A truly titanic hash of dumb Apple rumors permeated the blogosphere this week, including the usual suspects of the "iPad mini" and the Apple HDTV. But mixed with the mire were multiple reports from actual, reputable news organizations like the Wall Street Journal and Reuters regarding the next generation of MacBook Pros. Unfortunately those same usually reputable organizations also fell into the trap of drawing their information from the most notoriously unreliable of sources when discussing the next-gen iPhone, so it's hard to know what to believe.

It can be difficult to separate the plausible stories from the B.S. even during the slowest weeks. This past week was not a slow week, with an explosion of at least 20 rumors wafting across the Internet and stinking up the place. Fortunately, there are some telltale signs to separate the rumors worth paying attention to from the ones that are only good for laughs.

How do you know, with almost 100 percent certainty, not to take a rumor seriously?

1. Source is an Asian newspaper or "sources in the Asian supply chain"

These so-called "sources" are about as reliable as a guy in a trenchcoat trying to sell you wholesale donor organs from a back alley. "I take lungs now, you get gills next week." Since hardly anyone from Cupertino has loose lips these days, a high percentage of rumors get sourced from Asia instead, where some guy who knows a guy who overheard another guy in a cafe says the next iPhone might be gold plated, or it might hunt down and devour your parakeet. Or both. We've got plenty of examples from this week alone.

'Huge' orders for Samsung's flexible OLEDs spark rumors of Apple interest (AppleInsider)

Korea Times says the "iPhone Yoga" (not kidding) could have an OLED display. In spite of the fact that Apple has shown zero interest in including this technology in its products. 9to5 Mac, now (rather ironically) trying to rebrand itself as an anti-rumor watchdog, takes pain to pour water on this theory.

Rumor: LCD suppliers for 7.85-inch iPad Mini certified with production ready to ramp up (9to5 Mac)

Taiwan-based Liberty Times says production of LCD displays for the long-rumored but never seen "iPad mini" is ramping up. The target shipping for this completely imaginary device is supposedly 6 million units. Which is totally coming this year guys. Promise. Even though it failed to surface in 2010 or 2011, 2012 will be the year of the iPad mini! Unless it launches in 2013. Or 20-never.

[Note: The sources I've spoken to seem very confident that we'll see a smaller, cheaper iPad this year. We'll see. - Ed.]

Apple readies iPhone with bigger screen: sources (Reuters)

Oh boy, if Reuters says it, it's a done deal. Right?! Well, maybe it would be, if the organization had better sources than "people familiar with the situation" and "suppliers in Japan and South Korea." But wait! The Wall Street Journal said the same thing! NEW IPHONE RUMOR L@@K!!!

Apple Moves Toward Larger iPhone Screens (WSJ)

That alleged bastion of "real" news, the Wall Street Journal, says the same thing as Reuters: the next iPhone will have a bigger, 4-inch screen to counter the complete non-threat that Samsung's gargantuan "phablets" represent to Apple's never-ending money stream. So if both the Journal and Reuters are saying the same thing, it must be true, right? Because this 3.5-inch screen is totally holding me back, man.

Small problem: Reuters and the Journal are essentially drawing from the same sources. "People familiar with the situation" and suppliers in East Asia. Bloomberg jumped on the bandwagon too, citing three "people with knowledge of the plans."

The fact that three big names in business news are reporting the next iPhone will have a 4-inch screen can mean only two things: either the iPhone actually will have a bigger screen, or these big news outlets are simply getting hosed by bad sources... just like they did last year.

Of course, simply because these three outlets are big names in the news scene, they get trusted more than others. Even TUAW itself fell for the WSJ's charms on this 4-inch iPhone foofaraw, to which I can only say, "What are you guys paying me for if not to jump on grenades as stupid as this one?"

Rumor: Apple in talks to build Russian R&D facility (AppleInsider)

Yet another sketchily-sourced story from Russian news outlet Izvestia claimed Apple and several other household-name tech companies were looking to build R&D facilities in Russia. No less than 24 hours after this "story" broke, it was revealed this was a mistranslation, and nobody from Silicon Valley was buying those cool fur hats or stocking up on vodka after all.

Collective B.S. detector reading: 9/10. As soon as you find out a story comes from "sources in the Asian supply chain," flip a coin. If it comes up heads, the story is complete nonsense, and you can go about your business. If it comes up tails, the story is still complete nonsense, but this time you have to drink margaritas until you believe it with all your heart.

Sources in the Mexican supply chain tell me tequila stocks are running dangerously low because Reuters and the Wall Street Journal's coin tosses both came up tails.

2. Source is DigiTimes

I went over this last week, as did Harry McCracken of Time Techland: DigiTimes is as reliable as a Bulgarian subcompact automobile powered entirely by Old English malt liquor. Which is to say, not very reliable at all. In fact, DigiTimes' record is worse than you'd expect to see from random chance. Seriously, I bet I can source more accurate Apple rumors from a Kalahari bushman who's never even heard of an iPhone.

Despite that, some "news" outlets still source information from DigiTimes. Please join me in the shaming and shunning.

'iPad mini' to be ultra-thin thanks to new touch technology (BGR)

Nonexistent product, ill-defined "new technology," and DigiTimes as the source. The instant I saw the word "DigiTimes" in this story, I wanted to find BGR's server room and set it on fire.

Suppliers gearing up for launch of Apple's new MacBooks in June - report (AppleInsider)

See, I even kind of believe that the MacBook Pro will get a long-awaited refresh around WWDC, though it might be more because I want to believe because I want a new Mac. But because DigiTimes is telling me exactly what I want to hear, now I have to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all those letters I used to get from Publisher's Clearing House saying I may already be a millionaire.

Collective B.S. detector reading: Infinity. Any Apple "news" site that still cites DigiTimes should add at least four paragraphs of disclaimers about how the site has only been right three times in three years.

DigiTimes is now doing measurable, real damage to companies other than Apple. Samsung's market value plummeted by almost $10 billion on news that Apple was planning on sourcing components from another supplier. The source for this "report" was DigiTimes. Apparently Samsung's investors haven't learned what the rest of us already know: DigiTimes is more full of crap than the New York City sewer system.

3. Source is an "analyst"

I'm kind of curious how one finds employment as an analyst. They seem to do essentially the same job as novelists, but they get paid more and do less research. They also don't seem to fall under the umbrella of the James Frey Effect; when readers find out a novelist fabricated events he claimed to be true, they grab pitchforks and torches. When analysts make up whatever nonsensical B.S. popped into their head after the three-martini breakfast ended, nothing at all happens to them when their predictions inevitably fail to come true. Check these guys out, for instance.

iPhone orders 'significantly' reduced as Apple begins prepping for next-gen model (AppleInsider)

"Analyst" Shaw Wu says his checks with the Asian supply chain suggest Apple has pared back its orders for the iPhone 4S in anticipation of reduced demand in the quarter preceding the next-gen iPhone's debut. This rumor is a two-for-one: an analyst sourced his story from the Asian supply chain, which means you'll find about as much truth in this rumor as in your cousin's story of that one time he totally saw Sasquatch.

Analyst expects MacBook refresh by June, next-gen iPhone by October (AppleInsider)

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, once upon a time worthy of his own TUAW meme, has steadily lost credibility over the past couple years with his repeated tilting at the windmill of the still-unrealized Apple HDTV. Munster expects refreshes to the MacBook line in June and an iPhone refresh in October. Both of those ideas made perfect sense -- at least until I found out that Gene Munster had the same idea. Now I'm thinking the odds of either update happening dropped significantly just because Munster said they would.

Collective B.S. detector reading: 6/10. No matter how seemingly reasonable the claim, any time a story has an "analyst" at its heart it's automatically worthy of nothing more than derision. Over the past several years, analysts have proven only two things: they have no idea how Apple actually works, and their supposed "inside knowledge" of what Apple will do next is worse than worthless. They can't even present a unified front on some topics, such as...

Analysts back away from Apple's 'iTV' (BGR)

A truly rare breed of analyst in possession of a triple-digit IQ restated what others (including me) have been saying for years: Apple probably won't make much (if any) money off an HDTV, which significantly reduces the chances the company will sell one. Many analysts noted that content providers aren't likely to play nice if Apple introduces its own TV set, and at least one echoed a sentiment I've said several times: HDTVs are big, bulky, and not particularly profitable compared to tiny profit piles like iPhones and iPads.

If Apple builds an HDTV, I'll buy one. I'm practically required to at this point. But my disbelief in this product actually existing is so profound that I essentially won't fully buy into its existence until it's actually sitting on top of my entertainment center and blasting 2001: A Space Odyssey into my living room.

4. Headline makes bold assertion, article has no reputable source

Declarative sentences in headlines regarding Apple rumors are pretty amusing. Here are some examples.

Here's How The New Apple TV Will Work With The iPad (Business Insider)

New MacBook Pros will get Samsung's fast 830 series SSD too (9to5 Mac)

What a Tall 'iPhone 5' with 4-Inch Display Looks Like (MacRumors)

In all three cases we have a bold assertion in the headline with only scant evidence in the actual article. Business Insider claims the Apple HDTV will have an interface similar to TiVo, which is hilarious by itself, but it also says each "major channel" will have its own app. Its source: "an industry source who has spoken with someone who used Apple's TV remote control software on the iPad." In other words, "a guy who knows a guy."

9to5 Mac deduces the next MacBook Pros will have fast SSDs sourced from Samsung, but doesn't offer a shred of evidence in favor of that assertion. I guess we're supposed to just take the site's word for it.

MacRumors apparently didn't learn its lesson last year when its expensive-looking Photoshop mockups wound up looking nothing like the iPhone 4S, so the site commissioned yet another set of mockups to show what a 4-inch "iPhone 5" might look like. If you fell into a coma around this time last year, please be assured that a full year has actually passed. You wouldn't know it by the current spate of endlessly repeated rumors like this one, but this is actually the middle of 2012 and not 2011.

Collective B.S. detector reading: 10/10. You need better evidence for claims like these than "because we said so" or "we know a guy."

The biggest happenstance in the rumor scene this week was the explosion of "details" regarding the next MacBook Pro. As usual, 9to5 Mac is on the scene to claim credit for "confirmation" of months worth of rumors about the upcoming refresh. The rumors all say these next MacBook Pros will be moderately thinner, ditching the internal optical drive in the process, and the next Macs will all feature so-called "Retina Displays" featuring double the resolution of current Macs.

In other words, the exact same rumors we've been hearing since late last year. Nothing new, and nothing particularly implausible.

B.S. detector reading: A surprisingly low 2/10. Nothing that's been said about these MacBook Pro updates seems particularly outlandish. Apple usually doesn't jealously guard its Mac-related secrets with the same fervour it reserves for the iPhone and iPad, so as long as a rumor isn't sourced from the Asian supply chain, DigiTimes, an "analyst," or some blogger's fever dreams, it's got a halfway decent chance of being true.

In this case, I hope it's true. My current Mac is getting a bit long in the tooth.

By this time next week, I may well be incarcerated for arson, because the next time I see DigiTimes cited as a reputable source I'm likely to commit some serious acts of pyrotechnic vandalism.* Just in case that doesn't happen, I'll be back again next Monday to throw ice-cold water on the rumor scene once again.

*Just kidding, FBI. Please do not fly to New Zealand and arrest me. The weather is too cold for handcuffs right now.

Rumor Roundup, Episode 5: New MacBook Pros steal the spotlight originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 21 May 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

See Editor's Note at the bottom of this post.

This past week saw appearances from all the usual suspects populating the Apple rumor mill: So-called "analysts" claiming to be able to predict Apple's fortunes a full three years in the future. Booming proclamations from sites claiming to have inside info on unreleased (and probably nonexistent) products. And everyone's favorite source of utterly inaccurate Apple "news": the Asian newspaper DigiTimes. Much more on them later.

Apple stock seen hitting $2,000 by the end of 2015 (AppleInsider)

Some analyst throws a dart at a wall full of numbers and claims Apple's stock price will nearly quadruple in three and a half years.

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. Forecasting the fortunes of a company like Apple more than 40 months into the future is a fool's game, whether you're predicting unprecedented growth or unparalleled DOOOOOOOM. And besides, prevailing "wisdom" among all the other analysts says Apple will be out of business by the end of 2013 anyway, right? Because Apple's "free ride" is over, and either Microsoft or Google is going to take back the keys to the tech kingdom for reasons never adequately, logically, or even sanely explained?

GOOGLE AIN'T PLAYING: Will Clone A Key iPhone Feature (Business Insider)

GOOGLE'S GOING TO COPY IOS GAME CENTER, at least according to Business Insider. The feature would improve the gaming experience for all seven games available on the Android platform.

B.S. detector reading: 3/10. And the only reason it's even that high is because this is coming from Business Insider. From any other source, this would merit a 0/10 reading, because honestly, anyone who points to a feature in iOS and says "Google will copy that" is going to be right eventually, assuming Samsung doesn't beat them to it. (Cue the Android loyalists grousing about Notification Center in iOS 5 "ripping off" the notifications in Google's mobile OS.)

Our Source Has Seen The Apple HDTV, Here's What It Looks Like (Cult of Mac)

"Sources" claim to have seen the HDTV of myths and legends in person, then go on to parrot every single rumor we've heard about the device over the past year, bringing essentially nothing new to the table. But hey, Cult of Mac has some Photoshopped mockups to go with it, so it must be true!

B.S. detector reading: 8/10. Even if Apple is making an HDTV -- something that is a matter of ongoing discussion amongst the TUAW team, but that I personally rate as only slightly more likely than the Earth spontaneously exploding when I type the end of this sentence -- the handful of Apple employees who actually would have seen a prototype aren't all that likely to be leaking those impressions to their blogger buddies. Maybe someone saw something that looked like a new Cinema Display... and maybe what they saw actually was a new Cinema Display.

Foxconn plans renewed shift into distribution (China Daily)

At the end of a yawn-inducing article about Foxconn's business plans, included almost as an afterthought, are three brief paragraphs claiming Foxconn's chief spilled the beans on the supposedly forthcoming Apple HDTV. He allegedly confirmed that Foxconn is preparing to build the as-yet still mythical device.

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. Yeah, I'm sure that a company that's already on thin ice with Apple is going to go blabbing to the public about unreleased and unannounced products. That's exactly how you retain a business relationship with a company possessed of a legendary obsession with secrecy. Why not risk losing a manufacturing contract worth billions of dollars in order to give a BREAKING EXCLUSIVE RUMOR to China Daily.

Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt does a good job of dissecting this one, calling it a "soufflé" of a story -- meaning you kick it once or twice and it collapses in on itself.

Apple rumored to be in talks to acquire German HDTV maker Loewe (AppleInsider)

"Sources" claimed Apple was going to buy a German TV company. Only one thing that could mean, right? Right?!

B.S. detector reading: 9/10. Loewe itself said there was "absolutely nothing to" the rumor. Looks like AppleInsider got punk'd. You had to figure something like this would happen once Ashton Kutcher started dressing up like Steve Jobs. Extra credit to you-can't-spell-B.S.-without Business Insider, which managed to wring three or four items out of the Loewe buyout rumor before it was denied and demolished.

Unreleased 2012 MacBook Pro and iMac Models Showing Up in Benchmarks (MacRumors)

For a change of pace, MacRumors sources from somewhere other than DigiTimes. This time, benchmarks popping up on Geekbench show numbers coming in from unreleased, presumably forthcoming MacBook Pros and iMacs.

MR also points this morning to a 9to5Mac story citing Retina displays, USB 3.0, no Ethernet port and a sleeker but not quite Air-esque design for the anticipated pro laptop refresh. Among the presented evidence are strings referencing USB 3 in the recent 10.7.4 update and in betas of 10.8 Mountain Lion; the inclusion of USB 3 (which is natively supported in Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture) means that an external Ethernet dongle could support gigabit speeds rather than the 100 mbit limit of the current MacBook Air Ethernet adapter.

B.S. detector reading: 3/10 on average. These kind of "leaks" have happened before, and not just with Macs; unreleased iPhones and iPads have popped up on Geekbench before, too. While MacRumors itself notes these results are easy to fake, they're also consistent with the performance gains expected from Intel's Ivy Bridge architecture. The 9to5 report includes a lot of speculation around the industrial design of the next laptop line, but most of the onboard features mentioned are of a piece with the direction Apple has been heading with the Pro line.

Reported AppleCare training points to June Mountain Lion launch (AppleInsider)

"Unnamed sources familiar with the matter" claim AppleCare's Europe, Middle East, and Africa division is hiring and training new people. Somehow, for some reason, that apparently means the next version of OS X will launch in June.

B.S. detector reading: 8/10. Even assuming the source is correct and AppleCare EMEA is hiring new people, that could mean just about anything. And no reputable source I know of has pointed to a Mountain Lion launch any earlier than July, probably even later than that.

iPhone 5 design still not finalized, still no big screen, still no metal back, still on track for October release (iMore)

iMore contradicts every other site out there by saying pretty much every rumor about the iPhone is complete bunk. No 4-inch screen, no metal backside, no booze, no women, and absolutely No Stairway. Denied.

B.S. detector reading: 7/10. iMore and its sources seem to be leaning toward a theory I've had for awhile: Despite a mountain of increasingly disreputable rumors to the contrary, the next iPhone probably isn't going to look significantly different from the iPhone 4S.

That having been said, even if I agree with iMore that doesn't mean I trust the site's unnamed source, particularly over the claim that the iPhone's design hasn't been finalized yet. If the device will indeed launch in October, it seems very unlikely that the hardware design is still in flux.

'iPhone 5' Headphone Jack and Earpiece Component Surfaces (MacRumors)

The same source that gave us classic hits like "slightly different Home button" and "barely changed micro-SIM tray" brings us its latest chart-topping iPhone part: weirdly altered headphone jack cable.

B.S. detector reading: 7/10. At this point, three different parts leaks from the same source is looking like a simplistic con to draw attention to the site's parts reselling business. This newest "leak" is a bit on the outlandish side, as the supposed new cable looks like an absolute mess next to the cable in the iPhone 4S.

7-inch iPad on track for October 2012 release, $200 to $250 price (iMore)

The 7-inch iPad will supposedly launch in October, featuring a screen the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as the current iPad (3). It'll have an 8 GB capacity and start at $200 -- the same price as the current 8 GB iPod touch.

B.S. detector reading: 10/10* (or 5/10 -- See note below). A product that's been rumored but never seen for almost two years, the "iPad mini" would serve no other purpose than to cannibalise the existing iPad line. Even if you assume that making a 2048 x 1536 7-inch screen is technically feasible, saying Apple could sell such a device for the current asking price of the iPod touch is downright laughable.

The iPad mini already exists. It's called an iPod touch. Those who claim Apple wants to address the mid-sized market the Kindle Fire took by storm in late 2011 seem to be conveniently ignoring the fact that Kindle Fire sales went down the tubes in early 2012.

As for a lower-priced option to address budget-minded consumers, that already exists too. It's called an iPad 2. Maybe you've heard of it. It's just like the new iPad, only it's $100 cheaper and its screen looks like it's been smeared with Vaseline when you put it next to the new iPad.

*Editor's Note: After some consideration I'm disagreeing with Chris on this one and saying there's some chance of a 7-inch iPad. Why? The Nook/Kindle form factor has proven it has a market, and if Apple had a product in-between the touch and the iPad, it would obliterate Android in that category not unlike how the iPod soared to the top of the MP3 market. As an entry-level "halo effect" device on the cheap, such a tablet need not be called an iPad, even. - Victor Agreda, Jr.

Report Claims 7-Inch iPad in August, New iPhone in September, New 10-Inch iPad by End of Year (MacRumors)

DigiTimes claims blah blah blah yadda yadda. I'd tell you more, but I immediately stopped reading when I saw the word "DigiTimes."

B.S. detector reading: Off-scale high due to use of DigiTimes as a source. On the subject of the 7-inch iPad itself, I remember the first time I heard of this still-fictitious device: an August 2010 "report" from iLounge, complete with Photoshop mockup of course. Let's look at the claims from that long-ago report:

1. New iPod nano, new iPod touch, 1.7" touchscreen replacement for iPod shuffle, and a shrunken 3" touchscreen for the iPod touch. Partial credit for predicting a new iPod nano, but credit taken away for not realizing it was the same thing as the touchscreen "replacement" for the shuffle (which still lives on). Partial credit for predicting a new iPod touch, but credit taken away for the spurious shrunken screen rumor. Total points awarded: 0.
2. A 7" iPad in late 2010 or early 2011. Nope. Didn't happen.
3. Fifth-generation iPhone release bumped up to early 2011. Nope.
4. Silicone-only iPhone bumpers. Nope.

So, the first time we heard of the 7" iPad, it was included in a rumor blitz from iLounge where the vast majority of the rumored items never came true. In nearly two years since then, the "iPad mini" is still nowhere to be found, and most of the subsequent rumors about it have come from either from DigiTimes or "analysts" with no more clue about Apple's plans than my cat.

I'm sure Apple has been technologically capable of making an iPad mini for years. All the company lacks is the poor business sense to actually release one.

Rumor: Apple planning to launch $799 MacBook Air in Q3 2012 (AppleInsider)

Apple plans to "aggressively combat" ultrabooks -- that special category of notebook that PC makers dreamed up specifically so they could try to copy the MacBook Air -- by, um... selling a budget-priced MacBook Air. Because as anyone who's followed Apple for the past 15 years knows, that is totally something Apple would do. (ALERT: Sarcasm approaching critical mass!) And the source of this report is, of course, "sometimes reliable DigiTimes."

Those are AppleInsider's words, not mine. I've tried to find a more appropriate adjective for DigiTimes than "sometimes reliable," but so far all I've come up with is "standup philosophers DigiTimes." (Video NSFW if your boss is uncomfortable with one of the Golden Girls repeatedly saying something that rhymes with bullspit.)

B.S. detector reading: Once again, off-scale high due to use of DigiTimes as a source.

Apple rumor sites, it's time for an intervention. Or, at the very least, a scorecard.

DigiTimes is the scourge of the Apple rumor scene. It's been funny to watch sites like MacRumors, AppleInsider, BGR, and 9to5 Mac take DigiTimes less and less seriously over the years as the site's record has gotten worse and worse. These sites still breathlessly report every last bit of information effluent that drips out of DigiTimes' rumor sewers, but the way they refer to DigiTimes has shifted over time.

It started with "DigiTimes has given reliable information before," then shifted to "DigiTimes has been reliable in the past." Then it became "DigiTimes has been hit-or-miss lately," then "occasionally reliable." Now we've reached the point of "sometimes reliable DigiTimes."

What's next? "Archaeologically reliable" DigiTimes? "Fossil records indicate DigiTimes provided reliable information during the Cretaceous, prior to the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs and the site's legitimacy."

I decided to find out just how "reliable" DigiTimes has been. My study was thoroughly unscientific, though still performed with far more rigor than anything that's come from that site. I simply did a "site:www.macrumors.com digitimes" search on Google and went through the first 7 or 8 pages of articles I found. MacRumors posts a story pretty much every time someone at DigiTimes mutters something that vaguely sounds like "Apple," so this seemed like a good way to get some traction.

I didn't rate rumors produced in the past two months -- I figure I'll give DigiTimes more time to be wrong -- so I started with rumors in early March of 2012, then worked backward.

Here's a rundown of the true or at least partially true reports MacRumors has printed in the past few years with DigiTimes as a source.

1. iPad 3 Display Supply Constraints to Result in Early Shortages? (March 2012: 100% true)
2. Display Panel Shipment Plans Suggest Apple Will Offer iPad 2 Alongside iPad 3 (January 2012: 100% true)
3. iPad 3 Display Shipments Nearing 3 Million Units with Assembly Set for January Start (November 2011: Mostly true, but mentions B.S. about a 7-inch iPad)
4. Apple LTE-enabled iPhone Due in 2012, iPhone 4S Preparations for September 2011 (May 2011: Mostly true, and remarkably, one of the first sites to correctly refer to it as the iPhone 4S rather than iPhone 5)
5. iMac and MacBook Pro Upgrades in First Half of 2011? (December 2010: 100% true, but talk about your all-time easy calls)
6. Cortex A9-Based iPads, Verizon iPhone, iOS-Based Apple TV Set for 1Q 2011 Launch? (August 2010: 2/3 true. They got the CPU and launch date for the Apple TV wrong, and mentioned some 7-inch iPad B.S.)
7. DigiTimes Claims Display Improvements in Next-Gen iPhone (May 2010: 100% true, but multiple sources were claiming the same thing)
8. Next-Generation iPhone Set to Carry 5-Megapixel Camera? (December 2009: 100% true)

So that's roughly 7 2/3 stories in the past few years. Not a bad record... until you look at all the things DigiTimes has said over the years that have been, as the kids in the UK say, utter bollocks. And this is far from a comprehensive list. I only made it through the first several pages of a Google search before I had to step away from my Mac and find a martini to chase the stupid away.

1. 8 GB iPad 2 Coming Alongside 16 GB and 32 GB iPad 3 Next Week? (February 2012)
2. Intel Delaying Mass Availability of Ivy Bridge Processors Until 'After June'? (February 2012)
3. 'iPad 4' Headed for October Launch with iPad 3 as Interim Upgrade? (January 2012)
4. Pegatron to Become Apple's Primary iPad Manufacturing Partner? (January 2012)
5. Apple to Use IGZO Displays to Achieve a Thinner Lower-Power iPad 3? (December 2011)
6. Mid-Range and High-End iPad 3 Launching at iWorld Seems Unlikely (December 2011)
7. Thunderbolt Coming to PCs in April 2012 (December 2011)
8. Rumors of a 7.85-Inch 'iPad Mini' Revived (Again) for Late 2012 (December 2011)
9. Suppliers to Begin Preparing 32" and 37" Apple Television Sets in Early 2012? ((December 2011)
10. Updated MacBook Air Line with New 15-Inch Model Coming in 1Q 2012? (November 2011)
11. Apple Cutting Fourth Quarter iPhone Component Orders? (November 2011)
12. Apple's 15" Ultra-Thin Notebook Due in March 2012 (November 2011)
13. Next iPad Coming March, But "Real iPad 3" Not Until Q3 2012? (November 2011)
14. iPhone 5 with Metal Chassis and Less Than 4" Screen? (August 2011)
15. Apple Increasing iPhone Production with iPhone 5 Ramp-Up (August 2011: This one is especially laughable, as DigiTimes' predicted iPhone sales figures were off by more than ten million units)
16. Apple Orders 15 Million iPhone 5s, Shipping Begins in September (July 2011)
17. iPhone 5 to Have a Dual LED Flash? (June 2011)
18. Apple Ramping Up New MacBook Air Production in July (June 2011: DigiTimes's claim of 8 million MacBook Air units was only off by, oh, 5 or 6 million)
19. iPhone 5 to Use a 4-Inch Screen? (February 2011)
20. 5.6-Inch and 7-Inch OLED iPad Models Coming in Q4 2010? (July 2010)
21. Touch Panels for Apple Netbook Ordered? (July 2009)
22. And one from the vaults: DigiTimes Reports PowerBook G5 and iBook G5 Contracts (January 2005)

For every one report DigiTimes gets right, you get almost three more that are complete garbage. "Reliable" and "DigiTimes" are essentially antonyms at this point, and any site that still regularly relies on them as a source has absolutely no credibility.

That's it for this week's rumors. Next week, we'll find out the 7-inch iPad mini was actually released long ago... it was inside our hearts all along.

Editor's Note: Just as this post went live, we spotted Harry McCracken's thorough processing of DigiTimes's track record on rumors. Chris's deep dive into the past outcomes of DigiTimes reporting at the end of this post is similar by coincidence, not by design.

Rumor Roundup, Episode 4: 'Sometimes reliable' DigiTimes (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 14 May 2012 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As expected, last week was a slow one for actual Apple news. Equally as expected, rumors of increasingly dubious parentage were shoehorned into various sites' RSS feeds to pad out the news cycle. In the old days this kind of "news" might have been used to line the bottoms of bird cages, but today all anyone does with birds is launch them at pigs with a slingshot.

Claimed iPhone 5 SIM Card Tray Appears Identical to iPhone 4S (MacRumors)

Just when you thought iPhone parts leaks couldn't get more yawn-inducing than slightly different Home buttons, MacRumors lets us know that parts supplier SW-BOX.com supposedly got its hands on some "iPhone 5" SIM trays. These new SIM trays are almost identical to those in the iPhone 4 and 4S, suggesting the next iPhone won't be much different in design.

WhooOOOOoooo! Tk, tk, tk. That was the sound of the wind blowing through a ghost town and a tumbleweed blowing by.

B.S. detector reading: 9/10. Parts supplier no one's heard of? Check. Parts "leaking" to the public over five months away from the time the next iPhone's likely to launch? Check. This rumor isn't just clutching at straws, it's dreaming about clutching at straws.

Liquidmetal Inventor: Apple Will Use It In A 'Breakthrough Product' (Business Insider)

Business Insider takes a break from its usual schtick of behaving like the National Enquirer of the tech world and does an actual interview with a verifiable human being. If you're at all familiar with Business Insider's usual attitude toward all things Apple, you're probably as confused as I was. Anyway, some guy named Atakan Peker claims Apple is a long way off from using Liquidmetal in large scale deployment on any of its products.

B.S. detector reading: 0/10. Peker ought to know a little bit about how well Liquidmetal can scale, because he helped invent the stuff. He thinks it will take three to five years and hundreds of millions of dollars in investments and R&D before Liquidmetal can be widely deployed.

All this means is for the next couple years, any rumor that proclaims "all-Liquidmetal iPhone is coming out soon" is going to max out the B.S. detector.

Yes, Apple is still working on haptics for touch devices (9to5 Mac)

Remember how the night before the newest iPad launched, the internet went bananas for a few hours and thought the device would debut with haptic feedback? Remember how, predictably, that didn't happen? Oh, how we laughed. It was a simpler time. But 9to5 Mac is certain that recently unearthed patents mean Apple is still on the Haptic Trail. Would you like to ford Speculation River, or caulk the iPad and float it across?

B.S. detector reading: 8/10. I've been following Apple long enough to know that more than half the stuff it patents never shows up on store shelves. Apple may still be considering implementing such functionality in future devices... or it may have decided to abandon that route and go a different way. A patent doesn't offer proof of either decision.

Apple's 'iTV' might not launch until 2014 (BGR)

An analyst from JP Morgan spins the Wheel of Fortune and decides the Apple HDTV isn't coming until 2014. I'd like to solve the puzzle: "Making it up as I go."

B.S. detector reading: 7/10 -- and it's only that low because I agree the "iTV" probably isn't coming before 2014. But I only say that because, for reasons I discussed last week, I don't believe Apple is ever launching its own HDTV.

Having recently gone through the head-spinning and utterly confounding experience of buying a new HDTV myself, I agree it's an industry ripe for disruption. But I'm also more convinced than ever that it's an industry Apple's better off leaving to the other suckers. Let Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic, and the rest of them slug it out over who gets to sell TVs to people who are just looking for the cheapest way to watch Game of Thrones without having to squint to tell the difference between Gruff Old Knight No. 4 and Gruff Old Knight No. 7.

Apple television not expected to 'break the bundle' from cable (AppleInsider)

AppleInsider looked at the same JP Morgan analyst's thoughts on the proposed Apple HDTV and focused on his remarks regarding the "disruption" the device might bring to the industry. The headline kind of spoils it; JP Morgan's analysts don't think wild-eyed claims that the Apple HDTV will finally save us from the tyranny of cable providers hold much water.

B.S. detector reading: 5/10. The film, TV, and cable industries saw what happened to the music industry in the last decade -- Apple slowly upended the entire market and now holds almost unprecedented influence over how people buy and listen to music. Cable companies will do absolutely anything they can to stop that from happening to them -- no matter how many of their customers they tick off in the process -- so an iTunes-centric HDTV is probably going to send content owners scrambling to divorce themselves from Apple as quickly as they can.

I'm pretty sure the only reason these media companies even tolerate the likes of the current Apple TV box is that it's a relatively low seller, a tiny blip in the marketplace. If Apple launches what amounts to the iPhone of HDTVs, expect those same companies to "turn traitor" before Tim Cook leaves the keynote stage.

The New iPhone: Size, Screen + New Connector (Plus iPod touch) (iLounge)

The next iPhone will supposedly have a 4" screen and will be about 10 millimeters taller and 2 millimeters thinner. (That popping sound you heard just now was someone having an aneurysm from me mixing Imperial and metric units in one sentence.) The dock connector will allegedly be a redesigned, smaller port.

B.S. detector reading: 7/10. Lots of sites re-reported iLounge's crystal ball gazing like it was brought down from the summit of Mount Sinai, simply because some of iLounge's past guesses have been accurate in the past. All this iLounge post really did, though, was collect several months worth of rumors in one spot and slap some halfway-decently Photoshopped pics on it.

You know what I think would be absolutely hilarious? If the next iPhone looks exactly the same as the last two. Same screen size, same form factor, just with a slightly faster CPU/GPU. Apple is already selling around 4.5 iPhones every second (not an exaggeration), but still everyone seems convinced the company needs to do some radical redesign if it wants to stay ahead of its competitors. I'm pretty sure the "disappointing" sales of the iPhone 4S and iPad (3) are proof enough that Apple no longer needs to change things just for the sake of changing them -- if it ever did.

Apple expected to expand store-within-store presence at Walmart, Target (AppleInsider)

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster walked through an Apple "mini-store" at a Target. After browsing the shelves and chatting with a Target salesperson, he somehow became convinced Apple will widely deploy these mini-stores in both Target and Walmart locations across the United States.

B.S. detector reading: 5/10. I'll give Munster credit for actually doing some on-scene investigating (that's how I used to refer to my Target shopping trips, anyway). But it's pretty much equivalent to me eating at my local Burger Fuel and saying, "Man, the Bastard Burger sure is tasty. You know who'd love this thing? Drunk college kids. Headline: Burger Fuel to expand from New Zealand to Ivy League colleges across the northeastern US."

iPad tablet market share will dip to 50% by 2017, study says (AppleInsider)

NPD claims the iPad will account for only half the tablet market five years from now. As evidence, NPD researchers waved their hands over a pile of gnawed chicken drumsticks scattered on the NPD's throne room floor and proclaimed, "THE BONES HAVE SPOKEN."

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. This survey is even worse than one I saw last week, which claimed essentially the same thing would happen in 2016. Predicting what any segment of the tech market will look like five years from now is like forecasting the 2096 US Presidential elections. (I'm voting for Kodos.)

How Apple will become a mobile carrier (GigaOM)

Famed blues guitarist "strategic advisor" Whitey Bluestein claims Apple is about to sell mobile wireless services directly to its iPad and iPhone customers. He then laid down an astonishingly funkadelic bass groove that I've been humming all week long, to the annoyance of everyone around me.

B.S. detector reading: KABOOM! Wow, good thing I keep a backup detector in my desk, because the first one is toast. "Apple will strike wholesale deals with several mobile operators so that Apple can provide wireless service directly to its customers, as Apple Mobile," Bluestein claims, ignoring three different Apple shades of Apple reality in one Apple sentence.

Look, there's no question that dealing with wireless service providers is one of the worst parts of owning an iPhone or 3G iPad. Imagine that owning a car meant it ran out of gas at random and without warning, or that it couldn't drive to certain areas of the country in the first place, and even with those irritating limitations you endured monthly chain-whip floggings at the gas station to sustain the privilege of driving your car.

AT&T in particular has earned every last bit of enmity its customers (and former customers) feel toward it. Recent remarks from its CEO suggest the company's only regret is it didn't figure out how to overcharge for data services sooner than it did. "You lie awake at night worrying about what is that which will disrupt your business model [...] If you're using iMessage, you're not using one of our messaging services, right? That's disruptive to our messaging revenue stream." These are actual words AT&T's CEO said, presumably right before doing donuts in his Ferrari in a parking lot that used to be an Indian burial ground.

I don't know about you, but I'm finding it difficult to sympathise with a company that charges about (back of the envelope math) $1.60 per kilobyte for data related to sending SMS texts. But does that mean Apple's going to swoop in and rescue its users from these digital highwaymen? Not a chance. Let's dismantle Whitey's groovetastic bass line phrase by phrase.

"Apple will strike wholesale deals with several mobile operators" -BZZT! Nope. Mobile operators are already milking more money directly from their customers than Apple's going to be willing to throw at the likes of AT&T and Verizon. And even the dumbest of wireless providers still has to be smart enough to know that letting Apple wedge itself between them and iPhone users would be a last, well-deserved nail in the coffin of companies that like to pretend they're anything other than digital plumbers.

"Apple can provide wireless service directly to its customers" -BZZT! Name one possible benefit to Apple if it does this. The company would have to hire loads of support people to answer (and endure) the usual questions and tirades from customers dissatisfied with their wireless service. Instead of being able to do what it's done for the past five years -- shrug and deflect blame for terrible service on the carriers, where it usually belongs -- Apple would have to shoulder the burden (and cost) associated with users bellowing into their iPhones in the scarce seconds between dropped calls.

A deal the carriers would never go for, coupled with one of the top five worst strategic decisions Apple could possibly make? Sure, why not? Other than being the dumbest idea I've heard in months, I don't see any downsides!

That's it for the rumors this week. By this time next Monday, we'll know the precise dimensions of the next iPhone's mute switch, the launch date for Apple's VHS/DVD combo player, and exactly how much of the tablet market the iPad will hold in 2018.

Rumor Roundup, Episode 3: Your parts are leaking again originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 07 May 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This past week was relatively quiet as far as Apple-related rumors go. In the wake of Apple's latest quarterly earnings release, it seems there was enough real news to keep everyone occupied that Apple "analysts" didn't have to go around making things up off the tops of their heads like they usually do. That's not to say that some analysts didn't provide us with plenty of fresh manure this past week, because they most certainly did.

Rumor: iPhoto '12 for Mac coming this summer with features from iOS (AppleInsider)

"Anonymous sources" spoke with Dutch website Apple Weetjes and claimed that Jony Ive will be featured on cereal boxes starting this summer. Actually, the real claim is that iPhoto '12 will be released this summer with several design cues taken from the recently released iOS version of iPhoto.

B.S. detector reading: 9/10. Whenever a non-U.S. website most of the rest of us have never heard of comes out with a rumor like this, the smart money is on it being completely made up. While I wouldn't be surprised to see the next version of iPhoto continue the blending of OS X and iOS design elements, rumor sites are notoriously bad at predicting Apple's software release schedules.

As one example, over the past three years I've lost track of how many times people have tried to convince us that iWork updates were right around the corner. Meanwhile, the current version of OS X's iWork suite is older than any of the iPhone models Apple sells today.

Apple courts EPIX for upcoming TV: sources (Reuters)

This one starts out believable and seemingly well-sourced, and Reuters is usually reputable. Apple has supposedly been in negotiations with EPIX to get streaming rights for films owned by Lionsgate, MGM, and Paramount. That part I believe. But...

B.S. detector reading: 7/10. Reuters (or its source) goes off the rails when it claims this content negotiation deal has something to do with Apple's long-rumored (but never seen outside an analyst's fever dreams) HDTV set. The source claims that while the major focus of the proposed deal was the Apple TV, it could also apply to "upcoming devices that stream content" -- which is where either Reuters or its source breaks out the Jump to Conclusions Mat and assumes that means an Apple HDTV.

Loads of people have assumed Apple will build an HDTV, citing "evidence" that ranges from mildly plausible to more ridiculously contrived than the Loch Ness Monster photos. Far fewer people have actually sat down and thought about how an HDTV would actually benefit Apple. We're talking about a big, heavy product that's expensive to make, expensive to ship, expensive to store, and has razor-thin profit margins. Plus, people don't replace their HDTVs every year, or even every few years.

No matter how "cool" people think an Apple-branded HDTV might be, I haven't seen one person make a convincing argument for how such a device could actually make Apple money. Until that happens, any whisper of an Apple HDTV in any rumor earns an automatic 7/10 reading from the B.S. detector.

Surprisingly, that was pretty much it for Apple product rumors this week. But the tea leaf reading doesn't stop at the stuff Apple builds, especially around the turn of the financial quarter. This week, the rumormongers mostly busied themselves with predicting Apple's unrivalled ascendancy or its impending doom -- sometimes both at the same time, as we'll see.

Analyst now says Apple will be a $1 trillion company...next year (9to5 Mac)

An analyst from Topeka Capital Markets ("World Famous... in Topeka!") claims Apple will hit a market cap of -- pinky to lip -- one trillion dollars sometime in 2013. For reference, as of this writing Apple's market cap stands at just under $564 billion.

B.S. detector reading: 8/10. Apple's past two financial quarters have been its best ever by several metrics, but over the past five months its market cap has grown by "only" $100 billion. For Apple to almost double its worth as a company over the next year or so would require financial performance that even Apple itself doesn't expect to turn in; the company's guidance for the next financial quarter was so conservative that analysts sounded more than a little bit freaked out during its last conference call.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple top the trillion dollar mark one of these years, but I'm not betting on 2013.

Apple iPad to dominate tablet market through 2016 (BGR)

Forrester Research looked into its crystal ball and decided the iPad will rule the tablet market for at least the next four years. Supposedly 375 million tablets will be sold in 2016, and 199 million of those will be iPads.

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. Predicting what will happen in the tech sector is like predicting the weather. The farther out your forecast, the greater the probability you're just making it up as you go along. I don't trust my local weather forecast past 72 hours, and I definitely don't trust tech predictions beyond 12 months -- most of these guys are the same jokers who predicted the iPad would be an epic flop, after all.

While the iPad doesn't really have any credible competition now, who knows if that will stay true four or five years down the road? And another thing: can all the factories in China even crank out almost 200 million iPads in a single year? They're having enough trouble keeping up with current demand.

The biggest limiting factor on the iPad's success today is suppliers' ability to keep up with demand; that's why Apple "only" sold 12 million of them last quarter. Apple's going to need the equivalent of 5.5 more Foxconns to make 200 million iPads a year. I just hope that doesn't mean we end up with 5.5 more Mike Daiseys, too.

And now, for the dumbest Apple analysis of the week:

Apple = Sony (Forrester Research)

Forrester Research CEO George Colony trots out a familiar trope, that Apple is nothing without Jobs. Over the past few years this has become just as worn out and overused as any of the other deadly clichés analysts tend to substitute for rational thought whenever Apple's involved, but it's only gotten worse since last October. "Apple will decline in the post Steve Jobs era," Colony says. "Apple's momentum will carry it for 24-48 months."

B.S. detector reading: Off-scale high for several billion reasons. The first several billion reasons all have George Washington's face on them. These first two financial quarters following Steve Jobs's unfortunate passing have been the most successful in Apple's history. The only company that's ever turned in better performance than Apple's past two fiscal quarters is Exxon-Mobil, a company that sells a product which is the life's blood of modern civilization.

The world needs oil to function. It doesn't need iPhones or iPads, yet one of the biggest problems facing Apple today is it quite literally has more money than it knows what to do with. "Um, a stockholder dividend, I guess," is the best idea the company came up with (but still a better idea than "Buy Twitter").

Yet for some reason, guys like George Colony have no faith in Tim Cook or the rest of Apple's management team -- all of them, it must be said, hand-picked by Steve Jobs, and all of them running the company de facto over the past few years as Jobs struggled with his medical issues.

But here's the most astonishing part of George Colony's prediction of Apple's "decline": it contradicts his own company's research. Remember about eight paragraphs back, when we found out Forrester Research said the iPad would dominate the tablet market for the next five years? That in 2016, Apple would be selling almost six times as many iPads as it does today? Apparently Forrester Research's own CEO didn't bother to read that report, because he's claiming almost the exact opposite of what his company has "researched" regarding Apple's future performance.

If Forrester's own CEO doesn't take his company's research seriously, why should anyone else?

That's it for this week's rumors and "analysis" about the world's most successful corporation. The week ahead looks slow for real news, so it's a safe bet we'll be hearing lots more about the iPad mini, Apple HDTV, and more products every bit as mythical as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and "sources in the Asian supply chain."

Rumor Roundup Episode 2: Is Apple doomed or not? Make up your minds! originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Welcome to the inaugural session of TUAW's weekly Rumor Roundup. Anyone who follows Apple-related news long enough soon discovers that an entire cottage industry of "analysts" has sprung up in the company's wake. These guys come out of nowhere claiming to have inside information on what's soon coming out of the secret underground labs beneath Cupertino -- and their predictions are almost invariably wrong. Sometimes laughably so.

Over the years we've swung between reporting these rumors with a straight face, just like many other sites, or not reporting on them at all. The first road leads to embarrassment; I'll never forgive myself for taking DigiTimes seriously on anything, ever. The second road leads to dozens of emails every week from readers confused about why we haven't reported on something that's all over the other sites they read.

That's what this Rumor Roundup is all about. These are the stories we might have let slip through the cracks before, simply because we considered them so packed solid with B.S. that they just weren't worth the effort. Most of the stories that show up in the Rumor Roundup still aren't good for much other than pointing at them and laughing -- and there will be lots of that sort of thing.

On to the rumors. Fire up your B.S. detectors, because this past week has been chock full of the usual mythical suspects (none of which, it must be stressed, have ever come within five time zones of being confirmed to exist): the Apple HDTV, iPad mini, iPhone nano, and the super-thin Liquidmetal T-1000 iPhone Grande with 4-inch holographic Tupac screen.

If you've been paying attention, these are the same nonexistent products that dominated the rumor scene for all of 2011. Here we are in mid-2012, still with no indication that any of these products exist at all. And does it strike anyone else as supremely unimaginative that most of these rumors revolve around size? A smaller iPhone -- no wait, a bigger one! And a smaller iPad! And a great big TV! Yawn.

Rumors of an iPad mini swirl in China (Kotaku)

I love the "swirl" reference in the headline, because it reminds me of a commode -- which is probably where this rumor came from. A Chinese site I guarantee you've never heard of claims that the long-rumored iPad mini will launch in the third quarter of this year, with prices ranging from US$249 to $299.

B.S. detector reading: 9/10. "Leaks" like this from Asian sites are almost always wrong, and this one is made even more unbelievable by the fact that those prices are in the neighborhood of what Apple charges for the mid- and high-end iPod touch models. As for the iPad mini itself, we've heard so many conflicting rumors about this thing that by now the only source you should believe is Tim Cook's hands holding one onstage.

Release of 'iPad mini' from Apple viewed as 'question of when, not if' (AppleInsider)

This has all the hallmarks of a terrible and ultimately worthless rumor. Some analyst you've never heard of from some firm you've also never heard of makes a bold claim without a shred of evidence, and it's one he can easily back out of if it never comes true. Which it won't.

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. This is a classic example of a rumor that manages to say absolutely nothing, but in the most excited tones possible. "Apple might do this! Maybe! Or it might not! I dunno, but either way I get paid, suckers."

Apple job opening hints at continued 3D technology in iOS (9to5 Mac)

A job posting on Apple's site could point to integration of 3D features in a future iPhone. Or not, as 9to5 Mac itself points out.

B.S. detector reading: 6/10. Apple is obviously looking for someone knowledgable in 3D tech, but extrapolating what that means for future products is pretty much impossible. And can't the 3D fad just die already? Please?

Apple working on new power management technology for future Macs (AppleInsider)

Another story sourced from an Apple job posting. This one makes the bold claim that Apple is investigating ways of improving power management and battery life in its Macs.

B.S. detector reading: 0/10. I mean, come on -- imagine the exact opposite scenario. "Apple poaches Flash Player engineers, investigates ways to make its laptops run batteries flat in five minutes."

Apple plots wireless server hubs at Genius Bars for users to temporarily store, sync content for iOS device replacements (9to5 Mac)

According to "sources," Apple is testing ways of mirroring iOS device backups from iCloud onto in-store servers to streamline the process of exchanging faulty devices at Genius Bars. The system reportedly won't go into wide deployment until late 2013.

B.S. detector reading: 5/10. While this does sound like something Apple could plausibly want to implement, the fact that this unnamed source supposedly leaked info from within Apple's strictly guarded citadel is a red flag. So is the deployment date, which is so far off that we could easily forget all about it if this never actually happens.

Apple predicted to discontinue 17-inch MacBook Pro (Mac Rumors)

Some analyst says the 17-inch MacBook Pro isn't selling very well, so Apple's going to give it the axe. Of course, Apple doesn't break down its sales numbers by individual models, so this "analysis" is at best an educated guess. At worst, it's exactly like hundreds of other analyst predictions regarding Apple: completely uneducated, wild-ass speculation.

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. The Apple of the past 10 years only discontinues product lines under two circumstances: when it has something better as a replacement (iPod mini --> iPod nano), or when sales are just tanking hard (Xserve). With product margins as high as those Apple gets from its Macs, sales have to get pretty freaking low before Apple stops making money on them; the Mac Pro is still hanging around even though Apple sells more iPhones in one day than the number of Mac Pros it'll sell in a year.

Apple's 'iTV' to dominate high-end TV market while other vendors are in 'crisis mode' (BGR)

A nonexistent product will dominate an industry Apple's shown no sign of taking seriously? Tell me more! What's your source? A consumer survey and some analysts? Never mind. Move along, nothing to see here, no matter what brand of TV it's on.

B.S. detector reading: 8/10. When even 9to5 Mac is starting to disbelieve the Apple HDTV fairy tale, things aren't looking good for this perennial and worn-out rumor.

Redesigned Liquidmetal iPhone may debut at WWDC in June (BGR)

Another Asian source claims the next iPhone will be redesigned with a Liquidmetal case. If that rumor sounds familiar, it should, because like most of the rumors on this list, it's a re-run.

B.S. detector reading: 8/10. This is a malodorous combination of a sketchy source from South Korea and a rehashed rumor that's already failed to materialize.

Apple's next iPhone launch could be most important in smartphone history (BGR)

An analyst who apparently has no recollection of the year 2007 claims the next iPhone launch will be the most important launch ever. His evidence? Well, he doesn't really have any.

B.S. detector reading: Off scale high. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; when you don't provide any evidence whatsoever, your credibility deserves an old-fashioned boot to the bum. And that headline might have been the most hyperbolic in smartphone headline history.

Next-Generation iPhone to Use Thinner In-Cell Technology for Multi-Touch Display? (Mac Rumors)

This rumor has it all. Analysts, Asian supply chains, and "occasionally-reliable Digitimes" (sic). If by "occasionally reliable" you mean "hasn't said one accurate thing since early 2011," then sure. Otherwise, the (sic) stands.

B.S. detector reading: Off scale high due to inclusion of Digitimes as a source. Regardless of whether Apple is planning on using this technology or not, the perfect storm of terrible sources makes this story about as easy to swallow as Jurassic fruitcake.

Entry-level 'iPhone nano' again rumored to launch this year (BGR)

China Times cites unnamed sources within the Asian supply chain claiming the long-rumored so-called "iPhone nano" is in production. "No really. This time for sure. We promise."

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. No one has ever come up with a credible form factor or compelling reason why Apple should bother creating this imaginary product. Also, any report citing "unnamed sources within the Asian supply chain" is about as well-sourced as me just asking my greyhound what Apple's up to. "What's that, girl? Apple's building an iPhone shuffle now? Okay, I'll run with it, but if you're wrong again, no steak for a week."

More mockups make the case for a 4-inch iPhone (9to5 Mac)

Reader-supplied mockups "make the case" for Apple changing the iPhone's screen size. Note that we made mockups of our own over a year ago, yet the iPhone's screen is still 3.5 inches. Odd. It's almost like one of the world's best industrial designers isn't paying attention to the Internet and is sticking with his own ideas instead.

B.S. detector reading: 6/10. As we said 14 months ago, Apple may well change the size of the iPhone's display someday. But doing so comes with so many potential pitfalls and disadvantages that the company needs a more compelling reason than "Gee, if only our real-world product looked even half as terrible as all these hastily-Photoshopped mockups."

Chip delays point to next-gen iPhone launch around October (Ars Technica)

Ars Technica is almost always on the more credible end of the Apple news spectrum, and the site doesn't disappoint this time. Citing a report from Qualcomm, a big-name component supplier whose products are actually fully relevant to the iPhone, Ars Technica claims the next iPhone probably won't launch before October due to shortages of Qualcomm's cellular baseband chips. Those are kind of important, because without them there's no Phone in iPhone.

B.S. detector reading: 0/10. I don't doubt Ars' source or the veracity of its report, and the site helpfully notes that Apple was probably aiming for an October launch in the first place. No credible reports have arisen pointing to a midsummer iPhone refresh this year, so a "delay" to October shouldn't surprise anyone.

Rumor: iPhone 5 Home Buttons Appear for Sale (AppleBitch)

In what must constitute the least exciting parts leak all year, subtly different Home buttons have appeared on a Chinese supplier site. Rather than two small tabs jutting out from the central circle, these new Home buttons have a big, rounded rectangle flange around them. Excited yet? No? What if I told you it's for the iPhone 5?!? Still no? Eh, I tried.

B.S. detector reading: 5/10. Who knows what product these buttons are destined for? More to the point, who cares? The only rise this particular rumor got out of me was, "Maybe this is finally the end of those stupid 'Next iPhone won't have a Home button' rumors."

Apple CEO Tim Cook spotted at video game designer Valve's headquarters (AppleInsider)

Supposedly Tim Cook showed up at Valve earlier this week, and that set off a storm of speculation across the Internet. What could it mean? What could it mean?!

B.S. detector reading: 10/10. After hearing the Apple CEO was on their turf, Valve co-founder Gabe Newell and several other employees emailed back and forth trying to figure out who met with Tim Cook. It turns out no one did, because Tim Cook was never at Valve. I don't know who fed that particular line to AppleInsider, but I hope the site now realizes that the Cook is a lie.

That's a full week's worth of the Apple blogosphere's rumor offal. Come back next Monday for more exciting tales of imaginary and often nonsensical products, brought to you from the finest, drunkest analysts that money can buy.

Rumor Roundup, Episode 1: 'iPhone 5' Home button and more nonsense originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

When I got a new Apple TV, I decided to plug it directly into my Time Capsule via Ethernet to lighten some of the bandwidth load on my home wireless network. My Wi-Fi bandwidth has always been pretty lackluster with my first-gen Time Capsule, even though every device connecting to it is 802.11n-compatible, and adding something as bandwidth-gluttonous as an Apple TV streaming 1080p video from my Mac was only going to make things worse. I guessed that plugging in via Ethernet would roughly halve the bandwidth requirements for streaming to the Apple TV, and checking around with some of my more networking-savvy friends confirmed this. *

Within a couple of days, I noticed some really odd behavior. When using the Apple TV interface on my HDTV, streaming music or other media from my Mac worked without any issues. However, trying to stream media from my Mac to the Apple TV via iTunes on my Mac didn't work at all. The Apple TV showed up in iTunes' list of available AirPlay devices, but selecting it brought up a "Connecting" box that never went away. Trying to set things up via the Remote app on my iOS devices didn't work either.

It didn't make sense to me that streaming would work just fine if initiated from the Apple TV, but not at all from anywhere else. Some Googling around got me a solution to the issue: disabling IPv6 on the Mac via the network settings in System Preferences finally got AirPlay working from all devices.

If you're on a version of OS X older than Lion, it's easy to turn IPv6 off.

• Go into the Network pane in System Preferences
• Select AirPort in the list on the left
• Click "Advanced"
• Go to the TCP/IP tab
• Set "Configure IPv6" to Off
• Click "OK"
• Click "Apply"

OS X Lion got rid of the "Off" setting in the GUI, but the Terminal app in the Finder's Utilities folder comes to the rescue (as always). Open Terminal and input the following two commands exactly to disable IPv6 in OS X Lion:

networksetup -setv6off ethernet

networksetup -setv6off wi-fi

If you have an advanced network setup that requires IPv6 to be enabled for some reason, you're probably better off just unplugging the Apple TV and letting it connect via Wi-Fi. Most users won't run into any problems if they disable IPv6, however, so if you're in a niche like mine where plugging the Apple TV in via Ethernet is a better fit for your network, hopefully this tip helped you out.

* I confirmed this with first-hand testing, as well. When plugged into my Time Capsule via Ethernet, a 1.38 GB movie loaded in its entirety on the Apple TV in exactly 7 minutes, 30 seconds. Tests loading movies of the same 1.38 GB size repeatedly failed when the Apple TV connected over Wi-Fi, because roughly midway through iTunes Home Sharing inevitably decided to stop working. I never experienced this problem when connected over Ethernet.

In both cases, Time Machine was disabled on my Mac, and no other devices were making heavy use of the network.

The "best" result my Apple TV achieved when streaming over Wi-Fi was loading roughly 40 percent of a 1.38 GB movie -- after over 12 minutes -- before iTunes Home Sharing decided to die on me yet again. So at least in my case, connecting the Apple TV via Ethernet makes way more sense than Wi-Fi.

How to get AirPlay working when Apple TV is hooked up via Ethernet originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Brent Schlender of Fast Company has written a great long-form article on Steve Jobs's so-called "wilderness years" -- the period between when Jobs was ousted from Apple in the mid 80s and his return in the late 90s. Many people (wrongly) tend to think of this period as Jobs sort of aimlessly drifting until his triumphant return to Apple, but Schlender convincingly argues that it was during this time that Jobs grew into the sort of businessman who could not only bring Apple back from the brink of bankruptcy, but transform it into the world's most valuable company.

Jobs was indeed busy during that decade, founding NeXT and helping to transform Pixar into a giant force within the entertainment industry. While Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs goes into the details of this period of Jobs's life, Isaacson seems to treat both NeXT and Pixar as diversions or distractions from the bigger goal: Apple. Schlender instead argues that Steve Jobs brought the same devotion to those two companies that he brought to Apple, and his work at both companies made him into exactly the CEO Apple needed.

Schlender's article is quite long, but it's a very good read. If you can, set aside some time and read the whole thing.

Fast Company on the 'wilderness years' of Steve Jobs originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

It's bad enough that the new iPad causes people to burn their hands, threatens to destroy its own battery in a shower of hot lithium if you leave it plugged in overnight, makes images on the web look terrible, and consumes all of your data faster than you can say "not compatible with Australia's 4G network." Those are all serious issues that every potential iPad owner must face, but it gets worse. According to research from proctologist Dr. Rodrigo Fulano, announced today, using the iPad may cause you to develop hemorrhoids.

"We've known for a while that sitting on a Western-style 'throne' toilet for excessive lengths of time can lead to hemorrhoids," Dr. Fulano says. "But iPad usage accelerates the process. People will sit there as if in a trance, sometimes for as long as half an hour, playing Angry Birds or reading news articles rather than [performing actions appropriate to the setting]. All the while they're putting incredible strain on veins and arteries that, once inflamed, develop into hemorrhoids."

Dr. Fulano hasn't just pulled this supposition out of thin air. His research shows a correlation between the introduction of the original iPad and an explosion in the number of patients suffering from hemorrhoids. He predicts the problem will only get worse with the newest iPad. "Now that the iPad's display renders text that looks like it's printed on paper, it means people are going to spend a lot more time reading in the bathroom. Also, the fact that this new iPad is so much heavier than the old one means additional strain on [relevant anatomical areas]. Those two factors put together lead directly to a rise in the incidence of hemorrhoids."

Inspired by his research, a class action lawsuit has formed demanding compensation for medical bills and "pain and suffering" incurred as a result of excessive iPad use while in the restroom. "Apple knowingly provided its customers with a product that can directly lead to health issues through excessive use," the suit alleges. "Apple does not warn its users of the consequences of excessive iPad use under certain circumstances, and it should therefore provide compensation to those affected."

Dr. Fulano has recommendations for how Apple can immediately address "Arsegate." "Apple should give users the option to erect a 'geo-fence' around their bathrooms and issue regular warnings at five minute intervals to prevent excessive iPad usage in that area. It's a bit ribald, but the old folk wisdom is quite true in this case: people really do need to either [go] or get off the pot."

Until or unless Apple addresses the problem with a software update, you can easily avoid the consequences of Arsegate by simply leaving the iPad behind when you go to the loo. Although admittedly it can be quite relaxing to have a nice sit n' read first thing in the morning, the consequences can be dire; over time, the iPad can quite literally become a pain in the arse.

Apple has yet to comment on the issue.

Arsegate: Does using the iPad cause hemorrhoids? originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sun, 01 Apr 2012 10:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We featured Mactracker as a Daily Mac App in 2011, and an iPhone version of the app has been around for a few years (with comparatively more sporadic updates). Mactracker is essentially the history of Apple hardware all in one app, or at least Apple from 1984 onward. It's a database containing detailed information on every Mac since the Macintosh 128k, every iPod and iOS device ever released, and even the weirder stuff Apple dabbled in during the 1990s like the QuickTake camera.

More than just a trip down Mac memory lane, Mactracker also provides details on things like weight and dimensions, processor speed, storage, RAM, and even some benchmark data for several devices. It can be a great troubleshooting asset, or an instant source of info on what kind of RAM or hard drive your Mac will accept.

The iPhone version of Mactracker recently got an update to version 2.0, and with that update the free app is now universal, with a brand-new iPad version. If you're familiar with the Mac version there won't be many surprises here, but the expanded screen real estate on the iPad makes Mactracker much more pleasant to use than the iPhone version.

Mactracker for iPad is fully optimised for the new Retina Display, and it looks great. About the only feature it's missing is one the Mac version has: a place to input information on models you own. That's a very handy feature on Mactracker for Mac, and it's one I'd love to see added to the iPad version at some point.

If you're interested in the minutiae of Macs gone by, Mactracker has always been a must-have. Now that this great new iPad version is out, it's even better. Go get it.

Daily iPad App: Mactracker originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Here's a cool Apple TV feature that you probably didn't know about, particularly if you're like me and the third-generation Apple TV is your first foray into Apple's "hobby" device. In addition to the pre-packaged and somewhat spartan remote and Apple's more full-featured Remote app for iOS devices, it turns out you can control your Apple TV with virtually any third-party remote control. We first wrote about this feature about a year and a half ago, but we're guessing there are a lot of Apple TV newbies out there since the recent update, so it's worth a refresher.

On your Apple TV, head into Settings > General > Remotes. There, you'll find an option called "Learn Remote." From there, it's a simple matter of following onscreen instructions; press and hold the button on your remote that you want to have control the corresponding function you see on your TV.

In addition to the basic navigation functions, you also have the option to program more advanced playback functions. This will allow you to set up fast-forward, rewind, next chapter, and a handful of other functions on your third-party remote.

The whole procedure is pretty drop-dead simple, but results will vary depending on your remote. I didn't have any issues setting up the basic navigation functions on the remote that came with my surround sound system, but no matter what I tried I couldn't get the playback controls to pair up with my Apple TV. At the very least, having the basic nav functions let me toss the standard Apple TV remote in a drawer, so that's something.

This is one feature that Apple doesn't go out of its way to advertise, but like many other things Apple's done, I now find myself wishing everything worked this way. If my TV had a programming function like this, I could finally get down to one remote control without having to shell out extra money for a universal remote.

How to control Apple TV with a third-party remote originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

"Is that the new one?" one of my workmates asked of the iPad sitting on my desk in its upright dock.

"Yep," I said, and showed him the screen.

He played around with it for a few seconds and said, "Huh. It doesn't look all that different, does it?"

"Are you kidding?" I said, and grabbed my old iPad 2, now destined to be my wife's new/used device. I opened iBooks on both devices, queued them up to the same page of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and invited him to check out the (to me) obvious differences in text, side-by-side.

He liked the iPad 2's rendering better. I was pretty much dumbfounded. I suggested he visit the optometrist as soon as possible, because to me the difference is stunningly obvious.

Somehow, in spite of selling three million units in a weekend, we're meant to believe the newest iPad is a disappointment. It's supposedly a merely iterative upgrade to the iPad 2; the bigger battery, more powerful GPU, and doubled system RAM all simply offset the increased power and processing demands of that new Retina Display. A display which, if various pundits and casual (possibly half-blind) passersby are to be believed, isn't that much better anyway.

Frankly, those people are on crack. The new iPad's Retina Display is the best display I've seen on any device, ever. And for a device that's essentially all display, the effect that has on the experience can't be overstated.

Macworld's Dan Frakes agrees and says the new iPad's screen isn't getting its just due. "The new display is simply phenomenal. I expected it to be good, but it's really good. Really, really good. Text on a screen has never seemed clearer or more...right."

He's right. I used my old iPad 2 briefly, and it was like the screen had been smeared in a thick coat of Vaseline. The iPad 2's screen quality was always something of a letdown after months using an iPhone 4 and then an iPhone 4S, but it wasn't until I used the newest iPad that the 1024 x 768 screen on the old one became absolutely unacceptable to my eyes. There literally is no going back.

Between the iPhone 4S, iPad (3), and the still-impressive 1920 x 1200 screen on my MacBook Pro, I now have the privilege of owning three devices whose individual pixels are completely indistinguishable at the distance I normally use them. Sure, I can lean into my Mac's display and see the pixels, or I can push my nose against the iPad, or I can squint real hard and concentrate on my iPhone 4S screen and see a stray pixel here or there. But I have to make the effort to do that.

Is all this pixel density overkill? Hardly. As recently as five years ago, I still regularly printed out documents rather than reading them onscreen. For one thing, a sheet of paper was more portable than my Mac; for another, printed text simply looked better. Five years later, the tables have turned. I can carry an entire library worth of books on a device not much bigger than a book itself, and the text renders every bit as well on its screen as it does on a sheet of paper. Meanwhile, I can't remember the last time I printed out a document -- any document, for any reason.

This new 9.7-inch screen has more pixels on it than my 17-inch MacBook Pro and iPhone 4S have -- combined. The iPad's Retina Display has spoiled me; if I see a pixel, you blew it.

Macworld says the new iPad's screen is underrated originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies analyzed the performance of the new iPad's battery when it says it's 100 percent charged versus when it's actually 100 percent charged. Unsurprisingly, he found a discrepancy; it's already been widely reported that the new iPad's charging indicator is bugged somehow and doesn't correctly report when the iPad is fully charged. Though the new iPad may report 100 percent charge capacity, it's in fact only around 90 percent charged at that point. It's a simple bug to fix, and it'll likely be one focus of a 5.1.1 update to iOS.

Where Dr. Soneira's analysis and CNBC's reporting on the issue both go off the rails is when they both say that the iPad is actually overcharging its own battery and thereby causing damage to it. CNBC's analogy is that a battery is like a glass of fruit juice: it's meant to be filled to below the "rim," and if you overfill the glass the juice can spill out. This is an insipid analogy that demonstrates ignorance of how lithium battery technology has worked since... oh, the mid-1990s or so.

Like all modern computers, the iPad's charging circuitry automatically stops charging the battery and puts it on a trickle charge once it reaches 100 percent of its capacity. This maximum capacity decreases over time as the battery accumulates charge cycles, but it's quite gradual; iPads and most other modern Apple gear contain lithium batteries designed to retain 80 percent of their initial capacity after 1000 full charge/discharge cycles. That's 1000 times taking the iPad from 100 percent charged down to zero, or the equivalent.

It's worth restating that the iPad's charging circuitry automatically stops charging the battery when it senses the battery reached its maximum capacity. This is why you can leave your iPad plugged in overnight without worrying about the battery getting overcharged and exploding in a gooey, hot mess of chemicals and fire. The same is true of iPhones, iPods, and Macs -- once the battery is fully charged, the device throttles the charging circuits down to maintain a slow trickle charge that keeps the battery at or near 100 percent. Or, if you want to go with CNBC's dumb analogy, the glass is actually designed to be filled to the rim, but the juice dispenser is smart enough to stop filling it automatically when it gets to that point.

However, Dr. Soneira and CNBC both seem to think that the bug pertaining to the iPad's charging indicator means the iPad is getting overcharged. They both argue that the iPad's battery is actually at 100 percent of its charge capacity when it says so, and leaving the iPad plugged in after that 100 percent overcharges the battery and causes damage.

As evidence, Dr. Soneira notes that allowing the iPad to charge for additional time after it reads 100 percent charged gives the iPad an additional 1.2 hours of running time. His analysis correctly shows that the 11.6 hour runtime he got by "overcharging" the iPad's battery is likely in line with Apple's officially-stated 10-hour battery life. Apple has a history of being optimistic with its battery estimates for Macs and conservative with estimates for iOS devices, so the 10.4 hour runtime Dr. Soneira achieved when he stopped charging the iPad's battery when it said it was at 100 percent is right in line with what we already know: the iPad isn't actually fully charged when it says it is.

When Dr. Soneira and CNBC both leap to the conclusion that the iPad is overcharging and therefore damaging its own battery, however, they both get it wrong. "Apple has put forth a rather shocking reverse perspective that the on-screen battery indicator is instead the correct one," Soneira claims, and CNBC says "Apple is saying... if you charge it more than [when the battery indicator reads 100%], you could actually harm the longevity of the battery."

The problem with those claims? The problem with those claims? Apple didn't say either of those
things. CNBC said Apple said them. Apple's page on the iPad's battery says nothing of the kind. It's common knowledge that if you leave a device with a lithium battery plugged in literally all the time without ever discharging it that you can do some harm to the maximum capacity, but that's not a symptom of overcharging the battery. Instead, it's a consequence of never discharging a battery that's designed to be discharged from time to time.

"According to Apple the new iPad is configured to damage the longevity of its own battery if it isn't manually disconnected from the AC charger when the 100% indicator appears," Dr. Soneira says, without providing a link to a page proving that Apple actually made this claim. "Anyone that recharges their iPad unattended, especially overnight, will be doing this."

In a word: no. This statement demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how modern lithium battery technology works.

We reached out to Apple for comment, but we haven't heard back. We don't expect to, because this is a non-issue. The iPad may be telling us tall tales about its charge state in the status bar, but it's not destroying its own battery.

Update: In a statement to AllThingsD, Apple confirmed the iPad's battery behaves exactly the same way as all previous iOS devices. Battery charging circuitry "is designed so you can keep your device plugged in as long as you would like. It's a great feature that's always been in iOS," Apple VP Michael Tchao stated.

It turns out that displaying 100 percent charge in the status bar before the battery actually reaches full capacity is also "normal" behavior. The device actually does continue charging for awhile after displaying 100% charge, discharges slightly when put on "trickle" charge, then charges back up to 100 percent. Rather than confuse users and have them see the battery charge oscillate between 90 and 100 percent while the device is plugged in, the iPad will simply display 100 percent charge status.

So, not only is the iPad not damaging its own battery, the "bug" in its charging status isn't a bug at all.

Debunkatron: No, the iPad is not destroying its own battery (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple's online store is currently down. When the Apple Store goes down around this time of week, it's usually a sign of something new showing up in the store or some kind of promotional/holiday refresh taking place rather than simple maintenance updates. We haven't heard of any new products coming down the pipeline -- Apple probably has its hands full with the new iPad rollout at the moment -- but we'll let you know what (if anything) shows up when the store comes back up.

We have heard that Apple may simply be doing some work on the backend to update its images for the iPad's higher-resolution Retina Display, so that might be all this is. Don't get your hopes up is all we're saying.

Update: The store is back up, but as far as we can tell nothing's different. Let us know in the comments if you see something we missed.

The Apple Store is down (Update: back up with no changes) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 20 Mar 2012 00:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has added a new "Answers from the community" section to its product pages on the Apple Store. Something similar to this called "Questions and answers" has been around for awhile for accessories sold on the Apple site, but it's now been expanded to Apple's marquee Mac, iPad, iPhone, and iPod products.

The purpose of "Answers from the community" is right in the name. Visitors to the online Apple Store can submit questions about a product, such as "Will all the iPhone 4 accessories work with the 4S?" Anyone with an Apple ID can sign in and answer. Apple asks that users keep answers short and to the point; the compose page even has a simple graphical element reminiscent of a thermometer that warns when you're starting to get excessively verbose.

Apple appears to be very heavily moderating user input on the service, which will come as no surprise to anyone who's ever read a comment thread on a news post that mentions an Apple product. Answers left in "Answers from the community" can take up to one business day to appear after they're uploaded, and it's safe to say that any inflammatory rants about fanbois, Kool-Aid, or any number of other anti-Apple cliches won't be approved.

The Next Web notes that some of Apple's products seem to be pulling questions and answers from Apple's support forums, possibly pointing to greater integration between the two areas of Apple's site.

"Answers from the community" should prove to be a very useful tool for getting the most common questions about Apple's products answered in a forum that's just a click away from the product itself.

Apple adds 'Answers from the community' to product web pages originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ars Technica did an extreme close-up analysis of video quality from iTunes 1080p downloads versus the same title on a Blu-ray. The verdict? Blu-ray still takes the title of best-looking HD format, but the iTunes version is very close to Blu-ray quality. It's a dramatic improvement from the old 720p downloads the iTunes Store used to offer, and even though it doesn't quite measure up to the picture quality on a Blu-ray disc, it might be close enough for most people.

Ars correctly points out that Blu-ray discs offer other features that iTunes still doesn't, like special features, commentaries, and uncompressed audio tracks (a big deal for audiophiles with high-end surround sound systems). On the other hand, Blu-ray discs definitely can't match the convenience of iTunes downloads, which can now sync high-def content to all of your devices with a single click.

I finally broke down and ordered an Apple TV following the debut of the more powerful version announced at the iPad event, and after seeing how well iTunes 1080p content stacks up I'm glad I did. Head over to Ars and check out their comparison shots for yourself.

iTunes 1080p video comes close to Blu-ray quality originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple's pro-level photo editing application for the Mac, Aperture, has been updated to version 3.2.3. Aside from the usual fixes addressing "performance and stability," this update brings Aperture up to parity with iPhoto in allowing users to delete photos from Photo Stream, the iCloud service that allows wireless syncing of photos across all enabled devices.

Oddly, this update has come out nearly a week after similar updates to Aperture's "little brother" iPhoto were issued, but Apple's support site claims the update actually went live March 6, the day before Apple's big iPad event and the launch of the iPhoto update. I know for a fact that Aperture 3.2.3 didn't show up in my Mac's Software Update until a few hours ago as of this writing, and MacUpdate's information on the Aperture update confirms it didn't go live until March 14 despite what Apple's support site says. The fact that this update came out almost a week after a similar iPhoto update, plus the incorrect date on Apple's support site, makes me wonder if someone forgot to throw the switch on the Aperture update on March 7.

Whatever the case may be, Aperture 3.2.3 is available now as a 636 MB update. Now if you'll excuse me, I have about 200 iPhone screenshots to clear out of my Photo Stream...

Aperture updated to 3.2.3, enables Photo Stream deleting originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 14 Mar 2012 04:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple has sent an email notice to all users of the iWork.com public beta indicating that the service will be shut down July 31, 2012. "With a new way to share iWork documents between your devices using iCloud, the iWork.com public beta service will no longer be available," Apple states. "As of July 31, 2012, you will no longer be able to access your documents on the iWork.com site or view them on the web."

iWork.com went live more than three years ago alongside the release of iWork '09. Since then, the service has never shed its "public beta" label, and iWork '09 remains the most current version of the suite for the Mac. Despite the iOS versions of iWork's apps receiving continual updates, including support for iCloud syncing, the Mac versions are starting to look neglected by comparison.

Reaction on Twitter and within the TUAW newsroom suggests that few people will be surprised by iWork.com being shut down; the general consensus so far has been, "Wasn't it shut down already?" That having been said, Apple's suggestion that iCloud will serve as a suitable replacement isn't quite on the money. While iCloud does provide easy syncing of documents between iOS devices, the lack of easy syncing with Mac versions of iWork remains a glaring omission, though that's an omission that will be addressed when OS X Mountain Lion is released in summer 2012. Anyone who relied on iWork.com's collaborative editing features (some of you did, right?) is going to be hit much harder by the service's discontinuation, because at present iCloud doesn't offer the same ease of document sharing.

If you have documents on iWork.com, Apple recommends that you retrieve them from the site before the service is shuttered permanently.

iWork.com to be discontinued, Apple suggests iCloud as a replacement originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

After weeks of seeing the Apple TV slowly disappear from retail shelves, Apple announced the third generation of its "hobby" device today during the live press event. The new Apple TV is externally identical to its predecessor, but the big new feature is its support for full 1080p video playback.

The device has a redesigned user interface with special emphasis on Photo Stream and Movie content, all of which are available in full HD and use Apple's cloud services to get them on the device.

There's no official word yet on what processor is running all this, but it's a safe bet it's an A5 chip or later. Apple TV will be available on March 16 for US$99, but pre-orders start today.

Apple announces new Apple TV with 1080p support, still just $99 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 07 Mar 2012 13:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The iPad's built-in iPod app used to be my favorite way to interact with music on any device. It struck a good compromise between the heavy, sidebar-driven UI of iTunes on the Mac and the simple text-only music browsing on the iPhone. Then iOS 5 came along and ruined everything; the old iPod app got replaced with a UI catastrophe called "Music" that convinced me to switch to my iPhone as my primary music player.

Although I'd occasionally use a visualizer app like Planetary to play music on my iPad, I still longed for a music player on the iPad that was as easy to use as the old iPod app was. Szello, Inc. contacted me about their music player, deck, and after just five minutes of using it I was in love with it.

deck is about as simple as a touchscreen music player gets, and its interface reminds me of either a big 8-track player or one of those touch tone phones with giant buttons marketed toward the elderly. That might sound like I'm knocking deck, but in reality that kind of interface is exactly what I was looking for. The iPad's built-in Music app is an unnecessarily complex beast with inexplicably tiny controls, terribly inconsistent user interface colors, and an album-art-driven music browser that's a chore to navigate for all but the tiniest music libraries. deck strips out all that UI cruft and instead presents a decidedly superior alternative: big, unmistakeable buttons that tell you at a glance what's going on with your music.

The default Music app's UI, or What Not to Do.

deck: Your music, streamlined. That's more like it.

Unlike the flashy but frustrating art-driven UI of the iPad's default Music app, deck takes a page from the iPhone's Music app and presents a simple, text-driven interface. No more hunting through a grid of album covers to find playlists or a specific artist -- deck simplifies browsing music on the iPad even for my 8000+ song library, and it supports playback of songs uploaded to iTunes Match, too.

deck is close to perfect as a music player for the iPad, but there's still room for improvement. The app doesn't have built-in controls for AirPlay and requires that you enable/disable AirPlay streaming via the iPad's multitasking bar. Since the app is basically a UI "wrapper" for the iPad's music library (AirPlay streaming technically occurs via the built-in Music app in the background), I don't know if this is necessarily something the developers can work around. deck also doesn't have lyrics support, but since the built-in Music app doesn't either, I'm willing to give deck's developers a pass on this one.

Three changes I would like to see in future versions of deck:

1. deck doesn't appear to support playlist nesting at present. All playlists appear in one long, unbroken list, with no nested folders. Not everyone uses nested playlist folders in their music library, but I've found it a necessary feature to keep my playlists organized.
2. Artists and Songs have the little alphabet slider on the right side for ease of navigation, letting you jump around the music library quite quickly, but the Albums view doesn't. For someone like me, with over 1000 albums in my library, this makes navigating albums harder than it has to be.
3. Controls for Shuffle and Repeat show a little green light when active -- a definite improvement over the inconsistent color scheme in the Music app -- but the light might still be too subtle for some users. I'd suggest instead changing the control color on the button to a blue glow, similar to the Music app on the iPhone.

With those three minor changes, deck will be pretty close to flawless.

For US$1.99, deck provides a more than capable alternative to the bloated mass of UI inconsistencies and feature creep that Apple's Music app became in iOS 5. If you've found the default Music app frustrating or confusing to use, deck is a great replacement and worth every bit the developers are charging. At the same time, those of you at Apple who bollixed up the Music app in iOS 5 had best download deck and take some detailed notes.

Daily iPad App: deck originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Final Fantasy Tactics first came out for the original PlayStation in 1997 as a more strategic take on the famous roleplaying game franchise. I didn't get around to playing it until 2001, but when I did, it turned out to be a peerless game that still ranks among my all-time favorites. Between a deep combat and character growth system that satisfied the stat nerd in me and an extremely well-crafted, almost Shakespearean story, the original PlayStation version consumed a solid two months of my free time 11 years ago. In 2007 I was excited to hear it was being re-released with an updated translation and some other tweaks, but I was then disappointed to hear that it would be exclusive to the PSP, a system I never had any interest in owning.

Final Fantasy Tactics was announced for iOS not long after the original iPad's debut, and right away I imagined the game fitting the then-new tablet like a glove. But a series of delays meant the port kept getting pushed back, and it wasn't until over a year after its initial announcement that Final Fantasy Tactics came to the iPhone... but not the iPad. Square Enix promised an iPad version within a month of the iPhone version's release, but Square Enix is definitely a company where you have to take release dates with a very large grain of salt.

Six months after the iPhone version launched, Final Fantasy Tactics has arrived at long last on the iPad, but at US$17.99 it may well be one of the most expensive games on the App Store. Any review of Final Fantasy Tactics for iPad has to answer two questions at minimum. First, how well does this extremely complex game translate to the iPad's simple, touch-driven interface? Second, is this game worth almost twenty bucks in a market dominated by an overwhelming majority of games that hover between $0.99 and $2.99?

First, I'll address the interface. Final Fantasy Tactics is a very deep game, one whose user interface was always fairly obtuse to begin with: menus within menus within menus, like the designers were predicting the film Inception years in advance. That complex and highly layered interface carries over from the earlier versions onto the iPad; in fact, as far as I can tell Square Enix essentially ported the PSP version to iOS while barely revisiting the interface at all.

Without having re-optimized the game's controls for a touchscreen (aside from a welcome tweak that lets you rotate battlefields to any angle), Final Fantasy Tactics' interface can often be a chore to wade through. Even at nearly twenty hours into the game, I still find myself struggling to target units on the battlefield correctly on a first attempt. The game's veritable explosion of menus will prove daunting for novice players to navigate on the iPad's screen; this is not a game an eight-year-old is going to enjoy unless his/her I.Q. and patience are both off the charts.

None of this should imply that the game is unplayably confusing, but as I navigate through the mostly menu-driven UI I'm silently thankful that Apple didn't simply shove OS X onto the iPad and instead went with a more simplistic approach in iOS. If Final Fantasy Tactics' interface is anything to go by, using a full port of OS X on a touchscreen would be maddening if I had to do it every day.

It's worth noting that the iPad port doesn't suffer from the infamous slowdowns that plagued the PSP version of the game and earlier versions of the iPhone port. Final Fantasy Tactics runs extremely smoothly on my iPad 2, and the app fully launches within only a few seconds, much faster than I expected it to.

The second big question: Is Final Fantasy Tactics worth eighteen bucks? It depends. Final Fantasy Tactics on iPad is definitely worth $17.99 if:

• You played the original on PlayStation, but never the PSP remake
• You played the PSP remake but don't have a PSP anymore
• You're a fan of tabletop-style or strategic RPGs and looking for a challenge
• You don't already own the iPhone version

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics on iPad was a guaranteed launch-day purchase regardless of the price, and the relatively high cost of the iPhone version actually makes the iPad version look like a bargain by comparison. Final Fantasy Tactics costs just two dollars more on the iPad than on the iPhone, and the game's interface is unquestionably better-suited to the iPad's much larger screen. The game has an epic play length, too, especially compared to the more disposable "pick up and play" titles that litter the App Store's $0.99 price tier.

Though $17.99 sounds like a big outlay in the App Store economy, by the time you've played all the way through Final Fantasy Tactics that may well turn out to be fifty cents or less for every hour of gameplay. I don't remember exactly how much time I spent on the original PlayStation version, but it was probably in excess of a hundred hours.

Whether that $18 is well spent is harder to answer if you're new to the game or the genre. Final Fantasy Tactics is difficult to master; the game's difficulty is punishing, especially in the earliest chapters of the game. If you're more used to the "press X to not die" gameplay that Final Fantasy XIII offered, you may find Final Fantasy Tactics' learning curve unforgivably harsh.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a game that has one of the most well-crafted stories ever written for a video game combined with gameplay that has almost limitless options, that may well be worth the $18 all by itself.

Daily iPad App: Final Fantasy Tactics originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The touchscreen keyboards on Apple's iOS devices are great space savers, as they're never around when you don't need them. For all the great leaps forward Apple has made with Multi-Touch technology over the past five years in both its iOS devices and Mac touchpads, its physical keyboards still use some well-established and comparatively old technology. Apple has apparently turned its eye on the traditional mechanical keyboard and tried to figure out ways to shrink that down, too.

AppleInsider discovered a patent filed in August of 2010 that shows Apple is brewing up ideas to shrink its physical keyboards even farther than it has already. Current keyboards rely on a somewhat elaborate system consisting of a "scissor" mechanism that keeps keys suspended over a rubber dome switch, which when pressed, completes a path on the underlying keyboard circuitry, sending that key's signal to the computer's logic board. Apple has been thinking of ways to improve that system.

All keyboard design is fundamentally about a spring-loaded pressure switch completing an electrical circuit. When pressure is applied -- usually via an intentional keypress, sometimes by a wandering cat -- the switch completes a circuit and sends an input signal. When pressure lets off, the circuit breaks. Older keyboards relied on actual spring mechanisms, which is why those older keyboards were quite large, heavy, and loud (clackety clackety CLACK).

Some companies briefly experimented with membrane-style keyboards, but in a way those are almost worse than touchscreen keyboards; they have the same suboptimal level of tactile feedback to the user, but they also generally require more pressure to operate than a capacitive touch-style keyboard.

Apple's proposed new keyboard design replaces the currently prevalent "scissor" style mechanical lever with a setup that reminds me of a device that pre-dates even the original typewriter: a telegraph machine. Like one of the old-style telegraph generators, the assembly consists of a key at the end of a long lever which, when pressed, completes a circuit and sends a signal. The support lever in Apple's proposed design would be made of a flexible material with good tensile feedback to the user.

Design for an electric Morse key, patented in 1837

The upshot of this design? Traditional spring-loaded keyboards required a key travel of between 4 and 5 millimeters, with the "scissor" style setup in current notebook and portable keyboards requiring a smaller travel length of 1.5 to 2 millimeters. Apple's patent allows for a keyboard that needs only 0.2 millimeters of key travel.

This obviously has implications for the design of Apple's notebooks. So far the keyboard itself hasn't been an especially important constraint on the overall thickness of Apple's notebooks -- battery design and the need to keep motherboards from spontaneously combusting has been more of a factor -- but it's not hard to envision a point where that 1.3 to 1.8 millimeters of potential space savings does indeed come in handy for an even thinner version of the MacBook Air.

Apple patents design for ultra-thin keyboard originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 24 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mac Rumors recently got its hands on a component that's allegedly the display from the forthcoming iPad 3. After putting it under a microscope, the site was able to confirm that the display has a 2048 x 1536 resolution, double the horizontal resolution and quadruple the number of pixels on the iPad 2's current 1024 x 768 LCD.

iFixit has been able to confirm Mac Rumors' findings; Mac Rumors actually mailed iFixit the same display and let them have a look at it. iFixit confirmed that the display has the same overall dimensions as the iPad 2's display (though the "iPad 3" display is 0.6 ounces lighter), and microscopic examination of the display confirmed a 2048 x 1536 resolution at 260 pixels per inch, far higher than the current iPad's 132 ppi.

In its examination iFixit confirmed that this display features a different display connector from the iPad 2 display, so even if you could secure one of these displays on the aftermarket, there doesn't appear to be any means of successfully hooking it up to an iPad 2 or original iPad. No surprises there.

iFixit suggests the new display's ppi might be too low to qualify it as a "Retina Display," while others have quite erroneously suggested that the iPad 2's current display is already Retina quality (in spite of Apple never classifying it that way and despite the current iPad's pixels being easily discernible even with my less than stellar vision). However, we did the math on this last year, when the iPad 2 was rumored to be getting a Retina upgrade, and the numbers tell a different story.

The only consistent definition Apple has ever given about the Retina Display is that individual pixels are indistinguishable from one another. This statement comes with several implied asterisks: pixels are indistinguishable for people with 20/20 vision when held at a reasonable distance. An Air Force bombardier holding an iPhone 4S four inches from his face is going to see those pixels easily, but his 87-year-old grandma isn't going to see them no matter how hard she looks.

Running the numbers shows that this display would meet the "Retina Display" requirements of indistinguishable individual pixels for someone with 20/20 vision if held at a distance from the eye of 13 inches or greater. I don't see too many people holding their iPads closer than that, so despite having a lower ppi density than the iPhone 4S display, the "iPad 3" display easily meets Apple's somewhat fuzzy Retina Display qualifications.

Standard caveats apply: the iPad 3 hasn't even launched yet, so this is all speculative. However, it's worth noting that the iPhone 4's display leaked through the same channel -- aftermarket component resellers -- months before its debut in summer 2010.

iFixit examines alleged iPad 3 display, confirms doubled resolution originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Clear, the new todo list iPhone app from Realmac software, got a lot of buzz thanks to very impressive demos during Macworld in January. Interest in the app was so high that at least one opportunistic ripoff artist copied Clear wholesale and put a copycat app on the App Store before Clear even debuted. Our own review of Clear found that its simple but intuitive interface definitely lived up to the weeks of hype, and in my own usage I've found Clear an invaluable tool for organizing my day.

It turns out Clear has been extremely successful so far, having sold 350,000 copies in just nine days according to The Guardian. Those are extremely impressive numbers for a simple todo app; Clear joins Epic Games' Infinity Blade and its sequel as two of the few apps I've heard of that have gained so many new users so quickly.

Widespread press coverage, a low introductory price of US$0.99, and Apple featuring it as App of the Week on the App Store helped propel Clear to the success it's seen thus far. Realmac isn't resting on its success, though; an update to the iPhone version is in the works, and Realmac confirmed to The Guardian that iPad and Mac versions will follow. Realmac is "open to the idea of taking it to other platforms" -- Android and Windows Phone 7, in other words -- but they reiterated that Apple's devices are their first priority.

If you haven't checked out Clear yet, I highly recommend it if you're looking for a simple todo/list maker app with a streamlined interface that doesn't get in your way.

Clear: 350,000 sales in 9 days, iPad and Mac versions coming soon originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 23 Feb 2012 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In case you haven't seen it yet, the fourth episode of Kirby Ferguson's "Everything is a Remix" series went live in mid-February on Ferguson's site. As in the previous three episodes in the series, Ferguson examines modern attitudes toward "intellectual property" and how these attitudes rather counterintuitively stifle creativity rather than fostering it.

Part 4 of "Everything is a Remix" deals largely with the contentious subject of software patents, a subject we've covered many times here at TUAW. According to Ferguson, 62 percent of all patent lawsuits are now over software patents, and he estimates the total wealth "lost" (read: siphoned off from "infringing" companies and individuals towards patent holders and their lawyers) at half a trillion dollars.

Apple has found itself on both sides of the software patent trench warfare, as both target and aggressor. Ferguson makes it pretty obvious that Apple is just as guilty of hypocrisy as everyone else when it comes to software patents; he points out that Steve Jobs from 1996 proudly stated "We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," while Steve Jobs from 2010 said he was going to "destroy Android, because it's a stolen product" and was "willing to go thermonuclear war" on Google and its allegedly copycat product.

As Ferguson points out, "When we copy, we justify it. When others copy, we vilify it. Most of us have no problem with copying as long as we're the ones doing it."

The question remains, however, where to draw the line between copying as a necessary portion of innovation and copying as an admission of a failure to innovate. Some might say all Samsung has done with its many riffs on Apple's products is "remix" the iPad and iPhone, but even after viewing Ferguson's series I'm not wholly convinced of that.

On the other hand, Apple itself has long been accused of "copying" innovations at Xerox PARC for the first Mac OS -- something Ferguson himself addressed in an earlier episode of his series -- so the demarcation between "remix" and "shameless knockoff" isn't always easy to find.

Ferguson's entire series is very well put together, and is itself only possible because of the very "remixing" he discusses. If you haven't caught the earlier episodes, I'd highly recommend setting aside an hour to watch all four parts back-to-back.

'Everything is a Remix' examines software patents originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

During promotion for an upcoming Wii title, The Last Story, Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi teased three new games pending for the iPhone. Sakaguchi only gave the scantest of details on the titles to GameCentral; he mentioned that the first title will be a "surfing game" rather than Sakaguchi's traditional RPG fare. He gave even fewer details on the other two games, saying only that they would be smaller titles as a "palate cleanser" following his work on The Last Story.

Sakaguchi started the Final Fantasy franchise in the 1980s, and he was part of Square Enix until leaving to form his own company in 2004. He told GameCentral that he's making these three games because he's a fan of Apple and its products, but he doesn't believe that smartphones and tablets will completely displace traditional console gaming anytime soon.

Along with Shigeru Miyamoto of Nintendo, Hironobu Sakaguchi is a legend in the video game industry and has helmed many titles that have been outstanding examples of the creativity possible in the medium. We'll definitely be keeping a very close eye out for his debut on the iOS platform.

Final Fantasy's Hironobu Sakaguchi teases three new iPhone games originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Feb 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We have no idea how they got hold of one, but MacRumors has apparently sourced the display component for the next-gen iPad and put it under the microscope -- literally. In a deja vu moment from roughly two years ago when the iPhone 4 was confirmed to have a Retina Display, Mac Rumors put the alleged iPad 3 display under a microscope, counted up the pixels, and compared it to the existing display on the iPad 2.

Although the display was unpowered, microscopic examination still revealed the physical components of the pixels. When considering the same areal cross section of the display, the current iPad's LCD contains a grid of 2 x 2 pixels, 4 pixels total; this new display features a 4 x 4 grid for a total of 16 pixels. This much higher pixel density on the LCD, which is the same 9.7-inch diagonal size as the one on the iPad 2, is consistent with a display featuring exactly double the linear resolution of the existing iPad display.

In early 2011, various rumors pointed to the iPad 2 featuring a Retina Display upgrade; however, no actual parts featuring a 2048 x 1536 resolution ever surfaced, and the iPad 2 launched with the same 1024 x 768 resolution as its predecessor. The iPad 3 Retina Display rumors resurfaced this year, but this is the first time anyone has provided physical evidence of such a display.

The usual caveats apply: this display may be nothing more than a leaked prototype or even an extremely elaborate fake, and the iPad 3 may yet launch without a double-resolution Retina Display. However, at this point that scenario is looking unlikely indeed, and with MacRumors' new evidence, we consider the iPad 3's Retina Display all but confirmed now.

MacRumors all but confirms iPad 3 will have Retina Display originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Jeff Somogyi of dealmac has posted an amusing comparison between Apple's upcoming OS X Mountain Lion and a real mountain lion. It turns out the differences between them are not so subtle.

While Apple's Mountain Lion introduces Notification Center, a feature brought over from iOS that consolidates notifications in one organized pane, Somogyi correctly notes that "Mountain lions will not notify you before they pop-up and eat your face." I've never met a mountain lion face to face in the wild, but if they're anything like the utter bastard killing machines they were in Red Dead Redemption, Somogyi is absolutely right about that.

The whole chart is definitely worth a read and good for a laugh. Somogyi notes that the "low hanging fruit" would have been even riper for comedy if Apple had named the next version of OS X "Cougar" -- personally, I'm rather grateful Apple went with "Mountain Lion" instead.

Apple's Mountain Lion vs. a real mountain lion originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has been bypassing privacy settings in Safari intended to block websites from tracking user activity across the Internet. Stanford researcher Jonathan Mayer discovered that Google had been implementing code that bypasses Safari's user-determined privacy settings, and the Journal's own researcher independently confirmed Mayer's findings. This code affected both Safari on the Mac and its mobile counterpart on iOS devices

According to the Journal, Google's code "exploited a loophole in [Safari's] privacy settings." By default, both Safari and Mobile Safari block cookies designed to track user activity unless that user specifically interacts with a website by filling out a form or performing some other activity. This default setting blocks most advertising networks from tracking users' activity unless the user purposefully interacts with an online ad.

The Journal reports that Google's code "tricked" Safari into believing that users were submitting "an invisible form" to Google. This allowed Google to install cookies on the Mac or iOS device and subsequently track user activity. Such tracking allows ad networks to target specific ads to users based on their browsing habits -- and with the overwhelming majority of Google's revenue coming from advertising revenue, the discovery of this code raises very serious questions about Google's motivations for bypassing user-defined privacy settings.

The Wall Street Journal's testing found that 22 of the top 100 visited sites in the US were affected by the code bypassing Safari's default security settings; the iPhone's mobile version of Safari fared slightly worse, with 23 of the top 100 sites affected by the bypass code. The Journal reports there is "no indication" any of these sites knew about Google's code; indeed, even the Wall Street Journal itself found that its own ads were affected.

The code implementation involves the same iframe HTML code used, for example, to embed YouTube videos on external websites -- we use iframe codes all the time to deliver videos from YouTube, Vimeo, and other sources to TUAW readers. However, it appears that Google has been using the same iframe snippet to inject content from doubleclick.net, which the Journal calls "the primary tracking cookie for Google's ad network."

The iframe window was able to detect the current browser agent, and if Safari or Mobile Safari was being used, Google inserted "an invisible form" into the iframe container. This "form" was automatically filled out by the injected code, making Safari act as though the user had intentionally filled out a form. This then allowed Google to store a cookie on the user's device, effectively bypassing the user's privacy settings.

Google+ users have an added "benefit" from this code in the form of encoded information about their account, the Journal reports. Anyone not using Google+ or not logged into their account would instead have a blank cookie.

The cookie installed by Google's workaround code was temporary, according to the Journal, with an expiration between 12 to 24 hours. However, a "technical quirk" in Safari meant Google's code essentially acted as a Trojan horse for more cookies to be added after the installation of the first cookie. Any user who saw another Google ad before the initial cookie inspired would have further cookies added on top of the first one.

The Wall Street Journal characterizes this as Google tracking user activity across the Internet regardless of what user privacy settings may have been set to; in effect, Google was tracking even those users who specifically set up their browsers to disable such tracking.

For its part, Google says that "The Journal mischaracterizes what happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It's important to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal information." That having been said, as soon as the Journal contacted Google regarding the matter, Google disabled its bypass code.

Apple responded to the Journal on the matter and said it is "working to put a stop" to Google's apparent workaround of Safari's privacy settings.

Google has already been under fire for privacy concerns in several parts of the world and for many different reasons. If the Journal's investigation into this alleged practice is true, it has widespread implications for the search giant that may come to haunt it later, regardless of whether or not Google has subsequently disabled this code. Google has reported in the past that iOS browsers deliver a majority of its mobile ads; if it turns out that the company has been intentionally bypassing user privacy settings on those browsers, Google will find itself at the center of a well-deserved controversy.

Google allegedly bypassed privacy settings to track user browsing in Safari originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Every version of OS X has featured a standalone application called Software Update that delivers updates to Apple's operating system, applications, and hardware drivers. According to Pocket Lint, Software Update is being deprecated in the next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, in favor of delivering software updates entirely via the Mac App Store instead.

After OS X Lion was made available only via the Mac App Store, it created a somewhat confusing situation where Apple's own programs were updated via the standalone Software Update application while many third-party apps were updated via the Mac App Store. Mountain Lion eliminates this confusion and makes the Mac experience more like that on iOS devices; Mountain Lion users will have only one interface to reckon with when updating software components on their Macs.

Presumably Apple will continue to deliver updates via Software Update for Mac users running legacy operating systems like Snow Leopard (and soon, Lion). Hopefully Apple will also continue to offer standalone updates on its support site so paranoid users like me can keep downloading and applying combo updates when OS X updates come out.

Mountain Lion to move Software Update to the Mac App Store originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Every new version of OS X comes with harsh news for owners of older Macs: "Your Mac is too old. You're stuck with your current OS. Forever." For Mac OS X Leopard in 2007, anyone who owned a Mac with a processor slower than 867 MHz was stuck with Tiger. In 2009, Snow Leopard made the biggest (and most controversial) shift yet and dropped support for all PowerPC Macs. In 2011, Lion dropped support for Macs that didn't have 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo processors, which included most of the first-generation Intel Macs.

The march of progress continues in OS X Mountain Lion, and with it comes a new set of minimum requirements. An anonymous developer clued us into the minimum requirements for OS X 10.8, and there's bad news for some older Mac owners. Mountain Lion will only run on the following Macs:

• iMac (mid 2007 or later)
• MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later), (15-inch, 2.4/2.2 GHz), (17-inch, Late 2007 or later)
• MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
• Mac Mini (Early 2009 or later)
• Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
• Xserve (Early 2009)

This means the following Macs which are supported under OS X Lion will not be able to run Mountain Lion (model identifiers in parentheses):

• Late 2006 iMacs (iMac5,1, iMac5,2, iMac6,1)
• All plastic MacBooks that pre-date the aluminum unibody redesign (MacBook2,1, MacBook3,1, MacBook4,1)
• MacBook Pros released prior to June 2007 (MacBookPro2,1, MacBookPro2,2)
• The original MacBook Air (MacBookAir1,1)
• The Mid-2007 Mac mini (Macmini2,1)
• The original Mac Pro and its 8-core 2007 refresh (MacPro1,1, MacPro2,1)
• Late 2006 and Early 2008 Xserves (Xserve1,1, Xserve2,1)

Update: It slipped my mind that there were two pre-unibody plastic MacBooks introduced between the aluminum MacBook and the plastic unibody redesign, both of them with the model identifier MacBook5,2. Those MacBooks, which still feature the legacy pre-unibody case design and were manufactured in early- to mid-2009, are supported in Mountain Lion because they feature an NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics card instead of the integrated Intel GPUs in their predecessors.

If you're running Lion and not sure if your Mac is supported under Mountain Lion, go to the Apple Menu and select "About this Mac." Click "More Info," then click "System Report." You'll be presented with a window showing a Hardware Overview, and your Model Identifier will be the second entry from the top. If your Model Identifier matches the list above, then regrettably OS X Lion is the end of the road for your Mac.

The loss of support for all most pre-unibody plastic MacBooks and the first-gen MacBook Air are likely to come as a big shock to many Mac users; personally I know many people who own older pre-unibody MacBooks. Dropping support for these models in Mountain Lion appears to have something to do with the Intel integrated graphics processors from that era; no Mac with an Intel GMA 950 or Intel GMA X3100 graphics processor will be supported in Mountain Lion.

My Early 2008 MacBook Pro dodged the bullet... this time. I have a feeling many of you out there will not be so lucky, and I have a sneaking suspicion that OS X 10.9 will drop support for my Mac, too. It's rough news to be sure, but keep in mind that OS X Lion won't spontaneously combust once Mountain Lion goes live; even if your Mac is stuck with Lion for the rest of its operational life, you can still look forward to several more years of software support for your current OS.

Mountain Lion drops support for several older Mac models (Updated) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Many media outlets got a sneak preview of Apple's next version of OS X, Mountain Lion, and the Wall Street Journal was no exception. The Journal was treated to a preview from Apple CEO Tim Cook himself. He discussed with the Journal the basic philosophy behind OS X updates going forward: "We see that people are in love with a lot of apps and functionality here," Cook says of the iPhone. "Anywhere where that makes sense, we are going to move that over to Mac."

Cook considers iOS and OS X as having "incremental functionality," which fits in with how Steve Jobs characterized the iPad at its 2010 introduction; the iPad is a stepping stone between the iPhone and the Mac, and OS X Lion was Apple's first step at bringing some of iOS's features to the Mac. Mountain Lion is merely the next iteration of that process.

"We took a logical pass at what the user is going to experience using these products to make it all make sense," Phil Schiller told the Journal in another interview. By changing the names of certain applications (Address Book to Contacts, iChat to Messages, iCal to Calendar, etc.) and bringing features like Notification Center, AirPlay, and iCloud document sharing to the Mac, Apple seems to have put consistency of experience at the forefront of its design goals. This is a smart move for Apple; with considerably more iPhone users than Mac users out there, creating a wholly integrated platform where iPhone users can sit in front of a Mac for the first time and feel instantly familiar with it is sure to drive Mac adoption even higher in the years to come.

Whether this convergence will also apply to hardware is another story. The Journal asked Cook if Macs will eventually run on the same ARM microprocessors as iOS devices, but Tim Cook gave a decidedly noncommittal "We think about everything. We don't close things off."

When the Journal mentioned Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8 update, Cook shrugged it off. "I don't really think anything Microsoft does puts pressure on Apple," he said, calling any pressure that Apple may feel "self-induced." Indeed, the news about Mountain Lion comes at a time when Apple is the only major PC manufacturer experiencing positive growth in the industry; sales of non-Mac PCs have declined year-over-year, with some manufacturers experiencing steep losses in revenue.

OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion is already available as a developer preview, and Apple says it will be available for sale in "late summer." Now that the company has the resources to do so, it appears to be committed to yearly upgrades for OS X on the Mac alongside its yearly upgrades to iOS.

Tim Cook discusses Mountain Lion with the Wall Street Journal originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iTunes Connect has sent out a letter to content publishers detailing some changes and improvements to the iBookstore. Just like the App Store, the iBookstore now allows publishers to issue promo codes for content sold on the store -- up to 50 free codes distributable to book reviewers.

Publishers can also submit screenshots of the book, which will be particularly useful for multimedia content produced via iBooks Author. Just like screenshots for the App Store, Apple is very specific on what formats it will accept: 1024 x 768 or 768 x 1024 pictures in the RGB color space, formatted as .jpeg, .jpg, or .png.

The iBookstore has altered the way it handles pre-orders for content. Now publishers are able to make content available for pre-order without submitting a book cover or any other assets until up to two weeks prior to publication. Covers, book assets, and custom previews must be submitted two weeks prior to publication.

The addition of promo codes and screenshots brings iBookstore content more in line with the offerings on the App Store and will no doubt be extremely useful tools to publishers of all sizes, from the biggest publishing houses down to budding self-publishers.

iBookstore adds screenshots, promo codes, and more for publishers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The latest "-gate" suffixed controversy, the so-called "Address Bookgate," has surrounded the popular social networking app Path. After Path was found to collect data on users' contacts without prompting users for permission, CEO Dave Morin apologized and the app was updated to change the behavior.

That revelation, and the backlash that followed, has sent ripples throughout the iOS developer community. Path's update sets its app to explicitly request user permission to store contacts; Instagram and several other iOS apps followed suit.

In what's becoming a predictable trend any time the words "Apple" and "privacy" are mentioned together, two US Congress members have sent a letter to Apple asking the company to explain the situation (hat tip to The Next Web). "This incident raises questions about whether Apple's iOS app developer policies and practices may fall short when it comes to protecting the information of iPhone users and their contacts," Congressmen Henry A. Waxman and G.K. Butterfield write. Following that, the representatives voice the very questions that have been raised:

• Please describe all iOS App Guidelines that concern criteria related to the privacy and security of data that will be accessed or transmitted by an app.

• Please describe how you determine whether an app meets those criteria.

• What data do you consider to be "data about a user" that is subject to the requirement that the app obtain the user's consent before it is transmitted?

• To the extent not addressed in the response to question 2, please describe how you determine whether an app will transmit "data about a user" and whether the consent requirement has been met.

• How many iOS apps in the U.S. iTunes Store transmit "data about a user"?

• Do you consider the contents of the address book to be "data about a user"?

• Do you consider the contents of the address book to be data of the contact? If not, please explain why not. Please explain how you protect the privacy and security interests of that contact in his or her information.

• How many iOS apps in the U.S. iTunes Store transmit information from the address book? How many of those ask for the user's consent before transmitting their contacts' information?

• You have built into your devices the ability to turn off in one place the transmission of location information entirely or on an app-by-app basis. Please explain why you have not done the same for address book information.

AllThingsD reports that Apple has issued a brief response: "Apps that collect or transmit a user's contact data without their prior permission are in violation of our guidelines. We're working to make this even better for our customers, and as we have done with location services, any app wishing to access contact data will require explicit user approval in a future software release."

This response may address user concerns over the potential privacy issue, but Congress may not be satisfied so easily. Waxman and Butterfield (both of whom chair committees on commerce) have given Apple until the end of February to respond to the inquiry.

From our perspective as iOS users, this means we can likely look forward to more pop-up dialogs every time we open certain kinds of iOS apps for the first time. We're already prompted to give user permission for location services and push notifications, and now it seems we'll be prompted for access to Address Book contacts as well.

Hopefully iOS developers can write these dialogs in a way that encourages users to pay attention to them rather than blindly tapping "Allow" several times just to rush past the preliminaries and actually use the apps they've downloaded.

US Congress sends letter to Apple about Path, data access, Apple responds originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We learned not too long ago that Siri is on schedule to speak a few more languages soon, specifically Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Japanese. Siri herself (itself?) has confirmed that at minimum Japanese support is coming soon, according to 9to5 Mac. I personally verified that asking Siri "What languages do you speak?" returns Japanese as a result, along with the English, French, and German that Siri supported at launch in October 2011.

Despite what Siri says, however, Japanese is not yet showing up as an option in Siri's languages settings. Full support for Japanese and any additional languages will likely require an iOS update. With the last update to the iOS 5.1 beta having taken place more than a month ago, industry speculation points to iOS 5.1 getting its public launch alongside the next-gen iPad, which we expect to see announced in early March.

Apple has committed to increasing Siri's linguistic capabilities in 2012, with support for Spanish, Korean, and Italian expected later this year. Sadly, it appears Siri still has no love for the Scots.

Siri's upcoming Japanese language abilities leaked - by Siri originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Tim Cook presented remarks at a Goldman Sachs Technology Conference on February 14, and it turned out to be a quite lively affair. Cook opened up on a diverse array of topics ranging from Apple's commitment to improving working conditions at its suppliers all the way to what sounded to us like choking back comments on the next-gen Apple TV.

Mac Rumors has an impressive word-for-word transcript of the entire event, and it's definitely reading through the entire thing. We've reprinted some choice excerpts below. Apple may post a podcast of the event on iTunes later; if it does post it, it's worth listening to not only for the fascinating content but also to hear Tim Cook sounding the liveliest and most animated he's sounded since taking over as Apple's CEO.

On Apple's commitment to worker rights:

• We think the use of underaged labor is abhorrent. It's extremely rare in our supply chain, but our top priority is to eliminate it totally. We've done that with our final assembly and we're now working with vendors farther down in the supply chain. If we find a supplier that intentionally hires underage labor, it's a firing offense.

• We don't let anyone cut corners on safety. If there is a problem on safety, we seek out the foremost experts and set a new standard and apply that to the entire supply chain. We focus on the details. If there is a fire extinguisher missing from a cafeteria, that facility doesn't pass inspection until that fire extinguisher is in place.

• We are continuing to focus on problems endemic to our industry like excessive overtime. Our code of conduct has a cap of 60 hours per workweek [...] In January, we collected weekly data on over a half million workers in our supply chain. We had 84% compliance. This is significantly improved from the past, but we can do better. We're taking the unprecedented step of reporting this monthly on our website, so it's transparent to everyone what we're doing. (emphasis added)

On the iPad and the PC market:

• We started using it at Apple well before it was launched. We had our shades pulled so no one could see us, but it quickly became that 80-90% of my consumption and work was done on the iPad. From the first day it shipped, we thought that the tablet market would become larger than the PC market and it was just a matter of the time it took for that to occur. I feel that stronger today than I did then.
• As I look out and I see all of these incredible usages for it, I see the incredible rate and pace of innovation, and the developers -- If we had a meeting at this hotel, and we invited everyone doing cool stuff on PC, we wouldn't have anyone here. If you invited everyone working on iOS or on that other operating system, you wouldn't be able to fit everyone! That's where the innovation is!

On competition and cannibalization:

• Price is rarely the most important thing. A cheap product might sell some units. Somebody gets it home and they feel great when they pay the money, but then they get it home and use it and the joy is gone. The joy is gone every day that they use it until they aren't using it anymore. You don't keep remembering "I got a good deal!" because you hate it!
• The customers that we're designing our products for are not satisfied with limited function types of products. I think the real catalyst of the tablet market will be innovation and pushing the next frontier. Honestly, we'll compete with everybody. I love competition. As long as people invent their own stuff, I love competition. (emphasis added)
• I don't predict the demise of the PC, I don't subscribe to that. Given what we've seen, I believe the iPad is cannibalizing some Macs but more PCs. There are more of them to cannibalize than Macs so thats a plus to us.

On Apple's cash pile:

• I think everyone would want us to be deliberate and really think it through. That's what we're doing. We're not going to go have a toga party and do something outlandish. People don't have to worry that it's burning a hole in our pocket.
• It's not new that we're discussing [dividends]. We are discussing it more and in greater detail. The balance has risen to the point you've made and I think it's clear to everyone and I'd be the first to admit that we have more cash than we need to run the business on a daily basis. I only ask for a bit of patience so we can do this in a deliberate way and make the best decision for the shareholders.

On the Apple TV:

• It's clearly ramping, but the reality -- the reason we call it a hobby -- we don't want to send a message to our shareholders that we think the market for it is the size of our other businesses. The Mac, the iPad, the iPod, the iPhone. We don't want to send a signal that we think the length of that stool is equal to the others. That's why we call it a hobby.

• Apple doesn't do hobbies as a general rule. We believe in focus and only working on a few things. So, with Apple TV however, despite the barriers in that market, for those of us who use it, we've always though there was something there. If we kept following our intuition and kept pulling the string, we might find something that was larger. (emphasis added)

• We need something that could go more main-market for it to be a serious category.

Note: It doesn't come across so much in the transcript, but on the call itself Cook was being very cautious and deliberate in his choice of words when discussing the Apple TV. Everyone at TUAW listening in on the call could tell he was holding something back here.

On Siri and iCloud:

• They're not something we run P&L's on, we don't believe that. We run the company from the top and don't worry about the iCloud team or Siri team making money.

• Both of these things go in the profound category. They're things that you'll talk to your grandkids about that are profound changes.

On the "Apple Culture":

• Apple is this unique culture and unique company. You can't replicate it. I'm not going to witness or permit the slow undoing of it. I believe in it so deeply.
• We should only go into markets where we can make a significant contribution to society, not just sell a lot of products. These things, along with keeping excellent as an expectation, these are the things that I focus on.
• I want to look out at an audience and see people using iPhones and see people using iPods at the gym, or going to Starbucks and seeing people use the iPad. These are the things that bring a smile to my face. There is no substitute for that.

Update: Apple has posted audio of Tim's presentation.

Tim Cook speaks on labor, cash and culture during Goldman Sachs conference (Update) originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Protest groups Change.org and SumOfUs.org recently delivered boxes containing 250,000 petition signatures to the Grand Central Terminal Apple Store, demanding that Apple investigate and improve worker conditions in Chinese factories. Now that inspections have begun, those same groups are claiming victory.

"This new announcement shows the pressure is getting to Apple," says Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, Executive Director of SumOfUs.org. There's just one problem: Apple's announcement isn't new. Apple announced its partnership with the Fair Labor Association on January 13, nearly a month before Change.org and SumOfUs.org delivered their signatures.

In the same press release erroneously taking credit for Apple's partnership with the FLA, SumOfUs.org criticises the group as "a business-funded group with a long track record of serving as a corporate mouthpiece, not an effective advocate for workers." The New York Times' report on the FLA is hardly as scathing, though it has found that "many labor advocates say its efforts have barely made a dent in improving working conditions."

AppleInsider has criticised both groups for what it calls "slacktivism," "retroactive activism," and "empowering social change after the fact," since Change.org and SumOfUs.org are claiming credit for actions Apple took long before either group's petitions even began. In fact, most of the "worker abuses" cited in these petitions are sourced from Apple's own annually-released Supplier Responsibility Report.

Jim Dalrymple of The Loop has classified the groups' actions as "nothing more than a publicity stunt." "If these protesters are really concerned about the workers in China, why not deliver that petition to the other companies that manufacture products at Foxconn. Where is the press release saying they were going to visit HP, Dell, Microsoft and others?" Dalrymple asks. "I emailed the PR guy Brett Abrams yesterday and asked him that. No response."

Change.org and SumOfUs.org's petitions have not accomplished anything that Apple wasn't already planning to do on its own. The issue the groups have raised is a serious one, but claiming credit for actions Apple took over a month ago seriously damages their credibility.

Meanwhile, in a conference with Goldman Sachs, Tim Cook detailed the steps Apple is taking to improve conditions at its suppliers' factories (many thanks to Mac Rumors for its detailed transcription). "We think the use of underaged labor is abhorrent. It's extremely rare in our supply chain, but our top priority is to eliminate it totally. We've done that with our final assembly and we're now working with vendors farther down in the supply chain," Cook said. "If we find a supplier that intentionally hires underage labor, it's a firing offense."

On workplace safety: "We don't let anyone cut corners on safety. If there is a problem on safety, we seek out the foremost experts and set a new standard and apply that to the entire supply chain. We focus on the details. If there is a fire extinguisher missing from a cafeteria, that facility doesn't pass inspection until that fire extinguisher is in place."

Beginning in January, Apple began collecting weekly data on over half a million workers in its supply chain, with specific focus on overtime. Apple sets a 60 hour/week cap on supplier workers' overtime hours, and reports indicate its suppliers already have 84 percent compliance. Apple's goal on this is 100 percent.

Thus far Apple has been issuing annual Supplier Responsibility Reports, but Apple will now supply those reports on a monthly basis and release them on its website. No other manufacturer has committed to that level of transparency in its suppliers' working conditions.

By American standards, especially among those who have never set foot in a factory and are unfamiliar with the gruelling pace, poor working conditions, and worker abuses present in even the best and most tightly-regulated of factories, the conditions at Foxconn may indeed sound harsh. But real changes or improvements in those working conditions are not going to come from signing an online petition and tamely delivering a box of signatures to a handful of retail outlets.

The only way conditions at Foxconn have any chance at improving is if companies like Apple take steps to put pressure on their suppliers, and Apple has already done exactly that -- well before anyone outside the company asked it to. In fact, Apple has taken far greater strides in this area than any other consumer electronics manufacturer, so the continued focus on Apple not only seems illogical, it also seems counterproductive. Other consumer electronics companies must be looking at the situation, where Apple's unprecedented transparency about its suppliers has backfired into a PR nightmare, and Sony/Dell/HP/etc. must be saying to themselves that maintaining the silent status quo is better for them in the long run.

This is the third year in a row where, like clockwork, Apple's release of its Supplier Responsibility Report has been followed by a media firestorm and a laser-like focus on Apple to the exclusion of every other Foxconn client. With Apple now committed to releasing these reports monthly, the danger now is that the linkbaiting and Apple-focused controversy will never end. As long as every company except Apple keeps getting a free pass, no real improvements at Foxconn (or anywhere else) are going to happen.

Protesters claim credit for Apple's January announcement of FLA inspections originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The next-gen iPad or "iPad 3" may be announced as early as Wednesday, March 7, according to Rene Ritchie of iMore. Citing "sources who have been reliable in the past," iMore claims the iPad 3 will be announced on that date featuring a 2048 x 1536 Retina Display (a widely expected upgrade), and a quad-core A6 processor.

This report of a March 7 announcement date aligns with AllThingsD's earlier report that the iPad 3 will be announced in the first week of March. Jim Dalrymple of The Loop, who almost always has good information on such matters, simply quoted the first sentence of iMore's report on the March 7 announcement date and responded, "Yep." When Dalrymple breaks out the "Yep" stamp, it's almost as good as hearing something from Apple itself.

With Dalrymple's endorsement, we consider the date announcement decently sourced. Aside from that, not much concrete information on the next iPad is available, with only the usual storm of rumors to go on. While widely expected, a Retina Display and A6 processor update are both unconfirmed. Recent leaks to third-party repair depots allegedly show an iPad 3 case and display remarkably similar to the iPad 2 except for very minor internal changes. Other rumors have suggested the iPad 3 may feature an improved camera (let's hope so, because the iPad 2's camera is rubbish). Far less credible rumors have suggested the iPad 3 may feature support for 4G LTE networking, which both iMore and we here at TUAW find less likely for a variety of reasons.

If Apple follows a similar schedule to the iPad 2 announcement in 2011, the next iPad could be launched for sale in the US on Friday, March 16. International sales may follow in select markets like the UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand two weeks later on March 30, with staggered rollouts continuing in later months.

iPad 3 may be announced March 7 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

The NPD's analysis of 2011's trends in electronics sales shows that Apple now accounts for nearly one fifth of all US revenue in consumer electronics. HP is in a distant second place, having generated only about half as much revenue as Apple during 2011.

Overall, 2011's NPD results show shifting trends in the consumer electronics landscape. The share of overall sales revenue for PCs declined by 0.5 percent year-over-year -- a decline that is likely a percentage point or two steeper if Mac sales (which were actually up in 2011) aren't bundled in with overall PC sales. The overall share of TV and video game hardware sales also declined year-over-year.

Out of the top five highest-revenue categories, only "tablets" and mobile phones showed gains in revenue share during 2011. The revenue increase for mobile phones was slight -- barely 0.3 percent -- but "tablet" sales exploded in 2011, with their share of overall revenue doubling compared to 2010. I keep putting "tablet" in quotation marks because it's clear the overwhelming majority of this increase is directly attributable to the iPad; although last quarter's sales of Amazon's new Kindles probably made a small contribution to the revenue increase, the iPad is dominating revenue share in the tablet category.

Among the top 5 consumer electronics manufacturers based on revenue, only Apple showed revenue gains in 2011, and those gains were huge: sales grew by 36 percent in 2011. HP, Samsung, Sony, and Dell all experienced sales declines, with Sony and Dell showing sales declines in the double digits.

NPD's data shows a stunning rise in revenue share for "tablets" in 2011, Apple as the only company amongst the top five who gained revenue last year, and declines in PC sales and tanking revenues for some PC manufacturers. Taking all of this into account, the data suggests that the iPad is sending ripples throughout the entire consumer electronics industry.

[via Electronista]

NPD: Apple generates a fifth of all US electronics revenue originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a textbook example of a failure to think first and type later, Digital Spy and The Daily Mail both rushed to blame Apple when it became known that prices for Whitney Houston's iTunes catalog were hiked up only a day after the singer's passing. The only apparent source for Digital Spy's take on the story was the emails it received from angry fans, one of whom said, "To say I am angry is an understatement and I feel it is just a case of iTunes cashing in on the singer's death, which in my opinion is totally parasitic."

UK prices for Houston's 2007 Ultimate Collection rose from £4.99 to £7.99 only a day after the singer's death. Confused and embittered fans, who briefly found themselves unable to download the album while the price changes took effect, were quick to blame iTunes and Apple itself for the price hike.

Unfortunately, Digital Spy took these angry users at their word without performing even the most perfunctory of research or fact-checking, and The Daily Mail followed suit. If either outlet had inserted a crucial moment of logical analysis between fingers and keyboard, they would have discovered, as The Guardian did, that Apple is not responsible for setting album or catalog pricing on iTunes. Music labels are, and it was in fact Sony who raised prices on Houston's music.

"Sony Music, which owns the rights to much of Houston's back catalogue, increased the wholesale price of The Ultimate Collection," The Guardian reports. "This automatically boosted the retail price of the popular album, although Apple is responsible setting the price paid by music fans." Sony boosted the wholesale price for Houston's music after discovering it was "wrong," and the rise in wholesale price is directly responsible for the rise in retail price on iTunes.

Neither Digital Spy nor The Daily Mail have issued corrections or retractions to their stories blaming Apple for the price hike, and they probably won't do so.

Sony raises prices on Whitney Houston's iTunes catalog, media rushes to blame Apple originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

So, you want to write about Apple? Lots of people do these days. The company is a household name, its financial performance is virtually unparalleled, and it makes products that millions upon millions of users enjoy every single day. I can tell you from personal experience that getting paid to write about Apple, something I would do on my own anyway, is quite rewarding.

But first you have to decide what kind of Apple writer you'll be. Will you be the kind of writer who takes a step back from the linkbaiting Controversy of the Week, calmly and logically analyzes the situation, and then writes objectively about it? Will you keep your BS detector active and not believe every single rumor that blooms on your RSS feed? Will you have the patience and foresight to analyze past trends before predicting future performance, even if it means dragging yourself across a desert of spreadsheets and financial statements?

If you're saying to yourself, "Nah, that all sounds like work," and you're not worried about sounding dumb when you write about Apple, then by all means, write whatever comes into your head without putting it through a logic filter first. You'll have absolutely zero credibility among anyone who doesn't actively loathe Apple, but at least your page views will be through the roof.

On the other hand, if you'd rather not wind up the laughingstock of the Internet every time you write something about Apple, I have a few points of advice to offer.

Leave "fanboy" and the cult metaphors on the cutting room floor

I'm declaring a fatwa on the word "fanboy." I've said before that I stop reading any argument that uses the word "fanboy" as soon as I see it, and that remains true. But the word still gets tossed around like a hacky sack at Burning Man, and it's gone from overused and tired to straight out offensive and stupid. I look at people who use the word "fanboy" as an epithet with the same disdain I have for people who use racially-charged insults.

Seriously, it's 2012, and Apple has rocketed past Exxon Mobil as the most valuable corporation on the planet. You don't get to that level of success driven along by a handful of dedicated, froth-flecked fans, nor do you achieve what Apple's achieved by having a "cult" of people who will buy what Apple sells no matter what. Think logically for just half a second: Apple sold 37 million iPhones in 3 months. 37 million. If that's a cult, it's one damned huge cult.

How many posts do we see about Exxon Mobil "fanboys" or cultlike people mindlessly lining up their cars at Exxon stations and worshipping at the altar of the almighty unleaded octane 92? Exactly none. Because that would be stupid.

Whether you like the company and its products or not, Apple is now thoroughly mainstream. Maybe in 2002 you could've gotten away with painting Apple's users with the "cult" brush, but doing so today just makes you sound brainwashed yourself.

Don't predict Apple's doom

How many times has Apple actually been doomed in the past 15 years? None. How many times have people said Apple is doomed? I bet if you spent all day counting, not only would you not finish, you'd seriously start to question your life and the way you choose to spend your free time.

Look at Apple's ledgers, specifically the giant pile of cash it's sitting on, and tell me with a straight face that Apple as a company is going to disappear anytime in the near or even far future. At this point, for Apple to fail or be truly doomed would require close to a decade of deliberate, malicious mismanagement. I'm not saying Apple's "too big to fail" -- Microsoft is moribund proof of how far the mighty may fall when men of vision aren't holding the reins. But if you think that "Apple is doomed" will come true eventually if you just repeat that mantra often enough, I humbly suggest that you instead repeat to yourself, "I won $10 billion in the lottery and the Swedish Bikini Team moved into my guest bedroom." That has a far better chance of happening, and it'll likely be far more personally fulfilling if it does.

Now if we're talking about a more specific subset of Apple being doomed, the story's still the same. To this day I can still hear faint echoes of my laughter from 2006 when John Dvorak tried to convince us the Mac was doomed unless Apple switched to Windows. If you thought the iPhone was doomed in 2007 because the thing would just never catch on, then congratulations: you're capable of running Microsoft. If you thought the iPad was doomed in 2010 because it didn't ship with support for Flash Player, then man have they got a gig open for you at Adobe, you scamp. If you thought that either the iPhone or the iPad would be crushed and fade into obscurity because of Android's market share gains in 2010 and early 2011, then... well, maybe we can get you a job corralling the shopping carts at Target.

Take Apple's expectations for quarterly revenue and multiply by 1.15

If you intend to write about Apple with the least bit of credibility in forecasting its financial performance, you must follow the company's quarterly performance reports. As a publicly-traded company beholden to its shareholders, Apple quite carefully lays out its expectations for the quarter to come, including factors it expects to impact its performance for good or ill. Being the secretive company it is, Apple doesn't connect the dots for you, but the picture isn't all that hard to comprehend anyway. It can't be, because Apple has a responsibility to the people who've invested in it, and deliberately misleading those investors would get the company into seriously hot water.

Apple isn't run by idiots. These are very smart people who know what they're doing. Apple's success isn't a fluke; it's the result of an expertly steered company with some of the best business minds on the planet at the helm. If Apple saw something in the forthcoming quarter that it expected to have a significant impact on its earnings, and there was nothing it could do to avoid that financial iceberg, you can bet it would adjust its financial guidance accordingly. We saw that two quarters ago, in fact, when Apple said it didn't expect great Q4 results due to a "product transition" - i.e., the iPhone 4 hanging around for an extra 3 months. Apple still beat its own guidance but (heavy sarcasm quotes) "missed" Wall Street's expectations.

Every quarter, a gaggle of "financial analysts" pull Magic 8-Balls out of their Park Avenue closets, blow off the dust, and forecast financial doom for Apple. "Sell AAPL now," say these people who somehow still have jobs telling others how to invest actual money.

To avoid sounding like someone dropped an anvil on your head, here's what you do when it comes time to discuss Apple's financial future. It will require two minutes of research first, where you'll learn what Apple's own revenue guidance for the forthcoming quarter is. Once you have that number, multiply it by 1.15. Use a calculator if you must. That number is about what you can expect Apple to actually return for the next quarter. It sort of takes all the fun out of the earnings announcement, like mathematically determining on Labor Day exactly what you'll get for Christmas, but it sure does stop you from saying stupid stuff like "Apple can't possibly earn $30 billion in revenue in one quarter" when the company turns around and earns $46 billion instead.

Keep your product expectations moderate and realistic

One surefire way to make yourself sound ridiculous: take any article from Popular Mechanics circa 1950-1960, slightly update the retro-futurist themes to suit the modern era, and tell us Apple will usher in this new age all by itself. Use Siri to talk to your car! Multi-Touch screens on your refrigerator! A FaceTime watch (just like Dick Tracy!!!)!

In the leadup to every one of Apple's product announcements, the speculation gets so rampant and so out of control that the only surefire way to separate fiction from reality is to believe none of it. That's essentially what I decided to do two months before the iPhone 4S launched; after overdosing on fever dream rumors of the supposed iPhone 5, I asked myself what Apple was actually likely to do. "Apple's redesigned the exterior of the iPhone twice in four years," I said to myself when my wife wasn't home to stare at me for saying such things aloud. "How likely are they to do another major external redesign just over a year after the iPhone 4 launched?"

If you asked yourself this same question and answered, "Not likely in the slightest," then I bet you weren't one of those people beating their chests in early October and screaming, "But it looks just like the iPhone 4! Where is the iPhone 5?! So disappointing, Apple blew it, they're doooooomed!"

How to do it wrong: "Apple will introduce an HDTV with a 42-inch LCD screen, FaceTime camera, built-in App Store, and eleventy billion gigabytes of onboard storage. The entire interface will be voice-activated via Siri. The whole thing will cost $1500. It's going to be a total revolution in the way we interact with our TVs, man, you don't even know."

How to do it less wrong: "Apple might introduce an HDTV, but for a whole lot of (logical, well-thought out) reasons it sure doesn't seem likely."

Apple makes technology that occasionally seems like magic, but as far as I know Apple doesn't employ any actual magicians, sorcerers, or wizards among its design staff in Cupertino. Adjust your product expectations accordingly.

Don't try to tell us what Apple "must" do

Any time I come across a headline that reads like a gauntlet thrown at Apple's collective feet, I brace for The Stupid. These "Apple Must (x)" headlines usually follow like derp-derp jetsam after the rabble-rabble hurricane of whatever the "-gate" Controversy of the Week happens to be. The iPhone 4 drops signal when held a certain way, so Apple must issue a full recall. The iPhone contains buggy code that causes people's location info to be held for longer than necessary, so Apple must go before Congress and explain itself. Siri doesn't return results for Planned Parenthood when users ask it to find abortion clinics, so Apple must apologize to women everywhere for stealthily promoting a right-wing agenda on reproductive rights. Apple's EULA for iBooks Author says you can only publish iBooks-formatted books on the iBookstore, so Apple must be subjected to antitrust hearings before the week is out.

In the increasingly rare respites from storm-in-a-teacup controversy, there's the usual roundup of typically myopic suggestions from "analysts" and the blogosphere at large, all of which manage to sound hilarious in hindsight. Remember when Apple had to put a netbook on the market if it wanted to stay relevant? Or how it had to build an iPhone with a physical keyboard? Or how the iPad had to support Flash Player?

Occasionally people do come up with some decent advice for Apple, and I'll find myself nodding along in agreement. But those times are about as rare as sunny days in Cleveland, and just as fleeting before the usual gray, dummkopf skies return.

Think first, type later

I saved the most important advice for last. Some bloggers are so quick to rush to judgement on absolutely everything Apple does that I often find myself wondering if there's any actual thought behind what they write or if they're just spitting out pure rage like the father character in A Christmas Story. "Apple broke my lamp on purpose! NOTTAFINGA!"

We can't go a single week anymore without some "-gate" suffixed scandal surfacing that's supposedly proof everlasting of Apple's nefarious intentions, leading directly to the company's ultimate downfall. Just recently, a simple boneheaded mistake in Apple's writing in the EULA for iBooks Author had bloggers jumping over one another to launch ICBMs full of monkey poo toward Cupertino, with one guffaw-inducing example classifying it as "mind-bogglingly greedy and evil."

The only truly mind-boggling thing was the swift rush to judgement without even a breath's pause for logical evaluation of the facts at hand. It was clear to me from the beginning that Apple had no interest in owning anyone's content, only the iBooks format. A week went by, Apple updated the iBooks Author EULA, and people everywhere who don't spend their afternoons sticking pins in an iPhone-shaped voodoo doll looked at the rest of the blogosphere and said, "Duh."

So many bloggers (and an exponentially greater number of commenters) are used to seeing Apple as this grand dystopian force in their lives that literally everything the company does must have some mustache-twirling, villainous motivation behind it. That mindset is both sad and dumb.

If you're going to write about any topic, but particularly one as widely read about as Apple, for your own sake be sure to think first and type later. If you just take that one small step, everything else I've said here will follow naturally, and the chances of your writing being subjected to eternal ridicule will be much smaller.

How to avoid sounding dumb when you write about Apple originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.