One analyst warned investors Wednesday an unconfirmed report that Verizon Wireless will get the iPhone in January 2011, may be just more dead-end speculation. “Similar speculation has emerged before, so barring independent confirmation or a press release from one of the parties, it’d be rash to pop the champagne,” Oppenheimer’s Yair Reiner wrote.

Although the idea of Verizon gaining the iPhone makes many analysts salivate at the prospect, so far it has only been a parlor game. Apple has defended the exclusive U.S. carrier in the past, and AT&T has recently taken steps to improve its 3G service.

The wait is finally over. Apple has conspicuously ignored consumer demands for third-party application multitasking over the last three years, but now anyone with an iPhone 3GS or 3G iPod touch can now freely switch between apps without missing a beat. In many ways, today’s launch of iOS 4 is Apple’s most anticipated software release in almost two years. Not since the opening of the App Store via iPhone OS 2.0 has the company made such drastic changes to its flagship product line.

Having installed and played with iOS 4 on my 3GS a bit more than two weeks ago, I can say with confidence that it doesn’t disappoint — but it does take some getting used to.

Although Apple is not set to launch its iAds platform until July 1, placeholder tests are already being spotted at the App Store. The placeholders appear with the iAd logo in apps for developers OneTap Movies and the Yellow Pages, according to Monday reports.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a Worldwide Developers conference that 17 advertisers had already signed onto the platform, committing up to $60 million for iAds. Jobs said 60 percent of that money will return to developers. “Apple sells and serves the ads, and you recieve 60 percent of the advertising revenue,” he explained.

Analysts often point to the introduction of video conferencing – branded as FaceTime by Apple – as a chief selling point for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company’s soon to be released iPhone 4. However, a nagging question had remained until Sunday: won’t video calls drain your cellular minutes? Over the weekend, Apple put the doubting minds at ease.

“The voice call ends as soon as the FaceTime call connects,” an Apple representative told Silicon Alley Insider Sunday. Because FaceTime uses Wi-Fi, no carrier minutes will be used.

Apple execs have a hard time telling the difference between porn and literature.

First Apple removed images from graphic novels of classics “Ulysses” and “The Importance of Being Earnest” for being, well, too graphic for the device that has been touted as “freedom from porn.”

Robert Berry, the illustrator of “Ulysses Seen,” told the New York Times that an image of a woman with exposed breasts was one of the offending panels in the comic version of the book.

As seen at last week’s WWDC, iMovie for iOS looks like nothing else out there when it comes to mobile video editing. The Tidbits blog has posted some more details about what you can expect, and unfortunately, there’s some limitations on what you can do with iMovie.

The bad news is that for right now, it’s iPhone 4 only, with iPhone 3GSs needing not apply because of the lack of A4 processor. Don’t expect it on the iPad until Apple’s tablet gets a camera, though.

There’s more bad news: right now, you can’t export projects to iMovie on the Mac for giving your edits some more advanced finesse. iMovie for iPhone exists in its own little vacuum for people who want to quickly edit a movie on the go. If you want to edit your iPhone 4 footage on your Mac, you’ll need to start from scratch, at least for now.

While iMovie for iPhone is likely to be locked to next-gen iOS devices, I imagine Apple will eventually integrate the software with the desktop suite and bring it to the next-gen iPad and iPod Touch. Either way, at $4.99, iMovie for iPhone looks like a steal of an app.

According to a new report by Reuters citing three inside sources, everyone’s favorite television streaming service Hulu is preparing a subscription-based service that will be available on numerous non-PC devices, with the iPad and Xbox 360 prominently named.

Other than that, there’s little information, but rumors in the past have indicated that a premium Hulu service would be subscription-based and get you access to a complete library of older content, as opposed to free Hulu’s library of newer episodes and randoms.

Since Hulu hasn’t announced anything at this week’s WWDC, if the rumor is true, it’s likely that they will announce their plans for the Xbox 360 console at next week’s E3 gaming expo.

The question is: Netflix is already available for the iPad, and it already offers a lot of old television shows available for streaming. Is there room for another subscription-based service on the iPad streaming much of the same content?

Coming off Monday’s big announcement, we have the iPhone 4 as our top deal. The 16GB model is $199 and the 32GB is $299 with a two-year AT&T contract. We also have a number of unibody MacBook Pros, starting at $929 for a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo version. Also, if your internal SuperDrive is dead, you might want to check out this deal on the USB External Drive designed for the MacBook Air for just $50.

Along the way, we’ll also check out more iPhone software and other Mac-related gadgets. As always, details on these and many more items are available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page, starting after the jump.

Steve Jobs rolled out Apple’s iPhone 4 Monday at the WWDC 2010 Keynote in San Francisco, calling his company’s “new baby” a device that “changes everything. Again.”

But does it?

When Apple introduced the original iPhone in 2007, it altered the entire mobile phone market by emerging into a near vacuum, creating need and desire in millions of consumers who had no idea they needed or desired what the iPhone had to offer.

Today, some believe the iPhone has become passe based solely on its relative ubiquity across the landscape it both created and has managed to dominate for three years.

Others believe competitors such as Google, Palm and Blackberry have in the meantime produced equally effective, if not superior products that will, over time, equalize the distribution of market share among Apple and its rivals.

Those who have had the luck to play with an iPhone 4 before it’s official June 24th launch have all confirmed that the new handset’s quadruple-density Pixel Display is just as gorgeous as Apple is boasting.

But over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber points out another reason the iPhone 4’s display is so bright, crisp and lurid: a new production process that eliminates the space between the LCD and the touchscreen.