richardmork

Claimed iPad 3 parts have been circulating for some time already, but a few more pieces to the puzzle are starting to appear. 9to5Mac posts this photo of iPad 3 home buttons in comparison to the existing iPad 2 ones.

No real surprises, though it should help kill already sketchy rumors that Apple might do away with a home button altogether. The backside is slightly tweaked, though we’d be hard pressed to draw any conclusions from it. The biggest takeaway is that iPad 3 parts are continuing to leak as production and shipment draws near.

The iPad 3 is expected to arrive in early 2012, anywhere from February to April in timeframe. The iPad 3 is also expected to carry an ultra high resolution ‘Retina’ display.

Deal-a-day site Woot.com occasionally offers Apple products for sale, generally refurbished iPod Nano or Touch models. But this year, on Christmas Eve, the site is offering Apple’s current entry-level iMac for nearly 13 percent off Apple’s prices — and tax free for most states, unlike Apple’s online store.

The model in question, MC309LL/A, is $1,199 on Apple’s online store in a stock configuration. Woot’s offering, at $1049.99 plus $5 shipping (for up to three iMacs), doesn’t offer any sort of custom configuring but is significantly cheaper than any other site — including discounts available through Apple’s store for college students. It’s also cheaper than any of the deals available on Black Friday last month.

Woot, which uses a literary point of view to humorously sell their products, has this to say about the iMac:

GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMAN

That furry red-and-white coat would look great over a black turtleneck, wouldn’t it?

“Tonight’s the night! Are you excited about Jobsmas Eve?”

I’m afraid to even ask what that means.

“Jobsmas Eve, man! The way I see it, over the next several hundred years, the stature of Steve Jobs will grow to legendary proportions, like Gilgamesh or Axl Rose. And since Apple products are considered the ultimate Christmas gifts, the holiday will someday become synonymous with the company, and the man who founded it!”

Wow, you’ve managed to deeply offend both Christians and Apple fans with one fake holiday. Nice job.

”’Offend’? What’s offensive about the spirit of Steve Jobs going from house to house to deliver fantastically awesome presents to good little girls and boys? I’m just getting a jump on what everyone’s going to believe hundreds of years from now. I’ve always been ahead of my time.”

Is that what people in the future will call “crazy”?

“Look, you and I know that Steve probably couldn’t have visited every kid in the world in one night. I mean, he never tried, so who knows. OK, yeah, it seems far-fetched to you and me. But just imagine how far-fetched the Apple iMac Quad-Core i5 Desktop would have seemed to our great-grandparents.”

Hey! Have you been digging around in the back of my closet?

“Uh, no, no! I certainly haven’t seen that you bought me an Apple iMac Quad-Core i5 Desktop with 21.5” LED display, a quad-core 2.5GHz Intel processor, 4GB of memory, a 500GB hard drive, 802.11n wireless, and OS X Lion! Uncovering a surprise like that would ruin Jobsmas Eve!”

It’s curious that Woot would offer a current-model new-in-box iMac. To sell it as a main-item suggests the site has a fair number of the iMacs in-stock. Woot may be selling the machines near cost or as a loss-leader on Christmas Eve, or it’s possible that iMac sales are slower than Apple expected and it is using Woot — which was purchased by Amazon.com last year — to clear out surplus holiday inventory.

While it seems obvious that the holiday gift-giving season is a strong driver for iOS device sales, as evidenced in part by past history and Apple’s forecast of a blockbuster quarter, it is generally difficult to quantify that holiday boost before Apple reports device sales as part of its quarterly earnings or makes public statements about App Store milestones.

A couple of analytics firms have, however, put out reports today seeking to offer some measure of the bump in demand for iOS devices and those of competing platforms such as Android.

According to Flurry, both iOS and Android saw a “massive influx” of devices registering on the firm’s servers, coming in through the over 140,000 apps using Flurry Analytics. Data collated by Flurry shows that combined new device activations for iOS and Android rose from an average of 1.5 million per day during the first three weeks of December to 6.8 million devices on Christmas Day, an increase of 353%. This compares to a total of 2.8 million new devices detected on the previous record-setting day of Christmas 2010.

All of those new device activations also drove increased App Store activity, with Flurry measuring an increase of 125% in iOS and Android app downloads on Christmas Day compared to the early December baseline. Flurry’s data shows that the 242 million app downloads on Christmas Day spiked from an average of 108 million per day during the first three weeks of the month. Flurry notes that the increase in app downloads is smaller than that for new device activations on a percentage basis due to the higher baseline from apps being installed onto the already-large installed base of devices.

Illustrating how different analytics firms can see somewhat different patterns due in part to what data is used for baseline purposes, Localytics issued a report showing iOS device activations coming in more than 12 times higher during the holiday weekend than they did during previous weekends. The increase was over 15x for iOS devices as a whole in the United States, with the iPod performing strongly at a 21x increase due to the relative lower cost and lack of service contract, factors which make them relatively more popular as gifts than iPhones or iPads.

Comparing iOS to Android, Localytics found that Android also grew at approximately 12.5x over baseline. Localytics also looked at country-by-country comparisons, showing iOS outpacing Android in terms of growth in the United States, Germany, and the UK, while Android performed better in most of the other top countries.

Last year at about this time, we highlighted the biggest Apple leaks of 2010. While there wasn’t quite as big a story as the iPhone 4 leak this year, we still saw a lot of early leaks of unreleased products.

iPhone 4S

When this parts leak video was released in January 2011, we weren’t entirely sure what we were looking at. Global Direct Parts called it an “iPhone 5″ at the time, and detailed differences found in the new antenna design. The changes were relatively small, but what we know now is that this was the first look at the iPhone 4S design — 10 months before its release. The antenna design looks a lot like the Verizon iPhone which hadn’t been released at the time, but the inclusion of the SIM slot means this particular design was definitely for the iPhone 4S.
Read more…

DigiTimes reports that Intel has notified partners that the company will “fully release” its Thunderbolt technology in April 2012. Intel is reportedly preparing to launch Thunderbolt-supported motherboards, notebooks and desktop PCs at that time.

Intel and Apple originally partnered on the new technology which has become standard across Apple’s MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, and iMac. Digitimes reports that the cost of Thunderbolt technology is expected to drop in the second half of 2012, allowing more widespread adoption.

While Apple does offer Thunderbolt across most of its product line, the first Thunderbolt products have been limited to relatively high end devices. More widespread adoption should help drive adoption by accessory makers that will benefit both Mac and PC users that use Thunderbolt.

Intel has always said that they see both USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt as complementary technologies and plans to support both in their 2012 motherboards.

China Daily reports (via Electronista) that Apple’s manufacturing partner Foxconn is investing $1.1 billion to nearly double the size of a recently-opened iPhone manufacturing facility in Zhengzhou, China, banking on continued strong growth of iPhone sales.

The base will be centered on the Foxconn Science Park in Zhengzhou, provincial capital of Henan, increasing its current production lines to 95, said the Henan provincial development and reform commission during a conference.

The expansion plan, costing 7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion), is expected to bring $20 billion in sales revenue in 2012, the commission said.

The facility opened earlier this year and is already employing 130,000 workers and producing 200,000 iPhones per day. If the facility were running at full capacity seven days a week, it would be capable of producing 18 million iPhones per quarter.

A Bloomberg report from last week indicated that the city of Zhengzhou is working to help Foxconn add 100,000 workers to the facility this year, and a production boost in line with that workforce increase could see the factory yielding over 350,000 iPhones per day, or nearly 32 million per quarter.

Digitimes reports that Apple’s suppliers are set to begin preparing materials for the new Apple television set during the first quarter of 2012, with the company reportedly targeting a launch for the second or third quarter of the year. Apple is said to be initially working on 32-inch and 37-inch sizes.

The supply chain of Apple will start preparing materials for iTV sets in the first quarter of 2012 in order to meet Apple’s schedule to launch the new display products in the second or the third quarter of 2012, according to industry sources. [...]

Media reports in Korea also indicated that Samsung Electronics started producing chips for the iTVs in November 2011, while Sharp will produce the displays for the new TVs.

While the new television sets will reportedly integrate most if not all of the functionality of the current Apple TV set-top box, sources also indicate that Apple is likely to release an updated standalone Apple TV box next year as well.

While rumors of an Apple television set have been floating around for quite some time, they gained steam several months ago when Steve Jobs was quoted in Walter Isaacson’s authorized biography of him as saying that he had “finally cracked” how to create a revolutionary interface for a television product. Rumors have since suggested that Apple is working on a Siri-enabled television set that would be introduced by 2013.

Reuters reports that Apple has been fined the equivalent of $1.2 million in Italy over issues related to warranty disclosures.

According to the report, Italy’s antitrust regulators ruled that Apple has not been providing adequate disclosures about the two free years of product warranty assistance required under Italian law, while also pushing customers to purchase AppleCare extended warranties without disclosing that many of the benefits overlap the standard warranty.

The authority said Apple Sales International, Apple Italia and Apple Retail Italia did not properly inform customers that they were entitled to two years of free assistance under Italian law. Three Apple spokesmen contacted by Reuters weren’t immediately available for comment.

Information provided about an extra guarantee scheme, the “AppleCare Protection Plan,” encouraged customers to buy the service without clearly explaining that it overlapped with the free assistance required by law, the competition authority said.

News of Italian regulators’ inquiries into Apple’s warranty offering surfaced in late May. Word on any fines levied on Apple was said to be set to follow by late August, but the agency apparently took some additional time to examine the issue before reaching a decision.

BGR reports that Apple is planning to launch a completely redesigned iPhone in the fall of next year, following the trend set by the iPhone 4S of new hardware being released later in the year as opposed to the mid-year timeframe used previously.

According the report, the next iPhone will utilize an aluminum back panel rather than the glass found on the iPhone 4 and 4S. The new design will reportedly also see the incorporation of a rubber or plastic bezel covering similar to that used on Apple’s iPhone bumpers, with the covering serving to protect the device’s antennas from direct skin contact.

We have also learned that Apple is planning to use a rubber or plastic material — similar to the material used in the company’s bumper cases — that will be built into the new iPhone case. In all likelihood, this material will be used as a bezel surrounding the front edge of the phone (like the iPhone 3GS bezel) and it will serve two purposes. First, it will join the glass iPhone face with a new aluminum back plate. It will also cover a redesigned antenna system that surrounds the device, allowing Apple to build the rear case out of aluminum without having to use a large plastic insert above the antennas as the company does on its iPad 2 Wi-Fi + 3G.

BGR has a mixed track record when it comes to hardware rumors, coming relatively close on Apple’s late 2011 iPhone lineup while missing with a claim of a redesigned WiMAX iPhone 5 exclusive to Sprint.

Yamaha used some technological trickery to enable Siri to play a concerto on a Yamaha Disklavier Grand Piano.

By converting a MIDI songfile into an audio file that the iPhone can play and connecting the audio output of an Airport Express to the analog input of a MIDI-enabled Disklavier piano, the iPhone can “play” the MIDI file via AirPlay and control the multi-thousand dollar piano.

As explained to The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple:

Then, you simply ask Siri to play your favorite song from your iTunes library, and Siri responds immediately, by making the Disklavier’s keys and pedal move up and down, recreating the performance, including full orchestration.