Rumor : Verizon and Apple Already Testing 4G iPhon

This rumor simply has to be taken with a grain of salt, but word has it that Verizon and Apple are testing a version of the iPhone on Verizon’s upcoming 4G LTE network.
For those unfamiliar with the landscape, 4G is essentially the next-generation of cellular networks, designed to carry data and increase the speed and capacity of mobile networks. Although the rumor is unconfirmed, it would make a lot of sense for Apple to hold out for the LTE deployment in order to get more mileage out of the R&D dollars it needs to spend to make a version of the iPhone compatible with Verizon’s network.
The rumor sources note that Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam has been making bi-monthly trips to Mountain View to visit with Google (), culminating in an announcement of Android phones coming to Verizon. Apple’s headquarters are a mere 8.5 miles away, lending further anecdotal evidence to the idea.

We know that Verizon is steadily making progress on their next-gen LTE (Long Term Evolution) network, having already begun successful testing of data calls. We also know there are many logical reasons to expect that AT&T exclusivity for the iPhone will end, with analysts and pundits alike all placing the timeframe in 2010 for this to happen. Even the Department of Justice is taking an interest in getting the iPhone onto more networks.
What remains unknown are the specific details. It does seem like it fits with Apple’s M.O. to want to make a big splash with a 4G iPhone launch on the U.S. largest carrier, but keep those salt shakers at the ready until we get some official confirmation.
If you’re a current iPhone owner, would you consider ditching AT&T for Verizon if the option were available? If you’re not an iPhone owner, would you consider picking one up if it came to another carrier? Let us know in the comments.

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The iPhone is an Internet and multimedia enabled smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPhone functions as a camera phone (also including text messaging and visual voicemail), a portable media player (equivalent to a video iPod), and an Internet client (with email, web browsing, and Wi-Fi connectivity) — using the phone's multi-touch screen to render a virtual keyboard in lieu of a physical keyboard.

The first-generation phone (known as the Original) was quad-band GSM with EDGE; the second generation phone (known as 3G) added UMTS with 3.6 Mbps HSDPA;[17] the third generation adds support for 7.2 Mbps HSDPA downloading but remains limited to 384 Kbps uploading as Apple had not implemented the HSPA protocol.[18]

Apple announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007,[19] after months of rumors and speculation.[20] The original iPhone was introduced in the United States on June 29, 2007 before being marketed worldwide. Time magazine named it the Invention of the Year in 2007.[21] Released July 11, 2008, the iPhone 3G supports faster 3G data speeds and assisted GPS.[17] On March 17, 2009, Apple announced version 3.0 of the iPhone OS operating system for the iPhone (and iPod Touch), released on June 17, 2009.[22] The iPhone 3GS was announced on June 8, 2009, and has improved performance, a camera with more megapixels and video capability, and voice control.[23] It was released in the U.S., Canada and 6 European countries on June 19, 2009,[3] in Australia and Japan on June 26,[24] and saw international release in July and August, 2009.

iPhone OS

The iPhone OS, known as OS X iPhone in its early history, is the operating system developed by Apple Inc. for the iPhone and iPod touch.[2][3] Like Mac OS X, from which it was derived, it uses the Darwin foundation.[4] iPhone OS has four abstraction layers: the Core OS layer, the Core Services layer, the Media layer, and the Cocoa Touch layer. The operating system takes less than 240 Megabytes of the device's total memory storage.[5]

This operating system did not have an official name until the release of the first beta version of the iPhone SDK on March 6, 2008. Before then, Apple marketing literature simply stated that the "iPhone uses OS X," a reference to Apple's desktop operating system, Mac OS X.[6]

As of Nov. 4, 2009, there are over 100,000 applications officially available for the iPhone[7], and 2 billion downloads had been achieved.

On September 9, 2009, Apple announced version 3.1 of the iPhone OS, since then 3.1 has been updated to 3.1.2

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Main article: Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard" was released on August 28, 2009. Rather than delivering big changes to the appearance and end user functionality like the previous releases of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard focuses on under the hood changes, supposedly increasing the speed, efficiency, and stability of the operating system. For most users, the most noticeable changes are: the disk space that the operating system frees up after a clean install compared to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, a more responsive Finder rewritten in Cocoa, faster Time Machine backups, more reliable and user friendly disk ejects, a more powerful version of the Preview application, as well as a faster Safari web browser.

The rewrite of Finder in Apple's native Cocoa API allow the Finder to take advantage of the integrated 64-bit technology as well as Grand Central Dispatch, use a more user-friendly disk eject (clearer dialogs will notify the user of what services or programs are using a given disk), and provides it a more responsive feel overall.
The new Safari 4 includes a boost in JavaScript and HTML performance, which results in faster web browsing. The majority of this performance boost is enabled by the new SquirrelFish JavaScript interpreter, improving the JavaScript rendering speed of Safari by over 50%.[82] The new Top Sites also displays the most frequently visited and/or bookmarked sites in a panorama view, allowing the user to easily access their favorite sites along with a new Cover Flow view for the user's browsing history. Safari 4 is now also more crash resistant, being able to isolate plug-ins which are the number one cause of web browser crashes.[83]
Mac OS X v10.6 also features Microsoft Exchange Server support for Mail, iCal, and Address Book, new 64-bit technology capable of supporting greater amounts of RAM, an all new QuickTime X with a refreshed user interface and more functionality that used to be only available to Quicktime Pro owners.
Back-end platform changes include improved support for multi-core processors through Grand Central Dispatch which attempts to ease the development of applications with multi-core support, and thus improve their CPU utilization. It used to be that developers needed to code their programs in such a way that their software would explicitly take advantage of the multiple cores, which could easily become a tedious and troublesome task, especially in complex software. It also includes advanced GPU performance with OpenCL (a cross platform open standard for GPGPU distinct from CUDA, Dx11 Compute Shader or STREAM) by providing support to offload work normally only destined for a CPU to the graphic card's GPU. This can be especially useful in tasks that can be heavily parallelized.
Snow Leopard supports only machines with Intel CPUs, and drops default support for applications built only for the PowerPC architecture (Rosetta can be installed as an additional component to retain support for PowerPC-only applications).
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Main article: Mac OS X Leopard

Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" was released on October 26, 2007. It was called by Apple "the largest update of Mac OS X". It brought more than 300 new features.[77] Leopard supports both PowerPC- and Intel x86-based Macintosh computers; however, support for the G3 processor was dropped and the G4 processor required a minimum clock speed of 867 MHz. The single DVD works for all supported Macs (including 64-bit machines). New features include a new look, an updated Finder, Time Machine, Spaces, Boot Camp pre-installed,[78] full support for 64-bit applications (including graphical applications), new features in Mail and iChat, and a number of new security features. Leopard is an Open Brand UNIX 03 registered product on the Intel platform. It is also the first BSD-based OS to receive UNIX 03 certification.[79][80] Leopard marks the end of support for Classic applications.[81]

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Main article: Mac OS X Tiger

Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" was released on April 29, 2005. Apple stated that Tiger contained more than 150+ new features.[75] As with Panther, certain older machines were no longer supported; Tiger requires a Mac with a built-in FireWire port.[33] Among the new features, Tiger introduced Spotlight, Dashboard, Smart Folders, updated Mail program with Smart Mailboxes, QuickTime 7, Safari 2, Automator, VoiceOver, Core Image and Core Video. The initial release of the Apple TV used a modified version of Tiger with a different graphical interface and fewer applications and services. On January 10, 2006, Apple released the first Intel-based Macs along with the 10.4.4 update to Tiger. This operating system functioned identically on the PowerPC-based Macs and the new Intel-based machines, with the exception of the Intel release dropping support for the Classic environment.[76] Only PowerPC Macs can be booted from retail copies of the Tiger client DVD, but there is a Universal DVD of Tiger Server 10.4.7 (8K1079) that can boot both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

System requirements

Tiger was initially available in a PowerPC edition, with an Intel edition released beginning at 10.4.4; there is no universal version of the client operating system, although Tiger Server was made available on a universal DVD from version 10.4.7. While Apple shipped the PowerPC edition bundled with PowerPC-based Macs and also sold it as a separate retail box, the only way to get the Intel version was bundled with an Intel-based Mac. However, there were still unofficial places to buy the Intel version such as eBay, although the only Intel discs produced were the gray-colored "restore" DVDs supplied with new Macs that will only install on the model of Mac that they are intended for, unlike the retail DVD that can be used on any Mac supported by Tiger.

The system requirements of the PowerPC edition are:

• A PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor running at 333 MHz or more
• Built-in FireWire
• At least 256 MB of RAM (512 MB or 1 GB recommended)
• At least 3 GB of available hard disk space; 4 GB of disk space including the Xcode 2 Tools
• DVD drive (CD media exchange was available; offer ended 19 March 2007)

Tiger removed support for older New World ROM Macs such as the original iMacs and iBooks that were supported in Panther; however it is possible to install Tiger on these Macs using third-party software (such as XPostFacto) that overrides the checks made at the beginning of the installation process. Likewise, machines such as beige Power Mac G3s and “Wall Street” PowerBook G3s that were dropped by Panther (the preceding release of Mac OS X) can also be made to run both Panther and Tiger in this way. Also Tiger can be installed on unsupported New World ROM Macs by installing it on a supported Mac, then swapping hard drives. Old World ROM Macs require the use of XPostFacto to install TIger.

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Main article: Mac OS X Panther

Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther" was released on October 24, 2003. In addition to providing much improved performance, it also incorporated the most extensive update yet to the user interface. Panther included as many or more new features as Jaguar had the year before, including an updated Finder, incorporating a brushed-metal interface, Fast User Switching, Exposé (Window manager), FileVault, Safari, iChat AV (which added video-conferencing features to iChat), improved Portable Document Format (PDF) rendering and much greater Microsoft Windows interoperability.[74] Support for some early G3 computers such as "beige" Power Macs and "WallStreet" PowerBooks was discontinued.

System requirements

Since a New World ROM is required for Mac OS X v10.3 (“Panther”), certain older computers (such as beige Power Mac G3s and “Wall Street” PowerBook G3s) are unable to run Panther by default. Third-party software (such as XPostFacto) can however override checks made during the install process; otherwise, installation or upgrades from Jaguar will fail on these older machines.

The system requirements are:

• PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor (at least 233 MHz)
• Built-in USB (indicative of a New World ROM being present)
• At least 128 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended, 96 MB supported unofficially)
• At least 1.5 GB of available hard disk space
• CD drive
• Internet access requires a compatible service provider; iDisk requires a .Mac account

Video conferencing requires:

• 333 MHz or faster PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
• broadband Internet access (100 kbit/s or faster)
• Compatible FireWire DV camera or web camera

Panther still supported the Classic environment fully for running older Mac OS 9 applications.

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Mac OS X version 10.2 “Jaguar” is the third major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.1 code name Puma and preceded Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther”. The operating system was initially available on 23 August 2002 either for single-computer installations, and in a "family pack", which allows five installations on separate computers in one household.[1] The operating system was generally well-received by Macintosh users as a large step forward in the areas of stability, general speed enhancements, and the lineup of both graphical and command line applications available; however, many critics still claimed that significant user interface speed issues existed and that the operating system was still immature and awkward to use.

Jaguar was the first Mac OS X release to publicly use its code name in marketing and advertisements, a practice that has continued in subsequent releases of the operating system.

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