Filed under: Rumors

A small post in Barron's noted today that TiVo shares have jumped up about 5% today on rumors that the company's DVR technology may be included in the next iteration of the Apple TV.

TiVo's Premiere device has greater functionality than the Apple TV, with the ability to record up to 150 hours of HD video (with the Premiere XL), on-demand video streaming from Netflix, Amazon Video, and YouTube, viewing of photo libraries on TV, and a choice of music and photo streaming services.

There has been a lot of speculation as of late that Apple may be poised to make the Apple TV more than just a hobby. With Google TV just around the corner and Google making deals with Sony, Logitech, Intel, and the Dish Network, Apple may be looking for partners to help jump-start a revival in the neglected Apple TV.

As noted in Barron's:"Is it true? Who knows?"

[via MacDailyNews]

Those pesky Apple parts, they're always parading themselves in front of cameras. This time, a tiny (1.18" square, 3cm x 3cm) touchscreen has shown up in Taiwan. Apple.pro has posted two pictures of the mini mystery (English translation here). In the second shot, you'll see Apple's copyright stamp on the connector cable.

What could it be? A display for a future iPod? Dick Tracy's watch? A prototype that will never see production? A remote control for the hypothetical revamped Apple TV?

Before you scoff, consider Apple.pro's track record. They had a legit white iPhone case and a unibody Macbook Pro case before they were released. With that in mind, we'll say that this little doohickey, whatever it is, might be in our homes or pockets someday.

[via MacRumors]

According to French Apple news site Macgeneration, Safari 5.0 will be released at WWDC. We usually don't post non-verified information, but I think that this might be true since we were sent specific release notes. With the understanding that this is a rumor, albeit a very good one, here's what Safari 5.0 purportedly contains:

Just as quickly as the rumors started, they're over: the official Microsoft Twitter account confirms that no, even though it would be hilarious, CEO Steve Ballmer will not be appearing at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference. It's too bad -- having Ballmer around would have definitely been entertaining, and maybe it would have been an olive branch between the two companies. Apple is worth more than Microsoft now, after all -- if Steve Jobs called up Ballmer and asked him to appear on stage, you'd think he'd jump to do it. Maybe they could even team up against the evil Google.

The tweet also confirms (tongue firmly in cheek, we suppose) that Ballmer will not be appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Which is also too bad -- our guy already did it. What are you, Ballmer, too good to cut a rug on live TV?

Shocking news; we're absolutely gobsmacked with surprise. Boy Genius Report fans the flames of the widely-telegraphed WWDC rumored iPhone revision story with a one-line tidbit: AT&T employees have been informed that the phone is actually coming, and may in fact be on sale in the month of June.

MacRumors points out that this corresponds neatly with a previously-BGR-reported block on employee vacations for June affecting the cell carrier. Got to make sure those stores are staffed! Back at the end of April, Mashable hinted that the new phones might go on sale during the developer conference itself, which would be quite a way to kick off the summer.

Meanwhile, Jim Dalrymple at The Loop aligns his crystal ball with Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster on the topic of a possible Verizon iPhone: neither the bearded Mac maven or the tie-wearing Wall Street analyst expect to see a big red Apple phone anytime in the immediate future. Daring Fireball also notes that Matt Drance at AppleOutsider has done a nice job assessing many of the technical and business reasons why a VZW/Apple teamup isn't likely to appear soon.

Everybody ready for June? It's going to be a scorcher.

--- Last January, Apple COO Tim Cook stated, "We believe we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make." That motivation, backed by Apple's 41 billion cash on hand, makes its rumored acquisition of ARM Holdings so compelling. ---

What would you do if you had $41.7 billion in cash reserves? That's what Apple has and, as Ken posted earlier, the rumor du jour suggests the company might use a modestly large chunk of it to acquire ARM Holdings. If such a deal is in the works, it would be Apple's largest purchase ever by an order of magnitude; the suggested £5.2 billion (US$8 billion) sticker price dwarfs the biggest prior buyout, which brought NeXT into Apple for $400 million and delivered the foundations for Mac OS X (along with a certain iCEO).

ARM licenses its chips to many consumer electronics heavyweights; in addition to powering the iPad and iPhone, ARM processors power other smartphones, including those running on the Symbian, Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 7, and yes, Android operating systems. An Apple acquisition of ARM, therefore, could have far-reaching implications on consumer electronics, especially when it comes to competitive access to the latest and greatest ARM chips.

In the London Evening Standard article, a trader was quoted as saying "A deal would make a lot of sense for Apple .... That way, they could stop ARM's technology from ending up in everyone else's computers and gadgets." That may be taking it a bit far -- ARM's licensing and product lineup couldn't be made completely private in the short term -- but it would make Apple the most-favored customer for ARM's designs. It would also help Apple's other recent buyout, chip shop Intrinsity, make the most of its expertise.

Back in January 2009, Apple COO Tim Cook stated, "We believe we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products we make." As the processor plays a pivotal role in shaping the user experience on mobile devices (think performance and power consumption) an acquisition of ARM could provide Apple the ability to better integrate and leverage ARM technologies in order to stay ahead and differentiate from the competition. The A4 chip in the iPad is based on an ARM design, which was first whispered about almost two years ago.

In the last two years, Apple has made several notable acquisitions: of semiconductor company P.A. Semi, mapping company Placebase, music streaming service Lala, and mobile ad firm Quattro Wireless. So far, the Quattro Wireless acquisition has produced the most visible results, in the form of iAds. If an ARM acquisition is indeed happening, it'll be fascinating to see what comes out of it.

Say hello to the rumor du jour: Apple is considering a bid for ARM Holdings. The Web site for the London Evening Standard says that investors across the pond seem to like the Apple/ARM idea; so much so that shares of the chip designer jumped from by 8 pence to just over £2.51 by midday, a 3.2% gain. [Share prices corrected –Ed.]

It's hard to tell where, exactly, the rumor came from. According to the paper, "the takeover speculation was fueled by stellar second-quarter figures from Apple (on Tuesday) smashing Wall Street's forecasts," though there was nothing about such a buy mentioned on Apple's earnings call.

Still, Apple is ARM's biggest customer, and traders in the UK seem to think the idea is a good one. The price would be pretty steep for an Apple acquisition, though. Traders mentioned in the piece say that ARM could fetch more than £5.2 billion, or roughly US$8 billion. While Apple's got the cash, its recent purchases have cost much less, such as the Quattro Wireless buy in January for around $275 million, and the 2008 purchase of P.A. Semi for a rumored $278 million.

There's been much buzz these past couple of days around the leaked images and videos of the 4th generation iPhone. Despite the current hubbub, secrecy is at the heart of the Apple ethos, and it serves two primary purposes: to protect trade secrets, and to create a buzz. When products leak, it's like finding out about your own surprise party. Most of the fun is gone.

Hell hath no fury like Steve Jobs finding out about leaked Apple products. Over the past decade, Steve has had many reasons to unleash his anger about leaked products; let's take a look at the rogue's gallery.

More on the ongoing saga of the wayward next-gen iPhone. Gizmodo just posted their version of the story behind the story: They say that an Apple employee who works on the iPhone's baseband technology left the mysterious phone at the Gourmet Haus Staudt, a Redwood City bar and restaurant that's not far from Apple's campus.

[Insert joke about German beer and engineers here.]

Anyway, the gentleman who found the phone apparently waited for the phone's owner to return for some time, and was able to identify him from his Facebook profile on the phone. He intended to return the phone the next day, but it was bricked (or MobileMe deactivated) the next morning. That's when he began noticing ... strange things. Like the front-facing camera and the barcodes on the back.

[Insert surprised wisecrack that Apple's prototype units don't have "lock with passcode after 10 seconds" turned on by default.]

That was back on March 18. Gizmodo says they got the phone some weeks later, and today they confirmed it was a legit Apple item by calling the engineer at work. At Apple. Where he still apparently has a phone and access to a desk.

[Insert shock and astonishment.]

It's a fascinating read, and if nothing else, it more or less confirms that yes, we're looking at an official Apple prototype. Lesson of the day: Do not, do not, mix beer and priceless unreleased iPhones.

Meanwhile, here's an obvious point: it's clear Gizmodo had few or no qualms about publicly announcing the name of the Apple staffer who lost the phone (which I originally reproduced in this post, but redacted based on feedback from readers). When should we expect the follow-up story announcing the name and employer of the person who found the phone and in turn provided it to Gizmodo?

Busy Sunday. Despite earlier reports that the supposed next-gen iPhone prototype was actually a Japanese knockoff phone, the eagle-eyed team at Engadget hasn't given up the chase. The latest development highlights a second device in some of the blurry spy shots from back in January that turned out to be testing shots of the in-progress iPad, and if you look at it just right... it looks quite a bit like the found phone.

Despite the blocky look of the device and the stranger-than-strange circumstances surrounding its discovery, Engadget is now saying it has a source to back up the conclusion that this is the expected design for the next iPhone.

Update: We were happy to have Joshua Topolsky join us on last night's talkcast, so you can hear the story straight from him.

Rumors are flying hot and heavy about a new update coming to the iPhone this summer. AppleInsider has another big rumored feature: Multitasking. According to their sources, Apple will finally introduce third-party multitasking on the new iPhone. Of course, they're doing it the way that they want to and utilizing an Expose-like interface. Two presses on the Home button will supposedly bring up a list of icons, or names of the apps currently running, and then the user will be able to choose from those.

Notifications won't go away; AI says that Apple is still concerned about battery life and network performance, so whenever it's possible to keep an app alive simply with notifications, they'll advocate that solution rather than running it in the background all of the time. However, it's also noted that jailbreaking is currently the only way for a third-party to multitask on an iPhone, and the company hopes to end a lot of piracy and jailbreak concerns by providing an official solution.

This isn't the first time we've heard rumors about a multitasking system like this, and it probably won't be the last. Once the iPad is out of the way, it's very likely that we'll next see the iPhone updated, and it would be a smart move to finally allow users to run more than one app at a time.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is preparing to launch a 27-inch Cinema Display and 12-core Mac Pro by June. The 27-inch Cinema Display is rumored to use the same panel as the one used in the 27-inch iMac and will look similar to the 24-inch Cinema Display launched in October 2008.

Internally, the display is referred to as "K59" and AppleInsider's sources believe its been lingering in Apple's labs for some time while Apple waited for the larger LCD panel – which supports resolutions up to 2560 by 1440 pixels – to drop in price.

Along side the 27-inch Cinema Display will be the long-awaited Mac Pro update. The tower would get at least one 12-core model using two of Intel's six-core Xeon 5600 processors (that's a dodeca-core Mac Pro, baby!). The 5600 series will be available in 2.66, 2.8, 2.93, and 3.33GHz configurations.

A June time frame would be almost fifteen months after Apple shipped the last Mac Pro. The late release would owe itself to Intel not delivering the Xeon 5600's for another month and a half. Apple typically updates their Pro towers in the first few months of the new year.

[Cinema Display mock-ups by AppleInsider]

Update: MacRumors now points out that the higher prices are likely an inadvertent rollback to older graphics, as they match up with the original pricing for those machines when they were introduced. Engadget has also pointed out some similar inconsistencies on the Apple Australia and NZ sites, which may mean that Apple mistakenly pushed out old assets to the retailers with incorrect pricing.

A reader at Engadget has spotted new Apple ads on the Australian tech site PC Authority that show higher prices for the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro. Apple's Australian online store lists the most affordable versions of the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and Mac Pro at A$1599, A$1999 and A$3599, respectively, but the ads show significantly higher "starting at" prices of A$1899, A$2399, and A$4499.

While Engadget points out that clicking on the ads leads to Apple's currently priced machines, it is possible that this is another case where online ads have predicted imminent announcements. Despite the rumors, no new Mac Pro's appeared yesterday but are still expected soon as they haven't seen a major upgrade in over a year. The rise in MacBook Pro pricing could be attributed to the cost of the i7 chipset, but it seems unlikely that in a recovering economy Apple would increase their prices significantly without having a cheaper baseline model available. Is this ad a sign of things to come? Only time and a "We'll be back soon" sticky note will tell.

In the wake of yesterday's iPad sales estimates of 50K in the first couple of hours (now revised by Silicon Alley Insider and Apple 2.0 to about 91,000 in the first six hours), we have an unconfirmed but plausible number from inside the retail stores. According to our source, the in-store pickup reservation count differential between the start of the day and closing time was about 41,000; that represents reservations for the WiFi iPad only.

If you've got a pickup reservation and you happen to know your ID number for it -- and you made your reservation either at the very beginning of the day yesterday, or at the very end of the day -- let us know in the comments and we'll start doing some arithmetic. We'll also try to cross-confirm this number with other little birdies from the retail front. Update: Looks like there's no tracking info on the registration emails. Drat.

Update #2: Separate confirmation on the estimate for Saturday & further counts lead us toward about 50,000 reservations during the course of the weekend.

ZDNet is reporting that the next iteration of the Mac Pro will be unveiled next Tuesday, March 16th. Their sources indicate that Intel's new 'hexacore' Core i7-980x chip, which is also expected to be launched next Tuesday, will be in that machine.

Code-named "Gulftown" the 32nm, six-core i7-980X will be labeled as the i7x ("Extreme Edition"). It will be the first dual-socket, six-core processor from Intel. With 6 cores and 12 threads, a dual-configured, i7-980X Mac Pro will sport 12 physical cores and 24 logical cores with a top frequency of 3.33GHz.

Excluding the minor speed bump in December, the Mac Pro has not been updated for over a year. In December we reported on the leaked Core i7-980X specs. Two months later, HardMac reported that the new i7x Mac Pros could be delivered in February. With the launch of the i7-980X on Tuesday combined with HardMac's sources indicating a Mac Pro refresh that day as well, the i7x seems like a lock for the updated Mac Pro. However, as MacRumors points out, Apple has typically used server-branded Xeon chips in its Mac Pro line, and Intel is expected to debut a number of new Xeon 5600-series chips on Tuesday as well, notably Intel's 2010 flagship chip – the Xeon X5680.