Titanium Developer Forum

Apple is rapidly seeding new versions of Mac OS X 10.6.3 to developers as they prepare for its release. The latest version was released to developers today and represents build 10D558. Changes listed are detailed by iPhone in Canada:

It only took a day for the death of three Tesla Motors employees to be converted into ill-advised advertising. Witness the email ad below, circulated to Silicon Valley venture capitalists near the scene of the plane crash.

In terms of exploiting tragedy, this isn’t as bad as exploiting the 9/11 attacks by turning them into product endorsements. But it’s close, thanks to this line: “Prudent risk management dictates that multiple executives should never travel together, be it on a private plane or commercially.” Ah yes, blame the victims.

A pair of Apple patent applications published today have been generating a bit of attention for their disclosure of Apple’s behind-the-scenes work on its products. The first application covers methods for addressing variations in individual digital …

Several MacRumors readers have reported that Apple’s shipping lead times for its 27-inch iMac models in its online stores have improved today, with the U.S. and Canada now seeing lead times of 5-7 business days instead of 2 weeks and European…

The New York Times reports that recent shifts in the eBook publishing industry, spurred by Apple’s entrance into the market, to allow for higher prices and greater publisher control over their content may offer more flexibility in pricing than previo…

The Wall Street Journal reports (subscription required) on plans from other PC makers to tackle Apple’s iPad head-on, and HP is looking at undercutting the iPad on pricing as a significant component to that strategy.

In the next few w…

The world is always amazed at how well Apple keeps its newest gizmos secret. How do they do it? One Reuters reporter found out the hard way that you do not go sneaking around their Chinese suppliers’ manufacturing plants.

Commenter Uncle_billy_Slumming pointed us to this Reuters report on the pressures Apple puts on its suppliers to keep its secrets. Buried in the middle is a harrowing account of the reporter’s trip to a supplier called Foxconn in Guanlan, China. Basically, security guards went at him like a gang of drunken Eagles fans who happen to come across a guy in a Giants windbreaker walking down the streets of Philly. After he took pictures of the plant from a public road, a guard got angry. He blocked the taxi the reporter was leaving in and forced him to get out. Then things got ugly:

The correspondent got out and insisted he was within his rights as he was on the main road. The guard grabbed his arm. A second guard ran over, and with a crowd of Foxconn workers watching, they tried dragging him into the factory.

The reporter asked to be let go. When that didn’t happen, he jerked himself free and started walking off. The older guard kicked him in the leg, while the second threatened to hit him again if he moved. A few minutes later, a Foxconn security car came along but the reporter refused to board it. He called the police instead.

After the authorities arrived and mediated, the guards apologized and the matter was settled. The reporter left without filing a complaint, though the police gave him the option of doing so.

“You’re free to do what you want,” the policeman explained, “But this is Foxconn and they have a special status here. Please understand.”

Somewhere, Steve Jobs is sitting in a high-backed chair by a dying fire, cracking his knuckles one-by-one as he strokes a cat and mutters ominously to himself: “Don’t fuck with Apple.”

[h/t Business Insider]

Jim Cantore was muzzled by his corporate overlords; Martha Stewart was kept quiet by Neil Cavuto; and Ezra Klein was hushed in Yiddish. The Twitterati were hushed in only the most interesting ways.

The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore revealed just how paranoid NBC Universal is about Olympics leaks. Talking about the weather will not be allowed.

Domestic media empress Martha Stewart discovered that you now need a supermajority to govern media, too.

Always with the guilt, readers of the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein!

The New Yorker’s Susan Orlean continued to jinx farm animals.

Jordan Rubin imagined a glitch in the networking app of the moment.

Did you witness the media elite tweet something indiscreet? Please email us your favorite tweets — or send us more Twitter usernames.

The New York Times’s bizarre idea to perhaps double the price of its electronic edition for Apple’s iPad — to $30 per month — is just the latest chapter in a long internal fight over pricing versions of Times Reader.

Yesterday, we wrote about how the Times print circulation department wants to control the iPad edition and price it at $20 to $30 per month, according to a Times source, while the digital team wants control so it can charge $10 per month.

Several commenters and email correspondents then asked why there’s even a debate over pricing, given that the Times Reader already costs $15 per month to read on a regular computer, and the iPad NYT is essentially Times Reader on a different device.Why would the Times charge twice as much for the same thing on a machine without the keyboard and with a sharp touchscreen?

In short, because of mounting fear over protecting the print edition, fears that raise the stakes in a long-running internal battle at the Times over how to price non-Web digital copies of the paper ala Times Reader.

The dispute goes at least to the launch of Times Reader three years ago. A Times source tells us the PC application was originally supposed to cost $6 per month, but the price was raised to $15 before launch because Times Company executives feared too many print subscribers would cancel at the lower number.

Now that they have another crack at setting new prices on a new device, the old guard within the Times Company ranks is apparently trying to defend print subscriptions even more vociferously. Good luck with that.

(Pic: Times Reader at this year’s Macworld Expo by JD Lasica.)

The damage from a Cessna crash in East Palo Alto California today, which claimed the lives of the three Tesla Motors staff on board, appears contained, amazingly enough. No one on the ground died. Yet locals didn’t escape the tragedy.

Reminders abounded of the crash that claimed three Tesla staff. The small plane collided with power lines shortly after takeoff, and chunks of the plane burned down one home and damaged three others, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The downed power lines meant some Valley business lost electricity, including Facebook’s HQ. Tesla isn’t yet commenting on the identities of the victims; former pilot and CEO Elon Musk told the Chronicle, “Tesla is a small, tightly knit company, and this is a tragic day for us.” You can follow the developments on Jalopnik’s oft-updated post; in the meantime, AP’s first pictures of the wreckage are below. (Click here if you’d prefer to see all of these photos on one page.)