As noted by 9to5Mac , the latest developer build of OS X Mountain Lion released last week sets the stage for bringing iOS-like automatic app downloads to Mac App Store purchases. Like on the iPhone and iPad, when you buy and install an app on one of your Macs, all of your other Macs logged into the same App Store account will automatically install the app too

China Daily reports that Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn continues to expand its operations in support of Apple's strong growth in product sales, investing $210 million to build a new production line for unspecified components. The new production line is said to be set to come on line in October of this year and will be located in the Chinese city of Huai'an in the eastern province of Jiangsu

Apple today pushed out another update to its OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion developer preview program, moving to build 12A206j. The update comes on top of build 12A193i, which was released on May 1

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't visit Valve headquarters according to company co-founder Gabe Newell. The rumor , originally reported by AppleInsider , was squashed by Newell in a podcast interview. Video game website Kotaku had a preview of the podcast from Seven Day Cooldown that included this quote: We actually, we all sent mail to each other, going, "Who's Tim Cook meeting with

Back in January, blogger Seattle Rex announced that he would be suing Apple over issues related to his 2008 MacBook Pro that appears to have suffered from an NVIDIA graphics card failure . According to Rex, the graphics chip on his top-of-the-line 17-inch MacBook Pro began to flake out late last year, two months after his AppleCare extended warranty expired, and a month later the machine died completely, refusing to boot.

Marking the first significant piece of data to help build a picture of Apple's quarterly iPhone sales numbers ahead of next week's earnings release, Verizon today announced its own earnings results for the first quarter of 2012, revealing during the associated conference call that it activated 3.2 million iPhones during the quarter. The number is down from 4.3 million iPhones in the previous quarter, which was part of Apple's record-setting launch quarter for the iPhone 4S that saw the company sell 37 million iPhones worldwide. Analysts are generally expecting Apple's iPhone sales for the first calendar quarter of 2012 to be down slightly from that 37 million number, and Verizon's results certainly support that belief, at least in the United States

As noted by Macgasm , Apple has begun notifying at least some MobileMe users of a new upgrade program offering a free copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

Facebook has announced it is buying the extremely popular photography app-maker Instagram for a reported $1 billion . Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in a blog post today: For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests

Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White has released a new research report today outlining some of the takeaways from a recent trip to Asia to talk with companies in Apple's supply chain. According to White, chatter from those suppliers is pointing toward a larger 4-inch screen on the iPhone 5, which will also include a redesign bringing a "new, sleek look". In our view, this will be the most significant iPhone upgrade with a four-inch screen and a new, sleek look that we believe will require a Unibody case.

9to5Mac claims that Apple is internally testing new iPhone hardware that is based on a variant of the A5X system-on-a-chip used in the new iPad, with the company disguising the hardware in existing iPhone 4/4S bodies in order to keep its potential plans for a new form factor a secret. Much like they did last year, Apple has internally seeded a prototype next-generation iPhone with the iPhone 4 design.