If there’s one thing that this writer loves, it’s reporting on rumors. It’s fun to speculate and get excited about something, when you’re not sure if it’s even true or not. Of course this can come back to bite you, as I reported on the “iTunes Unlimited Download Service” that ended up being false. But aslong as the rumors pop up, I’m going to write about them.

The newest rumor comes by way of an AT&T employee memo. BoyGeniusReport, is reporting that AT&T has told their employees, that a vacation freeze would occur between June 15th – July 12th, for an exciting new product release. All signs as of right now point to the exciting new release being, the 3G iPhone. Mossberg, awhile back, stated that the 3G iPhone would be releasing by June. So if this rumor does turn out to be true, then it wouldn’t turn out to be a total surprise. But it might be a little earlier to get our hopes up as well, as this could turn out to be another “Unlimited Download Service” rumor.

It looks as though one of the first major virus scanners is seeing life on the iPhone. McAfee has quite un-officially released the, “iVirusScan“, which can be used by the iPhone, or the iPod Touch. As of now McAfee hasn’t made an official announcement of the anti-virus program release.

Just like other anti-virus programs, with the iVirusScan, you can do a full scan of your contents, download updates, and adjust settings.

In a report, from iPodNN, one user got an official response from a McAfee representative stating, “The application you blogged about is indeed a genuine McAfee project…We are always working on new platforms including the popular ones. In this particular case we were running a test to validate some recently developed technology. We happen to be first to test AV technology for iPhone. We’re happy that iPhone users are already getting excited about it, as evidenced by your blog and the thousands of people who are trying out the application. Still, we are not ready to announce a new product, our development work is in the early stages.”

Benchmarking is a term that most people that are “in the know” look out for. I like to think I’m one of those people, so I was very interested to check out how the newer iMac models tested. Primate Labs has provided the numbers of the new models, which has conjured up some interesting results. They used the Geekbench 2, to test each machine. All of the machines were used right out of box, with no upgrades, and at the default config.

These numbers above represent the overall score of each of the iMac models. Here are a couple of more “categorized” benchmark scores.

While the technical aspects of a machine are important, it’s just as important to know what kind of deal you’re getting. Luckily, Primate Labs also provided a “Cost Per Point” graph, showing which model was the best “deal”. They took the cost of each iMac and divided it by their Geekbench score. Going by this graph (the lowest number being the best), it looks as though the best deal is the base model. Although Primate Labs didn’t take into account the hard drive space, and video card each unit comes with.

The movie portion of the iTune’s store just a got a significant update to its movie section. It was announced by Apple today that new releases would be launching “same-day” as their dvd counterparts. This news definitely looks to bolster the credibility of purchasing and renting movies from iTunes.

In a press release, iTunes announced that most of the major studios and some independents are signed on, 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Lionsgate, Image Entertainment and First Look Studios.

Eddy Cue, the Vice President of iTunes shared his thoughts on the announcement, “We’re thrilled to bring iTunes Store customers new films for purchase day-and-date with the DVD release”, “We think movie fans will love being able to buy their favorites from major and independent studios”.

Here is the pricing structure of films you can download on iTunes:
$9.99 (US) – Library Title Purchases
$14.99 (US) – New Releases
$2.99 (US) – Library Title Rentals
$3.99 (US) – New Release Rentals
$3.99 (US) – HD Library Title Rentals
$4.99 (US) – HD New Release Rentals