In the ongoing e-book price fixing case with the Department of Justice, in which Apple is accused of conspiring with publishers to fix eBook pricing and cut out Amazon, Apple has again responded to the DOJ’s claims detailing the “tough negotiations” it went through with publishers. To further prove its point that it was not colluding with publishers to fix e-book pricing, Apple said it “one-on-one” and “contentious negotiations” at a time when publishers were already considering methods of getting Amazon to increase pricing: Read more
Seth Weintraub and Danny DeSilva contributed to this post.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve been posting links to a mysterious Apple refurbished store that appeared on eBay about a month ago and has been hiding in plain sight ever since. Labeled only “Refurbished Outlet” with hidden corporate information and nothing in the way of contact information or a traceable backend, the store gets impressive 99.7-percent positive reviews from buyers. But, there is no information on where devices are coming from.
We thought Apple might be testing the waters to sell refurbished products directly to customers through eBay, and it seems that’s exactly what is happening. We discovered that this is in fact an Apple-run Store within eBay. It is in trial, and it could open the door to much bigger things. No one would go on the record at eBay, however.
Aside from the image fonts above, which are an uncharacteristic wreck, there are many telltale signs of Apple’s direct involvement. Just like Apple’s own refurbished products, the “refurbished outlet” products all have the following:
Full one-year warranty
Returned to like-new condition
iPads/iPods include a new battery
Received complete burn-in testing
Original OS re-installed
Repackaged with manual and cable
Final quality inspection by Apple
The prices on the products are also identical to the Apple Store’s refurbished prices across the board (below) Read more
As pointed out byMacStories, Apple recently removed trials for the iWork suite and Aperture 3 from Apple.com. The webpage formerly home to the iWork trial now includes a message informing users that iWork apps, such as Keynote, Pages, and Numbers, are available through the Mac App Store.Apple removed the trial for a short while last year before returning it; however, the company also informed users last month that the iWork.com Beta service would shut down July 31. Apple does not currently offer trial versions of the $20 Mac Store apps.
