Jordan Kahn

Sprint is showing its loyal customers some appreciation in the coming weeks with SprintFeed informing us that starting Feb. 5 select customers will receive a discount up to $100. The discounts will come in $25, $50, and $100 and will be offered to select “upgrade eligible customers that are at high risk of leaving Sprint” through email and snail mail. So the deal does apply to eligible upgrades, but it will require a new two-year commitment. Yes, this is a great way to get you sorted with a less expensive iPhone.

The promotion is running from Feb. 5 to March 18, so you might want to check if your account is flagged for the discount.

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Yesterday we brought you music legend Neil Young’s interview from the “D: Dive into Media” conference where he talked about Steve Jobs’ love of vinyl and hinted at a high-fidelity music service he worked on with Jobs that was later confirmed by Bloomberg. At the same conference, Edgar Bronfman Jr. sat down with  AllThingsD on his last day as chairperson of Warner Music Group. While discussing why record labels are still necessary in an iTunes driven music industry, Bronfman talked about his struggles with Jobs on pricing:

Apple from day one believed in music and content. That was the good news. The bad news is that they decided all songs where created equal, and I fought Steve on that. Ultimately, Apple got the better part of that deal. Ultimately, I wish we’d gotten more pricing flexibility… Apple was there supporting music from day one, and it obviously was a great outcome for Apple… 

As for the competition… Bronfman said Google Music is an “oxymoron” and explained the iPhone and iPod content strategy is working, “But it’s not really there on other devices.” Bronfman said Google needs to decide how it wants to structure its content platform but is still “unclear” in how its want to handle negotiations, at least with WMG. He also discussed Spotify and claimed the service has not impacted downloads or sales:

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[slideshow]

Following reports earlier this month from Bloomberg that iPad 3 production kicked off in anticipation of a March launch, BGR today claimed a source is in possession of an iPad 3 prototype that has provided more information on the device.

A source claiming to be in possession of an iPad 3 prototype provided BGR with images containing details about Apple’s highly anticipated third-generation tablet. From the data in the photos, which contain the output from an iPad 3 using a development and debug tool called iBoot, we can infer plenty of information about the upcoming iPad 3.

BGR claimed the debug reports from the iPad 3 prototype in question have model numbers J1 and J2 (iPad3,1 and iPad3,2), with one being the only Wi-Fi model and the other an LTE/CDMA/GSM combo “for all carriers.” This echoes 9to5Mac‘s findings from last year.

The reports also provided confirmation of an A6 processor (model number S5L8945X) that most have expected Apple to include in the device.  We first broke news of a Quad-core chip in the iPad 3 via code snippets in iOS 5.1B software.

According to the BGR report, the processor will be a quad-core variant, “making the upcoming iPad 3 the fastest iOS device ever.”

We’ve seen previous mentions of the Samsung S5L8945X in iOS 5 dumps from the iPhone 4S:

So, while nothing in the report is new, the means by which these were found, reportedly from a prototype iPad 3, seem to confirm previous findings.

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Yesterday we told you a bit about the background of Apple’s newly appointed Senior Vice President of Retail John Browett, who previously ran Dixons and PC World. Apple CEO Tim Cook’s decision to hire Browett came under scrutiny yesterday when Browett’s reputation building what consumers described as “the worst of Best Buy and Radio Shack combined” was quickly highlighted by worried Apple customers following the announcement. Today, Apple CEO Tim Cook apparently responded to concerns in an email to concerned customer Tony Hart calling Browett the “best by far” (via MacRumors):

Tony, 

I talked to many people and John was the best by far. I think you will be as pleased as I am. His role isn’t to bring Dixons to Apple, [it’s] to bring Apple to an even higher level of customer service and satisfaction. 

Tim

An Apple CEO responding to emails is nothing new, but it appears Tim Cook, like Steve Jobs before him, will also occasionally answer emails from concerned customers. Browett is expected to take up his new role in April after moving to Cupertino from his current home in Hertfordshire, England. The full email is below if you are interested in seeing exactly what Hart asked Cook.

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Apple has long been rumored to include support for the ZFS file system designed by Sun, with rumors dating back even before Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced in 2007 Leopard would utilize ZFS as its file system. It even made an appearance in Disk Utility in a beta of Mac OS X 10.5 (pictured right). Although ZFS support was never included in Leopard, it was also initially hinted in Snow Leopard Server documentation in 2008 before the final public release.

In 2009, Apple had seemingly ceased all work on ZFS. Today MacRumors pointed us to a 2011 Ars Technica article profiling an Apple engineer named Don Brady who worked on the ZFS team at Apple until 2009. The report noted, “Apple couldn’t reach suitable license terms with Sun” at the time, and Brady eventually left to form his own company in 2010 called Ten’s Complement. Two years later, Brady and Ten’s Complement are bringing ZFS support to Mac OS X with the company’s latest project, ZEVO Silver Edition.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNcaMqiD64g]

We reported last night that Apple officially appointed CEO of Dixons John Browett as its senior vice president of Retail following Ron Johnson’s departure in October of last year. Browett is leaving his position at Dixons Retail, which operates various United Kingdom-based retail stores including Currys, Currys.digital, and PC World. Dixons is one of the largest electronics chains in Europe, and PC World, the last on that list,  is one of the largest computer/consumer electronic retailers in the U.K. It also has a reputation of being a big-box consumer electronic store that consumers describe as “the worst of Best Buy and Radio Shack combined.”

While U.K. product-testing and consumer advocacy group Which? consistently ranked both Currys Digital and PC World at the bottom of its research regarding the Top 100 retail chains, a report from Financial Times explained “Apple has mystery shopped and been impressed.” Specifically, the report mentioned “a system of decision trees to match customers with products” that Browett has implemented while at Dixons.

The calculation of Mr Cook may be that if Mr Browett is good at selling people products that bore them, he will do even better selling them i-gadgets that they lust after.

According to reports in November from BBC, Browett recently renovated more than 250 stores, implemented new service, and customer support strategies. However, the company reported first-half losses of just over £25 million (slightly lower than expected, but higher than losses of £6.9 million the year prior). In 2009, Retail Week (via GigaOm) profiled Browett, calling him “affable and intellectual” and describing his “schoolboy enthusiasm” for technology during a trip to PC World. Here is an excerpt:

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Since the iPhone 4S landed on Sprint in October, users have not had access to an official Sprint iOS app to manage their account similar to what other iPhone carriers provide. Now the carrier has launched its new “Sprint Mobile Zone” app (via SprintFeed) that allows users to manage their online accounts, access promotions and Sprint news, and more. Despite account access seemingly just serving websites from the carrier’s existing browser experience, in contrast to the un-installable carrier apps on Android, this is how all carrier apps should be.

In addition to the features mentioned above for Sprint customers, both Sprint and non-Sprint iPhone users will be able to access “Device Info” with the usual battery statistics, data connections information, and available resources. There is also an Apple and Sprint store locator and quick links to Sprint support and Apple Care. Get the free app now for iOS devices running iOS 5.0 and up (iTunes link).

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Following reports earlier today that U.S. District Judge Lucy H Koh would allow a lawsuit claiming Apple, Google and five other companies entered “no-poach” agreements, court documents made public today show in 2007 former Apple CEO Steve Jobs asked Google’s Eric Schmidt to “stop trying to recruit an Apple engineer.” Reuters reported:

The email from Jobs to Schmidt was disclosed on Friday in the course of civil litigation against Apple, Google and five other tech companies. The proposed class action, brought by five software engineers, accuses the companies of conspiring to keep employee compensation low by eliminating competition for skilled labor. 

According to excerpts of the documents posted by Reuters, Jobs wrote the following in an email to Schmidt after someone at Google tried to recruit an Apple engineer:

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T-Mobile will begin offering more than 1 million unlocked iPhone customers additional support starting Jan. 30, according to a report from TMO News who obtained internal documents. The documents said the new support offerings would include, “common procedures, information about feature and specifications and other basic device questions.”

The carrier is also updating the iPhone website within its Community so it fits in with the rest of the T-Mobile supported device pages and “Integrated Scope of Support” for representatives. Earlier this month, we had a chance to talk with T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray regarding the failed AT&T merger and the carrier’s plans to hit the switch on 1900 MHz HSPA+ spectrum in a number of cities in the Eastern U.S.

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In a recent interview with The Telegraph, Bill Gates sat down to talk, among other things, about his relationship with Steve Jobs. Gates recalled his often up and down relationship with Jobs changing somewhat after the launch of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2007: “Steve and I did an event together, and he couldn’t have been nicer…I got a fair bit of time with him in his last year.” When Gates ultimately learned of Steve’s medical condition, he wrote him a letter:

“I told Steve about how he should feel great about what he had done and the company he had built. I wrote about his kids, whom I had got to know…There was no peace to make. We were not at war. We made great products, and competition was always a positive thing. There was no [cause for] forgiveness.” 

After Jobs’ passing, Gates said he received a phone call from Laurene Powell, Jobs’ wife, who told Gates Walter Isaacson’s biography did not accurately depict the mutual respect between the two:

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Late last week we told you that the U.S. Justice Department apparently had evidence that Apple, along along with Google, Adobe, Intuit, Pixar, Intel, and Lucasfilms, entered “no-poach” agreements as part of an antitrust investigation from 2010. U.S. District Judge Lucy H Koh made a statement yesterday at the U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., confirming the companies must face a lawsuit. According to the report from Bloomberg, Koh said she would allow plaintiffs to re-file their complaint even if an initial request by the defendants to dismiss the claims is granted.  

Judge Koh’s decision yesterday will result in Google and the other companies having to provide a detailed account of the agreements made with other companies. They must also allow lawyers to take depositions. One lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Joseph Saveri, said, “We get to see what really happened,” claiming the case could result in hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Google provided statements to Bloomberg claiming they have “always actively and aggressively recruited top talent,” while the others have declined to comment.

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We told you in December that Apple was being fined $1.2 million by Italian anti-trust authorities for “misleading consumers” with AppleCare warranties. At the time, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato claimed Apple was failing to properly inform consumers of a two-year guarantee mandatory by Italian Consumer Code and European Union law. In response, Apple placed a prominent link on its Italian online store today that translates to “Communication to protect consumers” and links to a PDF of the antitrust decision by L’Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato. A full translation from the PDF is available after the break.

“The company Apple Sales International, finally, within 90 days, need to adapt the sales package of services AppleCare Protection Plan, by inserting the indication on the existence and the two-year guarantee of compliance and indicating the correct length of service with respect to maturity the legal guarantee of conformity.”

Apple is being asked to alter the terms of its AppleCare Protection Plans to clarify the existence of the two-year mandatory guarantee and provide “wide and comprehensive information to consumers, relative to the two-year guarantee of compliance” on its website. Reports shortly after the fine was imposed claimed Apple planned to appeal the decision. There is no mention of the appeal on Apple’s website or within the PDF (below).

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A patent application published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office earlier today reveals Apple is flirting with the idea of a universal touchscreen controller capable of controlling multiple devices including a “television, a video tape player, a video disk player, a stereo, a home control system, or a computer system.” The patent application is titled “Apparatus and Method to Facilitate Universal Remote Control” and was filed Sept. 30, 2011.

The patent application’s background covers many of the issues with current controllers for televisions and the devices mentioned above. It noted current universal remotes are “complex to operate” and unable to adapt to incorporate every command or control functionality supported by a device or future device. It also mentions the fact that users are often “confronted with multiple” remotes, which is the classic “table full of remotes” scenario described by Steve Jobs when talking about the Apple TV at D8. The patent application explained:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gOu50HaEvs]

Earlier this week, The New York Times brought us the first half of a lengthy piece on the conditions of Apple’s supply chain in China and the government subsidized factories that make it nearly impossible to shift production stateside. The second installment in the series, titled “In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad,” cites a half-dozen current and former Apple execs who said Apple’s attempts to combat working conditions often “falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products.” The New York Times reported:

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s 

products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records… Shifts ran 24 hours a day, and the factory was always bright. At any moment, there were thousands of workers standing on assembly lines or sitting in backless chairs, crouching next to large machinery, or jogging between loading bays.

NYT also talked to Li Mingqi, a former manager at Foxconn who is currently suing Foxconn over his termination over refusing relocation to Chengdu, who confirmed Apple’s priorities:

“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost. Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests.”

The majority of the article details former Foxconn worker Lai Xiaodong and his journey before being killed in a Foxconn explosion in Chengdu. Unfortunately, NYT said just seven months later a similar explosion happened in Shanghai injuring 59 employees. Occupational safety expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is calling it “gross negligence” on Apple’s part:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jKx-cr4bi74]

Describing it as “jamming a V8 into a Miata” in his blog post, Adobe’s Dave Helmy/via John Nack set out to see if he could edit full-res 4K RED video footage in the field using a MacBook Air beefed up courtesy of various Thunderbolt solutions. The concept proves with enough RAM and a powerful processor, Thunderbolt could enable smaller Macs to do the work of a Mac Pro.  Hard Drives, PCI cards and everything besides the processor and RAM can now be connected via Thunderbolt rather that being built into the box.

Apple could modularize for their Pros.  Think about starting with a Mac Mini with a XEON Processor and lots of RAM (OK, the cooling stuff might turn it into a cube).

As for the performance of the 13-inch MacBook Air,…

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Following Apple’s big push into education with the announcement of the new “iBooks 2.0” and “iBooks Author” platform, new reports claim 27 German textbook publishers are banding together to combat Apple with a digital textbook platform of their own. The platform will launch in time for the 2012 to 2013 school year.

According to a report from German language publication Boersenblatt.net (via eBookNewser), the unspecified German textbook publishers will unveil the new platform in Hannover during the Didacta Education Trade Fair from Feb. 14 to Feb. 18. The report seems to claim the platform is backed and developed in conjunction with the Educational Media Association. There is not a ton of details, but the reports claimed the platform would be completely open and available to all vendors and publishers, along with being supported on all devices and operating systems. According to eBookNewser: “There’s going to be both online and offline modes, and teachers and students will be able to purchase eBooks from different publishers and manage them on a shelf.”

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Earlier we brought you a look inside Apple’s secret unboxing room courtesy of Adam Lashinsky’s upcoming book titled “Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired – and Secretive – Company Really Works.” All Things D was able to catch Lashinsky yesterday for a brief interview (non-Flash version here) where he discussed Apple’s lack of cooperation with the book, his process in comparison to the official “Steve Jobs” biographer Walter Isaacson, and he talked more about Apple’s culture of secrecy.

Lashinsky explained his biggest takeaway from writing the book: “Apple, the second most valuable company the world, does business exactly the opposite way that business is taught in business schools…It’s in many ways the antithesis of the image that we have of Google with its bean bag chairs.”

He ended the interview with a quote from the book by former Senior Vice President of Software Engineering at Apple Avi Tevanian who said the following to Lashinsky shortly before Steve Jobs passed:

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Despite reports that Verizon’s fourth quarter earnings were hurt mainly by high subsidies for iPhone, Verizon announced on Tuesday it sold 4.3 million iPhones– over 50 percent of the 7.7 million total smartphones sold during the quarter. This statistic follows reports earlier this month that Verizon sold approximately 4.2 million iPhones during the holiday quarter. Compare that figure to the 1.6 million 4G LTE smartphones sold during the same quarter, of which the carrier offers more than 18 (mostly Android) devices versus a few iPhone models. These numbers show consumers are still choosing 3G iOS devices over the latest generation of 4G LTE smartphones from other vendors.

According to Barclays Capital analyst James Ratcliffe, even with the high subsidy, Verizon will see a positive cash flow of approximately $1,600 per iPhone. His estimate is based on the nearly $2,000 spent over a two-year contract and a $400 subsidy for the same period. Ratcliffe explained to Bloomberg:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TrCK0ya097Q]

We have seen Siri clones in the Android Market trying to pass themselves off as the real thing, and some Siri alternatives making their way to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Evi, on the other hand, might actually be the first true Siri competitor/alternative for Android and non-iPhone 4S iOS users.

Available on the App Store for 99 cents and free to Android users on the Android Market, Evi is the work of True Knowledge and its “core semantic search technology” better known as The True Knowledge Answer Engine. The 99-cent price tag on iOS is apparently to cover the cost of using Nuance voice recognition (the same voice recognition tech as Siri), which is not used in the Android version.

The app’s iTunes page explained Evi is capable of returning local data for the United Kingdom (along with the United States), which has been a complaint from U.K. Siri users since the iPhone 4S launch. According to TechCrunch, the app uses “an ontology of tens of thousands of classes into which” every possible user command can be recognized. True Knowledge said the app contains “almost a billion ‘facts’ (machine understandable bits of knowledge)” with the ability to infer trillions if necessary. It also reportedly uses all the expected sources, such as local results from Yelp, third-party websites, traditional web searches, and APIs.

While as of yet Evi is incapable of integrating with Calendar and Reminders like Siri, TechCrunch pointed out it sometimes provides more accurate and useful results for certain types of questions. Siri requests to search the web for an answer when users ask certain questions, such as “How do I make apple pie?” Evi, however, would provide a list of recipes with relevant links to that specific question. TechCrunch highlighted another example where Evi excels:

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Following Apple’s big education announcements yesterday with the introduction of iBooks 2.0, iBooks Author, and the iTunes U iOS app, the CEO of publisher McGraw-Hill Terry McGraw —one of Apple’s partners bringing textbooks to the iBookstore— sat down with All Things D to discuss the new partnership. When asked how long his company has been in talks with Apple, McGraw discussed meeting with Jobs:

Sitting and listening to all of this, I wish Steve Jobs was here. I was with him in June this past year, and we were talking about some of the benchmarks, and some of the things that we were trying to do together. He should be here. He probably is [gesturing up and around]. This was his vision, this was his idea, and it all had to do with the iPad.

We already learned in Walter Isaacson’s “Steve Jobs” biography that Jobs had his “sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform.” According to the book, Jobs’ “idea was to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions” for the iPad. We also knew he held meetings with major publishers, but we now know he was still working on the textbook projects until at least June.

All Things D also asked McGraw about the possibility of bringing similar content to Google’s platforms. McGraw avoided answering the question directly:

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When we covered everything you need to know about publishing and distribution for Apple’s new iBooks Author platform, we told you that Apple would require books created with the tool to be sold through the iBookstore. Publishers can, however, make books available for free on their websites or elsewhere. Now, Daring Fireball pointed us to a report from Dan Wineman who likens Apple’s end user license agreement for iBooks Author to “Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents.” Wineman explained:

It’s akin to Microsoft trying to restrict what people can do with Word documents, or Adobe declaring that if you use Photoshop to export a JPEG, you can’t freely sell it to Getty. As far as I know, in the consumer software industry, this practice is unprecedented. I’m sure it’s commonplace with enterprise software, but the difference is that those contracts are negotiated by corporate legal departments and signed the old-fashioned way, with pen and ink and penalties and termination clauses. A by-using-you-agree-to license that oh by the way asserts rights over a file format? Unheard of, in my experience.

Wineman’s real issue is not with the fact that Apple’s restricting developers and the software’s output, but more so that Apple assumes “by using the Apple software, you are agreeing to be bound by the terms of this license.”  Therefore users, according to Apple, are restricted from selling the content you produce anywhere other than through Apple. Wineman continued:

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