News has hit digg that Apple receives iPod Touch / iPhone IMEI numbers when someone queries the Calculator, Stocks, or Weather applications on the aforementioned devices. What I am about to tell you might be too harsh, but consider it fueled by the thousands of comments streaming in about “… fanboys justifying this …” and “if Microsoft did this!…”.

Operators of cellphone networks use IMEI numbers, or model-specific serial numbers, to track subscriptions, usage, and identity of devices on the network. It’s in the specification for GSM and UMTS. You IMEI is transmitted at every communication with every cell tower in your vicinity. And now people are crying wolf that Apple might or might not service you Weather and Stocks if your IMEI number isn’t valid? Ladies and gentlemen, this is a standard part of a standardized specification that is over 20 years old. Get over it.

Very nice new feature of iTunes 7.5, which perhaps the new 1.1.2 iPhone update will also address;

I have always been a huge fan of Apple’s battery indicator art (no, this is not a joke, I find them genuinely impressive icons) and these ‘sidebar-styled’ icons don’t deviate from the norm. I’m just keeping my fingers crossed to see this in the next update of the iPhone / iPod Touch. Via iLounge’s full writeup on new iTunes 7.5 features.

Quicktime and iTunes were just updated over at Apple.com. The upgrade’s new features aren’t revealed, but I am sure it will address some changes necessary for the iPhone 1.1.2 firmware.

T3 got their hands on an iPhone carrying the 1.1.2 firmware and posted a picture gallery; if the images are in any way reliable, there’s not a lot of changes apart from International language support. A bit of a bummer, if you ask me, if the update would echo in just a few extra keyboards and plug up some exploits.

Via T3:

First off, there’s support for dozens of languages, so if you happen to be a fluent Cantonese speaker, the phone has all the relevant character sets so you can display your language properly.

There’s full support for French and German, with special keyboard lay-outs on the ready to tackle accented characters – perfectly understandable, of course, what with the phone heading for launch across the channel this month too.

This is very good news for people like me, who crave the iPod Touch’s “languages” button to switch autocompletion dictionaries to Dutch, German, or whatever you may need. I hope we’ll see a hack for this firmware soon.