Mike Beasley

Following the recent hire of a former Burberry and Nike social marketing executive to run Apple’s new social media arm, a few job listings on Apple’s website point to an attempt to bolster the company’s retail marketing team. A few of the positions were outlined by ifo Apple Store earlier today and seem to point toward an increased focus on building and maintaining customer loyalty to the Apple brand.

We’ve heard time and again that Apple customers, particularly iPhone users, are among the most loyal, but it seems Apple believes there’s still more to be done in that department. One of these new job listings calls for a “Program Manager — Loyalty, Global Retail Marketing,” which would focus on creating “learning and services strategies” designed to inspire loyalty among Apple’s user base.

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Image via Cnet

Last month Samsung ramped up the anti-Apple rhetoric with a new ad campaign that depicted iPhone users as “wall huggers,” constantly tethered to a power outlet due to the inferior battery in their non-Samsung smartphones. Today Cnet reports that the company has taken its campaign one step further by trolling real-life iPhone users at power outlets throughout major airports.

The new ads take the form of posters near power outlets that read, “Samsung Galaxy S5 with Ultra Power Saver Mode,” followed by a tagline that appears to poke at Apple’s own recent ad campaign: “So you have the power to be anywhere but here.” If you’d like to take a gander at the latest salvo in the ever-escalating flame war between Apple and Samsung, you’ll be able to do just that very soon at JFK, O’Hare, and Midway airports. Samsung says even more airports could be getting the ads if they’re successful in the first three.

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Photo: Sunday Mirror

Five months after Chinese and American labor watchdog groups petitioned Apple to investigate the use of potentially hazardous materials in its iPhone and iPad assembly process, the company has announced that it will make changes banning the use of at least two chemicals, the Associated Press reported today. The chemicals in question are benzene and n-hexane, which are tied to lukemia and nerve damage, respectively.

After conducting a four-month study, Apple says it determined that there was no evidence to suggest that these chemicals posed a threat to workers assembling its devices in twenty-two factories, but announced that it would take steps to ensure that it would not become a problem in the future. To that end, both benzene and n-hexane have been banned from the assembly line.

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Verizon Wireless has announced its plans to launch support for Voice over LTE service (or VoLTE) on its cellular network later this year, according to FierceWireless. However, the company says it has moved back its plan to release a VoLTE-only phone until 2016, and will continue releasing CDMA-capable phones until that time. Such a device was originally anticipated for the end of 2014.

The carrier originally announced earlier this year that it would support the new voice service, which provides higher-quality phone calls by utilizing high-speed data connections, but declined at the time to say exactly when it would happen. Other U.S. carriers, including T-Mobile and AT&T, have already started rolling the technology out in select markets.

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New photos of the iPhone 6 surfaced tonight from Sonny Dickson that appear to show the backplate of the upcoming iPhone 6.  Dickson says that these photos were obtained from a source with access to the part, and they do appear to be legitimate.

The first photo, seen above, shows a close-up view of the cutouts for the camera (which appears to be raised), circular True Tone flash, rear microphone, and Apple logo. While it’s entirely possible that these photos are faked, the level of visible detail would make this quite the con job if that turned out to be the case (see the scuffs, scratches, dents, and texture).

Of course, we’ve seen fake wear on iPhone photos before, including the last batch leaked by Sonny, which featured fake fingerprint smudges across the screen.

Read more for the next photo

Reuters noted today that Apple is working with healthcare professionals at hospitals across the country, including Mount Sinai and John Hopkins, in preparation for the rollout of the HealthKit system in iOS 8. The goal is to ensure that medical personnel are ready to read data from the system when it ships later this year.

This move is hardly surprising, as Apple intends HealthKit to serve as a collection place for all of a user’s health-related data, which can be valuable—even lifesaving—during a medical emergency. In fact, the Mayo Clinic demoed the first HealthKit-enabled application earlier this year during WWDC:

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Images of what appears to be the face and screen assembly of the next iPhone have appeared on the Taiwanese blog AppleClub [translation]. In the photos, you can see both the inside and outside of the 4.7″ device’s front panel. For the most part it looks just like the current-generation iPhone 5s, though it’s obviously much larger.

Unfortunately it’s impossible to tell from these photos if the phone is utilizing a glass or sapphire crystal display. Most analysts expect this model to ship with a sapphire crystal screen, though others have claimed that only the larger 5.5″ model would feature that. Both models recently entered mass production and are expected to be revealed at an unannounced media event on September 9th.

More photos of the front panel are below:

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Image via <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-01/tech-hubris-the-silicon-valley-antitrust-hiring-conspiracy#p2" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>

A judge has rejected a settlement that was reached earlier this year between employees of Apple, Intel, Google, and Adobe and their respective companies, CNBC reported today. According to reports from the courtroom, Judge Lucy Koh ruled that the settlement was not high enough and should actually be $380 million.

The lawsuit was brought against the tech giants in question by current and former employees who believed (correctly) that their employers had created agreements to avoid attempting to hire engineers from one another. The idea was that if no competitors were making offers, each company was free to pay its employees whatever it wanted without having to worry about them jumping ship for a better offer.

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According to a new tag discovered on iOS App Store pages by iFun, it would appear that Apple is testing a new label for applications that work with the upcoming Family Sharing feature in iOS 8. The feature, which was announced at WWDC, allows a family to share a single list of purchased music, movies, and iOS apps, all charged to a single credit card. It also includes parental controls so that purchases require permission from the card holder.

Apple has given third-party developers the option to opt-out of this program, however, which would require users to purchase such apps once for each member of the family, rather than once for everyone. To ensure that there’s no confusion among those looking to buy apps for a whole family, it looks like Apple will be labeling apps that support the feature the same way it highlights apps that Game Center, in-app purchases, and other iOS features.

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Image <a href="https://twitter.com/darth/status/497151434924638208" target="_blank">via @darth</a>

Microsoft wants to build a new 8,700 sq. ft. retail store on New York’s Fifth Avenue, just a few blocks away from Apple’s cube, the New York Daily News reported today. The two-story building located at 677 Fifth Avenue is currently vacant, but the Redmond-based software giant wants to setup shop near one of its competitors most iconic locations.

Microsoft has been walking in the shadow of Apple’s retail success for years now. In 2009 the company poached George Blakenship from Cupertino’s retail arm to run its own (weirdly similar) stores. Since then, the Microsoft has been taking advantage of open spaces near a few Apple stores to try to get in on the action.

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Sprint’s plans to buy out the U.S. arm of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom came to an end today, the Wall Street Journal reported. According to the Journal, Sprint’s leadership was concerned that it would be too difficult to get United States regulators to agree to the merger.

The announcement is not yet official, but is said to be planned for Wednesday. If the merger had suceeded, the two companies would have united under the Sprint banner, possibly abandoning all of the “un-carrier” moves made by T-Mobile in recent years, including free one-week iPhone test drives on the network and unlimited music streaming on a variety of services.

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