Amid speculation of when the iPhone 4G will be officially released and a brewing court battle over its premature disclosure by a gadget blog, manufacturers are already ramping up production of Apple’s upcoming handset, reports suggest. LG Innotek has starting making the 5-megapixel camera and could reach full-tilt by July, according to a Korean publication.

“LG Innotek will supply 5-megapixel cameras for Apple’s next-generation smartphone, the iPhone 4G,” reports the Chosun Ibo. Production began this month with mass-production expected in the second half of 2010.

In part 9 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell tells how he shouted “Steve Jobs is a fucking genius!” in front of a bunch of kids at a Super Bowl party.

John Stewart on The Daily Show rips Apple a new one for going Big Brother on Gizmodo:

“Apple – you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming the man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man! …It wasn’t supposed to be this way – Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the fuck is going on?!

…I know that it is slightly agitating that a blog dedicated to technology published all that stuff about your new phone. And you didn’t order the police to bust down the doors, right? I’d be pissed too, but you didn’t have to go all Minority Report on his ass! I mean, if you wanna break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There’re no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T’s signal?!

…Come on, Steve. Chill out with the paranoid corporate genius stuff. Don’t go all Howard Hughes on us.”

Via Gawker.

Hewlett-Packard is buying Palm for $1.2 billion, the company has announced. Of all the potential suitors, I don’t think HP was mentioned as a candidate. Looks like HP will be making smartphones running Palm’s WebOS, which it may or may not rebrand. The company currently makes Windows Mobile smartphones and PDAs. Looks like it wants to manage its own hardware and software, à la Apple.

Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is expected to carry on, the HP statement says. Minor note: Rubinstein started his career at HP before working for Steve Jobs at NeXT and then Apple.

Fast Company has written up the iPhonegate saga as a funny Choose Your Own Adventure. The flowchart is spot on and made me laugh out loud.

Here’s the whole thing: Choose Your Own Adventure: The Gizmodo iPhone Saga

Do you still use a USB stick to move files between one computer and another?

You should be using Dropbox.

If you want to cover your precious iPad with the LV logo, be prepared to shell out about two-thirds the cost of the device itself.

In stores next year, the Louis Vuitton case will come with a price tag of $366 compared to the $499 for the basic iPad.

Touted as the first designer iPad sleeve from a major fashion house, you have to wonder what’s taking the rest of the overpriced, logofied pack so long. By the time this one, and others, are on shelves there may be an iPad 2G already available.

Via Geeky Gadgets, GQ

I’m happy to report that I was wrong about the iRetroFone Base. The handset works! Good Lord, I need one immediately.

A 15-year old teen is pointing the finger at social networking iPhone app Grindr for being assaulted by a 54-year-old man.

The incident happened in Vancouver, where Brent Tynan is being charged with sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and sexual assault following an incident that took place last August. Tynan, who was arrested April 13, is expected back in court today.

Tynan met the teen through free app Grindr, which uses GPS in order to connect users to nearby gay and bisexual men.

We start off with two more deals on MacBook Pros. First are a number of unibody MacBook Pros, including a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo unit for $929. Next are some MacBook Pro deals that include AppleCare, starting at $1,358 for a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo computer with AppleCare. Finally, there is a deal on iPods, including a 8GB iPod nano for $99.

Along the way, we check out apps for the iPhone and iPad, as well as cases for your iPhone. Details on these and many other items are available at CoM’s Daily Deal page, which begins right after the jump.

Retail sales of Apple products grew 8 percent during the March quarter, an analyst said Wednesday. What’s even more intriguing was a 21.3 percent jump in Mac sales during a period when no new Apple computers were introduced.

Charlie Wolf, analyst with Needham & Company, told investors the March performance followed 19.8 percent year-over-year growth of same-store sales in December, a traditionally-strong period. Even more dramatic was March’s increase served as a nearly mirror image of a year ago, when Mac retail sales were down almost 22 percent.

Sure you can buy iPhone cookies and cupcakes, but artisan chocolates in the form of iPhone icons are definitely the most delectable knock-offs to date.

The original 20-piece sets of organic chocolates sold out within a week of launch, but there’s a special Mother’s Day edition “created as a tribute to modern mothers.”

The iChocolates box features four flavors of extra-dark, 100% cocoa butter chocolate, a graphic designer was called on to help give the yummy icons a true-to-life look.

That iconic goodness doesn’t come cheap, either, at $46, they cost about as much as a universal charging dock for your actual iPhone.

The Paris-based iChocolate seller says they ship worldwide and promises your iPhone chocs will arrive intact.

Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be June 7 through June 11 in San Francisco, Calif.’s Mascone Center, the Cupertino, Calif. consumer electronics firm announced Wednesday. The event could also serve to introduce the iPhone 4G, Apple’s next-generation handset which Gizmodo unofficially announced earlier this month.

Historically, the WWDC has been used to unveil new Apple products. The iPhone 3GS was introduced at last year’s conference, which ran June 8 through June 12. Some analysts believe the leak of a prototype iPhone 4G would force Apple to introduce a new handset earlier than planned, as Cult of Mac reported Tuesday.

Since contacting Steve has gotten so popular lately, The Joy of Tech has created this handy web based Steve Jobs Email Reply Generator for simplifying the process…

Eye-Fi, pretty much the only company in town doing interesting things with SD cards, have just announced their newest card: the Apple-exclusive Eye-Fi GeoX2.

Like other Eye-Fi cards, the Geo X2 allows you to upload photos directly from your camera’s SD card to your computer over 802.11n WiFi. The Geo X2 will directly interface with iPhoto and MobileMe, as well as Picasa, Facebook and a slew of other online services.

The Geo X2 also boasts previous Eye-Fi cards’ cool Endless Mode, which allows the Eye-Fi to automatically clear space on the card after photos have been uploaded. It will also automatically geotag your photos to make it easier to use with iPhoto’s Places feature.

The Geo X2 will be exclusively available starting in May and cost $69.99 for a 4GB card.

Well, would-be iPad 3G owners. Your long, long wait is finally coming to an end. According to 9to5Mac, pre-orders of the iPad 3G are finally starting to ship, and should be in your hands by Friday. If you didn’t pre-order one, you may be able to snag an iPad 3G at an Apple Store if you swing by after 5PM.

Got your shipping confirmation? Brag about it to us poor suckers in the comments.

Update: Reader Chris Wanja says, “I see you pulled it from the 9to5Mac article. In the mass of the 130+ comments, I added to a lot of them. We… have come to the conclusion that the image is Photoshopped due to NO one else having a shipping confirmation via email or order status. Several people confirm with other blogs and forums that they have not yet shipped, but are “prepared for shipment”.

Seems like a rather pedestrian use of Photoshop, personally. Have any of our readers received shipping confirmation yet?

Accept no imitations! Reader Rob Kearney wrote us to claim ownership of the genius that came up with the original “i Went Drinking With Gray Powell And All I Got Was A Lousy iPhone Prototype” t-shirt. And he can prove it!

With Gizmodo’s leaked fourth-generation prototype confirming both front and back-facing video cameras in the next iPhone, we can now take it as read that video conferencing is coming to iPhone OS, as the 3.2 and Beta 4 SDKs have long hinted.

So what kind of software video features can we expect in the next iPhone? MacRumors has taken a close look at the latest build.

The popular European music streaming service Spotify has gotten a substantial new desktop update in new version 0.43, which brings social networking integration, the ability to import your own MP3 into your Spotify library, an offline storage locker, and a new user inboxes for the sharing of tracks.

Transmit, the popular OS X FTP client by Panic Support, has finally broken its half decade run of version 3.x executables and finally released version 4.0, a significant and shiny upgrade that boasts faster performance, a new user interface and several fantastic new features.

Confirming earlier rumors, the New York Times is reporting that Apple has purchased ARM design firm Intrinsity for an estimated $121 million.

HTC just got a powerful new ally in its patent fight against Apple.

Following Google’s announcement that they would support their frequent manufacturing partner in its defense against complaints made by Apple that HTC handsets infringe upon a number of key iPhone-related patents, Microsoft has issued a press release saying that they have signed a broad patent-sharing agreement with HTC.

According to the agreement, Microsoft will license its patents to HTC across all of their phones. If the phone is a Google Android handset, HTC will pay them a couple bucks in royalties on every handset sold.

In part 8 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell describes how Steve Jobs and IDG publisher Pat McGovern sign a deal to launch Macworld in conjunction with the Mac.

In the last tip, we showed you three standard views for looking at files in a Finder window.

There’s a fourth view, though. It’s called Cover Flow, and we’ve given it a tip all of its own because you’re likely to see it in many different places.

The Blagoblogs are a-buzz with a report that shows Android has overtaken the iPhone in mobile web traffic. This would be concerning were it not for two things:

1. The report only shows Android overtaking iPhone in the U.S. (it’s still dominating globally)
2. The report is created by AdMod, the mobile advertising company owned by Google, and is based on mobile traffic through its network. In other words, it doesn’t count any traffic directed through areas it doesn’t serve, including any by Apple-owned Quattro and many iPhone apps built on other platforms.

Since AdMob is a key part of Google’s mobile strategy at this point and is a key component to any ad-supported Android applications, this is almost exactly the trend we should expect to see. And this trend will only become more dramatic as Apple rolls out iAds in iPhone OS 4.0, which won’t wipe out third-party ad providers in iPhone apps but will likely come to dominate. Don’t be surprised to see a report six months from now showing Apple’s mobile web traffic dropping by half or more.

All of which suggests that a mobile ad network isn’t the best source for reporting the totality of mobile web traffic. Wouldn’t it be nice if all the mobile carriers got together and shared what they knew?

Via Fast Company