Apple has said it is "evaluating" the steps its manufacturing partner, Foxconn, has been taking to address nine of its workers committing suicide.

Foxconn supplies Apple with iPods, iPads and iPhones. It also manufactures equipment for other big technology vendors, such as HP and Dell.

According to reports from an undercover journalist for the Chinese newspaper Southern Weekly, employees at the factory are working under terrible conditions.

Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told Bloomberg that the company has been in contact with Foxconn senior management and is "saddened and upset by the recent suicides at Foxconn".

"We believe they are taking this matter very seriously," he said.

"A team from Apple is independently evaluating the steps they are taking to address these tragic events and we will continue our ongoing inspections of the facilities where our products are made."

Meanwhile, HP told Bloomberg it is currently investigating whether Foxconn's practices caused the deaths.

Today Apple made it official; chief executive Steve jobs will deliver the keynote for this year's World Wide Developer Conference.

That El Jobso would be the one to make the keynote address would suggest that Apple is planning a fairly major announcement. In this case, however, there may not be much of a surprise to the announcement.

Given the recent drama surrounding Apple, much of the planned announcement has likely already been exposed - the recent loss of an iPhone prototype and its subsequent resurfacing on Gizmodo. Among the reported features are a new casing design, a pair of cameras for both video capture and video chat, a longer battery life and a new HD video screen.

Given the outrage over the leak and the effort Apple has put into tracking down and retrieving the iPhone, it's a safe bet that most, if not all of the beans have been spilled. On the other hand, Jobs and company have always been good at keeping secrets, and even if Gizmodo got everything right there's a good chance that WWDC will include more than a couple new features that even well-paid blog leaks couldn't dig up.

A report from the Times of London is grilling Apple over security on iTunes and its handling of iTunes account theft.

In a sense, the report doesn't really point out anything new. iTunes uses the same account recovery system thousands of other online retailers use and it's open to the same types of social engineering vulnerabilities. Additionally, it's no secret that Apple has a less than stellar reputation for customer service and handling of complaints, but what big consumer electronics vendor doesn't?

Really, the article points out a security crisis that affects many online retailers, among the largest of which is iTunes. Given the amount of personal information we regularly post online, it's easier than ever to pull the information necessary to foil the 'account recovery question' system many sites use.

Blocking this attack vector, however, is easier than a lot of others. Sites need to offer more personal recovery questions (i.e. things harder to guess than 'favourite colour') and users need to do a better job of locking down their information on social networking sites. Additionally, the social networks themselves need to keep a close eye on how user data is handled and protected (I'm looking in your direction, Mr. Zuckerberg...)

Yes, Apple's the convenient target in this report, but the underlying issue goes far, far beyond iTunes.

Image via CrunchBase

The blog contains both pictures and a video of the device, which is more or less identical to the one shown a couple of weeks ago by Gizmodo.

Like the last sighting, this handset sports a metal band around the end, smaller volume adjustment buttons and a side-mounted SIM slot. All-in-all, nothing new here, really. The back print says that the device has a 16GB capacity, but we could have guessed that anyways.

V3.co.uk offices are fairly split on the authenticity. The timing of the video along with the screen that never seems to change status is leading some to believe that the whole thing is a hoax intended to bring traffic to a blog and drive up ad revenues. Then again, the device looks an awful lot like the iPhone Gizmodo paid for and if it is a fake, they have certainly put in their time to craft it.

If it's real, Apple is going to be less than pleased at the leak, but given the inevitability of a new iPhone in the next few weeks, I don't think the company is going to lose a ton of sleep over it. The firm that employs whoever it was that leaked the device, however, might just be going into attack mode over the whole thing.

Well, it finally happened. After releasing a dozen or so different devices, the Android platform has finally overtaken Apple, according to a recent NPD North American pole.

Apple is reportedly brushing it off as an inaccurate sampling limited to one market, but it's likely an indication that Android is finally starting to get traction in the market, and that's not necessarily a bad thing for Jobs and company.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while probably know where I'm going with this, but I'll spell it out anyways.

You see, Apple has as of late caught the eye of anti-trust regulators. The recent decision to limit development to Apple-approved platforms caused a stir and brought in the authorities to take a close look at Apple.

And the development issue is only the tip of Apple's "my way or the highway" iceberg. There's of course the App Store, which limits the user to Apple's own retail service. Then there's the fact that Apple updates have a tendency to disable phones that remove those protections.

After that there's the strict and occasionally inconsistent rules regulating what applications get admitted to the App store.

Basically, if it can be proven that Apple is using its weight in the industry to bully developers and users away from the competition, the whole outfit is just one huge anti-trust case waiting to happen.

If Apple can prove that it's not the big force in the market, however, those worries go away. The company has for decades kept strict protections on the Mac that Microsoft would never get away with because of its market share.

In other words, if Apple wants to keep being Apple it had better hope that Android continues to grow and prove that Steve Jobs doesn't control the smartphone world.

It seems we might have the first anti-trust case over Apple's strict new iPhone regulations.

The US Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission have been asked to open a probe into the company's recent decision to limit developer's to only Apple-approved programming tools. The two agencies are both said to be considering action against the company on the grounds that the policy is designed to scare developers away from porting to competing platforms.

The move underscores a harsh new reality that Apple might increasingly find itself facing. The success of the iPhone has taken the company from a likable underdog to the likes of Microsoft and Nokia to a bona fide heavyweight in the market, and with all the headaches that come with it. Once an asset, Apple's strict management of its platforms could become a liability should they be viewed as a controlling force in the market. We all remember what happened to Microsoft with its anti-trust woes, and Apple is far more controlling of its platforms than Redmond ever was.

It also reinforces a point I've long been making: that Apple should be among the biggest supporters of the Android platform. When a company is as into vertical integration and tight management of its platforms as Apple is, they need a major rival or three. Just like the MacOS needs a dominant rival in Windows in order to justify Apple's tight management, the iPhone OS needs major opposition to keep the anti-trust watchdogs at bay.

Once the current anti-trust storm clears, the company needs to either open up with its policies (unlikely) or start rooting for Android, Symbian or another smartphone platform to establish itself as a dominant force.