Google today announced its long-awaited Google Drive cloud storage service, providing users with 5GB of free storage integrated with Google Docs and other Google services.

Philip Elmer-Dewitt has put together his list of analyst expectations ahead of Apple's quarterly earnings report this afternoon. The list includes estimates from 23 "independent" analysts and 34 "affiliated" analysts who work for large investment houses or research organizations. As usual, the independent analysts are much more bullish than the affiliated analysts.

1Password is a popular password service which offers apps and browser plug-ins for a number of platforms, including Mac, Windows, iOS and Android. The service automatically generates strong, unique passwords whenever a login is needed, keeping them in a keychain under a master password.

Research analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has in the past offered accurate information on Apple's Mac product roadmap, recently took on a new position with KGI Securities and has published a new report today indicating that Apple may be preparing to drop the 17-inch MacBook Pro from its lineup due to weak sales.

There have been few updates in the "iPad" trademark dispute between Apple and Proview over the past couple of months, but IDG News now reports that the two companies are engaged in settlement talks with an eye toward resolving the issue. Ma Dongxiao, a lawyer representing the Chinese company Proview, said on Friday the talks were happening, but declined to offer details.

As announced earlier this week, Apple today began selling the new iPad in twelve new countries: Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, South Korea, Saint Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela.

광역

Qualcomm yesterday warned analysts that it is experiencing supply issues with some of its advanced mobile phone chips, particularly its new 28-nm modem chips set to power the next wave of LTE devices. "At this stage we cannot secure enough supply to meet the increasing demand we are experiencing," Chief Executive Paul Jacobs told analysts on a conference call, adding that the issue would limit revenue growth this year.

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

Just over a month after the arrival of the previous build , Apple today seeded registered members of the Mac Developer Program with the third developer preview version of OS X Mountain Lion. The new version arrives as Build 12A178q, up from the earlier 12A154q version. Changes included in the new version have yet to be discovered, but those with access to the build will undoubtedly be searching for Apple's latest tweaks as the company continues to work on the next-generation operating system.