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Apple News and Brief History

Before you can properly understand Apple News, it’s important to know its history. Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976. In 1977, Apple’s sales were growing with the success of its early computers. Within a few years, Jobs and Wozniak hired designers and a production line crew. Apple went public in 1980 and was an instant success. Over the next few years, Apple shipped new computers featuring new graphical user interfaces, such as the original Macintosh in 1984. As the market for personal computers expanded through the 1990s, Apple lost market share to the cheaper Microsoft Windows on PC clones. Eventually, Wozniak and Jobs both left Apple. Jobs would go on to found NeXT and would return to Apple when NeXT was acquired in the late 90s. Apple then began a journey to the great second act in the history of the business world.

Since the release of the iPod in 2001, Apple has become a major player once again in the technology industry. After releasing the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010, and the Apple Watch in 2015, Apple is now one of the largest companies in the world. Apple’s worldwide annual revenue totaled $274.5 billion for its 2020 fiscal year.

Today, Apple operates retail stores all across the world, has a growing services division, and an ever-expanding hardware lineup. The technology industry follows Apple news to see where the company is headed in the future.

Keep reading for the latest Apple news

EA says reports Apple paid for Plants vs Zombies 2 iOS exclusive ‘an unfortunate misunderstanding’

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Yesterday a story popped up Giant Bomb claiming that EA executive Frank Gibeau said Apple had paid the company a “truckload of money” to launch PopCap’s much anticipated Plants vs Zombies 2 title as an iOS exclusive. Apple quickly denied the comments in a brief statement following the story and said that no money was exchanged with the publisher. As if that wasn’t enough, EA representatives today issued an official statement on the matter saying that the comment was taken out of context (via PocketGamer):

“A comment from an internal meeting taken out of context has created an unfortunate misunderstanding,” says EA’s statement.

“Reports of a paid relationship between Apple and EA are factually inaccurate, and we apologise for any confusion.”

Gibeau’s comments were clearly taken out of context, and we tend to believe that Apple didn’t offer up any cash in exchange for Plants vs Zombies 2 landing on iOS before Android. But what did he really mean with his “truckload of money” comment? Perhaps EA knew it would receive favorable placement in the App Store as a much hyped iOS exclusive?

There are a lot of unanswered questions about how Apple goes about featuring and ranking apps on the App Store, but it’s big money for developers who often see enormous boost in revenue and downloads when featured on the store.

Last month a report from Fiksu noted changes in how Apple ranks apps and seems to be incorporating user ratings and other new metrics, but this is the first we’ve heard of Apple possibly working with developers to have apps launch exclusively on iOS.

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New iPhones hit nine regional U.S. carriers on October 1st

While the iPhone was available from the four main U.S. carriers from 20th September,  those who want to stick with smaller regional carriers have so far had to wait. 1st October is now known to be the magic date for nine carriers, with others expected to announce shortly.

The nine companies who have so far announced that they will have both the iPhone 5s and 5c available from that date (via MacRumors) are:

Appalachian Wireless
Bluegrass Cellular
C Spire
Cellcom
GCI
MTA
Nex-Tech Wireless
Ntelos
Strata

Not all regional carriers yet support LTE for the iPhone. You can check which do in this Apple support document.

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Gorgeous demo of iPhone 5s slow-motion video capabilities

There have been a number of demonstrations of the new 120fps slow-motion video capabilities of the iPhone 5s, but this one is the most beautiful I’ve seen.

Normal video is shot at 30 frames per second, a rate fast enough that the action looks smooth to the human eye. By filming at 120fps, four times faster than normal,  the footage still looks beautifully smooth when slowed down by the same amount.

The effect was used in footage shot at the Burberry London fashion show, shot entirely with the iPhone 5s.

Via Daring Fireball

The iPodFather strikes again: Nest’s rumored next move on the “ugly white plastic crap” in our homes

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Nest thermostat versus “ugly white crap” smoke detector

Nest Labs, the high-profile startup created by “father of the iPod” Tony Fadell, is reportedly planning to set its sights on a hi-tech smoke detector, following the successful launch of its Learning Thermostat.

Former WSJ journalist Jessica Lessin cites “people close to the startup” as saying that the new device could go on sale later this year. It’s speculated that the smoke detector would also detect carbon monoxide, and would be offered with a subscription-based monitoring service. More mundanely, it could be silenced simply by waving at it (I’m probably not the only person whose cooking requires the occasional ability to silence a smoke detector …).

And the company doesn’t plan to stop there … 
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iFixit investigates the innards of the new iMacs, spare SSD slot now standard in all models

iFixit has taken a look at the newly-released generation iMacs, tearing down both the 21.5 inch and 27.5 inch variants. Although most of the internal structure is the same, which is to be expected given that the new iMacs have retained the same casing, there are some small differences.

iFixit points out that the 21.5 inch iMac now includes a Fusion Drive SSD bay as standard, improving future upgradeability prospects of the machine. With last year’s model, this expandability was only available if customers had specifically ordered the iMac with a Fusion Drive originally. As the new drives are now connected via PCIe, third-party drive makers should be able to make appropriate adapters to enable the addition of a second hard drive. Both the 21.5 inch and 27 inch models offer this unused PCIe Fusion Drive SSD port. A picture of the empty port is attached below.


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Tim Cook probably won’t be retweeting Conan O’Brien’s Siri fail

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW1UDKyxJJ4]

Tim Cook’s may be on Twitter now, but he’s probably not going to be retweeting a poor showing from Siri on the late night program last night.

.

Actress Jane Lynch’s tweeted a recent experience with Siri in which it apparently responded to her request for directions to Le Pain Quotidien with “I have no listing for Let Pam Cookie Ian.” She recounted the story in an interview on Conan, in which two further live Siri attempts also failed.

The first, Lynch’s voice on O’Brien’s phone, wasn’t really a fair test: Siri keeps personalised voice files for each user on its servers. But the second, in which O’Brien used his own phone, resulted in the infamous “I’m really sorry about this, but I can’t take any requests right now” message.

With some iPhone fails, though, you have to look more to the human factor than the phone. Sure, it’s a bit of an oops moment when Apple Maps directs local drivers onto an airport taxiway, but as with many other GPS fails, you’d kind of think drivers might notice that they were crossing a runway – or that an international airport might, you know, make sure the gate was closed or something …

Video reveals how the Touch ID hack was performed – ‘trivial’ attack that took 30 hours

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http://vimeo.com/75324765

The German hacker who successfully defeated Touch ID using a fingerprint lifted from the back of an iPhone has posted a video showing exactly how it was done.

While the hacker – who goes by the nickname Starbug – described the attack as “very straightforward and trivial,” he revealed in an email interview with arsTechnica that it required 30 hours of work using a scanner, high-res laserprinter and a printed circuit board etching kit.

It took me nearly 30 hours from unpacking the iPhone to a [bypass] that worked reliably. With better preparation it would have taken approximately half an hour. I spent significantly more time trying to find out information on the technical specification of the sensor than I actually spent bypassing it.

I was very disappointed, as I hoped to hack on it for a week or two. There was no challenge at all; the attack was very straightforward and trivial.

Should 5s owners worry that, now that the technique is known, it could be replicated in 30 mins? The answer is ‘it depends, but probably not’ … 
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App Store stops by 950K apps on its way to 1 million

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Last time Apple checked in during its Q3 2013 earnings report it announced the App Store was home to 900,000 apps and over 375K designed specifically for iPad. Today, the App Store has now reached 950,000 apps and quickly approaches 1 million with Apple accepting 50K new apps in the last two months alone. The news comes from app discovery service Appsfire, which regularly tracks new and updated apps added to the App Store.

Apple often celebrates milestones for its App Store with some type of giveaway or contest for users. Earlier this year it made a number of premium apps available for free to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the App Store and also gave away a $10,000 App Store gift card to announce the 50 billionth app download. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Apple do something similar for the 1 millionth app on the App Store.

Apple has likely seen an increase in new app submissions in recent weeks, as a long list of developers update and release new apps to accompany last week’s launch of iOS 7 and the new iPhones. At the current rate, it will take Apple just another couple of months to hit the 1 million mark.
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New report claims China leads demand for iPhone 5s over 5c, 78% of new iPhones globally are 5s

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How many of those 9 million first weekend sales were for the iPhone 5s vs the iPhone 5c? There’s been a lot of speculation about how many of each device Apple is selling, and whether or not lack of availability of the gold iPhone 5s is due to low supply or simply the higher demand. Apple is staying quiet on the breakdown of 5s units vs 5c, but today we get some solid insight from Localytics after the research firm tracked over 20 million unique active iPhones since launch day on Friday.

72 hours after the launch of the new devices, Localytics found that China, not the U.S., had the highest relative share of iPhone 5s vs 5c sales.

Globally an average of 78% of new iPhones sold were iPhone 5s models, while China came in at 91% 5s. It’s somewhat surprising considering analysts have largely expected the 5c to do well in China and other emerging markets, but the report speculates that the fact that gold is a popular color in the country could be driving higher demand for the 5s.That compares to the U.S. at 76% and an average of 82% in other countries. It appears the UK has the highest share of 5c sales as “the only country that didn’t have at least a 3 to 1 ratio of 5s  to 5c activations.”

Localytics also tells us that currently “the U.S. accounts for 68% of all active iPhone 5s and 5c devices worldwide, with Japan in second place with 13% of 5s and 5c’s
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Belkin announces YourType Wireless Keypad to extend your Mac’s keyboard

Belkin has just introduced a new YourType Wireless Keypad made to match your Mac that adds 28 keys to your setup and connects over Bluetooth. There are other options around, like turning your iPhone into a numpad using an app or using Mobee’s $23 overlay for Apple Magic Pad. But for physical keys and a design clearly made to look a lot like Apple’s own Magic Trackpad and fit in with your aluminum Mac, you can pick up the YourType Wireless Keypad for Mac from Belkin’s website now for $59.

  • Wireless keypad connects to iMac, Mac Pro, or MacBook via Bluetooth
  • Adds 28 keys, including function and document navigation controls
  • Aluminum enclosure matches Apple Wireless Keyboard
  • Low-profile, island-style keys
  • Includes two AA batteries

BlackBerry receives buyout offer from Fairfax Capital for $4.7 billion dollars

Blackberry has just announced (via Business Insider) that an investment firm has put in an offer for the company. At $9 a share, the deal is worth about 4.7 billion dollars in total. Fairfax already owns about 10 percent of Blackberry before the deal.

Having an investment company buy Blackberry does not have a direct impact on the smartphone market. Often though, investment firms buy out companies with the aim of selling off assets separately. For instance, BlackBerry’s patent portfolio may soon be put up for auction as a result of the deal, allowing for smartphone makers like Apple and Google to then bid for the intellectual property without the other baggage associated with buying out the failing company in its entirety.


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Valve changes the game, announces its own Steam OS

Valve has been teasing announcements surrounding its much rumored Steam Box platform on its website, and today the company revealed “SteamOS” as the first of three announcements. There aren’t many details available just yet, but Valve says the Linux-based platform will be available soon as a “free stand-alone operating system for living room machines” and “freely licensable operating system for manufacturers.”

Steam is not a one-way content broadcast channel, it’s a collaborative many-to-many entertainment platform, in which each participant is a multiplier of the experience for everyone else. With SteamOS, “openness” means that the hardware industry can iterate in the living room at a much faster pace than they’ve been able to. Content creators can connect directly to their customers. Users can alter or replace any part of the software or hardware they want. Gamers are empowered to join in the creation of the games they love. SteamOS will continue to evolve, but will remain an environment designed to foster these kinds of innovation.

Not too long ago Valve’s Gabe Newell expressed that the biggest threat to bringing Steam and PC gaming to the living room would be if Apple got there first:

“The biggest challenge, I don’t think is from the consoles,” Newell said. “I think the biggest challenge is that Apple moves on the living room before the PC industry sort of gets its act together.”

Valve says that game developers are already optimizing new releases set for 2014  that will take advantage of “significant performance increases in graphics processing” and “audio performance and reductions in input latency” in SteamOS. Although Apple has been beefing up its Apple TV with new content recently, it looks like Valve could beat Apple when it comes to bringing its ecosystem of games to the living room.

The webpage for SteamOS also mentions four new features coming to SteamOS and the Steam client soon, including: In-home streaming, music/TV/movies, Family Sharing, and Family options. Family Sharing will let users “take turns playing one another’s games while earning your own Steam achievements and saving your individual game progress to the Steam cloud.” The in-home streaming feature will allow users to stream games from their Mac or PC to a SteamOS machine over their home network, and Family Options will provide customizable libraries for different members of your household.

The company also says it’s working with “media services” to help bring music, TV, and movies to SteamOS, so we could be looking at more of a direct Apple TV competitor than simply a game console.

Steve Jobs’ childhood home could become a protected historical site

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CNN reports that the childhood home of Steve Jobs could soon become a protected historical site as a Los Altos Historical Commission is set to perform an evaluation of the property today. The property, located at 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, was Jobs’ childhood home since the seventh grade and its garage later became the location where Jobs, Steve Wozniak and other early employees would build the first Apple computers before officially forming the company in 1977.

The seven-member Los Altos Historical Commission has scheduled a “historic property evaluation” for the single-story, ranch-style house on Monday… If the designation is ultimately approved, then the house on 2066 Crist Drive in Los Altos, California, will have to be preserved…
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One area that Moto X beats out new iPhones: Durability

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=dLuwkrbhmYU

From 9to5Google:

We’ve enjoyed seeing the new iPhones get smashed to pieces in the inevitable drop tests that followed the launch of Apple’s two new smartphones this month, but what we really want to know is how it holds up against some of its Android competition. SquareTrade has just completed a durability test (via AllThingsD), and found that not only are the new iPhones not performing as well as last year’s models, the new 5s and plastic-backed 5c were both beat by Motorola’s new flagship Moto X:

“We were expecting that at least one of the new iPhone models would up its game but surprisingly, it was the Moto X that proved most forgiving of accidents,” SquareTrade marketing chief Ty Shay said in a statement. “This is the first time we’ve tested the breakability on a Motorola phone, the only phone we’ve ever tested that’s made in the USA. We were pleased to find that it withstood our drop, slide and dunk test with only the slightest dent. It looks like Google is giving Apple and Samsung a run for their money.”

The new iPhones did, however, beat out Samsung’s Galaxy S4, which was also included in the durability test.

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iPhone 5s camera w/ True Tone flash vs Nokia Lumia 1020 & Sony’s Xperia Z1

(Click for full size images)

Apple has made it clear that it isn’t going to get into the megapixel race with the likes of Nokia and Sony when it comes to the camera system used in its iPhones. The new iPhone 5s has the same 8-megapixel shooter as previous generations, but Apple is touting a brand new camera system for the device that includes a new five-element lens designed by Apple, a F2.2 aperture, a sensor with a 15 percent larger active area, auto stabilization, and bigger 1.5 micron pixels. However, the big new standout feature for the camera is a dual LED “True Tone” flash that should vastly improve shooting in poor lighting conditions. The real question is, how does Apple’s new camera system in the 5s stack up against some of the best smartphone cameras in the game: That’s the 41 megapixel PureView camera in the Nokia Lumia 1020, and the 20.7 megapixel camera with Sony Exmor RS mobile image sensor packed into the Sony Xperia Z1.

Recombu put together the comparison above which shows how the three cameras perform under the same nighttime lighting conditions for a portrait. We’ll let you decide, but, as the site points out, the iPhone 5s seems to do a much better job of producing accurate colors:

Admitedly, the dual-LEDs can’t rival the illuminating clout of the Nokia Lumia 1020’s Xenon flash, but with its combi warm and cool LEDs, the 5S clearly delivers a significantly more accurate shot – just look at the white canopies!

With the camera on the Nokia Lumia 1020 one of the device’s big selling points, it’s not surprising Nokia has gone after Apple in the past with attack ads claiming the iPhone 5 takes subpar photos.

AAPL stock skyrockets toward 500 in pre-market trading following 9M iPhone sales and high-end guidance

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AAPL quickly climbed 6 percent in pre-market trading following Apple’s announcement that it had sold a record 9M iphones in the first weekend, beating most analyst expectations. The last time it hit $500 was six weeks ago, when Carl Icahn announced his increased stake in the company, believed to be in excess of $1.5B.

Analyst forecasts for sales of the new iPhones had ranged wildly from 5M to 10M, but 9M was at the high end of what most were expecting and substantially above the more pessimistic forecasts. Four major financial firms had seemed unimpressed by the announcement on 10th September, downgrading the stock.

Apple’s SEC filing advised investors that it expects to hit the high-end of its earlier Q4 guidance … 
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Apple announces record 9 million iPhone sales over first three days, 200 million iOS 7 updates

Update: On Twitter, Tim Cook has tweeted, for the second time, to thank customers for the “amazing” sales.

[tweet https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/382172377569689600]

Apple has just announced first-weekend sales figures for the iPhone 5s and 5c. Sales for both phones total 9 million. In comparison, the iPhone 5 shipments topped 5 million in the same period. These numbers come in at the higher end of analyst estimates, with many predicting bearish sales similar to the iPhone 5 launch last year. As expected, Apple did not reveal the breakdown of sales between the different iPhone models.

Alongside phone sales, the company’s press release also highlights iOS 7’s successful launch. Apple has announced that 200 million devices have been updated to iOS 7 since it was released last Wednesday. This is double the rate at which iOS 6 was adopted.


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iPhone 5s more than three times as popular as the 5c; iOS 7 overtakes iOS 6

Data from Localytics shows that the iPhone 5s appears to be outselling the iPhone 5c by a factor of 3.4. The data is based on examining web analytics from 20M unique iPhone connections to mobile and web apps between launch and 8pm last night.

In less than 3 days, the iPhone 5s and 5c combined now represent about 1.36% of the total numbers of all iPhones activated in the U.S. market across the top 4 carriers AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile. From the data we are seeing, 1.05% of all iPhones in the United States are now iPhone 5s and just 0.31% are iPhone 5c.

This pattern is unlikely to be maintained in the longer-term: as the higher-end device, the 5s was always going to attract more of the type of people who have to have it now. The 5c, as more of a mass-market device, will likely see initial adoption spread out over a longer timescale.

AT&T appears to have picked up the lion’s share of sales, with Verizon a close-ish second.

Similar data from Mixpanel shows that iOS 7 overtook iOS 6 over the weekend.

Via TechCrunch

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Apple’s iPhone 5S renders 1080P video at twice the rate of the iPhone 5, Geekbenches close to 2010 Mac Mini

Almost the exact 2x Apple promised and great for people doing big videos. Also notable from Macsfuture:

The iPhone 5s’ Geekbench score of 2552 is close to the score of the “Early 2010” version of the Mac Mini.

So it seems that Apple’s processors are about 3-4 years behind Intel’s currently. If Apple’s Ax processors keeps doubling speed every year and Intel struggles to keep up with Moore’s law, it doesn’t take a Computer Science major to see what’s going to happen in a few years.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook joins Twitter, waxes on visiting Apple Stores today

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[tweet https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/381131235247923201]

Other Apple executives have been on Twitter for a while, and today CEO Tim Cook sent out his first tweet mentioning that he visited retail stores in Palo Alto for the retail launch of the iPhone 5s and 5c. Cook has been a member of Twitter since July, but his account is not yet verified by Twitter. Apple marketing chief Philip Schiller retweeted Cook’s tweet earlier today proving that the account is indeed run by the Apple CEO.

Earlier today Cook, along with Apple executives Phil Schiller and Eddie Cue, made an appearance at Apple’s Palo Alto retail store in California to greet customers that queued up for the launch of the new iPhones today.

Apple Marketing SVP Phil Schiller sometimes tweets about issues related to the company. For example, back in March Schiller tweeted the words “Be safe out there” along with a link to a study showing a much higher number of security threats on Android compared to iOS.
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Apple says demand for new iPhones is “incredible,” iPhone 5s in limited supply

Following the retail launch of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c in Apple Stores and retail partners around the world today, Apple has provided a statement to AllThingsD calling demand for the new iPhones “incredible”. Apple also noted that the iPhone 5s is only available in limited supplies and sold out in many stores, lining up with what we first reported yesterday:

“Demand for the new iPhones has been incredible and we are currently sold out or have limited supply of certain iPhone 5s models in some stores,”

Yesterday we reported that many stores were getting little to no gold and or silver/white units of the new iPhone 5s, and that most retail outlets would only have the Space Grey model available for sale. We’ve heard that is indeed the case today even at Apple’s own retail stores as most locations have an extremely limited number of gold iPhone 5s units.

This morning the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple has instructed suppliers to increase production of the gold iPhone 5s by one-third, as shipping times for the device online have now been pushed back to October in most countries. That’s compared to the 7-10 days quoted for other colors of the iPhone 5s in most of Apple’s initial launch countries.

How to: Live a paperless life with Mac, iPad and iPhone

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BEN_6275

Remember those promises we were made, about a paperless world? Everything electronic, everything online? Since the world was failing to deliver, I decided a couple of years ago to do an experiment to find out whether it is possible to live a truly paperless life.

Two years later, the bad news is that you can’t entirely avoid the stuff. There are a few documents the government insists I keep in paper form: my passport and driving licence, for example. There are documents that still arrive in paper form, and documents I have to supply in paper form.

The good news is that you can get very, very close. Here’s how I made it work … 

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$0 down on both 5c and 5s in China, but high monthly cost and 3-year lock-in

TechInAsia reports that Chinese buyers are buying from China Unicom rather than Apple as the carrier offers both iPhone 5c and 5s with no up-front cost.

The catch? Monthly costs higher than in the USA, and contracts that run for either 30 or 36 months. Those monthly costs are massive in a country where the average monthly salary is around $800, and a 36-month contract means that buying an iPhone 5c or 5s today will see you sitting out the iPhone 6 and 6s/c/whoknowswhat.

It’s estimated that China already had 42M iPhone users before the launch of the new phones, and before they were officially supported by any of the local carriers.

Full comparison of U.S. and China Unicom costs below … 
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Apple boosts production of gold iPhone 5s by a third after availability went straight to October

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The WSJ reports that Apple has instructed suppliers to increase production of the gold model of the iPhone 5s by one-third after seeing high demand for the color. Availability for the gold model was into October within 30 minutes of orders opening on Apple Store sites around the world, with retail stores also reportedly selling out quickly and carriers getting few in the first place … 
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