Segall remembers Steve Jobs and Apple’s head of product design Jony (now Sir Jonathan) Ive as “inseparable”: “They were as close as lovers,” he recalled.
But, like all lovers, they had their tiffs.
Segall was shocked at one of these rare arguments between Steve and Jony – he even worried that Ive might quit Apple over the row.
After 1998’s Bondi Blue iMac Apple decided to push the boat out and release a whole rainbow of the coloured computers the next year. Many models in various hues were collected together for Jobs, Ive, Segall and a few others to select from.
But Ive was “driven crazy” by Steve’s choices, and eventually stormed out of the room to his holiday, shouting that Steve could choose any of the colours he liked but he was taking no more part in the discussion.
Eventually Apple chose Blueberry, Strawberry, Lime, Tangerine and Grape.

We already knew that Apple was pushing hard to have the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) select it’s nano-SIM card design over competitors such as Nokia and Motorola who proposed its own form factor. While it was already rumored that Apple had support from the majority of European operators, today the ETSI confirmed that it has selected a form factor for the new 4FF SIM Card:

The fourth form factor (4FF) card will be 40% smaller than the current smallest SIM card design, at 12.3mm wide by 8.8mm high, and 0.67mm thick. It can be packaged and distributed in a way that is backwards compatible with existing SIM card designs. The new design will offer the same functionality as all current SIM cards.

While the announcement from the ESTI doesn’t flat out confirm Apple’s design was chosen, thanks to a little bit of investigative work courtesy of The Verge, we are able to confirm that the new form factor does indeed match up nicely with measurements of Apple’s proposed design. We’ll have to wait for more official info on the new standard from ESTI before we know for sure that Apple’s design was selected.

Even before its cancellation, HyperCard's inventor saw the end coming. In an angst-filled 2002 interview, Bill Atkinson confessed to his Big Mistake. If only he had figured out that stacks could be linked through cyberspace, and not just installed on a particular desktop, things would have been different.

"I missed the mark with HyperCard," Atkinson lamented. "I grew up in a box-centric culture at Apple. If I'd grown up in a network-centric culture, like Sun, HyperCard might have been the first Web browser. My blind spot at Apple prevented me from making HyperCard the first Web browser."

In an interview with Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek, Parker quickly answered a question that made Ek hesitant. He said there was “some indication” (emails from other people in the industry) that Apple tried to block Spotify from entering the United States, and he noted “Apple was threatened by what [Spotify] was doing.” In October 2010, we heard similar rumblings that Apple attempted to sway execs in the U.S. music industry from signing with Spotify.

According to reports coming from Italian blog Fanpage (via TechCrunch), Apple just bought Italian startup Redmatica, a company that creates software to enhance the capabilities of popular audio sampler software such as the EXS24 used in Apple’s Logic Pro recording suite. The proof apparently comes via documents from local regulator AGCOM obtained by the blog.

Apple has not yet confirmed it acquired the company, but if true it looks like Logic Pro could be getting some powerful and easy sound design tools in the near future. Among the highlights of the company’s tech that Logic and GarageBand could certainly benefit from include slick drag and drop management of sampler instruments and full AU plug in support directly in the synthesis signal chain. Another thing we can imagine Apple is probably interested in is the new Escher, Penrose and Moebius Machines, which allow for realtime detailed and sample specific gain control for every aspect of your sampled loops, and none of the gain control is destructive. The company also has its GBSamplerManager designed for managing sampler instruments for GarageBand on iOS from your Mac.

According to Fanpage Radmatica had income of just €26,000 on €100,000 in yearly revenue.

Cook: “In my view, the tablet and the PC are different. You can do things with the tablet if you are not encumbered by the legacy of the PC.”
Cook says that isn’t the only way to do tablets, but says Apple’s approach doesn’t require all that.
“We didn’t invent the tablet market,” he notes. “It was there. We invented the modern tablet.”
Cook says that supporting the past requires lifting leg weights.
“Products are about trade-offs, and you have to make tough decisions. You have to choose.”
Microsoft, for its part, has pitched Windows 8 as a “no-compromise” operating system.


6:32 pm: Cook makes his analogy of merging the toaster and the refrigerator, saying that someone may merge the two, but it won’t be Apple. That’s not what is coming next week, he says.
If you merge the two, the PC isn’t as good as it can be; nor is the tablet.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook just noted onstage that the company sold 2.7 million Apple TVs in just the first few months of this year. The last time we received official numbers from Apple, it reported 1.4 million units for Q1 and sales of just 2.8 million for the entire previous year, which means Apple is on track to double its Apple TV sales this year. Cook’s comments, as reported by The Verge:

Tim: You know, very uncharacteristic of us, we’ve stayed in the Apple TV product. We’re not a hobby kind of company as you know. Our tendency is to do very few things. And, if something creeps in and isn’t a big success, we get it out of the way and put our energies on something else. Apple TV though, you see what we’ve done. We’ve stuck in this. It’s not a fifth leg of the stool. It’s not the same size as the phone or Mac or tablet business. But last year we sold a little less tan 3m Apple TVs… This year, just in a first few months, we’ve sold 2.7m… This is an area of intense interest for us…

Inizialmente Music Hub sarà disponibile solo per Samsung Galaxy S III, per poi essere allargato ad altri terminali. Gli utenti hanno la possibilità di utilizzare il Music Hub Store in modo gratuito e di abbonarsi alla versione Premium pagando 9,99€ al mese.

Attualmente il catalogo contiene oltre 19 milioni di canzoni, acquistabili dallo store e con possibilità di ascoltare una preview di 30 secondi. La musica acquistata viene quindi archiviata sul cloud e appare automaticamente sul dispositivo Samsung. Tali brani possono poi essere salvati anche in locale e ascoltati offline, mentre abbonandosi alla versione Premium sarà possibile caricare online tutta la propria libreria musicale (fino ad un massimo di 100GB) e di accedervi in streaming dal proprio dispositivi mobile.

Una funzione chiamata “Scan & Match Cloud Locker” consente di caricare i brani preferiti sul cloud e di ascoltarli in streaming con un tempo di caricamento molto inferiore. Gli utenti possono i poi gestire i brani caricati in playlist, inserire anche note vocali registrate dal dispositivo, leggere i testi e condividere i brani con gli amici. Inoltre, Music Hub offre anche la possibilità di ascoltare la musica preferita direttamente dalle stazioni radio, immettendo il nome del brano o dell’artista. Interessante la funzione che consente di “taggare” un brano che ascoltiamo per la prima volta in radio, in modo tale da poterlo ritrovare anche in un secondo momento.

Apple this month is reported to have begun production of the first prototypes of its much-anticipated connected television sets at one of its overseas manufacturing facilities ahead of a general production ramp expected to begin late in the 2012 calendar year.

The news, which was attributed to "informed sources" speaking to the China Business News, was picked up and translated by the WantChinaTimes earlier on Monday.

In particular, the publication cited its sources as saying that this initial build plan is taking place in one of Foxconn's Shenzhen plants as a trial production run, which typically produces a small number of assembly-line-quality prototypes for Apple to put through its design test verification stages. No further details were reported.

Those following us on Twitter already know that last week Apple rejected Instacast, a well-love podcatcher, over its Flattr integration. What does this mean for the future of Flattr inside applications for iPhone and iPad?

The idea here is that you can use multiple Apple IDs on each device, and at the same time each Apple ID does not need to be enrolled in every Apple product, feature and service.  Decide what products and services you want to use first and determine how each device will be used.  If you don’t, before you know it you could end up with a real rats nest of accounts.

Do consider using one master family account on all devices to manage iTunes purchases, and use that same shared account to track the location of all of your devices.  As an added bonus, you could use the calendar, contacts and reminders with this shared family iCloud account as well.  Once you have each device configured with these basics, let each family member decide which third-party email service they want.  This may well be the best strategy to employ, until Apple sees fit to enable multiple users per device.

“It looks like it has become a more conservative execution engine rather than a pushing-the-envelope engineering engine,” says Max Paley, a former engineering vice president who worked at Apple for 14 years until late 2011. “I’ve been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management,” he says. “When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority.”

It might also simply be the result of the shift in scale at which Apple is operating today. They sold 35 million iPhones and 12 million iPads last quarter. Is it not inevitable that global-supply management would grow in importance and influence with numbers like that? The question to ask is whether these changes are because of the differences between Tim Cook and Steve, or the differences in the size and scope of Apple’s business a decade ago versus today.

“Pre-sandbox screening of submissions has been shockingly arbitrary and Apple staff are frequently either unwilling or unable to understand detailed technical arguments,” said one anonymous developer.

Developers looking to Apple for guidance about sandboxing their apps have been disappointed, not least because of Apple’s own failure to sandbox its apps. So far only TextEdit and Preview have been sandboxed.

“A great source of irritation for developers is Apple's own failure to sandbox its own programs,” noted one developer. “Apple has sandboxed some of its applications, but the vast majority remain outside of the sandbox and will still be available via the Mac App Store.”

“The reason that they can't sandbox their own applications is because they experience the very same problems as third party developers: appropriate entitlements do not exist, the APIs are buggy and the sandbox model makes no sense for many applications,” the anonymous developer added. “In order to sandbox their own applications they would need to remove features that users have come to rely upon. For no reason. They don't want to do so. They don't want to irritate their users.”

He claims that Apple is resort to "cheats" that third party developers would “never get away with.” He suggested: “Apple should first have sandboxed its own applications and made sure that the sandboxing works properly. Then they could legitimately have asked us to join them.”

“The sandbox doesn't really make sense and Apple knows it,” another developer, told us, anonymously.

“Something has clearly gone very wrong when Apple imposes changes that require a large proportion of non-game apps on the Mac App Store to be feature crippled. Nobody knows what the real motivation behind it is,” he noted.

“I suspect that Apple's new found love for the sandbox has more to do with exercising greater control over third party developers and streamlining their review process than with any end-user benefits,” suggested one developer, noting that Apple’s reviewers can now “just look at the entitlements to see what the application can do,” rather than “checking what an application does do.”

After bringing Classics Illustrated into the digital age, and onto Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, in March, Trajectory Inc. announced this morning it has teamed with Apple to deliver the enduring comics series on iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.
[...] More than 120 titles are available from Apple’s iBookstore.
“Making the Classics available in digital form brings these brilliant works to where people live now, on their mobiles,” Trajectory CEO Jim Bryant said in a statement. “The iPad and iPhone are great for interacting with one of the most beloved comics and graphic novel series of all time.”

Con un comunicato stampa, Apple ha ufficialmente affermato di voler pagare i dividendi ai propri dipendenti con RSU, ovvero quelle azioni che in genere vengono consegnate ai dipendenti come incoraggiamento per restare all’interno della compagnia. Tra i vari impiegati troviamo una figura di spicco, questo è Tim Cook, egli possedeva 1 milione di RSU per un valore complessivo di 75 milioni di dollari. Nonostante abbia già incassato moltissimo denaro di recente, egli ha compiuto un gesto molto interessante, infatti ha completamente rifiutato la propria parte. Per dovere di cronaca, ricordiamo che le azioni sono state pagate a 2.65$ l’una.

Eccovi un breve estratto del comunicato:

Come richiesto da Mr.Cook, nessun elemento appartenente alle sue RSU verrà pagato come dividendo; assumendo un valore di 2.65$ ad azione e moltiplicandole per 1.125 milioni di elementi, Mr.Cook ha rinunciato a circa 75 milioni di dollari di dividendi.

La notizia dei pagamenti non è stata inaspettata, infatti verso la fine di Marzo, l’azienda aveva comunicato l’intenzione di spendere parte dei 100 miliardi di dollari nel distribuire quanto dovuto ai vari impiegati. I calcoli sono stati effettuati, i pagamenti veri e propri avranno inizio il 1 luglio.

Item 5.02.    Departure of Directors or Certain Officers; Election of Directors; Appointment of Certain Officers; Compensatory Arrangements of Certain Officers
 
(e) Compensatory Arrangements with Certain Officers.
On May 24, 2012, the Compensation Committee (the "Committee") of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc. (the "Company") approved amendments to each outstanding and unvested restricted stock unit award granted by the Company to its employees (other than Timothy D. Cook, the Company's Chief Executive Officer). The amendments provide that if the Company pays an ordinary cash dividend on its common stock, each award will be credited with an amount equal to the per-share cash dividend paid by the Company, multiplied by the total number of restricted stock units subject to the award that are outstanding immediately prior to the record date for such dividend. The amounts that are credited to each award are referred to as "dividend equivalents." Any dividend equivalents credited to an award will be subject to the same vesting, payment and other terms and conditions as the unvested restricted stock units to which the dividend equivalents relate. Depending on the domicile of the employee, accumulated dividend equivalents will either be paid in cash or used to offset employee taxes due upon vesting of the restricted stock units.

The Committee determined these amendments were appropriate in light of the Company's announcement on March 19, 2012 that it intends to commence paying ordinary cash dividends of $2.65 per share to its shareholders on a quarterly basis sometime during the fourth quarter of its 2012 fiscal year. As restricted stock units are not outstanding shares of common stock and thus would not otherwise be entitled to participate in such dividends, the crediting of dividend equivalents is intended to preserve the equity-based incentives intended by the Company when the awards were granted and to treat the award holders consistently with shareholders.

At Mr. Cook's request, none of his restricted stock units will participate in dividend equivalents. Assuming a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share over the vesting periods of his 1.125 million outstanding restricted stock units, Mr. Cook will forego approximately $75 million in dividend equivalent value.

 

The cover story of the latest issue of Fortune details how Cook is changing Apple in its post-Steve Jobs era. The piece, written by Adam Lashinsky, kicks off by describing how Apple investors were shocked when Cook met and spoke with them at an investor meeting in February at the company's corporate headquarters.

Cook's style is a stark change from his predecessor, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who despised participating in such investor events. But despite the "shifts of behavior and tone" described in Lashinsky's article, he added that Cook is maintaining "most of Apple's unique corporate culture."

"In general, Apple has become slightly more open and considerably more corporate," he wrote. "In some cases Cook is taking action that Apple sorely needed and employees badly wanted. It's almost as if he is working his way through a to-do list of long overdue repairs the previous occupant (Jobs) refused to address for no reason other than obstinacy."

In doing things his way, Cook has also retained his disarming personality, which Lashinsky said most employees at the company seem to prefer. For example, Cook often sits randomly with employees in Apple's corporate cafeteria during lunch, while Jobs typically dined with design chief Jonathan Ive, who was knighted this week in his home country of the U.K.


Apple CEO Tim Cook tours an iPhone production line at a Foxconn plant in Zhengzhou, China, in March.


Cook has also instituted major changes at the company, such as a considerable focus on using renewable green energy, bringing in independent audits of Apple's overseas supply chain, and also allocating $45 billion over three years toward a stock dividend and share repurchase program. And all of those changes have been made while Cook oversaw the two most successful product launches in Apple's history with the iPhone 4S last October and the third-generation iPad this March.

The Fortune cover story includes comments from an unnamed CEO of "an influential tech company," who described Cook as "down to earth, noncorporate, detail-oriented, and disarming."

"He's casual, grounded, and easy to talk to," they said. "I forgot he's the CEO of Apple. And that was not my experience with Jobs."

Apple designer Jony Ive was knighted today in a ceremony held at Buckingham Palace, according to a BBC News UK report. It's an honor he said was "absolutely thrilling."
Ive's knighthood was announced late last year and the ceremony took place on Wednesday. The famed Apple designer shared some small talk with Princess Anne, who was doing the knighting. You can watch the short ceremony on the BBC's website.

Following the publication of the Bloomberg editorial, former Apple employee Joe Moreno provided more insight into just what happened inside 1 Infinite Loop.

Moreno shares in his blog post that over a decade ago, the design teams at Apple held talks over the placement of the logo on the back of the company’s notebooks. Using Apple’s internal system called Can We Talk? employees asked:

Why is the Apple logo upside down on laptops when the lid is open?

Moreno writes:

We were told by the Apple design group, which takes human interface issues very seriously, that they had studied the placement of the logo and discovered a problem. If the Apple logo was placed such that it was right side up when the lid was opened then it ended up being upside down when the lid was closed, from the point of view of the user. (If you’re currently using an Apple laptop made in the past eight years, then close the lid and you’ll see that the Apple logo will be upside down from your point of view, but right side up when opened)

Why was upside down from the user’s perspective an issue? Because the design group noticed that users constantly tried to open the laptop from the wrong end. Steve Jobs always focuses on providing the best possible user experience and believed that it was more important to satisfy the user than the onlooker.

Obviously, after a few years, Steve reversed his decision.

Moreno references Sex In The City as one of the most obvious examples of the upside down logo. He also joined ex-Apple advertising guy and Steve Jobs colleague, Ken Segall.

When Jon Holtzman was an Apple marketing manager in the early 1990s, the company had no inventory reserved for set decorators and prop masters. Filmmakers interested in using an Apple product had to wait for reporters to return review models and often got older devices. Holtzman successfully lobbied to make product placement as much of a priority as the editorial loan program and privileged access for employees’ friends and family. And that made the newest devices available to Hollywood.

Holtzman also tried to persuade higher-ups to make a small but important product change. In the 1990s, Apple’s PowerBook laptops included a company logo on the lid that faced the user sitting at the computer. When the lid was opened, the logo was upside down. Holtzman knew this was inconvenient to filmmakers and had stickers printed to cover the actual logo and have it appear correctly onscreen. A few years after Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he flipped the logo for good.

Apple was struggling in those days, and then, as always, refused to pay for product placement, though the company did acquiesce to the occasional quid pro quo. In 1996 it secured a starring role for its PowerMac laptop in the first Mission: Impossible film in part by agreeing to promote the movie in its ads. The resulting TV spots were essentially clips from the movie with a few Apple logos mixed in. “We saved almost $500,000 in production costs—and got Brian De Palma to direct and Tom Cruise to act in it,” says Holtzman.

Apple’s AppleSeed program allows a select group of customers to test out Apple software before it’s even released to Apple’s registered developers. These select customers received an email from Apple on Wednesday, informing them that the company is preparing for ‘hardware specific software updates’.

9to5Mac reports that the email reads: “We are preparing for possible hardware specific software updates on OS X Mountain Lion. These contain hardware-specific bug fixes or even special features! In order to make sure you can participate in these exclusive seeds, we need your most up-to-date machine configuration information. The easiest and most efficient way to do this is with Feedback Assistant.”

A poche ore di distanza da questa “censura”, Apple fa marcia indietro e ora la parola “jailbreak” su iTunes Store compare in modo corretto.
La censura riguardava sia le applicazioni presenti su App Store, sia i brani contenenti la parola “jailbreak” al loro interno. Ora, invece, tutto è tornato alla normalità e non vi è più traccia di tale censura.
Ricordiamo che il jailbreak, oltre ad essere il titolo di alcune canzoni, è anche il nome della procedura che serve a sbloccare il dispositivo e ad installarvi applicazioni non approvate da Apple.

Sono confermate le multe per complessivi 900mila euro inflitte dall'Antitrust lo scorso 27 dicembre al gruppo Apple per pratiche commerciali scorrette a danno dei consumatori. Lo ha stabilito, come apprende Radiocor, la Prima sezione del Tar del Lazio presieduta da Roberto Politi, respingendo i ricorsi di Apple Italia, Apple Sales International e Apple Retail Italia. L'Antitrust ha contestato alle societa' del gruppo Apple operanti in Italia la non piena applicazione ai consumatori della garanzia legale biennale a carico del venditore e informazioni poco chiare sugli ambiti di copertura dei servizi di assistenza aggiuntiva a pagamento

Il Tar ha accolto in parte il ricorso di Apple Sales International, stabilendo che la modifica, richiesta dall'Antitrust, "delle confezioni AppleCare Protection Plan mediante l'inclusione dell'indicazione che 'nei primi 24 mesi dalla data di acquisto del prodotto il consumatore ha comunque il diritto alla garanzia del venditore che prevede tra l'altro la riparazione gratuita o la sostituzione del prodotto non conforme al contratto' sia ampiamente sufficiente".

``Mike Markkula was actually the one man and one person who made Apple a successful company,'' Wozniak said Friday at a business lecture in Australia, according to Perth Now, a local paper.
Markkula, seen here with Jobs, was a key figure in Apple's early days, bankrolling the company in the beginning with a $250,000 investment, convincing Wozniak to work at Apple instead of HP and even writing some software for one of Apple's first computers. But it wasn't the investment or the coaching that Wozniak called out in his lecture, so much as the way Markkula fundamentally changed the company's business strategy early on.
"He made it a marketing-driven company (as opposed to a engineering-driven company),'' Perth Now reports.

On a more practical note, Drexler also seemed to confirm during his talk the endless rumors of a new Apple TV. "You know, Apple has 10 products," he said. "The living room they're dealing with at some point in the near future."
Lastly, Drexler, with his trademark humor, offered up some advice for aspiring CEOs and expressed sympathy for current Apple head-honcho Tim Cook's unfortunate position.
"The best job to have: Take over a company that's doing poorly," Drexler said. "Never take over a company that's doing great. You know, I love Tim Cook, but I wouldn't want his job!"

Apple is currently involved in an outreach program to its new neighbors in its planned ‘Campus 2′ area.  This week, a brochure was mailled to residents surrounding the new campus providing new information and inviting feedback in a variety of ways. Although the project seems to be a big win for the city of Cupertino, some residents have voiced some concern about the additional traffic and other changes to the area.

We’ve obtained a letter from one of Apple’s new neighbors and here are the takeaways:

Campus 2, as it is currently called, won’t replace the 1 Infinite Loop campus.  Instead, it will just provide ‘research facility’ office space for an additional 13,000 employees, more than 3,000 more than 1 Infinite Loop.  There is 300,000 feet of expansion space for future growth.
Campus 2 will attain LEED certification and will have no manufacturing or heavy industrial activity onsite. Apple has and will continue to take additional steps to reduce auto use by employees. The roof of the main building is a huge solar array.
Campus 2 will not be open to the public so no museum or corporate store
The ‘world class’ auditorium, located at the very southern tip of the new campus, will host product launches and corporate events
The corporate fitness center/recreation center will be located to the north west of the main circular building in a separate structure
Infinite Loop will remain the official corporate HQ so top executives will likely stay behind
Apple intends to break ground as soon as Cupertino approves the changes (scheduled for later this year) and still plans to start occupying the space in 2015
Neighbors can fill out the postage paid response card or cupertino.org website with comments, questions, concerns.

Research firm Gartner on Wednesday announced its latest mobile device data for the first quarter of calendar 2012. It found that Apple's 33.1 million iPhones sold accounted for 7.9 percent of the total mobile phone market.

Gartner's data represents worldwide mobile device sales to end users, not shipments. It should be noted that the 33.1 million iPhones that Gartner says Apple sold is off by two million from the 35.1 million Apple itself reported last month.

Apple's share more than doubled from the first quarter of 2011, when the company sold 16.8 million iPhones and represented 3.9 percent of all mobile device sales, Gartner's data shows.

“It’s not like we didn’t try but — I don’t know how to say this politely — the music industry just didn’t get it. They just didn’t figure out that being dependent on Apple was bad for them. And they were so hooked on the drug of what Apple was supplying them that they couldn’t see past that to realize that they needed something else to actually drive their business. The label business, the music industry, has never recovered from that.
“If you look at business value, Apple took whatever business value was in the label business and erased it. That’s not a complaint about Apple, good for them. But they erased that, and created some new value for themselves.”

Filip Radelic, developer of the Cambox application for iPhone, informed AppleInsider on Friday that his software was accepted into the App Store. The approval came after Dropbox modified its development kit with a temporary fix removing the "Make account" feature.

Dropbox also officially confirmed the changes made to its SDK in its developer forums. Brian Smith, who works on the iPhone and iPad versions of Dropbox, said the issue with Apple was resolved after "the worst game of telephone you've ever played."

Using the new SDK, applications no longer offer an option to create an account with Dropbox. If a user attempts to use an application that relies on Dropbox and the official Dropbox application is not installed on their iOS device, the SDK will open a login view for the service directly within the third-party application, rather than opening the Safari Web browser.

The issue stemmed from the fact that Dropbox offers users the ability to purchase more cloud-based storage for their files. By linking to the Dropbox website to ask users to login, they could also follow a link to register for a Dropbox account and pay for additional storage if they so chose.




Apple's official rules for App Store developers explicitly ban links to out-of-app purchases. That's because transactions made through a browser can be used to bypass the App Store and cut Apple out of its 30 percent share of transactions.

Kaspersky has begun analyzing the OS X platform at Apple's request, the company's chief technology officer, Nikolai Grebennikov, originally said in an interview with Computing. The Kaspersky executive has publicly called Apple out for not taking security seriously enough.

"Mac OS is really vulnerable, and Apple recently invited us to improve its security," Grebennikov said. We've begun an analysis of its vulnerabilities, and the malware targeting it."

Update: But in a later comment provided to Engadget, Kaspersky Lab said the quote from Grebennikov was "taken out of context by the magazine." It has asked that the original article be updated to reflect this.

"Apple did not invite or solicit Kaspersky Lab's assistance in analyzing the Mac OS X platform," the statement reads, going on to say that the analysis of OS X was "conducted independently of Apple."

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple backend. The application design is said to be fairly similar to the current Google Maps program on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, but it is described as a much cleaner, faster, and more reliable experience.

Following a string of complaints across the globe (notably in Australia and the United Kingdom) regarding Apple’s branding of the 4G-LTE compatible iPads, Apple has tweaked the name of their cellular-connecting iPad in some regions. The new name is simply “iPad WiFi + Cellular,” and this is a shift from the former “iPad WiFi + 4G” branding. All first-generation iPad and iPad 2 models with 3G-data connections were referred to as “iPad WiFi + 3G,” and the 3G model of the 16GB iPad 2 that Apple still sells is still called “iPad 2 WiFi + 3G.”



The source of the criticism of the 4G third-generation iPad models is the fact that the 4G LTE only functions in the U.S. and Canada, on a total of five carriers. The third-generation iPad can still connect to any 3G bands worldwide below the LTE level, but Apple still formerly advertised 4G capabilities in non-iPad-4G LTE- supported regions. Apple dropped that marketing weeks ago, but this new iPad name change marks Apple’s full point of not trying to fool customers. Apple did not simply make this iPad name change in the affected Australia and UK regions, but they changed it in the UK, Australia, the U.S., Canada, UAE, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, New Zealand, Malaysia, Ireland, and Hong Kong. Not every country (yet?).

While Apple has released updates for both Lion and Snow Leopard to remove the Flashback malware that’s been making its rounds, until today, the company hadn’t released a fix for Leopard. However, this afternoon Apple released a Flashback Removal Security Update for Leopard, that weighs in at 1.23MB. Along with removing the Flashback malware, it also disables the Java plug-in in Safari. Apple described the update:

This update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware. If the Flashback malware is found, a dialog will notify you that malware was removed. In some cases, the update may need to restart your computer in order to completely remove the Flashback malware…To improve the security of your Mac, this update also disables the Java plug-in in Safari.
Furthermore, Apple also released Security Update 2012-003 for Leopard that “disables versions of Adobe Flash Player that do not include the latest security updates and provides the option to get the current version from Adobe’s website.” A similar update was released for Lion and Snow Leopard in Safari 5.1.7, which was released with OS X 10.7.4 late last week. Hit up Software Update.

This is the first major update Apple has released for Leopard since Lion was released in July of last summer.

Sarah Brody went to PayPal, where she is the vice president of global design.
Brody left for PayPal very shortly after Jobs went on medical leave in January, 2011. She was Apple's director of design and had worked at the company for seven years before being hired away to be PayPal's vice president of global design.

Tupman reportedly left the company very quietly at the end of 2011 after having worked at Apple for about decade as the VP of hardware engineering from the iPhone and iPod division. He is generally credited with being instrumental in the development of both products. No word yet on where Tupman is working now. Tupman's LinkedIn profile still lists him as being in the same position and Apple did not respond to our request for more information about his employment status.

After helping ourselves to some Odwalla from the endless supply, and admiring the enormous Boesendorfer concert grand and the BMW motorcycle in the lobby of Bandley 8, Glenn and I finally were called into Mike's office.

Mike talked to us in general terms about marketing strategy. He said that in 1984, Macintosh had established a beach head in businesses, but had very little penetration so far compared to IBM. In the coming year, however, with new products coming on line—including a laser printer, a revolutionary plug-and-play network architecture (AppleTalk), a file server, new software, and ways to bridge into existing IBM networks, Mac would move in from the beach. 

If you know Apple history, you'll know that some of those products didn't make it to market on time. AppleTalk and the LaserWriter were the few that shipped. The rest of what was termed "The Macintosh Office" was announced, but were not ready for the market. In 1985, Mac sales stalled. Apple went into crisis. Steve into exile—until 1997.  Mike Murray moved on to Microsoft where he became VP of HR. Image Stream folded as Apple contracted, and I hired on at Apple.

But as Glenn and I sat in Mike's office, we had no clue that Mike's strategy rested on some unrealistic development schedules. 

As Glenn and I listened to Mike talk about beach head and market penetration, and as we watched him draw on his white board, the parallels to the landings at Normandy seemed obvious. I think Glenn was first to connect 1984 to 1944. And the idea clicked in almost immediately. 

Given the way Steve had positioned Apple against  IBM, it just seemed to fit. Glenn, Mike, and I began brainstorming right there in the office. Ideas came tumbling out. IBM had Charlie Chaplin for P.C. advertising. And, it turns out that Charlie Chaplin not only had a Hitler-like mustache, he had actually done a Hitler sendup in The Great Dictator. We'd show oppressed workers liberated by the brave forces of Macintosh. We got so excited by the idea that Mike wanted to rush right in and pitch to Steve.

I called Chris in L.A. to outline what we were thinking. War movie. Stock footage from the D-day landings. Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel hanging on the wall. Mac marketing team in cameo roles. And the topper: Steve as FDR.  He said he'd start looking for a director (or maybe he had one in mind).

Glenn, Mike, and I marched into Steve's office to give him the pitch. Pretty much the way I outlined it in the previous paragraph. Steve's eyes were sparkling through it all. By the time I got to, "and you as FDR," I had made the sale. In the binary universe of Steve Jobs, something is either a zero or a one. This was a one. Instantly. Definitively.

Of course, Steve wanted to know what it would cost. We had no idea, since it hadn't been scripted or budgeted. Chris Korody and I pulled a guess of $50,000 out of thin air. I'm pretty sure there were overages. I'm pretty sure they were approved.

Glenn and I had discussed getting a professional impressionist to dub in the FDR dialog. When we mentioned that to Steve, he immediately jumped in to say, "no, I'll do the voice myself."

Probably the fastest I've ever gone from brief to yes in my entire career. The whole journey in less than 90 minutes. That NEVER happens. But the idea was so apt. And Mike had jumped right in to pitch it out with Glenn and me. So, in a way, it was sold even before it was completed. 

All that remained was to do all the hard work. Glenn had to turn the pitch from three sentences into a film script. Chris had to find a way to get it made. And the lawyers had to tell us there was no way in hell that we could get the rights to actually use the image of Charlie Chaplin as Adenoid Hynkel. I believe that a short section of the narration was actually crafted by Mike Murray to be sure he got his marketing messages in just the way he wanted them.

Chris found a young filmmaker named Bud Schaetzle, just out of school who had his own production team—and, as a bonus, a friend who flew vintage world war II aircraft—you probably saw the fly-over. His company was High Five Productions, and he had a very scrappy line producer, Martin J. Fischer. Bud went on to win some awards doing country music videos for Garth Brooks, and the Judds. We found Bud and Martin on the way up. They probably got us at least double the production value up on the screen that we paid for. Considering all the equipment, costumes, and extras, it was a major production for an industrial.

Here's Bud's page in IMDB: ªªhttp://www.imdb.com/name/nm0769761/  ºº
Here's Martin's http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0279047/

Steve flew to L.A. for his bit. We filmed him at a sound stage not far from LAX. Several members of the Mac marketing team had cameos, including Mike Murray, Alfred Mandel, and Tricia Willcoxon.

It had no homescreen like we know today - it was just a clock with a Google search field. Interestingly enough, it did have an early version of the homescreen we know from Android today, but it was a separate application instead of the main launcher (Android still works that way today - multiple launchers on the same device). It came with the usual Google applications, too, like Gmail, Calendar, and as on. There's a lot of skeuomorphism going on, and thank god The Astonishing Tribe redesigned all that stuff for the Dream project.

All this shows just how much the iPhone's launch caused the industry to change gears. Sure, Google was working on the Dream before the iPhone, but it was considered a "long-term" project, and they were clearly in no rush to get it done. Then the iPhone came. Google made the right choice - suck it up and ditch the Sooner - while others, like Microsoft, Nokia, and RIM, had no idea what to do. They were simply too set in their ways, and couldn't, or didn't want to, see just what the iPhone meant.

Google was leaner, and quickly shifted focus from the Sooner to the Dream. The company was lucky it hadn't launched the Sooner yet, else it would be in a position more similar to the other players (i.e., having to support and promote/sell what would obviously be a dead end).

"After further investigation it has been determined that this is a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering," the official response from Apple Developer Connection's Worldwide Developer Relations team reads.

The developer said they have often used Apple's Bug Reporter to submit requests for new features. However, this standard form letter is the first time that Apple has actually responded to such a submission from this particular developer.

Apple's response is not the first indication that the company may be working on multi-user support for the iPad. In 2010, before the iPad was officially announced, The Wall Street Journal reported that an early prototype of the device was designed to be shared by and customized for multiple family members.

Un'impostazione dimenticata nell'ultimo aggiornamento di sistema per Macintosh, mette a rischio le informazioni che dovrebbero essere al sicuro grazie alla funzione FileVault

An Apple programmer, apparently by accident, left a debug flag in the most recent version of the Mac OS X operating system. In specific configurations, applying OS X Lion update 10.7.3 turns on a system-wide debug log file that contains the login passwords of every user who has logged in since the update was applied. The passwords are stored in clear text.

Anyone who used FileVault encryption on their Mac prior to Lion, upgraded to Lion, but kept the folders encrypted using the legacy version of FileVault is vulnerable. FileVault 2 (whole disk encryption) is unaffected.

The flaw was first reported by a security researcher David Emery, who posted his findings to the Cryptome mailing list. The bug has not been corrected by any subsequent updates.

In a report earlier this morning, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said China passed 1 billion total mobile phone subscribers as of March at a growing rate of 1.18-percent per month. With potentially this many people to sell smartphones to, China is definitely a region Apple needs to keep hitting hard.

Furthermore, research firm Catalyst is out with another interesting factoid about China, claiming the country has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s largest smartphone market. China’s smartphone market has grown 81 percent year-over-year, where as the U.S. is only 5 percent. In Q1 2012, China accounted for 22 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments, where the U.S. was only 16 percent.

This rise is most likely due to the iPhone 4S’ availability on China Telecom and the carrier starting in Q1 2012. Chinese customers, who formerly had to resort to buying the device off the Internet or scalpers, finally got the phone they were after.

However, there are still a ton of customers in China that Apple isn’t taking advantage of —yet. China Mobile, the country’s largest carrier, does not have the iPhone on its network. The next iPhone is most likely going to be on China Mobile, thanks to Qualcomm’s new chip that supports TD-SCDMA, TD-LTE, LTE on FDD and TDD networks.


Interestingly, two-thirds of the smartphones that shipped in China during Q1 2012 were Android devices. However, I really think that with China Mobile, and continued work on China Telecom and China Unicom, the country will continue to pay off for Apple.

The puzzling stunt was initially ascribed to Samsung, which is planning to release a new Galaxy smartphone -- until an Aussie Mac blog noticed that some code on the "countdown" page advertised by the "wake up" campaign may have come from the BlackBerry maker. This put RIM in the embarrassing position of having to come out and say, "um, actually, it was us." Arguably, this sort of undercuts the point of "guerrilla" marketing.



Moreover, video blogger Nate Burr -- you remember "Blunty," the guy who was just playing with his new boom mic when he happened to catch this weird protest thing outside the Apple store? -- admitted that he'd been in on the stunt from the outset, as part of a rambling 11-minute response video slamming journalists and bloggers for their disingenuous and misleading reporting on the incident.

The second video can be found here. Both the description and the vid itself are fantastic examples of the pot calling the kettle black at the top of its lungs. Both Burr and RIM categorically state that no money changed hands as part of the deal.



While the company may have hoped to "provoke conversation on what 'being in business' means to Australians," as the official release has it, it seems a lot more likely that RIM has succeeded only in further highlighting its own apparent haplessness.

While the two big smartphone vendors, Apple and Samsung, are battling it out in the courtrooms, they're still in total control of operating profits. Horace Dediu of Asymco has just published his analysis of operating profits for the top eight mobile phone vendors and found that Apple and Samsung together pulled in 99 percent of the profits in the first quarter of 2012.
Apple had the largest share of that total, with a full 73 percent of the profits made by the top mobile phone vendors. Only Apple, Samsung, and HTC made a profit in the first quarter of 2012, and HTC's share was a tiny 1 percent. The other companies on the list -- Motorola, Nokia, RIM, LG, and Sony Ericsson -- all had losses for their handset businesses.
Apple and Samsung are reaping the benefits of being the top vendors in the lucrative and growing smartphone business. Profits from the eight top vendors detailed in Dediu's report have gone from US$5.3 billion to $14.4 billion, primarily from carrier subsidies on pricey smartphones.

A WWII-themed corporate video from 1984 features a cameo from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs playing the role of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as he leads Apple troops against the "blue blob" IBM.

The 9-minute video was made in-house for an international sales meeting in Hawaii and reportedly made its way to website Network World through Craign Elliott, a previous Apple employee and current CEO of cloud computing startup Pertino Networks.

A supposed follow-up to the famous "1984" Macintosh ad, "1944" cost $50,000 to produce and features hired actors as well as Apple employees like Mike Murray who was vice president of marketing at the time.

In the film, a rag-tag band of Apple soldiers are fighting against IBM in a David vs. Goliath battle that is likened to the U.S. infiltration and subsequent victory over Axis forces during WWII. The criticism that Macintosh lacked software was lampooned, with Bill Gates mentioned as a purported supporter of the Apple movement.

The hammer-throwing character from the iconic "1984" commercial also makes a brief appearance as she opens a crate full of software that spills onto the ground to be picked up and used as "ammo" for by the Allies.


Steve Jobs plays FDR in Apple in-house video. | Source: Network World


A narrator ends the film in a style reminiscent of 1940's-era news flashes:

"And so the Fighting 32nd begins its rendezvous with destiny. The battle will be long, and it will be hard, but it will be won. For the commandoes of the Fighting 32nd have on their side the most powerful weapon on Earth: an idea whose time has come."

Shipments of Android-based tablets including Amazon's Kindle Fire saw a "steep drop" in the first quarter of 2012, allowing Apple's iPad to grow to 68 percent of tablets shipped worldwide.

The latest data released on Thursday by IDC shows that Apple's worldwide market share increased significantly from the 54.7 percent the company held in the holiday quarter to conclude 2011. Apple's gains came largely from Amazon's losses, as the Kindle fire plummeted from 16.8 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2011 to just 4 percent share in the first quarter of 2012.

After a number of developers using the Dropbox SDK reported that Apple was rejecting their iOS apps from the App Store because of links to an external purchase option, the cloud storage provider has confirmed that is working with Apple to address the issue.

Developers recently took to the Dropbox forums to discuss the rejections, as highlighted by The Next Web. Apple had taken issue with a new version of the Dropbox SDK that included a link to the "Desktop version" of its website on the page for creating accounts that could allow users to purchase additional space outside of the app.

Dropbox, which has more than 50 million users across 250 million different devices, released a statement about the issue to AppleInsider on Tuesday.

"Apple is rejecting apps that use the Dropbox SDK because we allow users to create accounts. We're working with Apple to come up with a solution that still provides an elegant user experience," the statement read.

A Dropbox employee appeared to have issued a temporary solution on the company's forums with a new version of the SDK that removed the offending link. The employee promised to share next week information about a "better solution."

If Apple's A5 is any indication, Samsung's 32nm HK+MG process is extremely capable. Assuming Apple didn't change any fundamentals of its microarchitecture, the iPad 2,4's gains in battery life can be attributed directly to the process. The gains themselves are significant. We measured a 15% increase in our web browsing battery life, a nearly 30% increase in gaming battery life and an 18% increase in video playback battery life. Although Apple hasn't revised its battery life specs, the iPad 2,4 definitely lasts longer on a single charge than the original iPad 2.

If you're in the market for an iPad 2, the 2,4 is clearly the one to get - if you can find one that is. Unfortunately there's no sure fire way to tell that you're getting a 2,4 without opening the box and turning on the tablet, and I suspect most stores will get a bit irate if you're constantly buying and returning iPad 2s in search for a 32nm model. Presumably over time more of the available inventory will shift to 2,4 models, but based on our experiences in trying to find a 2,4 it's still pretty tough.

Lanciati negli Stati Uniti lo scorso autunno, i due servizi legati a iCloud sono finalmente utilizzabili anche dall'utenza italiana. Ecco le informazioni salienti per l'attivazione e l'utilizzo.

Here's a look at the drastic product evolution that's been happening since 2001, using financial breakdowns from the company.

Samsung has denied any involvement with the “Wake Up” flashmob staged outside an Apple Store in Australia, despite suggestions that it was an escalation of the company’s anti-iPhone campaign. Reported earlier this week, the flashmob saw dozens of black-clad men and women holding “Wake Up” signs converge outside of the Sydney Apple Store. However, ”Samsung Electronics Australia has nothing to do with the ‘Wake-Up Campaign” the company told SlashGear today.

The NYTimes delves into a divisive subject in American politics right now: Tax avoidance. Apple, like most international companies, sidesteps many California, US, European, etc taxes by using tax havens like Nevada, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Virgin Islands.

The problem for the protagonists is that this is all very legal and practiced by just about every multi-national company in the interest of remaining competitive and maximizing stockholder share. Like most matters of this sort, the problem lies with the laws and loopholes that allow this to happen.  Big companies spend a lot of money on lobbyists making sure that those loopholes don’t get closed.

What may not be terribly patriotic is Apple, Google, Cisco and other’s lobbying efforts against paying US taxes on repatriating their overseas earnings.  Apple currently has $74B overseas and a “tax holiday” on bringing that money and over $1 trillion from other companies back into the US could cost the U.S. federal government $79B, according to the report. (Great Graphic at Bloomberg on why the $1T holiday is likely going to happen)

Apple responded to the Times below:

Apple, in a statement, said it “has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules.” It added, “We are incredibly proud of all of Apple’s contributions.”

Apple “pays an enormous amount of taxes, which help our local, state and federal governments,” the statement also said. “In the first half of fiscal year 2012, our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax.”

With BlackBerry on the decline, there's a battle heating up for enterprise smartphone users and so far Apple is winning in a big way. According to the latest numbers released by mobile enterprise tech firm Good Technology, iOS devices accounted for around 80% of new activations on corporate networks in the first quarter of 2012, while Android-based devices accounted for just 20%. No other mobile platform, such as Windows Mobile, registered enough activations on the quarter to crack Good's study, which tracked mobile device activations across thousands of companies that registered at least five activated mobile devices. Good also says that BlackBerry devices were not on the study since the company does not support the platform and thus "does not have insight" into BlackBerry activations.

The numbers in Apple's favor only grow starker when Good broke down activations for tablets in the enterprise, as iPads accounted for a whopping 97.3% of enterprise tablet activations, while Android tablets accounted for just 2.7%. The financial services industry was by far the biggest consumer in the enterprise tablet market as it accounted for 40.8% of all iPad activations in the first quarter of 2012, followed by the business and professional services industry and the life sciences industry, which each accounted for just under 9.5% of iPad activations.

The second-generation Apple TV is selling for up to £1000, despite a third-generation model being available to buy from Apple for just £99.

The rising value of the second-generation Apple TV is probably due to the ability to jailbreak it. Hackers are finding the third-generation Apple TV difficult to crack. Jailbreaking an Apple TV can enable users to stream TV and films via the internet, as well as add other functions using various plugins. Jailbreaking a device does, however, mean that your Apple warranty is no longer valid.

On eBay, a second-generation Apple TV is available to buy for £999.95, and the seller has sold 820 so far, though these were not all sold at such a high price. Another seller has a second-generation Apple TV listed at £249.95, and a third seller is charging £199 for a model that has already been Jailbroken.

If you are the owner of a second-generation Apple TV, perhaps this is the time to sell it, before those hackers manage to jailbreak the third-generation model.

[...] over a period spanning 42 quarters (Q1 2002—Q2 2012) Apple has sold 344.3 million iPods, but in a period spanning only 20 quarters (Q3 2007—Q2 2012) the company has sold 218.1 million iPhones.
iPad sales data also makes interesting reading. So far, Apple has sold 67 million iPads. It took the company 24 years to sell that many Macs, 5 years to sell that many iPhones and 3 years to sell that many iPhones.

Remarking on the subsidy issue during the company’s second-quarter earnings call Tuesday, Cook dismissed it, essentially saying that the iPhone is so exceptionally profitable for carriers that they’re not likely to mess with it.
“From the carriers’ perspective, it’s important to remember the subsidy is not large relative to the payments across a two-year contract period,” Cook said. “Any delta between the iPhone and another phone is even smaller.”
Beyond that, there are a number of advantages to carrying the iPhone.
“A number of carriers have told me that churn from iPhone customers is lowest of any phone they sell,” Cook said. “That’s obviously a significant, direct financial benefit to the carrier.”
But the iPhone’s greatest advantage is this: It’s a device that customers want to use every day.
“At the end of the day, the vast majority of carriers want to provide what their customer want to buy,” Cook said. “That’s what motivates them. … The iPhone is the best smartphone on the planet to entice a customer who is currently using a traditional phone to upgrade to a smartphone. This is by far the largest opportunity for Apple and our carrier partners. It’s a win-win. All of these factors are missed in this discussion of subsidy.”

Ex-Apple executive Tony Fadell revealed that the company toyed with the idea of equipping the first iPhone with a physical keyboard, but ultimately settled on the intuitive multitouch design that changed the face of the game.

In a Friday interview with The Verge, the former iPod guru said that Apple narrowed down the original design to three prototypes before introducing the handset in January 2007.

Fadell, who officially left Apple in 2008 but was kept on the payroll as a special advisor to the late Steve Jobs until 2010, worked on 18 versions of the iPod as well as the iPhone up to the 3GS before leaving to start "smart thermostat" company Nest.

He notes that when Apple was readying its first handset, the final three designs were an iPod-phone hybrid, an undisclosed version also called "iPhone" and the final model that reached customers' hands.

When asked about his personal opinion, Fadell said that he recognized the potential of a virtual keyboard and would have waited for the technology instead of going with a hardware option. Jobs, who had the final say over what was released, apparently sided with Fadell and pointed out the lack of physical keys as being inherent to the now iconic design.

Just over two months after Apple acquired the app discovery service Chomp, the company has removed features that allowed users to search for Android apps in addition to iOS apps. Chomp is a search tool that lets users to search for an app based on what it can do, instead of by the name alone. The service works using specific algorithms that sort through and compile what an app does based on its description, user reviews, and capabilities.

Apple bought Chomp in February for US$50 million. It is assumed that Chomp was not just a talent acquisition, but was also purchased so that Apple can use Chomp's technology in future versions of the App Store. During Apple's financial earnings call last week, the company announced the App Store now has more than 600,000 apps and the Mac App Store has over 10,000 apps. One of the biggest complaints from developers and users alike is that it's hard to discover new and interesting apps with the existing App Store search function.

When Apple confirmed in 2010 it would no longer be supporting Java for OS X  it announced shortly after an agreement with Oracle to include OS X support in future versions of its OpenJDK Project, providing Java SE 7 implementation on Macs. Over a year later Oracle has now released Java SE 7 Update 4 and JavaFX 2.1, including the first JDK to land with OS X support (via MacRumors) [...]
Following the original announcement in 2010, Steve Jobs explained Apple’s process at the time of shipping a version of Java behind Oracle “may not be the best way to do it”. Of course in recent weeks Apple has patched several vulnerabilities in Java that have lead to an outbreak of malware on Macs. That vulnerability was patched by Oracle in February, months before OS X users received it.

According to MacGeneration, the Mac App Store has reached its 10,000th App.  That is of course a little shy of the 600,000 or so apps floating around the iOS App Store (or even the 200,000 specially designed for iPad) but considering the Mac App store is newer, the numbers of users is smaller and most titles are still available via old fashion installation, it isn’t too shabby.

In November, retail store JC Penney hired Apple’s former retail chief Ron Johnson as its CEO in the hopes of turning the company around. Johnson has continued to make new hires to his executive team at JC Penney, but he never went sniffing in Apple’s territory until today; although, he was rumored to have started. However, JC Penney announced this afternoon the hire of Benjamin Fay, the (now former) Senior Director of Retail Real Estate and Development at Apple.

Passion was also the golden thread at the friendly meeting with Tim Cook: ''I was impressed by his availability and openness," Montezemolo said leaving the headquarters after a 2-hour face-to-face meeting. "We're building cars, they build computers. But Apple and Ferrari are connected by the same passion, the same love for the product, maniacal attention to technology, but also to design."

Tom Cook wanted to see the FF from close up, Montezemolo had used to drive to Cupertino, admiring the shapes and the interior of the 4-door 4x4 from the Prancing Horse, excited about the sound of the 12-cylinder engine. Excitement Ferrari has always been stimulating all over the world and also here in Silicon Valley.

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook commented on the ongoing litigation in the company’s earnings call today. He said Apple does not want to be the developer to the world, but he also said: “I’ve always hated litigation. We just want people to invent their own stuff.”

Apple is currently in litigation with Google/Motorola, Samsung, HTC, etc., and there has been recent talk of settlements with some of those players.

Cook said if these companies stop taking Apple’s inventions and compensate for past trespasses, Apple would put this stuff behind them.

This directly contrasts former CEO Steve Jobs’ view of “Thermonuclear War” and using every penny of Apple’s cash to destroy Android.

Gli ultimi risultati finanziari confermano il trend positivo dell'azienda, che continua la sua crescita annuale, soprattutto grazie a iPhone e iPad. Ma da non sottovalutare sono anche i numeri di Mac, iPod e iTunes Store.

Apple has offered to settle the row over ebook price fixing in Europe, but it’s still holding out in the US. According to reports, European Union competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia has said Apple and all the publishers, other than Penguin, have agreed to settle, at least in Europe.

While the Mac world has been caught up watching the spat between Apple and the US Department of Justice, regarding the antitrust charges filed against it, here in Europe, investigations have resulted in Apple offering to settle.

A day after being criticized by Greenpeace for its energy practices, Apple said Greenpeace's estimates for power use at the company's latest data center are much too high.
Apple said that its data center now under construction in North Carolina will use about 20 megawatts at full capacity. Greenpeace put the estimate at 100 megawatts.
Greenpeace gave Apple, Amazon, and other companies low marks for locating their data centers in areas that rely heavily on coal and "dangerous nuclear." Those companies also scored lower than competitors, including Google and Yahoo, because they disclose less information on energy use.
Before publishing its report yesterday, Greenpeace shared its estimate for the power Apple's North Carolina power plant would use based on the size of the investment and size of the facility. Apple (and Amazon) told Greenpeace the number was incorrect but didn't offer a more accurate number.
Today, Apple issued a statement, run at Data Center Knowledge, which for the first time disclosed the expected power usage. It also notes that the facility in Maiden, N.C., will have a solar array and run fuel cells powered by biogas, or methane captured from landfills or other organic sources.
"We believe this industry-leading project will make Maiden the greenest data center ever built, and it will be joined next year by our new facility in Oregon running on 100% renewable energy," Apple said.
In response, Greenpeace's lead IT industry advocate Gary Cook questioned how Apple's 500,000-square-foot data center would only consume 20 megawatts, but welcomed more transparency from Apple.
The back and forth between the companies illustrates the sometimes strained relationship between the environmental advocacy group and tech companies.

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is not the only photo-loving business executive upset by Instagram in recent weeks. While Dorsey stopped posting photos from his Instagram after Facebook reportedly beat his Twitter to an acquisition of Instagram, Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller quit his Instagram for another reason: Android.

A reader noticed that Schiller had deleted his Instagram account – which was “@schiller” – and then reached out to Apple’s most visible public speaker by Twitter for confirmation. Schiller told the reader that he quit the rising photo-based social network because the app “jumped the shark” when it launched on the Android platform.

MacGasm reported that Apple is giving away free copies of Snow Leopard to MobileMe users to ease their move to iCloud. iCloud only works on Lion. Apple is offering MobileMe users without Snow Leopard a free copy, so they will pay $30 to upgrade to Lion. Once on Lion, they can ditch MobileMe to start using iCloud.

Apple posted a page where MobileMe users can register for their free copy of Snow Leopard. They had better act fast, because Apple is set to close the service in June to focus on iCloud in the future. iCloud plays a major role in Mountain Lion, which is currently seeded to developers for beta testing. Throughout the OS, there are several instances where iCloud becomes a very practical feature. Furthermore, I am sure you are all familiar with the iCloud integration throughout iOS. Expect iCloud to be a technology Apple is invested in for a long time to come.

Apple is essentially cutting behind users a $30 break. If you have not done so, it is about time to upgrade to Lion and join the roughly other 100 million iCloud users currently out there. What are you waiting for?

Apple arrivò a Reggio nel 1977 grazie alla società Iret Informatica che dopo aver scoperto con grande anticipo sui tempi i prodotti della Mela in California – racconta Andrea Lasagni, figlio del fondatore di Iret - ne divenne distributore esclusivo per l’Italia (1979) fino a quando la società di Cupertino non decise di assumere direttamente la commercializzazione del proprio marchio in ogni paese e nel 1983 rilevò da Iret sede – che all’epoca si trovava in via Bovio a Mancasale – personale e canali distributivi.

Da quel momento Reggio divenne il cuore pulsante di Apple Italia ospitando l’intelligence aziendale oltre, naturalmente, all’assistenza e agli uffici tecnici. Un ragguardevole primato che durò fino ai primi anni Novanta quando tutto fu spostato alla nuova sede di Milano e in seguito in Francia.

In quel lontano 1984 Steve Jobs arrivò in Italia per conoscere la nuova dirigenza e il personale recentemente acquisiti e spiegare i progetti futuri della società e l’evoluzione dei prodotti.

Doriano Guerrieri, ex dirigente Apple Italia, spiega: "Un incontro molto significativo avvenuto in un momento difficile per la società che, dopo aver perso quote di mercato con Apple II, Apple III e Apple Lisa, stava puntando al rilancio con il nuovo Macintosh", il primo computer con interfaccia grafica e mouse di serie a conquistare un vasto pubblico di utenti e a entrare prepotentemente nel mercato.

All’arrivo di Jobs in Italia dalla Francia, ci furono prima un incontro e una cena col management team a Milano, poi il guru informatico venne a Reggio per visitare la sede e incontrare tutti i dipendenti. Nel suo viaggio lo accompagnava Johanna Hoffmann, capo Marketing a quel tempo, e membro chiave del team che creò Macintosh.

Mauro Valsasina, manager di Apple, racconta che quello reggiano fu un incontro molto semplice e gradito a tutti: nessun discorso formale o Communication meeting, proprio secondo lo stile del fondatore di Apple, ma un pomeriggio tutti insieme negli uffici, mangiando in piedi tartine, frutta e verdura. Per tutta la giornata sul pennone della sede sventolò la bandiera della California.

A chi era lì con lui Jobs disse amichevolmente che si sentiva come a casa, anche se era dall'altra parte del mondo.

[...] quando Apple aveva appena lasciato il garage di Cupertino dov'era nata, è stato tra i primi a scommettere su quel simpatico giovanotto dall'aria strampalata e sul suo scatolone beige. Diventando, per un lustro, il concessionario unico dei prodotti Apple in Italia. Andando a trovare Steve a Cupertino e ospitandolo poi a Reggio Emilia. E facendo la sua fortuna. L'italiano in questione si chiama Vittorio Lasagni, sta a Reggio Emilia, e ha ora 77 anni.

Come comincia la sua avventura con Jobs? L'ho cercato io. Era l'autunno del 1979, avevo una società, la Iret, con sette negozi di elettrodomestici in Emilia-Romagna. Vendevo bene, ma volevo trovare qualcosa di diverso. Così ho assunto una persona e l'ho mandata in giro per il mondo in cerca di novità. Da una fiera in Inghilterra mi torna con questo oggetto, un Apple 2: resto esterrefatto, me ne innamoro all'istante e telefono a Cupertino, dove Apple ha appena cominciato a produrre i primi pezzi. Mi passano Steve Jobs: "Ok", mi risponde, "ci dica quanti ne vuole e noi glieli mandiamo. No, non diamo concessioni".

E lei quanti ne ordina? Cinque per volta. Era una cosa nuova anche per me...

Poi però diventa concessionario unico per l'Italia. Come avviene?
L'iniziativa fu loro. Mi telefonarono e mi dissero: "Venga a Cupertino, stendiamo un regolare contratto". Con un interprete, il mio inglese non era dei migliori, presi un aereo e ci andai.

Com'era Steve Jobs? Nel trattare affari lo dipingono come un freddo calcolatore che imponeva anticamere di giorni ai grandi delle imprese mondiali...
Scherza? Affabile e gentile, tutt'altro che freddo. Il feeling tra noi fu immediato, una questione di pelle. Trattammo per un paio di giorni, io, lui, Tom Lawrence e qualche altro. Volevo impegnarmi al massimo per 800 pezzi l'anno, ma mi fu detto "Almeno mille, o niente". Ero spaventatissimo, ma accettai. Firmammo il contratto su un tovagliolo a fiori gialli e arancione in un ristorante americano. Davanti a una buona tavola, puro stile reggiano...

E quanti Mac vendette?
Tornando a casa, in aereo, mi venne in mente di comprare una pagina del Sole-24 ore. Diceva: "Due milioni di italiani avranno un computer e non lo sanno". I primi mille li esaurii in tre mesi, li riordinai subito, poi sempre di più, sparivano in un battibaleno. Già tra l'80 e l'81 il fatturato della mia Iret informatica passò da 2,8 a 16,5 miliardi di lire.

E Steve Jobs lo ha rivisto?
Certo. Venne lui da me a Reggio Emilia, credo fosse l'80, a vedere come vendevo i suoi gioielli. Gli piacque, il nostro rapporto si rafforzò, lo portai anche un po' in giro per la città: "Quant'è bella!", esclamò davanti alla fontana classica in faccia al Teatro Municipale, quella sparita da quando hanno rifatto la piazza.

Traccia nei giornali locali?
Non se ne accorse nessuno. Ma chi lo conosceva allora Steve Jobs? Il suo Mac era un oggettino da piccola nicchia, tutti stavano dietro a Ibm, Olivetti eccetera.

Poi però dovette lasciare la concessione. Screzi??
Mai. Al contrario, è stato sempre un rapporto bello e pulito, da parte di entrambi. Anzi, quando un paio di persone, intermediari di loro fiducia, provarono a sottrarmi la concessione per cederla ad altri, Steve Jobs appena lo seppe cacciò costoro e tenne saldo il rapporto con me. E alla scadenza del contratto, 1983 con preavviso di un anno, non solo non tentò nessun trucchetto ma mi pagò svariati miliardi per rientrare in possesso della concessione e gestire direttamente come Apple la distribuzione dei suoi prodotti. Era la loro politica in tutto il mondo.

Ha continuato a vendere Apple?
Sì, come distributore. Buttandomi anche in qualche altra avventura imprenditoriale, alcune riuscite altre meno, com'è nell'ordine delle cose. Ora è tutto in mano ai miei figli, Rachele e Andrea. Quanto a me, da pensionato, mi diverto a giocare un po' con la finanza, faccio fruttare i miei guadagni. Sì, l'azzardo mi è sempre piaciuto, non ho mai smesso di scommettere...

Brent Schlender, a writer who reported on Jobs for Fortune and The Wall Street Journal for 25 years, published details of his many interviews with Jobs in Fast Company Magazine, explaining why he believes Apple’s success can be traced back to Jobs' hiatus from Apple, from 1985-1996.

Schlender, who doesn’t think ‘the wilderness years’, the phrase used for Jobs’ hiatus, is a fitting description, says that he thinks the period spent away from Apple was: “The most pivotal of [Jobs’] life. And perhaps the happiest. He finally settled down, married and had a family. He learned the value of patience and the ability to feign it when he lost it. Most important, his work with the two companies he led during that time, NeXT and Pixar, turned him into the kind of man, and leader, who would spur Apple to unimaginable heights upon his return.”

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Zane Rowe, executive VP and Chief Financial Officer for United Continental, the holding company that owns United Airlines, has a new job — at Apple. Rowe, who has served as United’s CFO since October 2010, is leaving the airline for an high-ranking sales position in Cupertino, Apple confirmed.
“We are thrilled that Zane Rowe will be joining us as one of our vice presidents of sales,” Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told AllThingsD. “He built a great team at United and we think he is going to do a fantastic job at Apple.”
From CFO to a VP of Sales? Quite a career change — even if there are only a handful of VP of Sales jobs at Apple.

The musician
Business guys didn't like to overpay for hardware. While Visicalc made the Apple II a workable product for them, each sale took a lot of effort, and, usually, some serious dealing that cut into my commission. But one day a tall weirdo came into the store and started quizzing me on what the machine could do that wasn't business related.
It turned out to be the musician Todd Rundgren ("Hello It's Me;" "Bang the Drum All Day"). He was interested in experimenting with computer technology, he said. I quickly and easily sold him a loaded Apple II, a monitor, two disk drives, and a thermal printer. Then he spied what I think were the only Apple Graphics Tablets we had in stock, and added them in, too.
Steve Jobs' most revolutionary Apple products (photos)

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The tablet was a horrible piece of equipment. It was a large, flat, beige slate with wires embedded under the surface and a corded pen as a pointer. It used magnetic sensing to get position of the pen, and as I recall was very susceptible to interference. The cursor tended to jump around a lot.
But Rundgren eventually created a product using the tablet, the Utopia Graphics Tablet System, and he licensed it to Apple.

Apple on Friday quickly quashed rumors that it is working on a "revolutionary" new project with acclaimed French designer Phillippe Starck.

A spokeswoman for Apple said in a statement to All Things D that the company is not working on any new products with Starck. They also declined to speculate what Starck may have been speaking about in a radio interview that gained attention earlier on Friday.

Gilles Dounes, editor in chief of French Mac site Macplus.net, suggested to AppleInsider that Starck was not speaking about a project with Apple, but rather a partnership with Apple co-founder Steve Jobs himself. Starck is said to have designed the yacht that Jobs was having built before he passed away last October.

Dounes said he saw a sketch of a yacht with a glass roof on Starck's website a few months ago. However, the image has since been removed.

Details on the yacht were revealed in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs released last year. Jobs himself began designing the boat, which features 40-foot-long glass walls, in 2009, though it was not completed before his death.

Dounes also explained that Starck is known in France as someone who likes to create "buzz" for his projects and generate publicity. He was described as "quite the opposite" of Apple's more secretive design chief, Jony Ive.