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Apple today released Safari 5.1.2, bringing several bug fixes and other enhancements. Most notably, it addresses issues with PDF viewing and pages “flashing white”.

This update contains various improvements, including fixes that:

- Improve stability

- Address issues that could cause hangs and excessive memory usage

- Address issues that could cause webpages to flash white

- Allow PDFs to be displayed within web content

Apple seeded a version of Safari 5.1.2 to developers for testing earlier this month.

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Dow Jones Newswires reports that Apple has filed a request for a preliminary injunction that would bar Samsung from selling its new Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Germany. Samsung launched the 10.1N earlier this month as a design-tweaked variant of the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 that is already barred from sale in Germany under an earlier injunction.

Apple has requested a preliminary injunction, and the Duesseldorf regional court has scheduled a hearing on the matter on Dec. 22, a spokesman for the court told Dow Jones Newswires on Tuesday.

The move has no effect on sales and distribution of the product, Samsung said in an emailed statement, while Apple repeated earlier comments that it intends to protect its intellectual property.

Samsung slightly tweaked the design of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 hardware to create the 10.1N, resulting in a frame that wraps around slightly onto the front of the device along its two short sides. Apple clearly feels that this design is not sufficient to overcome the ruling that the Galaxy Tab design infringes upon Apple’s designs for the iPad, and is thus pursuing the new injunction.

Galaxy Tab 10.1N (top) vs. Galaxy Tab 10.1 (bottom)

Meanwhile, FOSS Patents confirms that Apple’s initial injunction awarded against the Galaxy Tab in Germany does in fact cover all three announced sizes of the device: 10.1, 8.9, and 7.7. Apple cites that injunction in a filing in its U.S. case against Samsung, illustrating how the company is using its string of wins over Samsung in international courts to bolster its U.S. case.

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The Daily reports that Microsoft is “actively working” on bringing its Microsoft Office suite to the iPad, looking to take on Apple’s iWork applications for the popular tablet device. The report also says that Microsoft is working on a updated Office for Mac suite, with the new version said to be targeted for a Mac App Store release sometime next year.

According to sources, the tech giant is actively working on adapting its popular software suite for Apple’s tablet. With the iPad making up over 80 percent of the tablet market and millions of people worldwide using Office, that could mean big bucks for the tech giant based in Redmond, Wash.

In addition to an iPad-ready version, a new edition of Office is expected for OS X Lion sometime next year. The current version of the desktop package, Office 2011, officially supports [Mac OS X] versions up to Snow Leopard. A Lion version, likely available via the Mac App Store, is widely expected.

Microsoft acknowledged just after the iPad’s introduction in early 2010 that the company was “looking at” the possibility of bringing Office to the iPad, but by the time the device actually launched a few months later the company was saying that it had “no current plans” for such an offering.

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Fortune summarizes a pair of analyst reports out today suggesting that Apple may be experiencing some supply constraints on the iPhone 4S during this holiday quarter. The company has obviously been working hard to demand for the device as shipping estimates through iPhone carrier partners and even Apple itself have at times been lengthy, but beyond high demand the new reports suggest that Apple may be having some trouble meeting its own production goals for the device.

The first report, from Rodman and Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar, cites shortages of an unidentified “key component” for the iPhone 4S that is holding back production.

In a note entitled “Limited near-term upside for iPhone,” Rodman & Renshaw’s Ashok Kumar alerted clients that low yields on an unidentified “key component” is likely to constrain production of the iPhone 4S this quarter.

Including an estimated four million iPhone 4S units that were manufactured but not shipped in the prior quarter, Kumar says that Apple could sell 30 million iPhones this quarter, still a healthy number but leaving Apple without the ability to completely satisfy consumer demand.

The second note comes from Susquehanna Financial’s Jeff Fidacaro and similarly cites “supply constraints” as the reason behind his reduction in quarterly iPhone sales of about three million units, moving from 26-28 million units to 23-25 million units. He notes that demand appears to remain strong but that Apple is having a hard time producing enough iPhones to meet that demand.

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Tether has issued a statement explaining its interpretation of Apple’s removal of the iTether app from the App Store, hours after it went on sale. Apple, which has not had any public comment about the app, explained to Tether that the data use resulting from the app was too burdensome to carrier networks.

Around 12PM EST, Apple called our head office to let us know they were going to go ahead and pull our app iTether from the App Store. They stated it was because the app itself burdens the carrier network, however they offered us no way to remedy the solution… We were very clear when listing the app what the primary function was and they even followed up with several questions and requested a video demo then they approved the application.

We strongly disagree that it burdens a carrier’s network, as from our own data history on more than 500,000 users we know the average user consumes less than 200 MBs of data per month on Tether. In comparison, one TV show streamed from Netflix, an approved Apple App, could easily be in the 300-400 MBs range. Sure, there are some users that will consume way more than the average however that’s the case with any of these types of products.

Our team is very disappointed in Apple’s decision; as we strongly believe we help carriers better monetize their data stream by pushing customers into new data tiers further increasing their bottom-line. It is very anti-competitive to not allow any Tethering application to enter into this space to innovate. Our team has created a lot of innovative solutions for the BlackBerry product, which we were hoping to port over to the iPhone like end-to-end encryption, compression, website filtering and port filtering.

According to Apple, users who purchase iTether before it was pulled will continue to be able to use the product.

Our team is evaluating all of our options… Stay tuned.

Tether’s website has been slow and unresponsive since the app launched last night.

Thanks Victor.

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Just hours after becoming the top-grossing app on the App Store, tethering app iTether has been removed by Apple. The $14.99 app, which went live on the App Store last night, allowed users to share their iPhone’s internet connection with their Mac or PC computer over USB. With iTether, users could bypass a $20/month service offered by cellular providers for tethering services.

In 2008, Apple briefly approved another tethering app called Netshare but, as with iTether, quickly pulled it from the App Store. The approval of iTether may have been an oversight by Apple, but there has been no official word yet on the reason for the removal. As in the case of Netshare, it should continue to work for those who bought it before it was pulled.

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Late last week, The New York Times took a look at Apple’s retail store software for responding to customer requests for assistance, offering a relatively rare public glimpse of one of the company’s internal applications.

The internal app responds to both assistance requests from the iPads that serve as information displays at products on the sales floor and notifications from customers who have placed advance orders for pickup and then signaled their arrival by launching the Apple Store iOS app.

The iPod Touches of Apple employees show these customer requests and give employees the option to respond to them. The app then shows an illustration of the shopping floor and highlights the customer’s location in red.

According to the Apple retail employee who demonstrated the app’s capabilities, sixteen customers had used the functionality to pick up orders at the Palo Alto store that day, only a tiny portion of the total customer load for the busy Black Friday shopping day. But Apple has reportedly indicated that it eventually expects a majority of its retail store customers to eventually take advantage of the new services such as in-store pickup and self-checkout using the company’s iOS app.

This feature allows shoppers to ask for assistance when they feel comfortable doing so, unlike in other retail stores where customers are hounded by employees eager to make a sale, [retail store employee Diego] Aguirre said.

“It’s more toward customer experience,” Mr. Aguirre said. “We don’t want to feel like we’re hassling our customers to shop. We want them to feel at home.”

Apple has been working hard to build out capacity to meet customer load at its retail stores, which rank among the most profitable retail sales locations in the world. In recent years the company has been putting a significant focus on building larger, more iconic stores and also building out its international retail presence. But with the retail chain’s oldest stores now approaching ten years old, the company is also looking to replace or renovate a number of these stores in order to keep up with the company’s continued growth in popularity.

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Research in Motion (RIM), seeking to stabilize its enterprise business amid continued challenges from iOS and Android, today announced a new package of enterprise tools known as Mobile Fusion designed to support a broad range of devices at the corporate level.

“We are pleased to introduce BlackBerry Mobile Fusion – RIM’s next generation enterprise mobility solution – to make it easier for our business and government customers to manage the diversity of devices in their operations today,” said Alan Panezic, Vice President, Enterprise Product Management and Marketing at Research In Motion. “BlackBerry Mobile Fusion brings together our industry-leading BlackBerry Enterprise Server technology for BlackBerry devices with mobile device management capabilities for iOS and Android devices, all managed from one web-based console. It provides the necessary management capabilities to allow IT departments to confidently oversee the use of both company-owned and employee-owned mobile devices within their organizations.”

Mobile Fusion will provide corporate customers with an array of device management tools, including centralized remote locking and/or wiping of lost devices and enforcement of password requirements.

Apple offers a number of enterprise tools and capabilities for iOS to help companies manage their device deployments, but cross-platform device management services such as RIM’s Mobile Fusion target increasingly diverse mobile deployments as companies offer their employees new levels of flexibility in choosing their mobile platforms.

RIM has long been a leader in business mobile platforms, but has been losing ground to iOS and Android as those platforms have caught on with both consumers and enterprise customers. With Apple also gaining traction in enterprise markets with the iPad, RIM has tried to respond with new devices including its PlayBook tablet device, but has so far been unable to slow the momentum of iOS and Android. The company’s new Mobile Fusion tools, which are in early beta testing now and scheduled for public launch in March, demonstrate that diversification in enterprise and highlight RIM’s efforts to hold on to its relevancy in its key markets.

iOS 5.1 Beta seems to be a treasure trove of product ids with the exposure of the iPad 2,4 and the J33 codename for the next generation Apple TV. The latest part number to come from iOS 5.1 is the iPhone 5,1 as noted by both @FilippoBiga and 9to5Mac.

The progression of iPhone product numbers are as follows:

iPhone1,1 – Original iPhone

iPhone1,2 – iPhone 3G

iPhone2,1 – iPhone 3GS

iPhone3,1 – iPhone 4

iPhone4,1 – iPhone 4S

iPhone5,1 clearly represents the next generation iPhone that Apple is working on. Rumors have suggested the next iPhone will carry a 4″ screen rather than the usual 3.5″ screen found in all previous iPhone models. The new iPhone is also believed to have been prototyped with a tapering design in the past, though the most recent rumors suggest the actual release iPhone will not resemble the mockups.

The iPad3,2 reference has been previously seen though iPad3,3 appears new.

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Tether.com has somehow gotten App Store approval for their iPhone companion application “iTether”. The $14.99 App Store app allows users to share their iPhone’s internet connection with their Mac or PC computer over USB.

Tether is an application that allows your Mac and PC to take advantage of your smartphone’s data plan, providing you access to the Internet on your laptop anywhere there is cellular coverage from your smartphone.

Tether is easy to install, easy to use, works practically anywhere, and is very cost-effective.

To download the PC software visit:

http://tether.com/i/Tether-iPhone.exe

To download the Mac software visit:

http://tether.com/i/Tether-iPhone.dmg

Tether offers companion applications for the Mac and PC. Mac version shown here:

Running both apps on your iPhone and your Mac allows your Mac to use your iPhone’s internet connection over a USB cable (no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth support). Apple has traditionally not allowed such applications to become available on the App Store due to agreements with carriers.

Back in 2008, Apple briefly approved another tethering app called Netshare but quickly pulled it from the App Store. Instead, users have been expected to pay additional fees to U.S. carriers such as AT&T and Verizon who offer tethering as an add-on service for $20/month. The approval of iTether may have been inadvertent by Apple again and could be pulled at any time. It is presently available in the App Store for $14.99. As in the case of Netshare, if Apple does pull the app from the App Store, it should continue to work for those who bought it.

Tether offers a similar app for both BlackBerry and Android platforms and has been reviewed in the NYTimes and Entrepreneur.com.

We should note that excessive unauthorized tethering has previously resulted in warnings from AT&T to users about their usage. In many of these examples, however, the unauthorized use was dramatic and on unlimited plans. Still, it is good to be aware of that possibility. [App Store Link]

[via 9to5Mac]

Update: Tether’s website is presently down due to the traffic, which means you can’t download the Mac/PC apps and it also appears the iOS app verifies with Tether.com on each run, so it won’t work while the main website is down.

Update 2: Tether claims “We were very clear with Apple what our app did. They asked us a bunch of questions and then approved us.” So it may not be getting pulled.

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