Apple has issued cease-and-desist letters to 11 UK online retailers selling iPods imported from outside the country. According to a Channel Register report, the retailers were buying iPods in the US for less than they would pay in the UK, and then reselling them back in their own country. Apple has requested that the retailers stop selling the grey market iPods and provide details of the state-side suppliers that sold them.
Colorware has launched its new “Stealth” matte black iPhone coloring option. The Stealth color option (pictured) is available only on new units ordered through Colorware, and includes the new matte black finish on the back, logo, frame, home button, dock, and earbuds. The Colorware Stealth iPhone is available now and sells for $675 (8GB) and $775 (16GB).
According to a Commercial Times report, Taiwan’s Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. (also known as Foxconn) has been instructed by Apple to begin preparing material supplies for the 3G iPhone by the end of May. Citing sources at foreign institutional investors, the paper says that shipments of the 3G iPhone are expected to top 3 million units in June alone, and will likely reach a total of 24-25 million units by the end of the product’s life cycle. A previous report indicated Hon Hai had been awarded an exclusive contract to build a more advanced iPhone; the company is currently the sole manufacturer of the first-generation iPhone.
A member of the Handbrake forums has released Muxo, a utility for Mac OS X that allows users to add soft subtitles to mp4 files. Soft subtitles, which are supported on both the iPhone and iPod touch, can be turned on and off, instead of being hard-encoded into the video. The tool is currently in the early stages of development (the latest version is 0.3.3), and it requires a valid SRT file. More information can be found in this forum thread; Muxo is available as a free download from this link. [via TUAW]
