Apple

Among the various topics, like the new employee discount program, discussed at a recent all-hands Town Hall session with Apple employees was something seemingly very important to CEO Tim Cook: Charity. Unlike cofounder Steve Jobs who thought his company should focus on maximizing shareholders’ value so they can donate their own wealth, the new boss is adamant that Apple must do more on this front.

According to The Verge, the Town Hall meeting saw Cook shed more light on Apple’s charitable contributions that totaled $150 million (versus a cool $97.6 billion they had in the bank last quarter):

According to our sources, Cook said that Apple has donated a total of $50 million to Standford’s hospitals, split into $25 million for a new main building and $25 million for a new children’s hospital. Cook also spent quite a bit of time talking about Apple’s status as the leading contributor to Project RED, and expressed pride that Apple’s given over $50 million to the effort since it started.

According to Apple’s website, the Product Red initiative generated more than $180 million for the Global Fund since its inception. As 9to5Mac first reported back in September, one of the first important moves (anti-Jobsian, perhaps?) of then newly appointed CEO was a company-wide charity matching program for donations made by Apple employees up to $10,000 a year.

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A number of users flooded Apple Support Communities forums following yesterday’s release of the Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 update to complain about dreaded CUI errors. In addition to a bunch of minor issues, some people reported being greeted with unexpected app crashes after rebooting into 10.7.3. For them, attempting to launch any application would produce the above  (and below) prompt saying:

The application unexpectedly quit after trying to restore its windows. Do you want to try to restore its windows again?

Log files reveal that the affected users are often unable to use their computer normally as a large number of crashes are being logged. Luckily, there are several easy workarounds to fix this annoying bug…

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Robin Burrowes, the person in charge of Xbox Live marketing in the EMEA region, left Microsoft for Apple and is now charged with heading the App Store marketing initiatives for iTunes Europe. Burrowes led Xbox Live marketing for seven years and were responsible for product, business and marketing management as well as planning, strategy and leadership of Xbox Live across regions, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to joining Apple, the executive was involved with Microsoft’s MSN online operation as events/B2B marketing manager, British retail chain HMV (promotions manager) and Tennent Caledonian Breweries (brand marketing manager).

Burrowes graduated from University of Strathclyde in 1991. Apple fashionably would not comment on its new hire. Hiring yet another games veteran indicates Apple’s desire to expand on iTunes gaming initiatives in Europe. Apple’s business in the region and around the world is booming on strong iPhone sales. Interestingly, a recent job listing on Microsoft’s website for a software development engineer possibly hinted at Xbox Live games for iOS devices. A spokesperson for the Windows maker told Forbes they are “working to extend a few of our Xbox experiences and titles to other platforms.”

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Japanese blog Macotakara has a satisfying accuracy score in the Apple rumor business, and it was widely quoted earlier this month on a claim that Apple’s contract manufacturers Foxconn Electronics and Pegatron Technology issued orders to begin assembly of next-generation iPads for an early-March launch. Today, Macotakara reported that Apple would announce the iPad 3 in a media event due in March— ahead of the launch.

Previously, the blog claimed that a special Apple event to announce a new iPad was due in February and that the device was meant to go on sale the following month. Weirdly enough, Macotakara also said it heard from sources from Apple’s supply chain that the company will indeed hold an event this month, which was described as “strange.”

According to MacRumors’ Arnold Kim who contacted the author of the Macotakara report, “The February event would not be a product event.”

UPDATE: The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple disputed the story, saying Apple will not hold an event in February (he’s been right on these things before):

This is not going to happen, according to my sources. Apple will not hold an event in February, unusual or otherwise. That’s it.

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FileVault has been included in Macs by Apple since the release of Panther many years ago. In Apple’s most recent release, OS X Lion, the company included FileVault that brought new ways of encryption. FileVault lets you encrypt your entire drive with a master password to protect key-chain passwords, files, and more. FileVault 2 uses a separate partition to store the FileVault login information.

Cnet pointed us to a new report from password recovery company PassWare, who claimed it can decrypt Apple’s FileVault 2 in under 40 minutes. Obviously, this is a big concern because FileVault contains so much of users’ information.

PassWare decrypts FileVault by going in through the system’s firewire connection and using live-memory analysis to extract the encryption key from the FileVault partition (so the machine must assumedly be running?). From there, a user can uncover keychain files and login passwords that can be used to unlock the whole HDD/SSD.

PassWare conveniently makes PassWare 11.3 available to do this, but you will have to throw down a lofty $995 to get the software. PassWare makes this software primarily available for law enforcement.

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Apple just released Mac OS 10.7.3 via Software update and manual download.  Apple released some peripheral downloads today as well:

• Apple Remote Desktop 3.5.2 Client, Release Notes

• OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Server), Release Notes

• Server Admin Tools 10.7.3, Release Notes

• Security Update 2012-001 Server (Snow Leopard), Release Notes

• OS X Lion Update 10.7.3 (Server) Combo, Release Notes

• Security Update 2012-001 (Snow Leopard), Release Notes

Release notes are as follows:
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[slideshow]

Following reports earlier this month from Bloomberg that iPad 3 production kicked off in anticipation of a March launch, BGR today claimed a source is in possession of an iPad 3 prototype that has provided more information on the device.

A source claiming to be in possession of an iPad 3 prototype provided BGR with images containing details about Apple’s highly anticipated third-generation tablet. From the data in the photos, which contain the output from an iPad 3 using a development and debug tool called iBoot, we can infer plenty of information about the upcoming iPad 3.

BGR claimed the debug reports from the iPad 3 prototype in question have model numbers J1 and J2 (iPad3,1 and iPad3,2), with one being the only Wi-Fi model and the other an LTE/CDMA/GSM combo “for all carriers.” This echoes 9to5Mac‘s findings from last year.

The reports also provided confirmation of an A6 processor (model number S5L8945X) that most have expected Apple to include in the device.  We first broke news of a Quad-core chip in the iPad 3 via code snippets in iOS 5.1B software.

According to the BGR report, the processor will be a quad-core variant, “making the upcoming iPad 3 the fastest iOS device ever.”

We’ve seen previous mentions of the Samsung S5L8945X in iOS 5 dumps from the iPhone 4S:

So, while nothing in the report is new, the means by which these were found, reportedly from a prototype iPad 3, seem to confirm previous findings.

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Update: MIC Gadget says that there is a shutter/overexposure problem with the 1.3 Megapixel camera shutter that Apple is working on and they expect a April-ish type of time frame. We typically put less weight in piggybacking-type reports

Here is more evidence that Apple was (is?) prototyping an iPod nano with a camera on the back and the accompanying hole on the clip. Leaked by the Japanese blog Apple.pro, which leaked a similar set of images in April of last year, the new shots further indicate that Apple could be working (or at least was researching at some point), a next-generation iPod nano with an alleged 1.3-megapixel camera on its back, while still keeping the current model’s size and display.

The hole on the clip looks like it could house camera lens. Such a solution would theoretically separate the camera hardware and electronics inside the diminutive main casing from the optics and sensor hardware integrated on the clip. The clip hole looks very similar to an Apple patent filing published in May 2011, with one of the drawings depicting a belt clip with a hole in the exactly same place as on these spy shots. Two more shots are available after the break.

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Apple television mockup by Guilherme M. Schasiepen

Piper Jaffray’s resident Apple analyst Gene Munster is arguably the most vocal proponent of an integrated high-definition television set from Apple, the mythical iTV. His old predictions were picked up by the press lately thanks to that vague Apple HD TV hint in Walter Isaacson’s authorized Steve Jobs biography, gaining more credence with both Sony and Samsung dissing the idea as old news.

Now, last we heard from Munster was in November of last year when he predicted an Apple television set within a year, costing double a comparable set. In a note to clients issued Tuesday, the analyst warned that his original timing “remains uncertain” but underscored he is still targeting “a late 2012 launch.”

More interesting is Munster’s claim that a “major TV component supplier” told him last month Apple was inquiring about “various capabilities of their television display components,” which sounds a lot like this skeptical New York Times report from October 2011. However, “Without a revamped TV content solution, we do not think Apple enters the TV market,” Munster wrote. Remaking the user interface is easy, but getting Hollywood on board will be tricky, as the Wall Street Journal warned in December.

With that in mind, Munster offers three content scenarios for the Apple television, as quoted by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt…

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS9sUm5Y0sg]
last year’s 

The iPhone maker is many things to many people and it is easy to overlook Apple’s powerful marketing amidst the popularity of its gadgets. Yet, the two are inseparably intertwined. No wonder well-known names in business are (again) taking cues from Apple’s marketing cookbook, including United States specialty retailer of consumer electronics Best Buy that uncharacteristically decided to break away from the usual Super Bowl advertising featuring celebrities, which seems to be norm these days.

Instead, its new approach calls for celebrating technology innovators, a concept Apple popularized back in 1997 with the “Think Different” campaign. According to Bloomberg, the retailer opted to feature Silicon Valley inventors, such as Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom and camera phone pioneer Philippe Kahn who will help bring home the message at Sunday’s big game. From the mouth of Best Buy’s Marketing Chief Drew Panayiotou:

Big brands like to hire celebrities. We looked at everyone from George Clooney to Stephen Colbert. We believe the inventors are more than enough. I give those 125 million viewers a lot of credit. I think they’ll appreciate the story. […] They may not be at the same level as Steve Jobs, but they created some amazing stuff.

Eagle-eyed readers could point out that the retailer last holiday season aired Apple-focused adverts promoting its store-within-a-store displays, seen below. However, Best Buy’s latest creative concept marks a departure from its past Super Bowl campaigns that tapped celebrities, such as heavy metal rocker Ozzy Osbourne and teen heartthrob Justin Bieber. Meanwhile, a Taiwanese vendor is treading the fine line between originality and a display of disrespectfulness by featuring a Steve Jobs imitator to drum up excitement for its upcoming Android slab. Check it out that commercial in a clip included right after the break.

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From 9to5Toys.com:

Today only, MacConnection has Apple’s Thunderbolt Display for $899.99+ free shipping.  That’s $100 off list and the lowest price we’ve ever seen by almost $50.  It features a native resolution of 2560×1440, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 12ms grey-to-grey response time, 375 cd/m² brightness, built-in iSight camera, 3-port USB 2.0 hub, Thunderbolt port, and Mini DisplayPort connectivity.
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A year ago, CNN reported that Apple was working on a high-fidelity music service that would have required updates to its iPods and other music playing devices.

“Most of you aren’t hearing it the way it’s supposed to sound,” Dr. Dre said in a Beats Audio promotional video. “And you should — hear it the way I do.”

“What we’re trying to do here is fix the degradation of music that the digital revolution has caused,” he said. “It’s one thing to have music stolen through the ease of digital processing. But it’s another thing to destroy the quality of it. And that’s what’s happening on a massive scale.”

You would be forgiven for thinking that the late Steve Jobs enjoyed digital music on his home stereo through his iPod or MacBook. Quite the contrary, though, despite him single-handedly taking the music industry by storm with the iPod and the online iTunes digital music store a decade ago, Apple’s cofounder preferred listening to vinyl. In an interview with Walt Mossberg and Peter Kafka at the “D: Dive into Media” conference, musician Neil Young said the digital age “degraded our music” quality-wise.

A better techology is needed, Young cried. Conceivably, only one man would have been up to the task:

Steve Jobs as a pioneer of digital music and his legacy is tremendous. But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve got to believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have done what I’m trying to do.

Bloomberg expands on that saying that Jobs was actually working on a high-fidelity music service:

Musician Neil Young said he worked with Steve Jobs on a high-fidelity music service before Apple (AAPL) Inc. shelved the project.

While chief executive officer of Apple, Jobs sought to offer uncompressed music digitally, Young said today at an AllThingsD.com media conference in Dana Point, California. Apple “pretty much” has stopped working on the project, said Young, a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame who is known for the songs “Harvest Moon” and “Heart of Gold.”

We also love Young’s take on piracy:

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Apple and Foxconn are continuing to work on bringing that $12.5 billion iPad plant in Brazil online (there have been no iPads “Made in Brazil” seen yet, unlike iPhones). Meanwhile, the country’s Secretary of Planning and Development of the State of São Paulo Julio Semeghini revealed today that Apple’s favorite contract manufacturer will build up to five factories in Brazil with a thousand employees each.

According to a local report by Folha.com, Foxconn of Taiwan (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,) will leverage the additional plants to build notebooks and PCs, electronic components, connectors, batteries and precision machine elements. The plants should be located in Jundiai; São Paulo and business negotiations will resume when the Chinese New Year wraps up, according to the secretary.

The development could indicate plans to assemble an even greater portion of Apple products in Brazil, not just iPads and iPhones. Even so, poor machine-translated text suggested the secretary said, “The parts produced here will also help in the assembly of Apple products,” as “the company starts to import kits for assembly in Brazil iPad and iPhone.”

UPDATE: A Foxconn representative refuted the story, dismissing it as “pure speculation” amid what appears to be a power struggle over the Taiwanese firm’s billions of dollars in potential greenfield investments in the country. Foxconn, which already operates six plants in Brazil, wouldn’t acknowledge that iPhone or iPad production is taking place in any of the existing facilities.

UPDATE: Reader MarckOliver has submitted the following translation:

Parts produced in Brazil will aid in assemble of Apple products, said the Secretary. For now the company will import those kits from China to assemble in Brazil.

Reader Renato Selman concurs, telling us that while Foxconn will just assemble Apple gear using imported parts, “in the future Foxconn will use other components produced in Brazil”.

[vodpod id=Video.16028592&w=425&h=350&fv=pid%3DA15fgfffkgihmohhnil053%26amp%3B]
Thousands apply for jobs at Foxconn factories in China.

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Update: Apple has published a white paper entitled “Final Cut Pro X for Final Cut Pro 7 Editors” to detail the differences between the two apps and smooth the transition for professional users.

Apple updated its Final Cut Pro X video editing software this morning with some much-needed improvements. It is a significant update, because Final Cut Pro X version 10.0.3 now appeases to pro editors with two new features, including multicam editing that automatically syncs up to 64 angles of video and photos,  and broadcast monitoring. The software also advances XML 1.1 support for better plug-in compatibility, and it supports media re-linking while boasting enhanced chroma keying with edge quality, light wrap and color sampling. Users can also finally import layered Adobe Photoshop files.

Multicam editing is done in a typical Apple fashion, and besides taking advantage of the time code to sync camera angles, Final Cut Pro X can also sync scenes using audio waveforms to provide great accuracy. Users also no longer have to export to a motion graphics application to view results with real-time playback, and the broadcast monitoring feature lets an editor connect to waveform displays, vector scopes, and calibrated, high-quality monitors to ensure the projects meets broadcast specifications. Broadcast monitoring requires a Mac Pro with a PCIe card or a Thunderbolt device. In the case of the latter, customers will be able to monitor their project live while on a shoot.

Interestingly— broadcast monitoring is releasing as a beta feature, which is unusual for Apple. Then again, the iPhone 4S digital secretary Siri is also in beta, so perhaps these features mark a change in Apple toward getting new products out of the gate as soon as possible and smoothing out the rough edges over time.

The Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3 update is free for anyone that owns Final Cut Pro X, a $299 download from the Mac App Store. By the way, if you are stuck with a current Final Cut Pro 7 project, there is now a new app called “7toX by Assisted Editing” that is a $99 value and lets you easily convert old files to Final Cut Pro X projects.

Other updates include Compressor 4.0.2 that lets you customize output settings, work faster with distributed encoding and tap into a comprehensive set of delivery features and Motion 5.0.2 which allows users to customize Final Cut Pro titles, transitions and effects, with 2D/3D animations using real-time feedback.

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European Union regulators today announced the launch of a formal investigation of Samsung over mobile patents to determine whether the South Korean conglomerate breached EU antitrust rules in its legal dealings with competitors. The investigation is focused on so-called FRAND patents, a common rule that stipulates a patent applying to the standard must be adopted on “fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms” (FRAND). According to the press release, EU regulators want to figure out whether Samsung “used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets, in breach of EU antitrust rules.”

The Commission reminds that Samsung a decade ago promised to let rivals license its mobile patents under FRAND terms. The full-blown investigation comes in the light of the lawsuits Samsung filed against Apple at courts in Germany, France, the Netherlands and other countries around the world, asserting copyright infringement related to patents essential to wireless telecommunications standards.

The case is “a matter of priority,” the document reads. Patent blogger explained, “The European Commission can’t wait until Samsung finally wins a ruling based on such a patent and enforces it, potentially causing irreparable harm.” The full text of the European Commission Antitrust Commission announcement can be found below.

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Earlier this month, we reported that China Telecom earned the necessary approvals to launch the iPhone 4S on China’s third-largest carrier. Today, the China Telecom subsidiary Beijing Telecom issued a press release (via China Daily) and said the Beijing-based company will launch the iPhone 4S as early as the end of February or beginning of March.

A CDMA version of the iPhone 4S will launch on the network. The press release gave no word on pricing for the device, but it will likely fall in line with the other networks.

China Telecom currently boasts 36.3 million 3G subscribers, while in comparison the nation’s largest carrier China Mobile Ltd., boasts 51.2 million 3G subscribers. Obviously, the launch of the iPhone 4S brings a lot of excitement in China, and it gives Apple the chance to add new customers. Moreover, launching on China Mobile would add an abundance of new customers, but that does not look to be happening anytime soon.

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iPhone NFC by moneto

We had some time to talk to a well-connected developer at Macworld who was building an app that— among other capabilities— includes NFC reading for the purpose of mobile transactions.  We were obviously curious why they would do that, noting that third party NFC readers for iPhone were not popular (aside from the recently announced Moneto, above).  The developer told us that he had no hardware knowledge, but he had spoken to Apple iOS engineers on multiple occasions, and they are “heavy into NFC.”

I asked how confident he was, and he said, “Enough to bet the app development on.”

This is not the first we have heard that iPhone 5 would have NFC, however.  Besides the deluge of ideas Apple has patented with NFC, the New York Times said pre-iPhone 4S that an upcoming iPhone would have NFC.  While it did not turn out to be the iPhone 4S, it could be the one coming up.

(Moneto again)

The question is now: Who will Apple partner with for its payment systems?  Over the weekend we received some hints…
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Apple has implemented an interested system to fight those pesky scalpers who spoiled a recent iPhone 4S launch in Mainland China. A newly set up page on the Hong Kong Apple online store has a lottery system of sorts for iPhone reservations that appears to target scalpers employing bots from snatching up all the iPhones everyday. Rather than reserve their iPhone on a first-come-first-serve basis, customers are now required to provide full details, including a government-issued photo ID matching the name and ID number.

In addition, this lottery seems to be valid during a three-hour window each day. Those who “won” a reservation spot will be informed by email before 9 p.m. Interestingly, Apple specifically said it will not be selling iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S to walk-in customers. Previously, the reservation system would open at a random time and it would often fail as bots kept pinging the server all day, meaning reservations would be gone in less than a minute.

Perhaps Apple is keen on implementing this system in Mainland China and possibly elsewhere? Apple’s full message is included after the break…

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Update: Like others before it, Apple is now pulling QuasiDisk from its global iTunes stores. But we’ve added another below the fold

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNx6X4ZZFRA]

It appears another tethering app snuck into the App Store.  QuasiDisk ($1.99) purports to be a file manager for the iPhone, but it appears that in the most recent update over the weekend, it stealthily got the ability to tether via proxy.  Apple is usually pretty quick to pull these, so you might want to jump on this app if you want some tethering without a carrier plan.

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Flashless

After the NYTimes exposé and Tim Cook’s response, the question remains: Why is the media focusing on Apple and not questioning any of the other electronics companies that manufacture with Foxconn in China?

Obviously, Apple has the money, the brand, the prestige, and it grabs attention. However, it is not like Apple can make gold from straw. Apple simply cannot build its products anywhere other than China.

On the flip side, @NicePaul takes recent Forbes numbers and creates the following infographic that illustrates the opposite point:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOf_2HCX51w&feature=youtu.be]

Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-DeWitt pointed us to an hour long interview and Q&A session at LinkedIn headquarters with “Inside Apple” author Adam Lashinsky.

The interview is conducted by our former boss and current LinkedIn Executive Editor Dan Roth.  As PED noted, one of the more notable exchanges is with a former Apple employee who thought CEO Tim Cook is charismatic enough to be the United States President.  See the clip below (plus another interview this week at Davos).

Interestingly, the former Apple Engineer discusses how his friends at Apple were put on dummy projects until they could be trusted.

Buy the book at Amazon here or free at Audible.
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