News from category ‘Official’

The City of Cupertino posted some pictures and more information on Apple's "spaceship" campus that was first revealed in June and is expected to be completed in 2015. The project includes the following:

• An Office, Research and Development Building comprising approximately 2.8 million square feet;
• A 1,000 seat Corporate Auditorium;
• A Corporate Fitness Center;
• Research Facilities comprising approximately 300,000 square feet;
• A Central Plant; and
• Associated Parking.

As Steve Jobs described it back in June:

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Maggie Koerth-Baker at Boing Boing has compared the actual Andromeda Galaxy (which is 2.5 million years away from Earth), and the Andromeda Galaxy representation that ships as the default wallpaper in OS X Lion. One of the site readers, David Kaplan, assistant professor of physics at the University of Milwaukee, has noticed that Apple’s Andromeda Galaxy is missing a few stars. Of course, Apple’s representation has been photoshopped and the company removed some stars and galaxies. For example, the professor found out that one of Andromeda’s big satellites (M110 for those keeping track) is completely missing.

Apple has once again altered the Universe according to their whim. They moved/removed many stars, and got rid of a whole galaxy. This is M110, which is one of M31′s [Andromeda's] satellites. The other big satellite, M32, is still there.

By the end of September Apple will have opened over 30 new retail stores, so the total number of stores will be over 360. On this Saturday Apple apparently set to open at least five new stores: two U.S. stores and three international locations covering Australia, Canada, and Italy.

• Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall (Anchorage, Alaska): The new store will be Apple's first location in Alaska.
• Fashion Place (Murray, Utah): Apple's second store in Utah.
• Southland (Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia): The new store is Apple's third location in the Melbourne area and its twelfth overall for Australia.
• Conestoga: (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada): Apple's 20th retail store in Canada, the new location is also notable for its placement in the hometown of smartphone competitor Research in Motion.
• I Gigli: (Florence, Italy): The new store is Apple's sixth location in Italy and first in the Florence area, filling a gap between the company's store in Rome and a series of stores in northern Italy across the Turin, Milan, and Bergamo.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Apple and 5 of the 6 major book publishers: Hachette, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin, and Simon & Shuster. The lawsuit claims that they "colluded to increase prices for popular e-book titles to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing."

From the lawsuit:

In November 2007, Amazon revolutionized the book publishing industry by releasing the Kindle, a handheld digital reader for electronic books or “eBooks.” A major economic advantage to eBook technology is its potential to massively reduce distribution costs historically associated with brick-and-mortar publishing. But publishers quickly realized that if market forces were allowed to prevail too quickly, these efficiency enhancing characteristics would rapidly lead to lower consumer prices, improved consumer welfare, and threaten the current business model and available surplus (profit margins). So, faced with disruptive eBook technology that threatened their inefficient and antiquated business model, several major book publishers, working with Apple Inc. (“Apple”), decided free market competition should not be allowed to work – together they coordinated their activities to fight back in an effort to restrain trade and retard innovation. The largest book publishers and Apple were successful.

This lawsuit alleges that as a "direct result of this anticompetitive conduct as intended by the conspiracy, the price of eBooks has soared" and "bring claims under federal and state antitrust laws to enjoin the illegal conduct and to obtain damages."

After a district court in Dusseldorf, Germany, granted a preliminary injunction, Galaxy Tab 10.1 has been barred from distribution in the European Union (except for the Netherlands, because a separate lawsuit in the Netherlands is already underway). Apple spokesperson Kristin Huguet confirmed the injunction to Bloomberg:  ”It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

Apple alleged that the Galaxy Tab imitates the iPad and infringes on various intellectual property rights owned by Apple. Apple asked the Landgericht (district court) of Düsseldorf, Germany, to order an injunction under which Samsung is threatened with fines of up to EUR 250,000 (US$ 350,000) for each violation or imprisonment of Samsung’s management for up to two years in the event of continued infringement. Those are standard sanctions under German tort law for contempt of a preliminary injunction.

Last week, Samsung had to delay the launch of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Australia in response to Apple's request for a preliminary injunction in that country.

In June Apple began upgrading the plaza and glass cube at its iconic flagship retail store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The company plans to invest in upgrading about $6.6 million.  Customers still have access to the store through a covered passageway. Apple plans to remove the glass cube and work on drainage, pavers, and bollards on the plaza. The company is going to completely replace the cube’s glass panels with new and larger panels.  As Apple says, the appearance of the renovated Fifth Avenue Store will be much cleaner, and visually more seamless. Detailing the upgrades in an informational notice, Apple shows off past and present examples of the Fifth Avenue retail store, showing a reduction in glass panels from 90 to just 15 large strips (three vertical panes on each side and three on top).

We're simplifying the Fifth Avenue cube. By using larger, seamless pieces of glass, we're using just 15 panes instead of 90.

Apple has just released iOS 5 Beta 5 to developers. Alongside the new firmware comes Xcode 4.2 Developer Preview 5 and iTunes 10.5 beta 5.

Developers can download it here or update via OTA (over the air). Prior OTA all content and settings on the device must be erased (Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings). The delta update is just 128MB.

As reported various retailers reducing the price of iPhone 4 expecting the release of the iPhone 5. Rumors suggest that the next-generation smartphone  vary quite substantially from an August release to a September release, and AllThingsD expects a late October launch. So the US retailers Radio Shack and Target have both cut the price on the iPhone 4 models. Radio Shack is currently offering the 16GB model for $169.99 and the 32GB for $269.99. Meanwhile Target is now offering the 16GB iPhone 4 for $149.99 and the 32GB model for $249.99. These discounted iPhone 4’s still come with a two-year contract. The standard prices for the iPhone 4 in Radio Shack were $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model.

Site PriceGrabber released the results of a survey of nearly 3,000 U.S. online consumers, revealing that 35% of respondents intend to purchase the next-generation iPhone.

Anticipation in the consumer electronics world is soaring for the launch of Apple's iPhone 5, which is rumored to be hitting store shelves this fall. PriceGrabber, a part of Experian, just released the results of its iPhone 5 survey, revealing that 35 percent of consumers plan to purchase the latest iPhone upon its release. Of these respondents, 51 percent indicated that they will buy the smartphone within the first year of release, 30 percent will purchase it before the end of 2011, 14 percent will buy it within the first month, and 7 percent will buy it within the first week. Conducted from July 1-11, 2011, the survey includes responses from 2,852 U.S. online consumers.

Respondents expect to seen in the next-generation iPhone improved battery life; 59% of respondents selected this option in the survey. 56% was a lower price point. 46% indicated that "4G" compatibility is an important feature.

Apple released iOS 4.3.5 for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The new firmware fixes a security update with certificate validation. For Verizon iPhone owners Apple released iOS 4.2.10.

Products compatible with this software update:

• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPad 2
• iPad
• iPod touch 3G
• iPod touch 3G

You can update via iTunes or download using direct links here.

Automator, the set of automation tools that allows users to create workflows, services or apps has received interesting improvements in Lion. Some of such improvements allow eliminating the need for third-party software. The Option key for example has got new usage in Lion. Now it can reverse the entire Resume system, show the Library in the Finder’s menubar, or change the Finder’s “Arrange By” feature to “Sort By”. Though Lion is the most powerful and feature-rich version of OS X to date, there are still much to be done in Lion.

There were lots of rumors about Apple’s plans to open the largest Apple Store yet within Grand Central Terminal.  And now they have came true as Apple signed a ten year deal with New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The store will be the 23,000 square foot store in Grand Central Terminal, about 3,000 square feet larger than its largest existing store.

Apple will pay $800,000 in rent annually and in ten years the rent will go up to a million dollars annually. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority  said in a statement that the new Apple Store "has the potential to bring a great new shopping destination to iconic Grand Central Terminal and significantly increase revenues for the MTA's transportation system."

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Alongside release of Mac OS X Lion and new MacBook Airs, Apple introduced slightly changed keyboards. The main change is that Apple has replaced now the the Dashboard key (located on the F4) with a Launchpad key. The other one is that the icon of the Exposé button (located on the F3) key that is now used for Mission Control in Lion was a little bit changed. Such changes are now implemented only in wired keyboard, but we presume they will soon make their way to the Apple wireless keyboard and keyboards with purchased iMac’s and Mac Pros. Unfortunately, this time Apple has not implemented the rumored backlit keys as well as significant design changes.

Mac minis and MacBook Airs were introduced with a new function called "Internet Recovery" that allows to download and install OS X Lion even when hard drive on your Mac is failed or blank.

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Apple released new Mac Mini and Mac Mini Server. Here are very useful comparison tables that compare the new models to the previous generation models.

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