The countdown is on.

It’s New Year’s Eve and folks are either getting ready to go out and party or assembling a junk food fest to sit on the couch and gorge the night away, but it’s guaranteed that almost everyone will have their eyes locked on Time Square’s Ball when the clock strikes midnight. Instead of watching this year’s countdown on television, however, just use an iPhone.

The Times Square Official New Year’s Eve Ball App is the official app to celebrate New Year’s Eve live from New York City, as the app’s description indicates, and it’s free. The main features include the ability to watch the co-hosted official show live, opening ceremonies, musical performances, celebrity appearances, hourly countdowns, and the midnight Ball Drop.

Check it out:

• Times Square Official New Year’s Eve Ball App – 2013 | Free

Users can also submit images and then vote on friends’ photos to possibly be selected for display on the Toshiba Vision Screen beneath the New Year’s Eve Ball, and they have access to tidbits related to history, news, weather, photos, map, and event schedule. The app also offers New Year’s Eve eCards and the ability to customize the Toshiba Countdown Clock with a personal photo and time zone.

Get more apps and deals below.

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From 9to5toys:

As a special offer to close out the year, Apple is offering the bestselling albums of 2012 on iTunes for $6.99. The promotion is running from Dec. 31 to Jan. 3 only and includes some pretty nice offerings for you hip music listeners in the crowd:

• Babel – Mumfurd & Sons
  
• good kid, m.A.A.d city – Kendrick Lamar
• The World from the Side of the Moon – Phillip Phillips
• The Heist – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
• Take Me Home – One Direction
• Believe – Justin Bieber
• Dreams and Nightmares – Meek Mill
• Warrior – Ke$ha

12 Days of Christmas Day 6:

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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GG2Wn2dm5-4″]

Since the removal of YouTube, and Maps as preloaded Google apps within iOS, Google has been especially adept at developing its own set of iOS apps. We previously detailed how Google wants to own the iOS ecosystem on the apps level, providing users with an alternative universe to most of the core features of Apple’s mobile operating system. It appears Google now has a dedicated iOS app team which builds cohesive apps rather than having each business unit build its own apps.
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2012 was an incredibly prolific year for Apple in terms of products and company-related changes including being the first year without Steve Jobs at the helm. In line with Apple’s big year, 2012 was also a significant year for 9to5Mac’s leadership in digging up information on Apple products. As we close this year and transition into 2013, we have compiled our most important and popular stories of 2012…

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In September, we noted some statistics from the NYPD that claimed Apple-related crimes were increasing 10 times the 4 percent increase other crime in the city was experiencing. Today, New York City Michael Bloomberg is once again pointing to thefts of iPhones and iPads as the cause of the increase in the city’s annual crime index (via The New York Times):

Crime in New York City inched up this year, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Friday fingered the culprit: too many iPhones and iPads were being swiped.

As of Monday, the Police Department recorded 3,484 more crimes than for the same period last year. A full breakdown of the year’s crime statistics was not immediately available, but city officials were quick to focus on the Apple figure. The increase in Apple product thefts: 3,890.

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” said Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary.

Digitimes expects Apple to unveil refreshed MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models in June 2013. The report claims that Apple has already issued requests to its supply chain partners to prepare to build the revised notebooks. Digitimes frames the news as concern for Ultrabook vendors.

Digitimes also says that the new MacBook Air models will include new processors, but the computers will likely retain the current industrial design. The current MacBook Air design was introduced with the late 2010 model. Apple last updated the MacBook Airs in June 2012 with faster processors, new RAM and storage options, USB 3.0, and a FaceTime HD camera.

Separately, the report also believes that current MacBook Air models could see price drops ahead of the product refresh, but this would be unlike Apple’s typical Mac upgrade strategy. Apple’s common Mac update strategy is to succeed a current Mac model with the refreshed version without providing official price drops ahead of these refreshes.

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As users powered on their new iOS devices and received iTunes gift cards on Christmas day, a strong surge of app downloads obviously followed. According to analytic firm Distimo, App Store downloads increased a whopping 87 percent on Christmas Day, compared to the rest of December 2012. With the increased downloads, revenue consequently rose 70 percent. Interestingly, the iPad and iPad mini seemed to be the most popular iOS gift given, as downloads and revenues rose by 140 percent and 83 percent, respectively.

Distmo also looked at the most downloaded applications from the App Store on Christmas day. They included Google’s standalone YouTube app and the recently released Apple Maps alternative Google Maps at the top. Other top downloads, excluding Apple’s in-house apps like iWork, included: ElfYourself by OfficeMax, Where’s My Holiday?, and Skype for iPad. The numbers that will give us a real look at how iOS device sales were during the Christmas quarter will be during Apple’s January earnings call with investors, where record sales are expected.

Competitor Amazon, who doesn’t like to give hard numbers, detailed some of its shopping statistics for the holiday season. The Seattle-based online retailer said that Christmas day brought the busiest day ever for digital downloads of movies, TV shows, apps, and more. The Angry Bird fans were also busy with purchases, as Angry Birds plush toys would stack up to 285 times the height of the world’s tallest tree in California. Research firm Flurry also detailed that Christmas 2012 saw the highest amount of activated gadgets than any other day in history.

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[tweet https://twitter.com/jonveal/status/284257950065897472]

Several 9to5Mac readers, most of which are located in the United Kingdom, reported that movies and TV shows have oddly disappeared from the Apple TV menu. A thread on Apple’s Support forums confirmed many users are now experiencing the issue.

While the problem originally appeared to only affect users located in the U.K., more reports on Twitter, as highlighted in the selection of tweets below, from New York, France, Ireland, and Australia further confirmed missing icons. One user on Apple support forums claimed Apple informed him the icons would be restored soon and that the stores continue to work in the U.S. and Luxembourg:

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In June, we told you about BlueStacks. It is a tool that allows Android apps to run on a Mac. The alpha only officially supported 17 Android apps, with Pulse and Words with Friends being the two of the more notable apps at launch, but the application has improved immensely. As Venture Beat first noted, BlueStacks has moved into beta this morning. It now allows users to run every Android app that the Google Play store has to offer. Some may be puzzled at the need to run a mobile application on the desktop, but it does come in use for apps like Instagram and Flipboard that have no desktop equivalent. BlueStacks reminds us a lot of Parallels or VM Ware, and it definitely becomes more useful with the added apps.

As of earlier this month, the Silicon Valley-based company passed 5 million installs on both Windows and Mac. BlueStacks also plans an even more impressive growth with partners AMD and ASUS, as TechCrunch noted, where the software would be pre-installed on over 100 million devices. Upcoming features include an App Discovery system in the Mac app to make it easier for users to find apps. Interested? You can download the beta from BlueStacks.

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[youtube=”http://youtu.be/JtcQMFeNeTw]

In January 2012, The New York Times published a lengthy report covering the problems with Foxconn’s plants in China. The piece caused uproar, and it pushed Apple to perform its own audit in the factories that make its products and work to address the issues the audit found. Close to a year after publishing its first report, the New York Times has followed up with a second piece that found working conditions are getting better. One of the first steps was in March, when top Apple executives met with Foxconn executives to reduce worker hours and increase wages in 2013. This is said to create a ripple effect that will benefit the entire manufacturing industry.

Past wages and hours, changes are also coming about within the plant. According to the New York Times, new safety measures like automatic shut-off devices and protective foam are now in place to protect workers when doing their difficult jobs of assembling various Apple products. The piece told a story of one worker receiving a wooden, sturdy chair more comfortable on her back than the green plastic stool she once used. Apple also tripled the staff at its California headquarters to ensure safe working conditions across the world.

The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.

Earlier this year, CEO Tim Cook spoke a lot about worker safety while changes were underway. “We insist that our manufacturing partners follow Apple’s strict code of conduct, and to make sure they do, the Supplier Responsibility team led more than 200 audits at facilities throughout our supply chain last year,” said Cook in an email. “These audits make sure that working conditions are safe and just, and if a manufacturer won’t live up to our standards, we stop working with them.” Subsequently, Apple issued a statement to the New York Times this week on the recent changes:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Brfr7–6ESc]

A new iPhone app released just before Christmas provides a new spin on the panoramic, 360-degree video app, of which there are many competitors in the App Store. Normally, shooting 360-degree video would require the help of a hardware peripheral, such as the GoPano micro, or some crafty manual handwork to maneuver the device 360 degrees. With the new Cycloramic app from Egos Ventures, the iPhone will self-spin around by vibrating at certain frequencies. This allows you to capture hands-free, 360-degree video without a tripod or stand. The video above speaks for itself.

The developers warned the iPhone must be placed upright on a flat, hard surface without a case or stand. They also noted the iPhone 4s “will only turn very slowly on perfectly level glass. This is really designed for iPhone 5.”

The Cycloramic app is available for 99 cents on the App Store now, and you’ll find some demo videos from the developer’s YouTube page below. There’s even one of Woz trying out the app in his kitchen:

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Apple filed documents today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to announce the next annual shareholder meeting held at the company’s headquarters on Feb. 27, 2013.

The proxy statement revealed CEO Tim Cook’s compensation in 2012 equaled less than $4.2 million, but it also detailed six proposals shareholders would vote on at the meeting. The notable proposals include the election of the company’s board and whether Apple should have a “Board Committee on Human Rights”.

Cook’s 2012 compensation included $1.36 million in salary with no stock awards and a $2.8 million incentive plan, where as his 2011 compensation totaled $378 million. However, last year’s mammoth figure included $376.2 million in stock awards that he’ll earn over a decade.

As for the board, Apple seeks to re-elect Cook, Chairman Arthur Levinson, and directors Al Gore, William Campbell, Millard Drexler, Robert Iger, Andrea Jung, and Ronald Sugar. Apple’s board decidely recommended in the filing that shareholders vote against a proposal to have a Human Rights committee.

The proposal originated from common stock owner John Harrington, who owns at least $2,000 in market value stock, and he wishes to create a separate board committee on Human Rights that would “review the implications of company policies, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, for the human rights of individuals in the US and worldwide.”

The board said the committee isn’t necessary, because Apple is “committed to the highest standards of social responsibility and human rights wherever we do business.”

As for details on the executives’ salaries, check out the table below from the SEC filing:

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Update: They are back

U.S. online retailing giant Amazon sells its own line of “Basics” products that features cheap re-branded accessories for electronics. At first glance, they appear to be mostly OEMed from Asia and include rechargeable batteries, cables, cases, and other accessories you might purchase alongside electronics.

Earlier this week, Amazon began selling ‘Basics’ Lightning cables for use with Apple’s new iPhone 5, iPad mini, and fourth-generation iPad for $14.99. But, today, something strange happened…

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Here’s a bit of an odd rumor surrounding a Bluetooth smart watch from Apple, something that we’ve speculated in the past could make sense for a future, Bluetooth 4.0-enabled iPod nano. According to a report from iphone.tgbus.com (via major Chinese news portal 163.com) that cited supply chain sources, Apple is currently collaborating with Intel on the design of an Apple-branded Bluetooth smart watch.

As for what we can expect from Apple’s rumored smart watch, the report listed specs including a 1.5-inch OLED screen from RiTdisplay (about the current width of iPod nano). The machine translation also noted “a rhenium ocean of OGS encore indium tin oxide transparent conductive (ITO) glass.”

In August 2011, we made the case for Apple releasing a future, Bluetooth 4.0-enabled wearable iPod nano.

While comparing the product to Sony’s recently launched Bluetooth smart watch, today’s report seemed to indicate the product is slated for the first half of 2013 to make up for a lack of product announcements in the first two quarters of the year. While Intel has a good relationship with Apple, powering its current Mac lineup with Intel CPUs, we’re skeptical Apple would go with Intel for a low-powered, mobile product such as a smart watch.

Customer experience analytics firm Forsee is out today with its study of holiday customer satisfaction for the top 500 Internet retailers by revenue. Forsee has Apple at a four-year low in customer satisfaction in its survey of 24,000 customers during prime Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping seasons. Apple slipped three points to a satisfaction score of 80/100 this year, putting Apple at its lowest in four years and bumping it out of the top 5. Among the other largest declines is J.C. Penney, run by former Apple retail head Ron Johnson:

Big companies take big hits: JCPenney (down five points to 78), Apple (down three points to 80), and Dell (down three points to 77) all had large declines in customer satisfaction in 2012, revealing that even some of the highest-revenue companies on the list can struggle to meet the expectations of their customers.

For the study, Forsee focused on four areas of overall satisfaction including the perception of fairness in pricing, the appeal of merchandise, website functionality, and the quality of website content. Among recommendations made by Forsee to retailers for the focus areas, Apple’s online store is listed as needing to improve the “usefulness, convenience and variety of online features available to site visitors.”

Other than that, Forsee does not go into specifics about the reason behind Apple’s decline in this year’s study. Apple has of course made some major changes in its retail team this year, firing its retail chief John Browett following some controversial decisions during his short-lived stay as senior vice president of retail.

Apple has also run into some big issues with supplies of iPhone 5, iPad mini, and iMacs after the introductions of the products this year, which could have affected customers’ view of the retail experience.

Amazon remained the standard for customer satisfaction in Forsee’s study, sitting atop the list with a score of 88/100:

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Digitimes has shed more light on CEO Tim Cook’s early December announcement that a Mac line’s production will move to the United States in 2013 courtesy of a $100 million investment. According to the hit-and-miss publication this evening, Cupertino-based Apple will move the production of its Mac mini to the U.S. (and not the Mac Pro, as previously theorized.) The infamous Foxconn will be responsible for manufacturing it, moving away from its traditional Asia and South America locale.

We previously detailed several locations that Foxconn has in the U.S., where hiring is sure to ramp up to accommodate the production. Additionally, with the help of automated production lines, Mac mini sales are expected to rise to 1.8 million units in 2013. That’s up 30 percent from 2012. While we have a very solid guess on location, we’re still left scratching our heads with who the U.S.-assembled iMacs are originating from.

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It’s now the day after Christmas, and so you’ve had a full day to play with your new iPad Mini, or some other shiny iDevice, and you’re finally ready to chuck all the ole’, dusty Apple products piling up in the living room.

On the other hand, maybe you were not so lucky. Perhaps you were gifted a non-iOS smartphone, and now you quickly want to trade.

Well, 9to5Mac has you covered, for whichever situation you find yourself in, as we have compiled another list of the top trade-in places for cash or credit. There are many retailers and websites that offer trade-in programs, and most accept a wide range of used and new electronics, offer automatic quotes, and provide free shipping.

Check out the top 12 list below.

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New tethering app:

Yet another App Store developer has managed to sneak an app with hidden tethering functionality into the App Store. We covered an app that did this in August, and this new application uses a similar process to enable tethering.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APNEQp_DHEs]

The new application is called FlashArmyKnife, and it costs $1.99 on the App Store. For those unfamiliar, these apps with hidden tethering allow you to use your existing iPhone internet data service (with no additional cost) to connect your Mac or PC to the internet. We tested the application with a Mac and it worked as advertised. The developer has not provided a specific tutorial video for PC users, but there is a PC tutorial video for the similar tethering application in our August article. That article also includes more general troubleshooting tips.

Because the application’s tethering functionality is an “easter-egg” – and was hidden from Apple’s app review team – it will likely be removed soon.

Some users have experienced some issues, and making sure that turning off proxies on your computer following setup and entering the correct static IP and socks information (the static HTTP is 6667 and SOCKS is 6668) seems to fix the most common problems.

The video above is the best guide for setting up the tethering app. Directly above is some written assistance with specific characters that will need to be entered.

Update: The tether app has been removed. 

First 12 Days of Christmas gift from Apple:

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The Marion Police Department in Virginia have decided to encourage residents to report crime by releasing a new app called “iWatch Marion“. The app is available for free on the App Store and provides citizens with an easy way to report potential crimes by uploading tips, photos, and video. Content uploaded by users is forwarded directly to the police department closest to the location the tip was sent from:

Because iWatch Marion uses global positioning technology, the system intelligently forwards information to the Howard County Police Department based on where the handheld device is physically located at any given moment.

The app will also allow users to receive alerts for missing children, crime, weather, and more. I’m not sure if major cities will jump on the idea of encouraging citizens to get involved in crimes in progress, but it’s something that more and more smaller towns are starting to take advantage of.
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