Reuters

BEIJING–Apple Inc said on Tuesday it had launched an online shop selling second-hand Apple products in China, offering discounts of up to 22 percent, as it looks to beef up its business in the country.

These are products that were previously sold and returned to Apple and have undergone quality tests, the company’s website said.

The refurbished products available on Apple’s Chinese website ranged from a 308 yuan ($44) iPod shuffle to an iMac computer costing more than 14,000 yuan ($2,047).

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By Agence France-Presse

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple replaced advice on Wednesday that people install anti-virus software on Macintosh computers with assurances that the machines are safe “out of the box.”

The move prompted online speculation as to whether Apple was merely polishing the Macintosh image or that the increasingly popular computers are as impervious to hackers as the California company maintains.

Apple routinely touts how rarely Macintosh computers are afflicted with malicious software as compared to machines based on Microsoft Windows operating systems, which run more than 90 percent of the computers in the world.

On Tuesday Apple removed a 2007 Knowledge Base posting telling people to install “multiple anti-virus utilities” in Macintosh computers to thwart ill-willed software savants with arrays of defenses.

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Let’s stop talking about the iPhone3G for a minute. Did you get a good look at Steve Jobs at the WWDC Keynote yesterday?

See the pic above: on the left, Steve at the keynote for iPhone 1.0 over a year ago, and on the right, at yesterday’s presentation. They say black mock turtlenecks really are slimming, but this is a bit much.

Ever since he came onstage yesterday at Moscone West, the web has been as much abuzz about Mr. Jobs and how frighteningly thin he’s become since we last saw him as much as the new iPhone itself. Google his name today and you’ll likely get news items like this at the top of the search list.

Jobs came out in 2003 to disclose his ongoing battle with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, which has since been successfully treated, or so he says. It’s hard to tell because, as we all know, Apple and Steve Jobs seem pretty good at keeping secrets.

If something’s amiss with The Steve, it’ll have tremendous impact on the future and direction of Apple, because face it—the man is Apple. More than any other company in recent history, multi-billion dollar Apple Inc. is the one whose fate is most intimately intertwined with the vision of its leader. Let’s hope that he’s just been spending too much time with his Wii Fit balance board thing.

Seriously though, let’s pray that things are all right for Steve Jobs.

As is expected after a keynote address, we have the first of likely several updates to come, probably until the release of the new iPhone on July 11. (I was expecting iTunes to come first, but I was wrong.)

It’s Quicktime 7.5.

As usual, here’s Apple’s detailed and thorough explanation of what’s new: “QuickTime 7.5 improves application compatibility and addresses security issues.”

Hmph.

It’s a 60mb download via Software Update, or through iTunes for Windows users. Restart required.

Video-on-Demand from the Apple site here. Quicktime required.

UPDATE: Now available as a free 1.18gb video podcast download from the iTunes Store.