9to5 Staff

The article has been updated with information about a possible Lion release in the UK.

We are receiving multiple reports of Apple telling developers that iTunes Connect will be undergoing scheduled maintenance today from 9am to 4pm Pacific Time. The iTunes Connect site is where content providers upload and manage their itunes submissions such as songs, movies, apps and more. Apple is advising developers not to make price changes during the blackout because that will cause apps to become unavailable for purchase. Additionally, regional App Stores in Mexico, UK, Australia, Switzerland, Norway or Japan may not sell apps at all during the maintenance period, Apple writes. The heads-up signals the imminent release of OS X Lion tomorrow, as previously rumored. Some people also reported reporting having difficulties entering the Mac App Store, but this issue appears to have been resolved by now.

We are also expecting some new Mac minis, the updated white MacBook and, of course, the refreshed MacBook Airs, with Mac Pros to follow later this month. As you know, OS X Lion will be distributed exclusively via the Mac App Store as a digital download weighing in at just under four gigabytes. If anything, the digital-only release will test the capabilities of Apple’s latest data center in North Carolina. Full contents of Apple’s email is right after the break.

UPDATE 1 [July 13, 2011 10:30 Eastern Time]: An unknown source “close to Apple” tipped SpeakApple.net that UK fans will get Lion at about 1am tonight UK time.

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9to5mac partner Dealnews today publishes price trends research showing that the best time to buy a Mac might not be at launch.  Tax issues aside, even waiting a few days for Amazon and other outlets to carry new Macs can save a hundred bucks or more.

We’ll of course have any announcements, should they happen tomorrow and links to products as soon as they become available.

As always, keep an eye on 9to5toys.com for up to the minute deals on Apple products and accessories.
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Patently Apple is on a roll these days with Apple patent filings. Today, the publication uncovered a recent Apple filing that promises exciting new features on future iOS devices catering to citizen journalists worldwide. Put simply, Apple wants to take CNN’s iReport idea to the next level. For example, wouldn’t it be great if a future iPhone could automatically switch between the front and back camera for a seamless live report between interviewer and interviewee, in real-time and during a FaceTime video call? Apple has been thinking about that!

Their patent application entitled “Automatic Video Stream Selection” outlines how a future iOS software might detect a speech activity by observing the direction of sound or lip movement of the person captured through the lens of both cameras. The company explains:

The handheld communication device receives a first video stream and a second video stream simultaneously from the two cameras. The handheld communication device detects a speech activity of a person captured in the video streams. The speech activity may be detected from direction of sound or lip movement of the person. Based on the detection, the handheld communication device automatically switches between the first video stream and the second video stream to generate a multiplexed video stream. The multiplexed video stream interleaves segments of the first video stream and segments of the second video stream.

They call it the Report mode and it could even have its own dedicated hardware button near the volume buttons, Apple explains. In another embodiment Apple is proposing the new Interview mode…

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Remember Google Wave, the search giant’s ill-fated attempt at re-imagining good ol’ email communication? The service was famously pulled due to lack of interest, but that didn’t stop others from figuring out better ways to handle email. This right here could be the solution we’ve been yearning for. Marco Triverio, an interaction designer at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, teamed up with his colleagues Ali Seçkin Karayol and Harsha Vardhan on a project dubbed Persona.

In a nutshell, Persona is their take on reinventing an email client that is “both Personal and has personality”, as the tagline says. Be that as it may, Persona has definitely gotten us excited with its focus on simplicity and on the human touch. Per description on their Vimeo page:

Persona is an email client that was designed to change the perception and experience of sending and receiving emails by focusing on People, the Conversations between them and the Knowledge shared in emails today. This is a reaction to the paradigm of emails presented in spread-sheets seen with most email clients, where a focus on presenting data prevails over the need for a personal touch.

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AT&T this morning announced first two devices 4G LTE devices, both Mac compatible: A 4G LTE mobile hotspot and a 4G LTE USB modem. If you live in any of AT&T’s five 4G LTE markets (Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, with more coming by the year’s end), you can take advantage of 4G LTE speeds. Those living outside the initial 4G LTE coverage needn’t worry because AT&T, as they say, will have the only combo LTE/HSPA+ network and both devices feature HSPA+ support as a fallback technology. “Our customers will receive a more consistent mobile broadband experience that supports simultaneous voice and data connections and higher speeds than others can provide outside their LTE footprint”, AT&T argues. More on the devices, availability and price points after the break.

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Apple should know better than sue phone makers left and right. The iPhone maker should honor fair-play in the mobile arena rather than exhibit “constant attempts at litigations”. That’s a summary of the Taiwanese Android phone maker HTC’s latest back and forth with rival Apple over an alleged breach of patents and intellectual property which Apple first asserted back in March of 2010.

The comment came in response to Apple’s Monday filing with the International Trade Commission seeking to block the import and sale of HTC’s devices. HTC’s PR machine kicked into overdrive and their general counsel Grace Lei stepped forward and told Associated Press that his company won’t be intimidated by Apple’s legal sharks:

HTC is disappointed at Apple’s constant attempts at litigations instead of competing fairly in the market. HTC strongly denies all infringement claims raised by Apple in the past and present and reiterates our determination and commitment to protect our intellectual property rights.

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Pictured above: The Rosenstraße Galerie Apple store in München

Apple is big in Germany. The country, one of the key European markets and the leading economy in the European Union, is the home to five Apple retail stores. In January of this year 9to5Mac reported that Apple had secured the tenancy to a 5,000 square foot building in Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm, directly across from the Hard Rock Café. Three months later the company opened its fifth retail spot in Germany on the ground floor of Dresden’s suburban, high-trafficked shopping mall in Altmarkt Galerie (Old Market Gallery). The remaining four stores include the Alstertal store in Hamburg, the CentrO store in Oberhausen, the Rosenstraße store in München and the Große Bockenheimer Straße store in Frankfurt.

According to a German-language blog, Macerkopf.de, the Mac maker will open four more stores in the country this year. Hamburg should get its second store this year, Augsburg will get one and the aforementioned Berlin store is due later this year. The latest news is that another store is set to open in Sulzbach near Frankfurt as well, pointing to several job openings in the Sulzbach, Hessen region. What’s curious about this is that the city of Sulzbach is just fifteen miles from Frankfurt, where Apple operates a major brick-and-mortar retail spot. Furthermore, Sulzbach has the population of just 10,000, hardly a market for an Apple store, let alone one in close vicinity of one of their flagship stores. The site explains…

This is the Frankfurt store in Große Bockenheimer Straße. Just fifteen miles away near the highway and the small town of Sulzbach Apple is apparently planning another store.

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Reuters reported this morning that Apple’s chief patent attorney Richard “Chip” Lutton Junior is leaving the company “at a time when the iPhone maker is fighting numerous legal battles around the world, according to a source familiar with the situation”. The news gathering organization did a little digging on LinkedIn and found out that BJ Watrous is now listed as Vice President & Chief IP Counsel at Apple Inc. Watrous was hired from computer maker Hewlett-Packard where he led intellectual property, licensing and litigation efforts.

In addition 9to5Mac discovered a LinkedIn profile that belongs to Jason Skinder, now listed as Apple’s senior patent counsel and coming from law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP where he was a senior associate. The news about this departure arrived just as we learned that courts in US and Canada approved the sale of 6,000 patents and applications for $4.5 billion to an Apple-led group that includes industry heavy-weights such as Microsoft, Research In Motion, Ericsson, EMC and Sony (but not Google). Those willing to dive deeper are advised to check out Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s piece from this morning entitled “Much Ado About Patent Lawyers” over at the Fortune blogs.

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iPhone Download Blog’s iPod touch with 3G rendering

We know you love beautiful renditions of Apple’s unreleased products as much as we do. Last week, the blogosphere buzzed briefly about a fifth-generation iPod touch which was said to include 3G cellular data connectivity and a micro-SIM tray, allowing users to swap in and out SIM cards to change their data provider and take advantage on 3G cellular data to keep using VoIP programs, social apps and other data-hungry software while outside the coverage of nearby wireless hotspots. As crazy as it sounded, the rumor tied nicely with an alleged inexpensive, mass-market iPhone, basically an iPod touch with phone parts thrown in. With that in mind, our friends over at the iPhone Download Blog have created this cool concept render of a 3G iPod touch.

We took this concept to Photoshop, and we came up with the iPod Touch 3G. It looks exactly like the current iPod Touch, but has a black strip on the back. It also says “3G” in the menu bar. Along with that, it also features an integrated SIM card, as the next iPhone is rumored to have.

Kudos for the great work (but you can always beg to differ in the comments). While we’re at it, have you seen these incredibly believable iPhone 5 mockups?

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Tucked away as a side-note in Patently Apple’s report that cast more light on future iBooks features for kids and adults is a discovery of a new hardware feature that could be in the works for Apple’s portable devices. It is based on state-of-the-art positioning technology called ALLOYT which is capable of pinpointing your location accurately in places where traditional GPS doesn’t work. This includes places like underground garages, shopping malls, basements or just about any location where various obstacles or concrete material block line-of-sight to the global positioning satellites:

Apple briefly described the inclusion of a hybrid positioning system using a combination of satellite and television signals from a company called Rosum Corporation. Whether that example was used to identify a generic type of chip or that particular company’s chip isn’t known at this time. But the technology that the Rosum Corporation developed is definitely worth noting.

The very mention of a specific company in an Apple patent filing is unusual and indicative of the company’s future plans. And because it’s based on a readily available solution, Apple will want to take advantage of it before its rivals do. The Rosum solution enables mapping and GPS-enabled software to work in places where GPS is “blind”.  The Redwood City, California-headquartered company developed and unveiled the chip in partnership with Siano in March of last year. It uses broadcast TV signals to provide precise frequency, timing and location information, prompting Bloomberg to call it a “breakthrough”:

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Patently Apple analyzed a new patent application from Apple from last week which details several improvements for children’s books in iBooks through the use of new gestures:

One such gesture will allow a child to tap on a word and have an associated picture, animation or video pop-up to make that word come to life. For those learning a foreign language, Apple has devised a gesture to have a word present itself in the student’s native language so as to quicken the learning process. Apple’s ideas also seem to cross over to electronic magazines where tapping on certain words could pop up a related widget.

You could also press and hold a beginning and last word in a phrase to bring up the presentation of media content related to the phrase. Still images could be used to explain nouns and short clips would illustrate and define verbs, the document states. Apple then goes on to detail additional gestures, like swiping your finger over a single word or a word segment to hear the word or entire sentences or fragments spoken aloud. Kids could even slowly drag their finger over a word to hear it pronounced slowly. Heck, there are even gestures for adult books…

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If you downloaded GarageBand, iMovie or iPhoto individually from the Mac App Store, load the store by choosing Mac App Store from the Apple menu and hit the Updates tab because Apple has just released free updates to said apps, TUAW reports. Interestingly, people who downloaded and installed the iLife ’11 suite using the restore discs or a physical box purchase cannot yet update their installation because the updated apps haven’t yet to hit Software Update or Apple’s download site. GarageBand 6.0.4, iMovie 9.0.4 and iPhoto 9.1.5 are all available for purchase as standalone products on the Mac App Store, costing fifteen bucks each. Go past the fold for iTunes release notes accompanying each download.

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Image courtesy of Boy Genius Report

Samsung Mobile’s chief technology office Omar Khan is leaving the company for greener pastures, it was revealed yesterday. Khan is leaving for Citi where he will be responsible for their mobile initiatives. The unexpected departure arrives at a time when Samsung is chasing Nokia to become the world’s leading phone vendor and fighting Apple’s copycat accusations of stealing the design of iPhone’s hardware, software, packaging and even marketing communications.

As it turns out, Samsung may have already lost orders from Apple, its biggest buyer, as a result of the growing rift. The Globe and Mail reports that Apple might end its relationship with Samsung by taking their five billion dollar a year in electronics parts orders elsewhere. For example, Apple could order NAND flash from Toshiba, Micron and Hynix Semiconductor and mobile processors from Intel and TSMC. Samsung also supplies Apple with LCDs for computers and iPads. Samsung’s financial filings provide clues to its relationship with Apple.

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Assuming you’re getting tired of those patent suits as much as we are, we’re keeping this one brief. According to Boy Genius Report, quoting a Bloomberg story, Apple has filed a new complaint seeking to block sales of HTC smartphones:

Apple on Monday filed a new patent complaint with the International Trade Commission looking to block the sale of several HTC devices it claims infringe on its patents, Bloomberg reports.

As noted by FOSS Patents, this is Apple’s second try with ITC complaint against HTC with potentially stronger patents, indicating that Apple probably asserted different patents in the new complaint versus the five patents listed in their first ITC complaint filed back in March of last year.

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Hardware specialists over at Bare Feats ran a series of interesting Final Cut Pro X benchmarks pitting the latest Sandy Bridge-equipped iMac and MacBook Pro against the last year’s Mac Pro. The iMac system rocked a 3.4GHz quad-core Core i7 processor with 16GB of DDR3 1333MHz RAM and AMD Radeon HD 6970M graphics with 2GB of GDDR5 video memory. The MacBook Pro was a 2.3GHz quad-core Core i7 system with 8G of DDR3 1333MHz RAM and AMD Radeon HD 6750M graphics with 1G of GDDR5 video memory. The 2010 Mac Pro desktop had a 3.33GHz six-core Westmere processor with 24GB of ECC DDR3 1333MHz RAM and AMD Radeon HD 5870 graphics with 1G of GDDR5 video memory.

Summing up, in two out of four benchmarks involving blur sharpen and blur directional effects the iMac came in first and the MacBook Pro outperformed or matched the Mac Pro. It is in the remaining two GPU-intensive tests – exporting a Final Cut Pro X project in H.264 (transcoding) and encoding a  Blu-Ray stream in Compressor 4 – that the Mac Pro shined. Although the benchmarks are far from conclusive, they give away the false impression of Apple favoring the newer Sandy Bridge architecture.

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Apple advertises its iPod touch as an iPhone without a phone (and as discussed last night, they might actually merge them). For kids and teens (its primary audience), the iPod touch is an App Store machine that lets them play jaw-dropping games, listen to music, run social apps to share stuff online and what not. Despite these treats and really low $229 price point, the gizmo is seriously lacking in the connectivity department: It works only with wireless hotspots and does not connect to cellular networks.

Now, a Dutch blog called AppleSpot.nl is running a report this morning which asserts that a fifth-generation iPod touch will contain new antennas and circuitry for 3G data connectivity. Bad translation courtesy of Google Translate:

This will be as his work as the iPhone, where you have a 3G subscription from your ISP, then the SIM card into your iPod Touch key. The choice to add to 3G iPod Touch lineup is not even a very bad idea from Apple, it was obviously true. The only question is how this is received by the telecom farmers, since the use of Skype then will shoot up considerably.

In plain English, 3G in the next iPod touch will be for data-only traffic, like on iPad, rather than voice calls over a cellular network (excluding VoIP apps, of course). Note that 9to5Mac is putting a heavy amount of skepticism on this report because the blog’s track record is literally non-existent. In addition, they provided little information about the alleged 3G feature. However, the idea has legs and could easily hit the ground running, here’s why…

[UPDATE July 8, 2011 11:05 Eastern]. Reader Peter from Netherlands sent in a much better translation:

It will work just like the iPad; you get a 3G enabled simcard from your provider and put that in you iPod Touch. Apple’s choice of bringing 3G to the iPod Touch isn’t all that weird, if it’s true of course. Question remains how the providers will react to this, since the use of for example Skype will skyrocket.

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Bit.ly, a popular URL shortening service, has analyzed web usage data of the millions links flowing on a daily basis through its network. Their findings (via ReadWriteWeb) confirm what many of us iPad owners have known all along, that we use our beloved gizmo mostly during evenings, when we get home from work. Normal usage patterns for smartphones and computers (also corroborated by 9to5Mac’s logs) involve two big spikes, in early morning and mid-morning. This reflects a typical usage pattern for the vast majority of employed: We grab our smartphone when we wake up to catch up on the latest news, email and weather.

Then, upon arriving to our workplace, most people drill through their reading list and consume news articles that matter to them before hitting the water cooler. When we get home, however, the tablet comes to the rescue. Who wants to sit hunched in their chair for another 2-3 hour browser session when they can lay back and relax with a tablet in their hand? As expected, peek usage times for iPad are between 8pm and bed time:

Usage dips after breakfast, remains low during traditional working hours and does not peak until much later in the evening. During the weekends iPad usage between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. is higher than it is during the week at those same hours. No other device sees a heavy increase of use during the weekends, showing that the iPad is used as an entertainment device and differs from both smartphones and browsers

Another interesting observation: The study counts iPad numbers from 203 different countries, a far cry from the 39 countries worldwide where iPad is officially available. The analysis is based on clicks on short URLs from Windows, OS X and Linux desktops plus iPad and iOS Android and BlackBerry smartphones.

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Peter Kafka reports for The Wall Street Journal’s All Things D blog that online music service Spotify will formally launch in the United States next week. The company itself confirmed yesterday that it would kick off its American operation “soon” and has begun issuing invites. Kafka explains:

My informed guess: Next week. Because that’s what Spotify reps have been telling U.S. label executives. Or maybe later! Spotify is Spotify, so anyone who has paid any attention to this story will be reflexively skeptical that Spotify will show up in the U.S. until Spotify shows up in the U.S. Meanwhile, Spotify PR reps decline to comment.

Spotify has signed agreements in its pockets with three of the four major record labels. Ongoing negotiations with Warner Music Groups should be finalized before the launch, the author notes. If Spotify’s European prices are an indication, Americans can expect to pay up to ten bucks a month for unlimited streaming of high-fidelity, ad-free music from Spotify’s online catalog encompassing ten million songs.

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A new patent application published yesterday by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) outlines in excruciating detail new multitouch gestures based on physical metaphors letting users share documents between devices by the means of flicking objects outside the screen boundaries, “pouring” content from one device into another (depicted in the above illustration) and more. The system taps your device’s many sensors, namely accelerometer, magnetometer and gyroscope, in order to determine its physical position relative to other devices in the vicinity. Combined with visual clues such as repelling forces, the user interface would communicate to the user when and how objects between devices can be exchanged. There’s a lot to be excited about this invention.

Apple provides limited file sharing options that require a computer, such as iTunes syncing, iTunes File Sharing and running a WebDAV server on the device to wirelessly share app documents through a desktop browser. In addition, come this Fall the iPhone maker will roll out the free iCloud online service and new iOS APIs so third-parties could build apps that can share private documents across devices via the user’s iCloud storage. Also, the new AirDrop feature in Lion could eventually arrive to iOS to enable drag-and-drop file sharing between Macs and iOS gadgets.

However, none of those methods provides an easy way to directly exchange files between nearby devices and the lack of full file system access for end-users doesn’t help either. While Apple is certainly not going to sacrifice ease of use by exposing file system intricacies to the user, the proposed file sharing metaphors based on new multitouch gestures should solve the file sharing issue once and for all. Check this out….

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Swirling rumors about a fifth-generation iPhone have gone mainstream with the news that Episode 2, Season 2 of television show “Covert Affairs” featured a brief appearance of what could only be described as a poorly designed next-generation iPhone prop rocking an edge-to-edge display. I know what you’re thinking, “What’s with the fugly steel edge”, right? I guess the show producers didn’t get the memo about current iPhone 4 design being “out of favor” at the highest levels of Apple as the company “moves on to an entirely new product”. Nevertheless, the clip’s entertaining enough to waste forty seconds of your life (fun starts at 0:08).

via NowhereElse

[vodpod id=Video.12597450&w=425&h=350&fv=allowfullscreen%3D]

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DigiTimes reports that Apple’s share of the tablet market in Taiwan has dipped from 60 percent in May to 50 percent in June. Don’t worry, the decline is attributed to an demand and supply imbalance rather than competitive pressure from other tablet vendors. Of the 35,000 tablet PCs that shipped in the 22 million people market of Taiwan during June, iPad accounted for 50 percent of the volume and the other half was split between Asustek, Acer, ViewSonic and HTC. In other words, Apple sold 17,500 iPad units in the Taiwan market last month, amounting to a run-rate of 210,000 units. Industry sources warn that even though iPad should regain its share when supply is balanced, the onslaught of Android devices will put pressure on Apple:

Since demand for iPad 2 in Taiwan is still strong, the sources believe once the supply issue is resolved, the device’s shipment share in Taiwan should be able to climb back above 60 percent. However, as Android-based tablet PCs from non-Apple brand vendors are mostly set to appear in the third quarter, the appearance of these machines may still affect the share of iPad 2, the sources added.

In another report from this morning DigiTimes writes that panel maker Chimei Innolux shipped about half a million touch sensors for iPad 2 in the month of June, an increase suggesting improving yield rates compared to the first quarter of 2011.

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