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Slovakia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, Romania, Turkey, United States and Uruguay.

ImportGenius last week believes the 3G iPhone may be enroute to the United States, if not already here.

“Since mid-March, Apple Inc. and its logistics partners have imported 188 ocean containers of a product type never before declared on its shipping manifests.”
“On March 19 Quanta delivered 20 ocean containers of merchandise, described on the Bills of Lading as “electric computers,” to Apple, Inc. Neither Apple, Quanta, nor any other company has ever used this product description for any shipments to the U.S.”

ImportGenius noted that the declaration of “electronic computers” is in addition to the regular shipments Apple receives of desktop computers (which haven’t decreased over these past few months), which means this is not just a renaming of a current Cupertino product for customs.

The GPS has been rumored to be put into the iPhone for some time now. Recently, findings by AppleInsider might hint at the existence of GPS in the upcoming iPhone model.

The latest iPhone 2.0 build new location findings, images from AppleInsider

The images, shown above, are of beta iPhone 2.0 firmware, build 5A292g, that was distributed to a select group of enterprise testers last week. The new shots show new preferences for location based services for the Camera and Google Maps applications, and user prompts for the permission to find their current geographical location. “”Maps” would like to use your current location” “Don’t Allow” or “Ok”.

The addition to the Camera application implies the addition of geo-tagging, which adds meta data to the photograph that includes the coordinates that the picture was taken. AppleInsider notes that the tipsters say that there seems to be no addition of geographical meta data to photos taken from the Camera application at this time.

The addition to the Maps application is even more interesting, however. In the current iPhone and iPod Touch firmware, Apple has added a “Locate Me” button which allows the user to be located by cell triangulation or through Wi-Fi hotspots. This could simply mean that Apple is re-integrating your location into the Maps application or that the addition of GPS hardware could enhance the application even more.

Finally, last Wednesday AT&T announced that it is wrapping up the deployment it’s 3G infrastructure.

“By the end of June, connecting to AT&T’s 3G mobile broadband service will be as speedy as logging onto the high speed Internet service that many consumers enjoy at home.”

By rolling out HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access); AT&T customers will be able to achieve 1.4Mbps download speed and uploads speeds up to 800Kbps. AT&T also notes that 75 percent of the phones sold by the company are 3G compatible; with “more 3G-enabled smartphones in the summer and fall of 2008”. The cell phone carrier has spent over $20 billion in network upgrades over the past few years.

It should be noted that the iPhone 2.0 firmware is intended to be released across both the current generation iPhone and the upcoming generation iPhone. Apple revealed in March the release date of June for the firmware, which could coincide with the WWDC 2008 conference starting on June 9th. The most hotly anticipated features of the iPhone 2.0 firmware are the App Store, which will allow for 3rd party applications; and the new enterprise features such as Exchange support and VPN.

Stay tuned for more rumors and predictions to come.

Sidney San Martin online at Macworld 2008 for theiLife.

This year, over 5000 developers are attending WWDC and Apple has announced that for the first time ever that they have sold out of tickets. As usual, Steve Jobs will be kicking off the conference with a Keynote, taking place on Monday June 9th. We at theiLife.com are proud to announce that Sidney San Martin, theiLife regular, will be in attendance. This means coverage similar to Macworld 2008- which included videos, pictures, liveblogging (from the Keynote and Expo) as well as regular blog coverage. Regarding the liveblogging there will be more details coming soon- we are not sure if it will be AJAX based, due to the heavy load it puts on our servers. Stay tuned for more details coming soon, and certinally if you would like to offer any suggestions, please contact us or leave a comment below!

A new iTunes+iPod commercial surfaced early this afternoon promoting the new Coldplay single from the upcoming album Vida la Vida. It has just been published to The Daily iLife podcast, which you can subscribe to in iTunes or watch here.

An iTunes+iPod advertisement for Coldplay.

This is the first part in a series of WWDC rumor articles to come, exploring the possibilities of the new second generation iPhone speculated to launch at WWDC 2008.

A supposed spy shot of the new iPhone

For years rumors have been flying about an Apple phone. Finally, last year at Macworld 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. Ever since the January 9th release, rumors and speculation have run wild regarding everything from rumored firmware updates to hardware revisions and even new iPhone models. Now with a little over two weeks until WWDC, the iPhone rumors have exponentially increased- and everyone seems to be unanimously shouting one thing- 3G iPhone.

The first generation iPhone is held by some as one of the best cell phone ever created. Both users and critics agree that the iPhone is close to perfection- or at least a step up for cell phones. However, some of the of the cons with the iPhone are the touch screen keyboard, slow EDGE connection (no 3G) and the lack of third party applications. With the rumored second generation iPhone, it appears that Apple is out to fix two of those three flaws for sure- 3G and third party application support with iPhone firmware 2.0 (already revealed).

Ever since the public release of the iPhone in June of 2007, the iPhone has been rumored to be getting a 3G chip in a future update. For a time, some speculated September 2007 (coinciding with iPod updates), then others thought Macworld 2008, but now it seems like an iPhone with 3G is impending for WWDC 2008. Here is some proof:

In April, AppleInsider reported that references were found in the latest iPhone 2.0 betas to the Infineon chipset, SGOLD3H. The SGOLD3H is a cellular chip that supports 3G cellular data access via HSDPA to up to 7.2 megabits/second. The chip even supports the WCDMA technology which is needed in countries such as Japan or Korea. Currently, the iPhone uses a SGOLD2 to power 2.5G (EDGE) cellular communications.

Last week, 3G settings were found in the latest betas of the iPhone 2.0 firmware.

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of annoucments regarding the worldwide release of the new iPhone, and it appears that Apple is gearing up for a widespread International launch much larger than the one with the current iPhone. In April, Rogers announced that it was going to bring the iPhone to Canada later in the year. Last week SingTel announced it would be offering the iPhone in parts of Australia and Asia. France Télécom’s Orange announced it would be offering 3G iPhones in Austria, Belgium, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Jordan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Switzerland, its current African markets. America Movil announced that it would be offering the iPhone in Mexico and other parts of the region later this year. Telecom Itaila stated that it would be carrying the iPhone in Italy. Telefónica announced they were bringing the iPhone to Spain, and is rumored to launch on June 18th, with the iPhone 2. Finally, in a statement last week, Vodafone said:

“Later this year, Vodafone customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone for use on the Vodafone network.”

Over all, these following countries, listed in alphabetical order, will be getting or currently sell the iPhone: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Egypt, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Italy, India, Jamaica, Jordan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Slovakia, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, Romania, Turkey, United States and Uruguay.

Not only is the current iPhone nearing its first public birthday, but it is very hard to find at the moment. As reported in April with the then temporary shortage of iPhones, today the iPhone is very hard to come by. Since last week, a quick check to the Apple Online Store shows the product “Currently Unavailable”. iPhones are also in very limited quantities in both Apple Retail Stores and AT&T Retail stores. These are definitly indicators that Apple is readying an update and has sold out of the remaining inventory of iPhones.

While 3G is the likely next move for the iPhone, there is still much speculation of other changes Apple might want to make. The next few topics are debatable and the evidence is not nearly as solid as it is for 3G.

iPhone Videoconferencing developed by Ken and Greg Aspeslagh for the Iron Coder Live

Videoconferencing: There have been many rumors that the second generation iPhone will have two cameras; a camera on the back and a hidden forward facing camera to be used for video conferencing. This rumor is not supported by anything solid except that the SGOLD3H cellular chip supports live recording and videoconferencing, where as the SGOLD2 cellular chip (found in the current iPhone) does not.

Flush Headphone Jack: Another complaint about the current generation iPhone is that the recessed headphone jack makes it very hard or impossible to plug third party headphones in. It would only be logical for Apple to revise the case and mount the headphone jack flush for this next update.

GPS: Built in GPS would certainly compliment the Google Maps application. By allowing the iPhone to give a precise location fix, dynamic turn by turn directions, geotag pictures, and more.

Material Change: By switching the back case of the iPhone from anodized aluminum to plastic; the iPhone could become lighter and allow for better wireless signal reception- especially if adding GPS. One possibility is that Apple will remove the aluminum backing and use a similar material to the black plastic piece at the bottom of the current iPhone (which is there for the antennas for the cell and 802.11 wireless).

Curvier Body: The current iPhone, while rounded, seems almost square in your hand. When holding an iPhone in your palm, you generally only feel the edges of the phone. It is rumored that the back of the iPhone will be more rounded for that reason.

Verdict: We will certainly see a new iPhone launched sometime before the end of this year with 3G. Gizmodo, Tuesday morning is reporting that Apple will launch the new iPhone on June 9th, for immediate worldwide release; which is a fairly reasonable claim.

Keep tuned for theiLife’s predictions in the days leading up to WWDC.

This week begins my first week of no school which means that I have lots of time to dedicate to the site. Not only does that equate to more content, and improvements to the site, but we will be able to prepare for our upcoming WWDC 2008 coverage. Regarding rumors for WWDC, I am in the process of starting a series exploring the possibilities for the WWDC 2008 Jobs keynote. The latest iPhone buzz started late Monday morning, when a new case design from manufacturer XSKN started a buzz with it’s newest iPhone case. The new case, shown below, contains a number of rumored features of the forthcoming second generation iPhone.

The current 2.5G iPhone case, pictured above.

The 3G iPhone case, with rumored features highlighted.

You can see that the new case features a curvier, rounded back; what appears to be a change in the mounting of the headphone jack and an unprotected area around the top earpiece area- presumably for a front facing camera (for video-conferencing). Note that after the release, the XSKN website has been hit hard with traffic, rendering it almost unusable.