Two issues are pushing Apple to expand beyond its current one-carrier arrangement for the U.S. iPhone, an analyst told investors Monday. Not only is the iPhone maxxing out the AT&T network, the Cupertino, Calif. company needs to stem the tide of Android phones flowing from Verizon.

This is where we usually write about Verizon’s chances of obtaining the Apple handset. Although such speculation has reached the level of the Easter Bunny or BigFoot as an appealing tale lacking only facts, Kaufman Bros.’ Shaw Wu takes a different tact: if not Verizon, how about a two-for-one deal?

Can’t bear to part with your mouse, but in love with the slim slate of touch-capable glass and aluminum, the Magic Trackpad? 9to5Mac calls our attention to this gorgeous mousepad by Just Mobile, the Alupad.

Gorgeously carved from a slap of anodized aluminum, then infused with a coating of iPod ivory plastic, the Alupad looks like the mousepad Apple would create if they bothered themselves with such things… and makes me even sadder that the Magic Trackpad itself isn’t large or flush enough to double as a mousepad when it’s not in use.

The price is right, too: $35 is a lot to spend for a mousepad, but most mousepads just wouldn’t go with our iMacs nearly as well.

[via 9to5Mac]

It doesn’t take much to get rumors flying. For example, the news Verizon’s CEO will deliver the keynote speech at CES 2011 in January. Naturally, this points to the oft-rumored CDMA iPhone. Maybe.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg’s speech could have a number of meanings. It could be a sign of the rise of the cell phone as a key component to consumer electronics. It could be an opportunity for Verizon to talk about its leading role in advancing Android-based handsets. However, it is unlikely Seidenberg would upstage Apple CEO Steve Jobs, given the Apple co-founder’s penchant for controlling the message.

For all those who took the liberty of running the ridiculously simple JailbreakMe 2.0 installer over the weekend (before having second-thoughts based on the security hole it exposes), the accompanying package to unlock your iPhone to run on any GSM carrier worldwide has dropped.

Ultrasn0w 1.0-1 is the first baseband unlock for iOS 4 phones, and works with iPhone 4s, 3GSs, and 3Gs. It might also work with 3.x devices, but it’s unclear from the documentation. Gentlemen, head for T-Mobile (at EDGE speeds)!

Via Engadget

Say goodbye to that wedge of magnetized plastic in your wallet. If AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile have their way, the future of credit is your smartphone… and they are going to war against the likes of Visa and Mastercard to accomplish it.

According to Bloomberg, the three carriers are working with Discover and Barclays, testing a system in four US cities that would enable special smartphones embedded with NFC (near field communication) chips to make credit card payments with just a wave of the hand.

Making a credit card payment from your iPhone isn’t exactly a new idea: Visa already lets you do this with special payWave cases, and Digg founder Kevin Rose is backing Square, which is a similar idea.

The point here, though, is that it’s the carriers who are making the most concerted push yet to consolidate and bring ubiquity to smartphone payment systems, by cutting out the biggest credit giants entirely.

We’d like to ask our Canadian readers for help with a story we’re working on about the iPhone 4.

The iPhone 4 just launched in Canada on Friday, and Canadian buyers are able to buy the device unlocked (if it’s bought from Apple rather than a carrier).

We’re looking for readers who are getting an unlocked iPhone 4 and can test it on Wind Mobile’s network to see if it can support 3G data speeds.

Why do we want to test the iPhone 4 on Wind Mobile’s network?

Wind Mobile is an up-and-coming carrier that uses the same GSM network technology as T-Mobile in the United States.

The iPhone is rumored to be coming to T-Mobile USA in the fall, breaking Apple’s exclusive deal with AT&T. However, it’s not clear whether the iPhone 4 has the right radio hardware to support T-Mobile’s 3G data network.

We’re told Wind Mobile in Canada has the same network infrastructure. If it works on Wind Mobile’s network, it should work on T-Mobile’s.

T-Mobile’s 3G data network operates on the 1700/2100 MHz bands. According to Apple’s specs, the iPhone 4 works on the 2100 UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA band, but not the 1700 band, which has led some to conclude that it is incompatible with T-Mobile’s 3G network.

However, there is some debate whether Apple simply didn’t list the 1700 band, which seems to be the convention when listing such specs. And no one has yet tested the iPhone 4 on T-Mobile’s network in the U.S. Despite the efforts of the Dev Team, there isn’t yet a publicly available unlock for the iPhone 4.

This is why we’d like help testing an unlocked iPhone 4 on Wind Mobile in Canada.

If you can help out, please email us at news (AT) cultofmac.com. In return, we’ll send you some goodies in the mail.

UPDATE: In the comments below, reader @Qorax tried a Wind Mobile SIM in a brand new, unlocked iPhone 4 he purchased over the weekend. Unfortunately, the SIM card didn’t work at all: no voice or data. We would have predicted he would have at least got voice. iPhone users here in the U.S. who unlock their phones and use T-Mobile SIM cards get voice and data — but Edge only.

But now that the iPhone 4 has been unlocked here in the U.S., we’re on the lookout for reports of usage on T-Mobile US’s network.

PS: @Qorax’s comment is worth reading to see how he beat the gigantic line for the iPhone 4 at his local Apple Store. Tricky!

AT&T has had a love-hate relationship with the iPhone. Today, however, the mood at Apple’s exclusive U.S. carrier probably is unadulterated adoration for the iconic handset. Along with announcing $30.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, AT&T said it activated 3.2 million iPhones during the financial quarter just ended. As the late-night infomercials often say – ‘But, wait! There’s even more.”

Despite the chatter about reception problems, AT&T said demand for the iPhone 4 was ten times that of the iPhone 3GS when it was released last year. Additionally, nearly a third (27 percent) of those were new subscribers. “That is, Steve Jobs and company helped AT&T bring in another 860,000 customers,” wrote All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka.

Emboldened by a $612.5 million settlement from Research in Motion, a company claiming to have invented wireless e-mail, Friday sued Apple, Google, Microsoft and three other handset makers. NTP Incorporated alleges the companies are violating eight patents on wireless e-mail.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Eastern Virginia, is aimed at getting Apple and others to pay licensing fees. In a news release, NTP said the defendants all make hardware or software to deliver e-mail via wireless communications.

Will (or when) Verizon get the iPhone? Stories speculating on the answers to those questions have taken on a near myth-like quality; although disproven, the conversations continue. The chatter has been given new life by some analyst comments released Tuesday.

Analyst Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital told investors he believes we could see Verizon selling an iPhone 4 in the first quarter of 2011. Reitzes points to “checks” seeming to show a CDMA iPhone could be produced late 2010.

MobileMe went down for some ‘scheduled maintenance’ last night, and when it came back up it included a whole host of new features. As well as the Mail web application now out of beta, Apple’s list of improvements includes:

• Widescreen and compact views.
• Rules to keep your email organized everywhere.
• Single-click archiving.
• Formatting toolbar.
• Faster performance.
• Increased security with SSL.
• Support for external email addresses.
• Improved junk mail filtering.

In addition to the new features, Apple has updated the login page (above) and introduced a fancy new application switcher (below) that provides a nice new way to navigate between the MobileMe web applications.

Apple have also released a Find My iPhone app that now provides you with quick and easy access to the Find My iPhone service from each one of your iOS devices. All of the web application features are included like sending a message to your device or playing a sound, locking the device and even wiping your data remotely.

Apple has been busy releasing a few of their own iOS applications this week, and as well as Find My iPhone, we’ve also seen iTunes Connect Mobile which gives application developers the ability to monitor their app’s success in the App Store from their iPhone, and the Apple Store application allowing customers to make purchases from their iPhones and schedule reservations at an Apple Retail Store.