According to AppleInsider, Apple’s employee Jeff Williams has recently been promoted to right hand man of chief operation officer Tim Cook. That move was made to ensure that Apple products meet “the highest standards of quality” after it was revealed that iPhone 4 has significant problems with antenna, bluetooth and proximity sensor.

Before 2004 Jeff Williams was Apple’s head of worldwide procurement and managed company’s supply chain of the music player components.  Then he became a Vice President of Operations and played a significant role in worldwide launch of iPhone and iPod.
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Apple just released its third quarter earnings. Here is a quick summary:

• Revenue: $15.7 Billion (record)
• Profit: $3.25 billion ($3.51/share)
• Margin: 39.1% (vs 40.9% last year)

International sales accounted for 52% of revenue

Sales:

• Macs: 3.47 million
• iPods: 9.41 million
• iPhones: 8.4 million
• iPads: 3.27 million

Here is the official press release:

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This week Steve Jobs had been seen enjoying his vacation in Hawaii. According to Gawker.com, which in turn referred to some tipster, who actually saw Apple’s CEO, the latter had a lunch at Kona Village Resort with his family. The spy also heard that Jobs was explaining the positive uses of LCD to his kids, the subject which was described earlier in the latest issue of Vanity Fair.

Though nobody else did not confirm this information, the news are certainly entertaining.

This Thursday Larry Page and Eric Shmidt (one of Google founders and its current CEO respectively) gave an interesting interview at the Allen & Co. conference.

According to Reuters, Page said that Jobs’ opinion about animosity between Apple and Google that was caused by the latter (because it was Google that decided to compete with the iPhone by creating Android mobile platform) is “a little bit of rewriting history”.

“We had been working on Android a very long time, with the notion of producing phones that are Internet enabled and have good browsers and all that, because that did not exist in the market place. I think that characterization of us entering after is not really reasonable.”

Shmidt also added there are no “zero-sum games, which are battles to death”, as the market is large enough for Google and Apple to thrive. Besides, Google still remains to be an important strategic partner for Apple by being the default search provider and powering Maps and Youtube application on all iOS devices.

Recently the head of Lenovo Liu Chuanzhi gave an interesting interview to Financial Times, where he said that Apple loses out in China:

“We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn’t care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble”.

Currently Lenovo holds about 30% of Chinese technology market, which is expected to be the #1 biggest market in a year. Apple, on the contrary, limits the number of products shipped to that country. There are only a few of its authorized resellers and stores situated in the largest cities of China.
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One of the main features of the iPhone 4 is the ability to record HD-video in 720 p. However, users have discovered that in order to get the video off the iPhone you have to connect the device to the computer and download the file. There are simpler solutions of course, such as sharing the video via e-mail or MMS directly from your iPhone or uploading them to YouTube or MobileMe, but in the process of compressing the files lose greatly in their quality, making the HD-option rather useless.

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According to yesterday’s announcement, Apple have sold three million iPads during the first 80 days on the market since the device was launched in the US on the 3^rd of April with Wi-Fi only models. To sell 2 million, it took approximately 60 days, so it can be said with certainty that the sales of the iPad are accelerating.

Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs says that people are loving iPads and it’s becoming part of their lives. The company is working hard to allow more and more people to use this wonderful device, and next month the iPad will be available in 9 more countries: Singapore, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Mexico, Luxembourg, Ireland, Hong Kong, Belgium and Austria. The information on the prices and pre-order for these countries is expected to be revealed soon.

According to the press release, more than 11,000 iPad-specific applications are now available in the App Store.

Apple has published the entire WWDC 2010 keynote video. It is available via Apple website (in QuickTime format) and via official Apple youtube channel:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduces iPhone 4, with FaceTime, Retina display, multitasking, 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, and HD video recording and editing. All on the world’s thinnest smartphone.

We’ve published several interviews of Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D8 conference with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Here is the full-length uncut version. It is only an hour and thirty five minutes. Let’s watch:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shares his thoughts on the iPad at D8.

Who knew Steve Case, the co-founder and former CEO and chairman of America Online, had a secret plan at one time to buy Apple and have Steve Jobs run AOL Time Warner?

In his fifth appearance at D: All Things Digital, Steve Jobs speaks with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher about his well-known issues with Flash. Let’s watch:

Ballmer had been rumored by Wall Street analyst Trip Chowdhry to be making an appearance at WWDC. He was expected to announce Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 with support for iPhone OS and Mac OS X development.

Here is an official tweet from Microsoft:

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Today Apple announced that its annual WWDC conference will start with a keynote from Steve Jobs on Monday, June 7 at 10 a.m. Pacific Time. It is rumored that Apple CEO will finally introduce iPhone 4G.

The company has also revealed that the conference will include hands-on working labs for iPhone OS 4, Mac OS X core technology labs and the iPad development sessions. The event will be divided into five key technology tracks:

• Developer Tools
• Graphics & Media
• Internet & Web
• Application Framework
• Core OS

The company’s engineers will focus on iPhone OS 4 and conduct more than one hundred solutions-oriented sessions and labs, so it may be possible that Mac OS X 10.7 won’t be previewed.

The tickets on the WWDC had been already sold, though they increased from $1,259 to $1,599.

Recently The Wall Street Journal had reported that Verizon collaborates with Google to create new tablet device that will compete with the iPad. The information was confirmed by Lowell McAdam, who is a Verizon CEO, in his interview to the paper.

“What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are? We’re working on tablets together, for example. We’re looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience.”

Still there were no information revealed about the device’s hardware and its manufacturers. McAdam said that collaboration with Google has already led to success in company’s efforts to combat the iPhone with Android-based handsets, so he’s looking forward for the same result in creating new tablet device.

Verizon CEO also told that the company now will close the gap with AT&T which offers exclusive only 3G data plans for the iPad in the USA. In early 2011 Verizon will present 4G-capable device along with its new high-speed network, which by the end of 2010 will cover 25 to 30 cities. It is planned that there will be more price plans for every selling device, and it may be more expensive than current offers of other carriers who have 3G network.

AT&T seems to not support such policy (at least the company have been repeatedly denying such information), though its CEO Randall Stephenson thinks the industry will be proposing variable pricing once.

“For the industry, we will progressively move towards more of what I call variable pricing. The heavy consumers will pay different than the lower consumers.”