Apple

As per Mark’s scoop last week, Staples has indeed begun selling the iPad and is offering the full line with 5% back in Staples gift cards. Staples now also carries every iPod model including the iPod touch, Classic, Nano and shuffle. You can now order the iPad from its online stores (which will begin shipping next week), and if online sales go well, through its physical retail stores early next year. Staples will also begin putting up iPad kiosks in its stores next week.

You’ll recall from our iPad Product Page, we’d probably recommend holding off the purchase of any iPad because Apple will likely update its line in October.  However, those companies with Staples purchasing accounts will now be able to scoop up an iPad on the corporate account.

Staples began carrying Apple products in the US earlier this year and would seem to be doing well at it as evidenced by the expanding line of products. 
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A few Apple map related stories have popped up today starting with the departure of early Placebase founder– the mapping company Apple bought back in 2009–  Jaron Waldman. After Apple bought Placebase, Waldman started and lead the Apple Geo team behind the Apple Maps infrastructure and location services on iOS and Mac like MapKit and CoreLocation. He was at Apple up until last month and even filed for numerous Apple mapping patents, but recently left to work at a “new startup” according sources and verified by his LinkedIn page.

As Waldman is on his way out, the Apple Maps team today posted a job listing (via Macrumors) seeking a web UI designer to “design, develop, and maintain complex front-end code for a new secret project.” Unfortunately we don’t get many hints at what the project would consist of, but the job listing adds that the successful applicant would join “a small team working on an advanced web platform upon which many of Apple’s future services will be based.” It is almost like Apple knows the listing will get lots of publicity if it adds ‘secret project’ therefore attracting a wider audience of potential candidates.

Finally, over a year into Apple’s Maps launch, Apple is still getting press for some hiccups it is yet to work out. A couple days ago news broke that Apple’s Maps app was directing drivers in Alaska down a dangerous route across a Fairbanks International Airport runway and taxiway. It’s certainly not the first time that Apple’s Maps app has given dangerous directions to drivers (those lacking common sense anyway) since its controversial launch, and today airport officials confirmed that Apple has disabled directions to the airport until it fixes the directions:
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With Apple’s new gold iPhone 5s getting the most attention of any of the new colorful iPhones it released earlier this month, Samsung wants you to know that it isn’t copying Apple with its new gold Galaxy S4.

In a blog post on its official Samsung Tomorrow blog titled, “Golden History of Samsung Phones,” the company makes a point of noting that it announced the Gold Galaxy S4 on August 27th and launched it in stores on September 8– over a week before Apple’s gold iPhone 5s launch. It also showed off some gold phones it’s made dating back to 2004.

Some were unreleased like special edition phones for the Olympics and one for Ocean’s 13, and Samsung notes that “this is definitely not a complete list of gold-colored products made by Samsung.”
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With Apple’s iBeacon technology starting to see some real-world applications, we thought this would be a good time to take a brief look at what it is and what we might expect from it in future … 
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Mashable reports that Major League Baseball has demo’d using Apple’s iBeacon indoor mapping technology to provide live baseball fans with a whole range of personalised and interactive experiences when attending games at stadiums.

An update to its At the Ballpark app provides both practical assistance and additional entertainment and interest.

By loading the free app when you get off the subway and head towards the stadium, it immediately knows you are at Citi Field. It populates a ballpark guide with information specific to the stadium, so if you were to enter Phillies’ Citizens Bank Park, the entire experience and data wouldn’t be the same.

As you near the gates, the app displays your ticket’s barcode on screen, as well as a map of where the seats are located. If tickets are loaded into Apple Passbook or purchased online through certain ticketing partners, the app will automatically pull them up … 
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Chinese site DoNews has posted two photos of what it claims is a champagne-colored iPad Mini 2 with Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

Concept photos and outright hoaxes are commonplace in the run-up to an anticipated product launch (we debunked one of these just yesterday), so there is no telling whether or not these are the real deal, but it’s obviously logical to expect Apple to release both the iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2 in the same colour schemes as the iPhone 5s. It’s also pretty likely that both will be fitted with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor (shown below the fold), though we have heard some whispers that it doesn’t … 
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This morning, Apple has sent an over-the-air update to the Apple TV to add two new apps of content: Major League Soccer (MLS) and Disney Junior. The MLS app allows Apple TV users to watch soccer games live, and Disney Junior includes several shows oriented toward young children.

The new soccer app will surely be a big bonus for sports fans, while Disney Junior will continue to attract kids to the Apple’s living room appliance.

Last week, Apple added iTunes Radio and many new features to the device. A few weeks ago, the company added a couple of Disney Channel apps, The Weather Channel, Vevo, and a Smithsonian app. Thanks DJ! 

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The LA Times is reporting that the distribution of iPads to all 640,000 students in the LA school district may be temporarily halted after high school pupils worked out how to bypass the restrictions placed on the devices. Apple announced back in June that an initial start to the rollout was worth $30M.

While the school networks block apps such as facebook while at school, a personal profile was used to limit usage of the devices when taken home. Within a week, children at Theodore Roosevelt High School had worked out that deleting this profile removed the restrictions … 
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KGI’s Mingchi Kuo, an analyst with an excellent track record, has disputed an earlier suggestion by web analytics company Localytics that the iPhone 5s is outselling the 5c three-to-one, suggesting that actual sales are closer to 50/50 – with 5c sales actually likely to be somewhat higher.

KGI estimates that the 9M initial sales comprised 3.5-4.5M iPhone 5s, and 4.5-5.5M iPhone 5c.

The confidential briefing document points out that analytics data is based on activation (or, more specifically, use of the phone to browse the web and run certain apps), which is not the same as sales. KGI’s estimates are based on production numbers … 
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Supposed posters from China Mobile promoting the iPhone 5s and 5c have leaked out, touting “the strongest iPhone in China” (via UnwiredView). The ‘100’ visible on the poster indicates the network’s 100Mb/s maximum speed will be supported by the iPhone. Naturally, the iPhone will be China Mobile’s flagship 4G phone.

Apple has already received the necessary certification to put the iPhone on all Chinese spectrum, including the TD-LTE strand used by China Mobile, earlier this month. Now, the only holdup is getting permission from the MITT governing body to let China Mobile use the spectrum on a commercial basis.

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Alongside the new iMacs, Apple has silently raised the prices of all Mac mini models in both Australia and Brazil. In Australia, the prices were formerly A$699 and A$899 for the standard configurations, and the Mac mini Server model was priced at A$ 1,099.00. Now, the machines are priced at A$749, A$999, and A$1249, respectively.

Here are the new prices in Brazil (up R$ 300, 400, and 500 respectively):

The prices for the Mac mini have also been raised in Portugal and Malaysia, multiple tipsters have noticed.

These are notable price increases, but it is unclear if there is reasoning for the change beyond standard currency fluctuations. The iMacs pricing was also tweaked when it was updated yesterday, but the Mac mini has not been altered. No other Mac prices in Australia nor Brazil have changed.

The Mac mini is presumably due for a hardware update with 802.11ac WiFi, new Fusion Drive options, and Haswell processors to match the new iMacs. Thanks, James and Joao! 

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In April 2013, when WWDC sold out in a matter of minutes, Apple said that they would hold tech talks later in the year. Apple has now sent out the details for these events, with a clear focus on getting developers up to speed with iOS 7.

The talks are going to be held in San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Berlin and London. Unusually, Apple is holding two events in each city this year, one for app development and one dedicated to game development. Topics revolve around the new API’s in iOS 7, to further encourage developer adoption of the new technologies. The talks are being held across October, November and December.

Registered developers must apply by September 27th 2013, if they want to attend. Developers can attend either the app developer day or the game developer day, not both.

Last fall, Apple had a lot of products to introduce: a new iPhone, two new iPads, three new iPods, and a few new Macs. Apple ended up dividing those new devices into two events: an iPhone + iPod event and an iPad + Mac event.

Without much occurring during the first half of this year, and even with the new iPhones launching this month, Apple still has a significant amount of products to still announce this year. Let’s take a look at what’s coming:

• Redesigned full-sized iPad (64-bit, looks like a larger iPad mini, likely no Touch ID)
• iPad mini with Retina display (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions have been in testing, likely no Touch ID)
• iPad mini without Retina display (version with faster, A6 processor has been in testing)
• MacBook Pros with Haswell chips, improved battery life
• Haswell Mac minis
• Final OS X Mavericks details, pricing (launch targeted for late October, but sources now say there’s been internal chatter about a (very unlikely) push-back to early November
• Mac Pro tech specs, pricing, availability details
• Secret Mac-related hardware that nobody knows about coming as soon as late 2013
• New Apple TV hardware
• Redesigned first-party iOS 7 apps
• New iWork for Mac
• New iWork for iOS
• New Final Cut Pro

Could Apple announce all of this in one sitting?…

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