Apple

As we get close to the Lion launch, several tipsters have provided more information regarding the Apple retail overnight and  days after.  Tonight, Apple retail will hold an overnight from approximately 11pm – 7 am to give the retail staff enough time to update the stores visual elements with new marketing materials and re-image all display Macs with Lion.

As previously reported, our tipsters say most stores have recently received an external LaCie hard drive containing Lion installs, but we have received new information that the drives contain 3 different install images for Lion; Normal, Pro, and Joint Venture. 

JointVenture is an enterprise membership program to support businesses running Macs and iDevices.  It is believed that each of these installs will include unique software titles, and some of which could be new.

Furthermore we’ve heard rumblings that some stores will be receiving maxed out Mac Pro towers to be used as Lion distribution caching centers (speculation here).  Some believe that these stations would allow customers to purchase Lion (3.5GB) from the Mac App store and download it directly from the store server in minutes rather than hours it takes over a normal broadband connection.

MacOS X Server and internal builds of Time Capsule allow for Software Update Caching, so this is certainly something within Apple’s capabilities.  Also, Apple told Computerworld that users could come into the store to download Lion last month.

This would also be a huge help to customers who do not have access to a broadband Internet connection or users who want to walk through the install process with an Apple employee during a personal training session.  It would obviously also save Apple some internet bandwidth which at 3.5GB per user adds up.

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(Penrith Store – Image Flicker via Macrumors)

Current (via TNW) received some fun Apple Store stats for us this morning on the occasion of the Apple Store Opening in Penrith Sydney, Australia.

“Apple Retail has been in business for 10 years. During this period, we have had over 1 billion visitors through our doors, many of whom are new to the Mac, as the Apple Store is the best place to learn about all the latest products from Apple,”

We had over 1 million customers sign-up for our Personal Setup offering last quarter alone.

The country’s first Apple-operated retail outlet opened doors for business 2008 in Sydney. As you know, Apple recently celebrated ten years in retail business. Their retail chief Ron Johnson, credited with turning a risky gamble into a highly profitable business, recently left Apple for JC Penney, where he is due to assume the CEO role February 1 next year. Retail stores are a crucial part in Apple’s success. “Without these stores I don’t think we would have been as successful either”, Steve Jobs remarked at the iPad 2 unveiling in February.

The milestone arrives as Apple’s retail staff is gearing up for the OS X Lion launch. Sources say the company is holding employee overnights today in anticipation of the Lion launch tomorrow. In addition, AppleCare reps have received their Lion training and upgraded their workstations to Lion. Leaked training material obtained by 9to5Mac this morning reveals that Lion will be able to reinstall itself over the Internet directly from the all-new recovery partition, without even needing to boot the operating system and launch the Mac App Store.

Apple currently has 330 open stores, Fiscal 2011 ends September 25th, in just over 2 months…

“Our retail offering continues to growth, with Penrith the 11th store in Australia, since we opened Apple Store Sydney just three years ago. Globally we are planning to have 363 stores in fiscal 2011.”

Speaking of the Penrith Apple Store, there is a special media event for the opening July 23rd at 8am (see below).  The store will open to the public at 9am.

Saturday?  8am?  Journalists? Hehe.
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We’re hearing from multiple retail sources across the world that Apple’s retail chain will be holding employee overnights Tuesday night. The likely topic? Lion.

In the employee halls of the retail chain sit large tubes that hold new posters for both front of store posters and posters within the store. Additionally, we’re hearing that each store has been sent a Lion-packing Mac Pro for an unknown purpose. As previously reported, LaCie hard drives loaded with the GM seed of Lion image are ready to be connected as installers on the Macs throughout the showroom floor.

New MacBook Airs with Thunderbolt and faster chips are expected to launch alongside Lion, but nothing from the retail channels confirms this timing. Apple has also been known to push back release dates with little notice (last week).  AllThingsD previously said “Thursday-Friday” and we previously were shown Apple internal delivery times for new products arriving last week.

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Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber today makes note of his complaints about iPad magazines (all valid), including the large files and static page sizes. But he also mentions casually, but apparently factually, that the iPad 3 will have a 2048×1536 Retina Display:

These magazines and newspapers that render each “page” as a static 1024 × 768 image are going to look like utter ass on the iPad 3’s 2048 × 1536 retina display.

Unfortunately, there is no timeframe given to this and with some expecting a Fall upgrade and others putting the release update as far out as next March, we’ll have to wait and see.

We earlier found bits of code which seem to indicate that an upcoming iPad will indeed have double the resolution as the current iPad 2.
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We loved his iPhone 5 mockups, now Guilherme Schasiepen’s wows us with his iPad 2HD/Plus/HD, via MacMagazine.br.

More below:

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As Apple gears up to announce earnings tomorrow after the bell, the stock has hit an all time high each of the last two trading sessions.  Today AAPL is up about 2.5% to just north of $373. Market cap is now just shy of and incredible $350B. (Exxon is at $409B)  Great earnings are expected from AAPL as tech has found a footing following Google’s quarterly results last week that shot the stock up over 12%.

In addition to expected stellar earnings, news that Apple is close to inking a deal with China Mobile has given the iPhone maker a boost. This deal would potentially give Apple access to China Mobile’s 600m subscriber base. Stay tuned tomorrow for the exact earnings release.

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[UPDATE July 19, 2011 8:10 Eastern]: The article has been updated with a comment from Samsung included at the bottom. In addition, an Asian Economy story establishing family bonds between the case maker’s CEO and Samsung’s chairman, provided in the comments, has been added.

Apple is suing “the copyist” Samsung because they “imitate the appearance of Apple’s products to capitalize on Apple’s success”. Be that as it may, the similarities between the two tech giant’s gadgets are nothing compared to what other Asian knockoffs are doing for a living. Like Anymode Corp., which is in the business of designing, manufacturing and selling a blatant Smart Cover rip-off, pictured above and below. Conveniently dubbed the Smart Case – obviously because Apple trademarked it – the accessory comes in five pastel color choices. It too can prop a tablet upwards and it folds like Apple’s accessory as well. The Smart Case is designed exclusively for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 – and not by a coincidence, warns our reader Jun.

Apparently Sang-yong Kim, the Anymode CEO, was “born in Samsung family”. Jun tells us – and you’re free to take it at face value – that the Anymode CEO “is nephew of the Samsung’s chairman Kun-Hee Lee“, the claim we were unable to verify at the time of this writing. UPDATE: This Asian Economy article establishes family bonds between Sang-yong Kim and Kun-Hee Lee. The 69-year old chairman of Samsung Electronics stepped down in April 2008 amid the Slush funds scandal, but returned at the group’s helm in March of last year. He is credited for improving the quality of Samsung’s design and products. Anymode is not even attempting to conceal the Samsung link. The company describes itself on a LinkedIn page as…

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[vodpod id=Video.13339040&w=650&h=400&fv=videoGUID%3D%7B2606B2B4-E5C1-41E6-A7FF-191E5D010FA3%7D%26amp%3Bplayerid%3D1000%26amp%3BplyMediaEnabled%3D1%26amp%3BconfigURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fwsj.vo.llnwd.net%2Fo28%2Fplayers%2F%26amp%3BautoStart%3Dfalse]

Without revealing too many new details, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple and China Mobile are “getting closer” to the seemingly elusive China Mobile iPhone deal. China Mobile is the mainland’s largest carrier with over 600 million subscribers (that’s about the equiv. of the US+European populations). The report also confirms that it was, in fact, Tim Cook who was spotted at China Mobile‘s headquarters in mid-June.

China Mobile references in the iOS SDK – Thanks, Sonny Dickson!

The WSJ also discusses the price of the current iPhone models in context with the average salaries for China households:

The iPhone, which currently sells for between 3,999 and 5,999 yuan without contract, would be a luxury for many Chinese consumers. The average household income in the first half of 2011 was 12,076 yuan, according to China’s national statistics bureau.

With this fact in mind, it makes sense for Apple to build and sell a more economical iPhone. The report is not specific about when this China Mobile iPhone will launch and China Mobile has already confirmed that talks with Apple over carrying the iPhone are ongoing. Be sure to check out the WSJ’s explanation of the “exclusive” in the video above.

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In an exclusive report, Boy Genius Report’s Jonathan Geller says that Apple is about to launch an inexpensive iPhone costing $350 by the end of summer:

According to our source, Apple will indeed be launching a prepaid / lower cost iPhone this year. We are told the handset will retail for no more than $350 without contract. Ready for the really interesting part? It’s entirely possible that the low-cost iPhone will in fact be the iPhone 3GS.

The author theorizes that “there would be an iPhone 4S in addition to the prepaid iPhone 3GS available within the next month to two” in addition to the iPhone 4 which BGR is told Apple will continue to sell…

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Shares of the Taiwanese Android phone maker HTC fell 6.5 percent this morning following the ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) that the company violated two patents held by Apple. The company’s shares had been pretty much in a free-fall throughout last week as well. The agency’s commissioners still have to support the ruling, but investors are already panicking over fears that the ruling will favor Apple. This, in turn, would open doors to ITC’s ban on imports of HTC’s phones into the United States. In response to the crisis, HTC announced a share buy back program worth up to $760 million in an attempt to stabilize its share price and restore investor confidence, reports Financial Times:

The attempt to prop up HTC’s share price appeared to have little effect as the stock fell below HTC’s minimum purchase price of T$900 to close down 3.9 per cent at T$871. The sell-off highlights investor fears that the legal battle could have wider implications for the competitive balance between Apple and Google Android-based phonemakers like HTC, Samsung and Motorola.

HTC is thought to have recently acquired S3 Graphics for $300 million in a bid to secure a stronger ground in its legal dealings with Apple, which filed its patent infringement complaint against the Taiwanese company back in March 2010. That’s not all HTC’s been doing lately in order to buy its way out of this mess…

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Yesterday’s victory in the ITC courts may have seemed like good news for Apple in giving it the upper hand against its Android carrying foe.  But, even if the ITC courts hold up the ruling on Apple’s two broad ranging patents from the mid-90s,

• U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data.”
• U.S. Patent No. 6,343,263 on a “real-time signal processing system for serially transmitted data.”

..it likely won’t be able to stop HTC from selling its popular Android line in the US.  HTC has a recently acquired ‘Ace in the Hole’…
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CNET reports that the International Trade Commission has officially ruled that phone maker HTC has violated two of Apple’s patents related to iPhone technologies. This blow to HTC opens the door to a potential ban on imports of HTC products into the United States. Apple initially filed 10 patent violations against HTC, but increased that amount by five earlier this week. HTC obviously does not agree with the ITC ruling and provided the following statement:

HTC will vigorously fight these two remaining patents through an appeal before the ITC commissioners who make the final decision,” said Grace Lei, general counsel for HTC. “This is only one step of many in these legal proceedings.

As we know, Apple and Samsung (and Motorola too) are currently in a similar situation with Apple claiming multiple patent violations against the company. The twist in the Apple and Samsung case is that Samsung is counter-suing by claiming that Apple is violating Samsung’s patents.

There are only a few possibile endings if Apple wins HTC case. Either the two companies settle (with Apple taking home some more of HTC’s money – Microsoft already takes $5/phone and Oracle is looking for some more) or HTC stops selling Android devices. In all likelihood, if the ITC does not agree with HTC’s appeal, the two technology heavy weights will work out some settlement.  Cha Ching!

More on the patents below:

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Our friends over at iFixYouri have offered to do some repairs on 9to5mac readers’ iOS devices for free.

9to5mac and iPhone repair company iFixYouri.com are offering to get your broken iPhone, iPod, or iPad repaired for FREE! In order to enter the contest, retweet this post on Twitter with hashtag #HelpiFixYouri and a picture of your broken iDevice for a chance to win. If the story about your broken device requires more than what a tweet can share, send an email off to support@iFixYouri.com or like and share it on their Facebook page.

A winning contestant will be randomly selected each week, for the next month. You are only allowed to enter once and a winner can only win one time. If it is determined that your device is irreparable (and doesn’t start in Blend-Tec condition), iFixYouri and 9to5mac will replace the device with a good working equivalent!  (also no iPod shuffles or nanos are eligible)

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MacRumors noticed that Apple placed images of their new LED Cinema Display on their website yesterday. The leaked display looks identical to the current model, but will have a Thunderbolt port on the back to easily connect with Apple’s latest Thunderbolt machines: iMacs, MacBook Pros and Mac Pros, MacBook Airs, and Mac minis in the very near future. You can tell that these are new displays based on the unreleased model number, previously thought to be a new White MacBook that they are attached to and by the OS X Lion wallpaper.

The differentiation is important because, as Apple has warned in a previous KB article, the CD no longer has to be the end of a Thunderbolt chain of devices.  For instance, you could have an external hard drive array connected to your monitor permanently rather than having to plug into another device which would terminate at the monitor.  For MacBook Air/Pro users, this would allow the ‘power-USB-Thunderbolt’ cable to do everything, yet again.

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Apple released iOS 4.3.4 (build 8K2) fixing a PDF exploit which makes possible wireless jailbreaking by visiting the JailbreakMe.com web-tool  in mobile Safari. The exploit could also be used to inject and execute any code on iOS devices. The iOS 4.3.4 download is now available through iTunes for the iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1 and 2 and third- and fourth-generation iPod touch. Verizon iPhone users will get the same fix via the iOS 4.2.9 update (build 8E501). Contents of the Verizon iPhone firmware update is outlined in this support document (here for iOS 4.3.4 for all other devices).

Stand-alone downloads below:

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Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes quotes unnamed industry sources who claim Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer for gadgets, will produce a rumored Android-driven tablet from Amazon, said to sport a 10.1-inch display, with shipments to begin in 2012 at the earnest. Quanta Computer, another contract manufacturer from Asia, has already begun shipping a smaller seven-inch device to Amazon, the report notes:

Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) has reportedly landed orders for 10.1-inch tablet PCs from Amazon with shipments to begin in 2012, while Quanta Computer has begun shipping a 7-inch model to Amazon. Foxconn declined to comment on market speculation.

Foxconn of course is Apple’s long-time manufacturer so it comes as a surprise that Apple did not exercise its influence and billions to block rivals from tapping Foxconn’s manufacturing potentials. That’s not entirely unheard of, however…

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Last month, we documented code within iOS 5 which contained references to some new panoramic camera functionality for iOS devices.

The latest build of iOS shows that Apple continues to do work on this functionality.  They’ve added a few more strings which weren’t in the earlier Beta:

Here’s what happens when you jailbreak and enable panoramic

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqAJa2GzYvg&start=32]

More than a few third party apps already do panoramic camera capturing on Apple’s iOS. One example is below:

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A new report from Cnet.co.uk seems to imply that Apple could launch a new iPhone on August 16th.  Their source?  A job posting for temporary workers who would work the last two weeks in August.

The job listing, posted by Gekko Ltd., says Apple is looking for a “full-time iPhone Sales Staff for an exciting project to work 5 days a week (Tuesday-Saturday) for the period 16th August – 29th October within key retail stores”. Oddly enough, Apple didn’t post the listing on their own, rather hiring out Gekko Ltd. to find their new Apple Store talent. Gekko appears to have worked with Apple before:

The awards page on Gekko’s website indicates that it has worked with Apple in the past on shops within shops — the specific Apple-branded sections within larger outlets. We’d wager that Gekko is hiring to fill these sections, as one of the responsibilities of the advertised role is to “ensure the Apple area within the store is effectively merchandised”.

Rumors pointing to a September or early October  launch for the new iPhone have been prevalent so far with Apple’s traditional  early September music announcement, but we’re happy to line up early.  Full listing below:
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Developers wishing to sell apps to business in volume for discounted rates now will be able to according to an email just sent to developers. Apple upgraded its Paid Applications Agreement today which allows for a new type of pricing.

For instance, a hospital could buy a medical app for its 2000 employees in one big swoop rather than hitting the buy button 2000 times.   
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We’ve been getting word from some international Apple retailers that not only are MacBook Airs, Minis and White MacBooks getting updated soon, but those Macs are also going to see modest-significant price drops in some countries we’ve polled.  While we can’t get into the specifics of where and how much, we can tell you some models are being reduced more than the equivalent of $100.

A few things to consider: One, the US Dollar has dropped significantly against Pacific currencies like the Japanese Yen and Korean Won (below) in the past year.  Apple has in the past adjusted its products against currency fluctuations.

Also, Apple has been streamlining operations across the globe over the past few years and has been able to bring its prices more in line with US prices.

While these price drops are great news for our friends overseas, it doesn’t necessarily correlate to price drops in the US.

But we wouldn’t rule price drops out either, there have been unreliable reports of a $899 base price of a MacBook Air.
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We’ve discussed the next generation ‘value-tier’ iPhone.  But we weren’t the first.  Apple COO Tim Cook was.

While Tim stopped short of explicitly stating that Apple would pursue a lower price iPhone, he did state that Apple was working hard to “figure out” the prepaid market and that Apple didn’t want its products to be “just for the rich,” but “for everyone”; he also stated that Apple “understood price is big factor in the prepaid market” and that the company was “not ceding any market.” ….He further noted that the handset distribution model was poorly constructed and that Apple would look to “innovate” and do “clever” things in addressing that market.

That was the WSJ tapping the line (har) of  Bernstein Research’s Toni Sacconaghi in February.

Today, Virgin announced that it was hiking its data plans to $35/month for unlimited data which coincides with the launch of a big Android phone. But more interesting, to me anyway, was that Virgin is changing its ‘unlimited’ to ‘unlimited with throttling at 2.5GB’ in…October.

Beginning in October 2011, Virgin Mobile will also move to reduce data speeds when a customer’s data usage exceeds 2.5GB in a month but still provide unlimited 3G access without a contract, usage cap, overage or activation fees. Based on current usage patterns, fewer than 3 percent of Virgin Mobile USA customers use more than 2.5GB of data usage per month. After reaching this level, this minority of customers may experience slower page loads, file downloads and streaming media. When a customer’s next month begins, the data usage meter starts back at zero with unlimited 3G speeds.

If Apple was going to do a pre-paid carrier in the US, it would certainly be Virgin (vs. Cricket, US Cellular, Boost).  If Virgin did do iPhone, they’d certainly want to put measures in place to prevent the iPhone from killing its network.

image via

We got word yesterday that AT&T was changing its iPhone insurance plans on October 4th, perhaps signaling some new models.  With what we had, we’d have given the info about a 25% shot of being legitimate.  However, since then, we’ve heard that a big commotion was made about that information being made public.  Based on that and today’s Virgin announcement, we’re thinking the probability of that date being right has increased significantly.
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