While the past few days have seen a spy saga of a stolen laptop and a few rapidly recovered stolen iPhones, the story at the Sagemore Apple Store in Marlton, New Jersey is more of your basic "five guys vs. a plate-glass door." A well-organized 2 am robbery at the store netted the team a substantial haul of 23 MacBook Pro laptops, 14 iPhones and nine iPod touch handhelds.

The latest but maybe not-so-crazy-buzz is that Apple has "obtained the rights to offer ready-made ringtones for the iPhone," according to what music industry sources tell CNET News.
For music junkies like myself, this news - if it proves legit - would be huge. Not only could this development amount to some degree of savings, such an offering would now make the iPhone ringtone experience a significantly more convenient one. After all, its easier to look forward to pizza when you know you don't have to cook and and slice it first. Although pizzas and ringtone are difficult to pair in analogies, Apple is making it easier to do so on the heels of this potetial announcement.
Although some critics on more than a few message boards I frequent were quick to deride the alleged "pre-cut ringtone" plan as lame for an Apple event, CNET had the ultimate comeback for such a criticism.
If all we get - in addition to iPod upgrades and an updated iTunes - is a new ringtone regiment, I think that would still make for a lot of happy campers in the Apple fan club.

Apple's worldwide single-carrier exclusivity model for each nation is seen as fleeting, as a new report suggests the iPhone could be available for carriers other than AT&T in the U.S. within a year.

In his latest note to investors, Gene Munster, senior research analyst with Piper Jaffray, takes on 14 "unanswered questions" that surround Apple. They address the company's financial guidance, the iPhone, iTunes, iPods and Apple retail stores. One prediction suggests Apple would add new iPhone carriers in the U.S. with the debut of a new product in the summer of 2010.

"For various reasons the company moved from an exclusive relationship with French wireless carrier Orange to a multi-carrier model," Munster said. "In France, the company now enjoys dramatically higher market share (in the 40 percent range vs. about 15 percent in ROW) than in countries with exclusive carrier agreements (such as AT&T in the U.S. where the iPhone has market share in the mid-teens). We believe Apple is seeing the increased unit sell-through more than offset the slightly (~10 percent) deteriorated economics per unit involved in non-exclusive agreements."