Before the bell 8-2-07: AAPL, DELL, EBAY, GOOG ...

Main market news: Before the bell 8-2-07: Another choppy day

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) has issued a software patch yesterday for the iPhone system to fix some security holes that independent security researchers recently discovered. Also, DigiTimes reports this morning that "sources at Taiwan-based component makers have said iPhone shipments schedules are still on track" and not not seeing any trimming of orders for iPhone.

Dell Inc. (NYSE: DELL) is buying ASAP Software, which provides information technology services to corporations and government organizations, for approximately $340 million to bolster its software business.

StubHub Inc., a unit of eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has hit a home run as it will become the official online ticket reseller for Major League Baseball and the 30 team sites it runs with local franchises.

Another unit of eBay, PayPal, announced a new service PayPal Pay Later. The service will allows online merchants to offer a credit account with flexible financing options such as no payments for 90 days with General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) GE Money Bank. This could help it as it faces increased competition from Google's Checkout and win new users and improve business for merchants that use its service.

Meanwhile Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube was once again blasted over copyright violation from a coalition of Japanese television, music and film companies. The group also expressed skepticism over an automatic video recognition and purging system being developed by Google.

Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) will delay the release of Office 2008 for Apple's Macintosh computers until the middle of January 2008, in order to fix lingering bugs in the software.