Rumor Mill: What's next from Apple (updated)

Hey there, it's Jake. It's Friday, which means it's time to round up the latest Mac rumors.

Earlier today my brother Jason reported that Salesforce.com is rumored to be dumping all their 4,000 PCs for Macs for "security reasons." Salesforce.com's stock (NYSE: CRM) popped yesterday on rumors that it may be acquired by Google.

RegHardware and Engadget are reporting that the 8GB iPhone is now "End-of-Life" (EOL) in the U.K. O2 and Carphone Warehouse dropped the price of the 8GB iPhone and are out of stock. More signs of the 3G model, or perhaps a bump to 32GB?

Speaking of iPhone 3G: Richard Gardner and Yeechang Lee at Citi say they believe Steve Jobs will announce it during his keynote at WWDC on 09 June 2008 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Now that's going out on a limb. I think it'll be a preview only with units to ship "within 30 days."

Mobile phone-related:

• T-Mobile confirms that it'll ship mobile phones based on Google's Android OS in the fourth quarter.
• After a report that Comcast will no longer offer Sprint’s wireless service, GigaOM reports that the cable giant hired the former CTO of Telefonica O2 Europe, Dave Williams, as the SVP of wireless and technology strategy to “explore wireless options” for Comcast.

GeekSugar claims that iMac speed-bumps are coming next week. And by "speed bumps" they mean Apple's usual m.o.: faster CPUs, larger drives, more RAM for the same prices. MacRumors notes that GeekSugar correctly predicted MacBook and MacBook Pros in the final hours leading into the last update.

And what's the deal with Apple's acquisition of chip designer P.A. Semi for US$278 million? It's not for their chips, apparently. EETimes (via MacRumors) states that P.A. Semi's been telling their customers that Apple is "not interested in the startup's products or road map, but is buying the company for its intellectual property and engineering talent." Hmmm...

Update:  Toshiba expects to quadruple the capacity of their solid-state drives (SSDs) to 512GB in the foreseeable future (as soon as 2009) while cutting their production costs, according to chief Shozo Saito at an IDEMA seminar in Japan.

Apple's virtual shopping world patent looks patently absurd to me. Personally I don't want to shop at a Web site that looks like Second Life – or any game for that matter. But then again, Apple's been applying their CoverFlow purchase to just about everything these days so I guess that anything's possible.

Check out the other rumors I've been covering, since Apple hasn't announced much lately, they still stand too.