Local police have confirmed that a 26-year-old female Apple Store employee has been shot in an armed robbery that occurred at the Apple Store Clarendon in Arlington, Virginia, in the back service entrance. The suspect has been said to rang a doorbell at the service entrance and shot the employee as she opened the door.

The employee suffered a wound to her right shoulder, and was sent to hospital where she is now in a stable condition, but her injuries have not been considered as life-threatening.

The Washington Post has said that only two employees were at the store, with the other employee calling the police after hearing the gunshot. The robbery happened 15 minutes after the store opened, at 10:15 am, with thirty or so customers inside the store and at least a dozen employees inside, according to a customer talking to the newspaper.

According to WTTG5, a Fox affiliate, the suspect has been said to be a “skinny black male in beige clothing. They say he may have had a fake beard.” He is also said to be between the ages of 35 and 45, wearing a dark baseball cap, and fled on foot.

Any person with information about the shooting or the suspect is asked to call the police.

Security footage may be released to aide the investigation in the shooting.

George Hotz (geohot) has announced that he has successfully found a way to jailbreak the iPhone 3GS, following his success to be the first person to successfully unlock the original iPhone, right before the iPhone Dev Team releasing their jailbreak, after the team decided to put their jailbreak on hold for the iPhone 3.1 update.

“Normally I don't make tools for the general public, and rather wait for the dev team to do it. But guys, whats up with waiting until 3.1? That isn't how the game is played,” he wrote in a blog post. “We release, Apple fixes, we find new holes. It isn’t worth waiting because you might have the ‘last’ hole in the iPhone. What last hole… this isn’t golf.”

The new process, called “purplera1n”, is currently Windows-only – except for Windows 7, so those running on a Mac won’t be able to get it (without the need of virtualisation software like Parallels, but we don’t know if this works or not). As well, this is IN BETA – meaning that BACKUP everything that you have on the iPhone before running this; and that it will not free you from your carrier.

Other requirements include that you need the latest iTunes installed and iPhone OS 3 (which should be pre-installed in your iPhone 3GS).

You can read the instructions in the blog post announcing this, and also you can find where to get it at the “purplera1n” website.

Apple is working round the clock in fixing a security hole in the iPhone operating system that could allow an attacker to remotely have root access to the device and install and run unsigned software code that could potentially allow your iPhone to be part of a botnet.

The new security hole was found by Charles Miller, security researcher and co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook, at the SySan Conference in Singapore, according to a report by Computerworld. He, however, has left no description on the attack, citing an agreement with Apple not to disclose it.

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Apple Inc. has released the iPhone SDK and Firmwire 3.1 Beta to iPhone Developer Standard or Enterprise Program participants. There were few details to the seeded developers. This comes just a few weeks after after the official release of the iPhone OS 3.0.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and the chief executive, has returned to work on Monday after a five-month leave of absence for his medical problems, which included a liver transplant, in January of this year; according to the New York Times and Bloomberg.

“Steve is back to work,” says Apple’s spokesman Steve Dowling, “We are very glad to have him back.”

Jobs will be at work for a few days a week, and will be working at home for the rest of the time when he is not in the office. However, his return is set to reassure investors after claims that he was too sick to continue as the current CEO.

Jobs was at the office today, however, he still declines to comment on his liver transplant, or more information about the health of Steve Jobs.

Its share price fell 47 cents in the NASDAQ stock exchange at 4 pm (New York time), but its stock price have jumped up 65 percent this year, mainly attributed to Tim Cook, the Chief Operating Officer and the interim Chief Executive during Jobs’ absence.

Image from: Marcopako/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs is said to have had a liver transplant in Tennessee two months ago after leaving Apple in January for an undisclosed medical condition after recent photos showed him losing a lot of weight, according to a new report by the Wall Street Journal.

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TECHGEEK.com.au can reveal that the iPhone 3GS is now heading to Australia a week after the launch of the new phone’s launch on June 19. The phone, which is expected to be on Optus, Telstra and Vodafone’s networks (the three original carriers of the iPhone), will be heading down under on June 26.

The phone is the successor to the iPhone 3G, but will not be replacing it – except for the 16GB version, as a 16GB version of the iPhone 3GS will succeed that. The iPhone 3GS will also come with a 32GB version. You can find more information on our post about the phone.

IN BRIEF: At its WWDC conference, Apple has announced a pricing change to its MacBook Air laptop. The thin notebook will now have a new entry-level pricetag of US$1,499 for a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a 120GB hard drive and NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics; and its 128SSD model with a 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and same graphics card will now cost US$1,799.