Apple

That lovely Steve Jobs action figure you see up there went on auction for $2500 recently.  Only 100-300 were sold through MIC Gadget before the operation was shut down by Apple, making the items a rare find for collectors.  More have cropped up on eBay fetching prices from $1000.. to.. $2500.

BTW, is anyone interested in ours?  We may have a charity auction or something later this month.  Check twitter for updates.
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Facebook, who count 55,060,129 monthly active iOS app users, today updated their iPhone/iPod touch app with a few new features but mostly bug fixes, listed below:

– Improved reliability in chat and messages
– Improved notifications UI
– Fixed memory usage
– Fixed some crashes
– Walls you cannot post on no longer show the text field at the top
– Restore ability to post as a page that you admin
– Fixed group photos
– Various Places improvements

Is it silly to expect a iPad app at this point?

All 55 million of you, hit the App Store updates or head over here.

Screenies below…
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We might be due for an iWork refresh pretty soon.  We’re hearing from a few Apple Store employees that “there is no iWork on the shelves, no iWork in stock and none on the way”.  A quick check to Amazon shows none in stock there (but family packs are available).

Ingram Micro shows a few hundred retail boxes available and Amazon’s secondary sellers have some in stock.  The online Apple store has them in stock but there is a fresh “new” label on the product (see above).

We’re not sure if this is a inventory blip or a sign that new products might be coming but we do know that iWork is coming as apps in the Mac App Store and we know that is coming January 6th.  Anyone else heard anything?

Update: Also, the Apple Search page also autocompletes “iWork ’11” (thanks Pete!):

Update 2: TUAW points out that iWork ’09, the latest version of the software suite, was released on January 6, 2009. Coincidence?

Update 3: Video below of Apple store Employee saying wait for iWork ’11 soon:
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We haven’t put the two head to head (been on Parallels exclusively for about a year personally), but the folks over at MacTech had a chance to run the latest versions of VMWare for Mac against Parallels 6 which was released just a few months ago (VMware Fusion 3.1.1 and Parallels Desktop 6.0.11828.615184)  It appears that Parallels is the winner in both general and 3D tests.

Parallels 6 is available in Box form ($63) or for immediate download.

Full results will be posted in MacTech magazine next month.  More below:
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We have been told that TJ Maxx in the UK, TK Maxx, has started selling iPads at a discounted price. The discount appears to be £100 on all models making the entry level 16 GB WiFi iPad £329.00 instead of £429.00. We’re not exactly sure which models are in store but readers have spotted both the 16 GB and 32 GB WiFi models. These discounted iPads at TK Maxx are of course not authorized by Apple and are in extremely limited quantities. Let us know if you spot them in your local UK store.

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These iPad adapters are starting to look like mini docking stations.  Earlier this week, we showed you a simple $25 3-in-1 adapter that simply pales next to this latest adapter which has USB, mini USB, SD, MicroSD, and a AV-Out port with an included RCA-jack adapter (below).  You simply need to buy at least 50 of them an arrange for shipping from China.  Again via MICGadget.
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News Corp sources tell News Corp reporters that News Corp’s iPad app, the Daily will drop on January 17th.

Given that News Corp. has hired dozens of blabby journalists for the Daily, and interviewed many more, lots of other details about the app/service have leaked out already: It will come out daily, it will sell for 99 cents a week, it will use lots of video and it will have cool multimedia bells and whistles, including some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about. And Apple CEO Steve Jobs may or may not participate in a launch event.

The date has moved around a lot but it appears that it will be coming at some point in the future and carry a $.99/week price.  Other billionaires launching iPad publications recently include Richard Branson.
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People have been prognosticating the iPod Nano as a watch since before it even debuted.  Steve Jobs mentioned in the keynote that an Apple board member was wearing his (or her) nano as a watch and the Apple Store has started selling them.  Is it mainstream yet?

Perhaps the biggest indication of the iWatch phenomenon to date is that Kickstarter funded TikTock has raised a million dollars to produce its LunaTik watch bands for the Nanos.  WTF.

Well, it is a little more complicated than that.

The project has clocked in nearly $1,000,000 in funding, helped in large part by a $25 pledge getting you first in line for a $35 MSRP TikTok watch kit, while $50 scored you the metallic LunaTik, which will go for $70.

Still!

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Research In Motion’s in the news today: not only is its iPad-killing PlayBook delayed until around the time iPad 2.0 is expected to ship, but Mac users with a BlackBerry can now download the latest desktop connection kit. Meanwhile the company’s financial results were alright but nothing supercalifragilistic.

By the numbers then:
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In case you’ve any doubt left, you can forget the notion of AMOLED screens in the next-generation iPad, there simply aren’t enough components to go round — indeed, Apple competitors who made the leap to the tech are already facing steep component shortages.

There’s an inevitability about all this. Even as Apple competitors attempt to leapfrog iOS devices by fielding more advanced technologies in their gadgets, they forget the need to serve mass market products up in reliable quantity.
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The figures are in and they confirm that iTunes remains the biggest US digital music retailer, with Amazon failing to grab too much of Apple’s digital music heartland.

NPD tells us AAPL’s iTunes took 66.2% of the digital music market in the third quarter of this year – that’s up from 63.2% in Q3 2009.  Easy still beats free.
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Apple has lost one of its leading iTunes execs to UK major, EMI, which has announced that Alex Luke – content lead for Apple’s iTunes – has been appointed to a senior A&R position at EMI Music’s Capitol & Virgin Label Group.

During his seven years at iTunes, Luke has been responsible for the digital platform’s music programming, music content acquisition, and artist and industry relationships.
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Fortune reports that a Flextronics executive was taped by FBI officials revealing iPhone sales numbers two and a half weeks before the official announcement as well as the existence of the iPad.  Flextronics director Walter Shimoon had a conversation with an an unnamed “cooperative witness” in late 2009 in which he revealed:

• Apple, he is heard telling CW-2, was “coming out next year” with a new iPhone that’s “gonna have two cameras … It’ll be a neat phone because it’s gonna have a five-megapixel auto-focus camera and it will have a VGA forward-facing videoconferencing camera.” Apple announced the iPhone 4 — with its two cameras — eight months later.
• Then he is heard telling CW-2 that “they [Apple] have a code name for something new … It’s totally … It’s a new category altogether… It doesn’t have a camera, what I figured out. So I speculated that it’s probably a reader. … Something like that. Um, let me tell you, it’s a very secretive program. … It’s called K, K48. That’s the internal name. So, you can get, at Apple you can get fired for saying K48.” The iPad — code named K48 — was unveiled four months later.

Flextronics supplies Apple with camera and battery components for its iOS devices (or at least it did). Shimoon and his three co-defendants were arrested Thursday on several changes of wire fraud and securities fraud.
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COMPUTERWORLD: Apple is making Macs more touch-friendly when touch makes sense. Magic Trackpad is the touch interface for desktops, but how long will it be until we see the Mac keyboard replaced by a touch-sensitive, intelligent device? What would it do?

Read more

Apple this morning confirmed it intends opening its Mac App Store on Thursday, January 6.

The store will be available in 90 countries at launch and will feature both paid and free apps in various categories.

“The App Store revolutionized mobile apps,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We hope to do the same for PC apps with the Mac App Store by making finding and buying PC apps easy and fun. We can’t wait to get started on January 6.”

Oh and Devs? You need to submit apps by Dec 31 to be in the grand opening.

Press Release follows:
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Apple  generates more column inches of coverage than any other firm on the planet. Love or loathe, millions worldwide are fascinated by what happens in Cupertino — and that’s probably why the company is now one of the biggest in the world dominating the smartphone and tablet industries.

What follows are some of the most essential titles any Apple watcher should read and own if they really want to build up their understanding of the company.

We’ve been watching Apple at work and play for a long, long time. We consider these to be the key titles to help boost understanding of the history and philosophy of the company.

We know that Mac website editors across the planet have a few books forever in the shelf behind their desk, and we figured it would be of some interest if told you which books they are.

So, whether it’s to satisfy your own curiousity, or for a Christmas or birthday present for an Apple fan, we think you really can’t go wrong with any one or all of these titles. Read on…

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Apple has introduced a software update designed to fix intermittent audio loss issue experienced by some users of the 27-inch LED Cinema Displays.

A previous tech note describes the problem:
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Some interesting survey results from Changewave today: While the iPad is mopping up in the enterprise today (satisfaction levels above) , it looks like next quarter is going to be even more lucrative for Apple, who have 80% of the market already..

A 1st Quarter Explosion in Corporate Tablet Demand

While 7% of business respondents say their company currently provide employees with tablet devices, an astonishing 14% of businesses report their company will be buying Tablets in 1st Quarter 2011.

In other words, the total number of companies making use of tablet devices is set to double in just the next three months – an explosive surge in demand going forward.

This breaks down into the following usage categories…
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What’s new in iTunes 10.1.1?

This release provides a number of important bug fixes, including:

• Addresses an issue where some music videos may not play on Macs equipped with NVIDIA GeForce 9400 or 9600 graphics.
• Resolves an issue where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when deleting a playlist that has the iTunes Sidebar showing.
• Fixes a problem where iTunes may unexpectedly quit when connecting an iPod to a Mac equipped with a PowerPC processor.
• Addresses an issue where some music videos may not sync to an iPod, iPhone, or iPad.

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As expected, Apple has updated its iBooks app to version 1.2. The new version has just made its quiet debut on the AAPL servers.

What’s new?

Yep, as we exclusively revealed hereand here: better organization and printing and emailing of PDF’s. And that’s only part of the mix.
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Google is about to change the music economy, preparing to hand over huge amounts of cash to win rights to offer the music locker service it has been trying to build for Google Music.  However, confused internal politics and music licensing complexity mean Google, just like Spotify and Apple, isn’t set to launch its service before the end of the year.
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