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.
The next-generation iPhone is set to launch in next week and trade-ins are peaking, so now is the perfect time to start exchanging those soon-to-be old models to earn some cash for Apple’s upcoming smartphone. 9to5Mac compiled a list of reliable places to help you trade in that ole’ dusty iPhone for cash or credit—up to $500s worth in some cases! That is enough to buy a new iPhone and cover the AT&T early termination fee for moving to a carrier that fully supports FaceTime.
Before browsing the options, take a moment to identify the condition, features, and model of the swappable iPhone. This will help determine its potential value, because most online programs use a survey to calculate the iPhone’s estimate. Moreover, it is prudent to act now, as retailers will likely drop their prices as the launch date draws nearer.
HackerNews linked last night to a Pastbin file, which is a long-rambling diatribe by hacker group AntiSec, that eventually said the group infiltrated an FBI laptop in March and was able to download files off the machine. One of those files, NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv, contained more than 1 million Apple UDIDs, but the group claimed to have over 12 million UDIDs and other personal information, which it apparently gathered after breaching the Dell Vostro of an FBI operative.
During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of “NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc.
“NCFTA_iOS_devices_intel.csv” looks like it stands for the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, which “functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement.” (http://www.ncfta.net/)
Apple previously said it would limit developer access to UDIDs, but the Pastebin post asserted AntiSec published the identifiers, after first leaving out full names, cell numbers and addresses, to warn folks about the FBI tracking U.S. citizens with the mobile data.
Fun Fact: 166 devices in the data set are named “Titanic” or “The Titanic” because of the “Titanic is syncing” joke.
Cydia creater Saurik took to Hacker News to note that it is unlikely that the source was from jailbreaking:
I run Cydia, and have determined only 16.7% of the UDIDs in that file are from jailbroken devices: I thereby do not believe that whatever managed to get this data is anywhere in our ecosystem.
Apple quietly dropped the prices on refurbished MacBook Airs last night by up to $120. Notables above are 2010 releases of the 11.6″ MacBook Air model with options of 128GB SSD or 4GB of RAM. Apple refurbished items are virtually indistinguishable from new items and come with the same 1 year AppleCare warranty. All refurbished Macs purchased at Apple are also eligible for the OS X Mountain Lion Up-to-Date Program.
With the September 12th Apple event approaching, anticipation for a redesigned iPhone is heating up. Besides the legitimate information leaking over the course of the past months, there has been fake information, mockups and hoaxes about the device floating around. Over the past few days, the increasing anticipation and speculation for the new iPhone has led to a new level of mockups and hoaxes.
Many iOS devs are slashing the prices on some of their hottest iOS titles to celebrate Labor Day Weekend. These are some of the lowest prices we’ve seen for major iOS gaming titles. Use the direct download links below to cash in on the savings before they disappear.
Vietnamese website Tinhte, which has a solid record of procuring pre-release Apple products, has headphones that it claimed the new iPhone will come with next month. The current iOS device headphones have remained largely unchanged since the launch of the original iPhone in 2007, and many complain they fit poorly or fall out often (guilty!). Apple also makes in-ear headphones that many consider over-priced and under-performing (also guilty!).
These headphones appear to be a hybrid of the two current versions that Apple offers. It is not certain if they will be offered with the product or as a new add-on accessory.
Some stills from the website are below, including the comparison to current iPhone headsets, and the telltale “Designed in California, Made in Viet Nam” written along the cable:
If the accessory in the video above turns out to be legit, it would certainly indicate Apple is making some improvements to its headset…or at least trying.
We had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Sharp today at its IGZO display booth. While they would not say which Apple products would incorporate their new displays, they did seem to insinuate these were the best displays on the market, and Apple is the type of company that uses the best displays.
LifeProof already made a splash with its water, dirt, snow, and shockproof cases for iPhone 4 and 4S ($54). Today, at the ShowStoppers IFA event in Berlin, we were able to get our hands on LifeProof’s latest creation: an iPad version of the popular Nüüd case. If you are unfamiliar, the Nüüd cases feature no screen protection (although there is now an optional display cover that doubles as a stand), but it instead protects your iPad from the elements by creating a seal around the perimeter of the display. The case is currently available for iPad 2 and 3 through the LifeProof website and bundled with the screen protector/stand for €127.53 ($160 USD).Go past the break for another video demo of the Nüüd case ‘skinny dipping’ (being submerged in water).
A report surfaced this morning about T-Mobile sending a memo to its sales staff that encourages them to sell against Apple’s iPhone beginning Sept. 21. Unsurprisingly, the memo confirmed T-Mobile would not be a carrier for the next-generation iPhone due out next month. Adding a bit to this morning’s story, TmoNews followed up with a new flyer that T-Mobile aims to show customers. The flyer boasts just how much iPhone users will save if they ditch AT&T and bring their unlocked iPhone to T-Mobile. Magenta is promising customers can save up to $1,500 over two years if they switch. T-Mobile’s single line offering actually sounds fabulous, as it offers customers truly unlimited data, text and minutes for only $75. That seems like a plan you can’t beat…unless you want 3G speeds. T-Mobile made a recent push to iPhone-compatible 1900MHz 3G network (and 4G at WWDC), but we are not sure how well it is doing on that front. Until then, EDGE 2.5G is as fast as you will get.
T-Mobile has not been able to sign up as an official iPhone carrier, so it has always made strides to welcome unlocked iPhone users. We previously reported there are roughly 1 million iPhone users on T-Mobile’s network. T-Mobile offers a MicroSIM kit to make the switch on your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S a little easier. An updated version of the kit will hit stores beginning Aug. 29.
Ah, the Genius Bar: It’s (mostly) free, it’s accessible, and nine out of 10 Apple product owners love it.
The latest research from NPD Group indicates folks are willing to buy multiple Apple devices primarily due to their pleasant experience at the Genius Bar. A whopping 90 percent, in fact, said they were “extremely or very satisfied” following their experience. The approval rate is primarily attributed to 88 percent of those Genius Bar consumers receiving complimentary service.
That service left almost all of the 40 percent of Apple owners who took their Apple devices to the Genius Bar very happy. Nearly 90 percent of consumers who used Apple’s tech service said they were extremely or very satisfied. In contrast, top 2 box satisfaction among all consumer service interactions was 78 percent. A major part of their satisfaction came from the fact that only a small percentage actually paid for their service. According to the report, 88 percent of Genius Bar consumers said their service was free compared to 78 percent of all consumers.
The majority of the support was for troubleshooting (37 percent), followed by product repair (28 percent), how-to support (18 percent), software installation/upgrade (11 percent), and product installation/set-up (7 percent).
Apple product consumers also approve the retail giant’s tech support offerings. Sixty percent of consumers claimed they were “somewhat or much more likely” to make another purchase following their experience, while another 31 percent admitted they had a “much more positive view” of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company after their service. However, as the study noted, “physical presence is key.” Fifty-three percent of consumers were extremely satisfied with in-store encounters versus other types of interactions, but 45 percent of younger consumers still preferred virtual communications.
These statistics are interesting, especially considering yesterday’s report from IFOAppleStore. It claimed then-COO Tim Cook and current CFO Peter Oppenheimer pushed former Apple Senior Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson toward revenues over customer satisfaction when then-CEO Steve Jobs was on medical leave in 2009. Moreover, Apple has maintained new policies —despite wide-spread criticism over recent retail layoffs— that reflect budget cuts with an emphasis on revenue. With this outlook, it surely won’t be long until tech support experiences start falling by the wayside.
NPD gathered responses from over 2,000 adults via an online survey in May 2012.
More stats are available in the press release below.
In what should not be a surprise to anyone, it looks like T-Mobile won’t carry Apple’s next-generation iPhone. In a memo to employees, leaked by TmoNews, T-Mobile is encouraging its retail staff to begin “selling against the iPhone” on Sept. 21. Of course, Sept. 21 is the rumored launch date for the latest handset out of Cupertino. T-Mobile is probably just making an assumption, rather than having inside knowledge, but you never know.
T-Mobile has been battling for the iPhone for years and does not have much to show for it. Last holiday quarter alone, the nation’s fourth-largest carrier lost 802,000 contract customers (many of whom moved to pre-paid plans).
T-Mobile hosts over a million iPhone customers on its network. Thanks to T-Mobile’s recent push to 1900MHz 3G network (and 4G at WWDC), customers are able to enjoy magenta’s network. Luckily, for those who want to take the unlocked route, another leaked memo today shows that T-Mobile will sell an updated MicroSIM kit that allows customers to use their iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S on the network. The new “Monthly4G microSIM kits” will begin arriving in stores Aug. 29 and will allow for T-Mobile’s awesome new unlimited data plan to be used. [TmoNews]
Apple recently unveiled Germany’s ninth Apple Store on its website (translated). The latest shop will open Sept. 1 at 10 a.m. in Cologne’s Rhein-Center shopping mall. It is located on the top floor next to Zara and across from Lush. According to German news blog iFun (translated), those who wait in line to gain entrance will receive a limited number of T-shirts.
In related news, Apple’s signage now covers a second spot in Hong Kong. The gray, simple look indicates a new retail store is coming to the Festival Walk mall in the Kowloon Tong area, according to Engadget China (translated), which also posted a few pictures, as seen below. The report said the store could open in September, but the date is not confirmed.
Apple just announced that Vice President of Mac Software Engineering Craig Federighi and Vice President of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio will join CEO Tim Cook’s executive team as SVPs. Apple’s Executive Bio page updated thusly:
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Note: Apple currently has two SVPs of hardware engineering. Bob Mansfield announced his retirement in June but will instead stay to work on future products, while reporting to Cook.
The World Ends with You: Solo Remix: Square Enix has reworked the title originally released for Nintendo DS in 2007 with an all new combat system, HD art, and new music. The $18 iOS port (and $19 iPad version) has made a few changes that hardcore fans of the game are not too pleased with, but overall first impressions have been positive.
Square Enix’s fresh-faced hit The New York Times called “one of the best role playing games ever designed for anything” has busted onto iOS in a big way… Enjoy the game in full HD on your Retina-enabled iPhone 4 or later device. Art and animation across the game has been redrawn just for this release, making combat a beautiful experience. This is how all 2D classics should look.
CNN app for iPad version 1.7: CNN’s iPad app, in addition to its official iPhone app, was updated today with the ability to follow the 2012 presidential race through CNN’s U.S. Election Center. The update also includes improved “easy-to-use navigation” for browsing stories and video.
Clueful:A few weeks back we mentioned that BitDefender’s iOS app for detecting apps that access private data was removed from the App Store without much explanation from Apple. Today the company has relaunched the Clueful app as a web app accessible from your iOS devices at Cluefulapp.com. The new web app will let you manually search for info on any given app, opposed to the previous app that would detect the apps running on your device. Expand Expanding Close
Mobile analytics firm Flurry published a new report today asserting iOS and Android handsets have experienced adoption at such a supersonic speed that their growth rate has now eclipsed all consumer technology in history.
The rate of iOS and Android device adoption has surpassed that of any consumer technology in history. Compared to recent technologies, smart device adoption is being adopted 10X faster than that of the 80s PC revolution, 2X faster than that of 90s Internet Boom and 3X faster than that of recent social network adoption. Five years into the smart device growth curve, expansion of this new technology is rapidly expanding beyond early adopter markets such as such as North America and Western Europe, creating a true worldwide addressable market. Overall, Flurry estimates that there were over 640 million iOS and Android devices in use during the month of July 2012.
Smartphones making headway as they spread worldwide is nothing new, but their history-making adoption rate is certainly notable. The report illustrated countries with the greatest number of device activations as well as the fasting growing markets. The results indicated the United States sits at No. 1 with 165 million iOS and Android handset activations for July, but China experienced a leading 401 percent activation growth during the same period.
Reports emerged over the weekend about AT&T forcing its employees into a Sept. 21 to Sept. 30 “Vacation Blackout”.
According to an AT&T sales rep, AT&T staff has been given a vacation blackout from September 21 to September 30, just like Verizon employees. Our source also mentioned that blue carrier employees are undergoing training for an “iconic release.”
“Not true!” we’ve heard. We reached out to AT&T to see what it had to say regarding the above. An AT&T spokesperson told us this morning that there is no company-wide vacation blackout for the end of September.
We also talked to AT&T reps at other stores who implied more people are being put on duty, depending on staffing levels of that particular store, but there is no “blackout.” One New York employee will even sit out the first week of the iPhone launch due to a long-planned vacation.
TechCrunch sourced one rep from a single AT&T store, which may have its own little under-staffed blackout, but, as we heard, the policy is not nationwide.
Apple’s stock opened at a record $690 per share following its triumph in the pivotal patents trial against Samsung last Friday. Today is the first day of trading since Apple came out on top and its latest record soars past the previous best of $674.88 per share. The unparallelled all-time high also forced Apple’s market capitalization to $637 billion.
While not official from Apple, the store that was previously rumored to be an Apple Store in Stockholm’s Taby C mall appears pretty likely to be an Apple Store. The run-up to this day has been long for Swedish Apple users. The local MacWorld.se says doors should open around Oct. 25, which is just in time for iPad Minis and the holidays. Watch out IKEA!
[Internal Memo] Regarding the Jury Verdict in California
On Friday, August 24, 2012, the jury verdict in our trial against Apple was announced at the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The following is an internal memo that reflects Samsung’s position regarding the verdict:
We initially proposed to negotiate with Apple instead of going to court, as they had been one of our most important customers. However, Apple pressed on with a lawsuit, and we have had little choice but to counter-sue, so that we can protect our company.
Certainly, we are very disappointed by the verdict at the US District Court for the Northern District of California (NDCA), and it is regrettable that the verdict has caused concern amongst our employees, as well as our loyal customers.
However, the judge’s final ruling remains, along with a number of other procedures. We will continue to do our utmost until our arguments have been accepted.
The NDCA verdict starkly contrasts decisions made by courts in a number of other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Korea, which have previously ruled that we did not copy Apple’s designs. These courts also recognized our arguments concerning our standards patents.
History has shown there has yet to be a company that has won the hearts and minds of consumers and achieved continuous growth, when its primary means to competition has been the outright abuse of patent law, not the pursuit of innovation.
We trust that the consumers and the market will side with those who prioritize innovation over litigation, and we will prove this beyond doubt.
If, when you read “History has shown there has yet to be a company that has won the hearts and minds of consumers and achieved continuous growth, when its primary means to competition has been the outright abuse of patent law, not the pursuit of innovation.” you thought “Microsoft!”, you are not alone. Expand Expanding Close
As you can probably see, we made some big changes to the look and feel of the site this weekend. The new design was put together by Get10Up.com and we want to thank Taylor, Jake and the rest of the team for getting it all into place and making this happen.
We did not hate the old 9to5 design, but we wanted to start from scratch on so many different aspects due to Retina devices proliferating and the move toward mobile. Some improvements you will notice:
1. All of the design elements are optimized for Retina displays. In addition, we are able to display images and video over 700 pixels wide in this new format (1,400 pixel Retina). This allows us to bring imagery and video clarity that has always been hard to deliver (without “open in a new window”). Our CMS/Hosting partners WordPress VIP are also jumping on the Retina train with new additions that will allow us to deliver Retina quality imagery without compromising load times for those without Retina displays.
2. Mobile. We have been through a bunch of mobile designs before, which we were not particularly fond of (and neither were you!), but last year we gave up and decided we were going to start fresh. If you are reading this on a mobile device, you will hopefully like the changes at hand. Desktop users: Have a look…or just resize your browser and notice how the responsive desktop elements fall away into a mobile experience.
3. Load times. Even with Retina images and design elements, we wanted to bring load times down. The team at Get10Up was able to pull this off with their mastery of WordPress, CSS and some front- and back-end “magic.” No matter what device you are using, you should notice significant page load time improvement.
4. We are a blog and proud of it. Recently, many of the bigger blogs attempted to change formats from their roots in the reverse chronological format into something like a magazine or newspaper. We played with the idea, but we found that we really, truly enjoy the traditional blog format whether we’re on an iPhone, an iPad, or our Macs. With that said, we also enlarged our Top 4 Feature Stories to spread across the page. In addition, we are improving our “asides” as smaller, title-only lines on the front page. We love these for small, quick bits of news and hope you do too.
5. Hooray for Authors! We gave a little more space to Mark, Jordan, Elyse, Jake, Mike, and all of our contributors who do a great job of delivering Apple news, rumors, reviews, and opinion to you first. You will see their faces on stories so you will know who is delivering your news.
6. Sharing buttons: Nowhere and everywhere. We labored over the decision about whether to include sharing buttons. On one hand, they are very helpful when you want to share a post with your social networks. On the other hand, they take valuable load time, are ugly, and they get in the way of the flow of content.
We think we came up with an elegant compromise: There are no social buttons anywhere on the site, but sharing buttons will load with counts (now including Pinterest!) if you hit the ‘share’ text on top or ‘share this’ text on the bottom of a post. They are a little harder to find, but we think you will have no problem sharing if you should decide.
7. You! As you’ve probably noticed (see @inadarei above), we’ve been embedding a lot of reader Tweet reactions to posts recently. Besides just calling out great comments, embedding allows us to share the conversation. If you have something to add, include the post URL and cc @9to5mac on the tweet for consideration.
We also pushed updates to 9to5Google.comand 9to5Toys.com, which should unite the experience. 9to5Forums.comand our commenting engine also got a big pickup this week from VanillaForums. It improves voting/order of comments, spam removal, and a host of smaller improvements. 9to5Forums will move to the new design shortly.
We really hope you like the update and it improves your experience at 9to5 (more on the way too). We love bringing you your favorite technology news!
We often get review items that do not merit their own review for a variety of reasons. Some might have gotten to us late after we have already read reviews, while others might be smaller niche items or some bigger ticket items that might not have blown us away, but they are still interesting nonetheless. Still, we think these guys are all noteworthy…
Following the verdict in the Apple vs. Samsung trial today, where Samsung was found guilty of infringing various Apple patents related to the case, Apple is also coming out a winner, at least temporarily, in Google/Motorola’s attempt to block imports of iPhones and iPads to the United States.
In late June, we told you about Google’s attempt to block U.S. imports of iPhones and iPads based on a previous ruling that Apple infringed on one standard-essential Motorola patent. The initial ruling was under review by the ITC, which has power to block U.S. imports of Apple devices from Asia, with a decision expected at a hearing scheduled for today.
The ITC has now concluded its review (via paid blogger FossPatents), finding no violations for three of the four patents in the initial suit (including the one mentioned above), but remanded an investigation on a fourth, non-standard essential patent to Judge Thomas Pender. The result? According to FossPatents, there might be a violation and import ban related to the patent, but a remand and ITC review could take up to a year: Expand Expanding Close
Update: Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves reached out to us with some clarification on his note to clients earlier today noting the “commentary in our note was our interpretation and our thoughts based on the meetings we had”:
Nobody at Apple said anything to us about future products. The commentary in our note was our interpretation and our thoughts based on the meetings we had. It’s ok if you say “Analyst does not expect a TV any time soon”, but its incorrect to attribute the commentary to Apple management, particularly in the title.
While recent reports claimed Apple is in deep negotiations with cable operators to create a new cable TV platform for Apple TV, many also tied the reports to the possibility of a full-fledged Apple HDTV. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek claimed just last week that Apple’s HDTV set is in full production, and he went as far as including 2 million units of the device at an average sale price of $1,250 in his model for early 2013.
According to a note to clients from Pacific Crest analyst Andy Hargreaves, who spoke with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer and Senior Vice President for Internet Services Eddy Cue on Wednesday, Apple’s entrance into the HDTV world is “extremely unlikely in the near-term.” Fortune posted an excerpt from Hargreaves’ notes today following his meeting with Oppenheimer and Cue: Expand Expanding Close
