iPhone 5 News

AppleInsider reports on an interview with a representative of Hong Kong-based nonprofit Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) claiming that Foxconn used advance knowledge of recent audits by the Fair Labor Association to hide underage workers from auditors. Specifically, the report addresses the issue of 16- and 17-year olds, who are permitted to work under Apple's supplier code of conduct if allowed under local laws, but with special restrictions on types and duration of their work.

[SACOM project officer Debby Sze Wan] Chan said she had heard from two Foxconn workers in Zhenghou last week that the manufacturer was "prepared for the inspection" by the Fair Labor Association that had been commissioned by Apple and began last week.

"All underage workers, between 16-17 years old, were not assigned any overtime work and some of them were even sent to other departments," Chan reported the workers as having said.

Other workers reported to the agency that Foxconn had relaxed certain policies such as by adding additional break periods ahead of the audits.

Fair Labor Association president Auret van Heerden noted to Nightline's Bill Weir in a segment that aired yesterday that his group always expects to receive "a show" when it arrives for its audits, but that its interview techniques and other strategies help to dig beneath the surface to find more accurate representations of working conditions.


Chan's organization also focuses on issues of student labor, alleging that local Chinese governments have in some cases forced school to sent their students to Foxconn for internships even when the work is completely outside of their field of study.

Apple's high-profile presence and Foxconn's role as its largest manufacturing partner have cast the two firms into the spotlight over the issue of worker rights and factory conditions. The issues are of course not unique to the two companies, although Apple's public statements and attempts transparency have also contributed to the focused attention.


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Yesterday, we noted that the music component of iTunes in the Cloud was rolling out to Japanese users, allowing them to freely download any music content previously purchased from the iTunes Store. But as now summarized by 9to5Mac, various reports in the Japanese media reveal that the additions have been much more extensive and have brought Apple's Japanese iTunes Store offerings nearly on par with most of the company's other major markets.


Highlighting some of the changes, Apple has posted a What's New page [Google translation] for iTunes on its Japanese site. The new additions include:

- 3G downloads: Music downloads from iOS devices had previously been restricted to Wi-Fi only, but users can now access content over 3G networks.

- iTunes Plus: The Japanese iTunes Store now supports the DRM-free 256 kbps iTunes Plus format, up from the previous 128 kbps versions carrying usage restrictions. Labels will need to upgrade their content to the new standard, so it may take some time for all music to become available in iTunes Plus format.

- Ringtones: Music ringtones are now available for purchase in the Japanese iTunes Store.

- Mastered for iTunes: Rolling out on a worldwide basis, Apple is now featuring songs and albums that have been specifically mastered for the iTunes Store to provide the best sound quality for the format.

- Complete My Album: Users who previously purchased individual tracks from an album can now purchase the entire album for a discounted price based on a credit for their individual-track purchases.

As for iTunes Match, Apple's subscription service currently available in 37 countries that allows users to either match or upload their entire music libraries regardless of source for access from any iCloud-enabled device, the company is reportedly planning to bring the program to Japan during the second half of 2012.


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While Proview has had some success in its battle against Apple's use of the "iPad" trademark in China with minor court decisions against local retailers, the two companies are now going directly head-to-head in a higher-profile case underway in Shanghai. There has been no decision in the case yet, but lawyers for both sides spent four hours today laying out their evidence for the presiding judge. Reuters notes that Apple has gone on the offensive by citing the impact on the Chinese economy if iPad sales were to be halted, given the iPad's massive popularity and Proview's current lack of any product offering under that name.

"Proview has no product, no markets, no customers and no suppliers. It has nothing," Hu Jinnan, a partner at Guangdong Shendadi law firm, which is representing Apple in the case, told the court.

"Apple has huge sales in China. Its fans line up to buy Apple products. The ban, if executed, would not only hurt Apple sales but it would also hurt China's national interest."

Apple's tactics of highlighting the economic impact of the iPad and calling into question the validity of Proview's trademark given a lack of physical product using the name are side arguments to its primary claims, which hold that Proview agreed to transfer the rights to an Apple-held company in late 2009 and has failed to uphold its part of the deal.


Proview's iPAD, sold from 1998 until 2009 (Source: The Wall Street Journal)
A Hong Kong court sided with Apple last year, ruling that Proview and its subsidiaries had colluded to extort significant sums of money from Apple in refusing to hand over the Chinese rights to the trademark. But Apple needs to convince courts in mainland China to adopt the same view as it seeks to thwart Proview's attempts at halting iPad sales and its requests for as much as $2 billion in compensation. Proview has argued that the Hong Kong ruling is inadmissible in Chinese courts, although Apple could presumably submit the same primary evidence to the Chinese court that it did in the Hong Kong case, seeking to convince the Chinese judge to independently come to the same conclusion.


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Continuing their close relationship with the iTunes Store following a landmark deal to launch their music in the store in late 2010, The Beatles today announced the release of their first official ringtones, available exclusively through the iTunes Store.

Beginning today, fans around the world can, for the first time, purchase ringtones for the Beatles’ 27 UK and US #1 hits, exclusively on iTunes.

The 30-second ringtones are priced at $1.29 each, and the full list of available ringtones includes: "Love Me Do", "From Me to You", "She Loves You", "I Want To Hold Your Hand", "Can't Buy Me Love", "A Hard Day's Night", "I Feel Fine", "Eight Days a Week", "Ticket to Ride", "Help!", "Yesterday", "Day Tripper", "We Can Work It Out", "Paperback Writer", "Yellow Submarine", "Eleanor Rigby", "Penny Lane", "All You Need Is Love", "Hello, Goodbye", "Lady Madonna", "Hey Jude", "Get Back", "The Ballad of John and Yoko", "Something", "Come Together", "Let It Be", and "The Long and Winding Road".


Apple and The Beatles have an extensive history together, dating back to disputes over the Apple name that The Beatles have long used for their business ventures. As Apple moved into the music business, the two sides came into conflict over the trademark, eventually leading to a 2007 agreement that saw Apple obtain all rights to the trademark and license it back to The Beatles for their specific uses.

Following the November 2010 addition of The Beatles to the iTunes Store, Apple has prominently featured the band's music at times. The Beatles published an exclusive free animated e-book of Yellow Submarine on the iBookstore last year, and Apple accompanied that release with a dedicated television commercial of its own focusing on The Beatles.


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ABC aired their Nightline special tonight where they took an inside look at Apple's Foxconn factories. Apple allowed Nightline access to the Foxconn factories that produce iPhones and iPads. Foxconn is the world's largest electronics manufacturing company that has contracts with most major U.S. electronics companies. The full video is not available online at this time.


Overall, the report held no real surprises. They summarized many of the events leading up to the bad press surrounding Foxconn's working conditions. The cluster of suicides was mentioned over the past few years that led to the installation of suicide netting to discourage impulsive suicide attempts. Nightline did note that the suicide rate at Foxconn was still below the Chinese national average. Tim Cook, then Apple's COO, flew to China during that time to help coordinate the response. Beyond the suicide netting, pay was increased and counseling offices were set up.

Work on the factory line is described as monotonous with 12 hour shifts with two hour long meal breaks. When questioned, workers complained about cramped dorms and low pay, but the jobs were in high demand with thousands coming to Foxconn for work. Nightline traveled to a nearby village to compare those living conditions which didn't seem any better. The families who remained in the village told Nightline that their living conditions were better with the "young people" working in the factories.

The Verge compiled some interesting statistics from the report:

- It takes 141 steps to make an iPhone, and the devices are essentially all handmade
- It takes five days and 325 hands to make a single iPad
- Foxconn workers pay for their own food — about $.70 per meal, and work 12 hour shifts
- Workers who live in the dorms sleep six to eight a room, and pay $17.50 a month to do so
- Workers make $1.78 an hour

Nightline's visit coordinated with Fair Labor Association who is compiling their own report on the factories.

Overall, the report was fair-to-positive making it seem like Apple was being very responsive to the concerns.

Update: Video of the segment is now available to U.S. viewers through ABC's website.


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KTVZ.com has received confirmation from Apple that the company plans to build a new data center on a 160-acre lot in Prineville, Oregon. The land was reportedly purchased for $5.6 million from Crook County. A February 15th filing first identified Apple, Inc. as the purchaser of the land, which Apple later confirmed:

Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet confirmed Tuesday that “we purchased the land and it’s for a data center,” but could not speak to details beyond that, other than to say it will be a "green" facility.

Facebook's data center in Prineville, Oregon
Word of the possibility of a new Apple data center in Oregon was first reported in December when it was revealed that Apple was in discussions over the location. The new data center would be near a recently opened Facebook data center in the same area.

Apple has been working hard to expand its data center capacity to handle iCloud and other services, having invested $1 billion in the North Carolina center and revealing a master plan that could see the size of that facility double in the future. Apple also maintains a smaller data center in Newark, California and has been building out minor additional capacity in Santa Clara, California near its corporate headquarters in Cupertino.


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Qualcomm today announced the launch of its fifth-generation Gobi reference platform that seeks to pack support for nearly all of the major worldwide mobile standards into a single chip. While the reference platform is not ready in time for inclusion in the iPad 3, it does pave the way for future world-mode iOS devices and is targeted at ultra-thin notebooks and tablets.

Based on Qualcomm’s Gobi 4G LTE wireless baseband modems, the MDM9615™ and MDM9215™, the technology delivers fast LTE connectivity on FDD and TDD networks worldwide, with backwards compatibility to both HSPA+ and EV-DO networks. This will allow support for regional LTE frequencies with backwards compatibility to existing 2G/3G technologies, allowing Gobi 4G LTE devices to connect to the faster LTE network locally and stay connected to the Internet globally on 3G networks worldwide. [...]

Qualcomm’s latest Gobi 4G LTE connectivity reference platform includes embedded GPS capability and features an application programming interface (API) with LTE extensions, which is compatible with leading connectivity standards, including CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B, HSPA+, dual-carrier HSPA+, TD-SCDMA and LTE, with integrated backwards compatibility to HSPA and EV-DO.

Gobi offers a layer of software enhancements on top of Qualcomm's MDM chipsets in order to streamline wireless connectivity across technologies.


Apple already uses a world-mode chip to support both GSM and CDMA networks in the iPhone 4S, but the device does not support faster LTE networks now being deployed. The iPad 3 has been claimed to support LTE, and will likely be using a world-mode chip capable of falling back onto both GSM and CDMA 3G networks.

Apple has held off on supporting LTE so far because the technology has simply not been available in a single-chip solution meeting Apple's size and power requirements. But with Qualcomm's new single chip designs now making their way to availability, Apple has options that suit its design and performance goals for future devices.

While the identity of the LTE wireless chip in the iPad 3 has not yet been revealed, Qualcomm's roadmap suggests that Apple may be looking to use the MDM9600 (or MDM9615) in the iPad 3. For the iPhone 5 due later this year, Apple would likely utilize the MDM9615, which does pack voice capabilities onto the LTE chip.


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Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster is out with a new report today citing data from research firm NPD on U.S. sales of Macs. According to the data, Apple's U.S. Mac sales were up only 1% year-over-year in January, tracking behind predictions that have called for roughly 20% year-over-year growth for the full quarter. Munster believes, however, that continued strength in international markets and the potential for new Mac updates such as a refreshed MacBook Air near end of the quarter will likely help Apple close strongly to meet expectations.

We have analyzed domestic NPD retail data for the first month of the March quarter, which is up 1% y/y. The early data appears soft on a y/y basis; however, last quarter actual Mac growth outpaced NPD by 14 percentage points. Also, we believe Apple may launch new MacBook Airs as early as March. Net-net, we believe this early data suggests Mac sales in the range of 4.4m-4.6m, or 17%-22% y/y growth (we believe Street consensus is 4.5m Macs in the quarter and we are also at 4.5m).

With historical evidence showing overall growth outpacing NPD's U.S. data by 14 percentage points, Munster believes that Apple's actual worldwide Mac growth for January could be in the 15% range, close enough to the 20% target for the full quarter to give a Apple a reasonable chance at making up the difference with a strong finish.


Piper Jaffray's independent data on iPhone sales for January are tracking toward full-quarter sales of 32-34 million, a figure that would help overcome any softness on the Mac side. iPod sales trends remain in line with predictions of continued declines as customers shift from the aging iPod line to iPhones and iPads.


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Apple today announced that it has extended the deadline for Mac App Store apps to implement sandboxing until June 1. The requirement had been set to go into effect on March 1 after already having been delayed from last November, but continued uncertainty about implementation and its effects on app functionality has caused Apple to again slow down the transition.

We have extended the deadline for sandboxing your apps on the Mac App Store from March 1st to June 1st to provide you with enough time to take advantage of new sandboxing entitlements available in OS X 10.7.3 and new APIs in Xcode 4.3.

We first profiled the sandboxing requirements, which would restrict apps from initiating operations outside of their operational confines, back in November. While users could override the sandboxing with their own commands, compromised apps would be prevented from affecting a user's entire system. But concerns over the effect of the requirement on apps requiring system-wide file access or allowing inter-app scripting have given some pause about how sandboxing should be implemented.


The issues was revisited earlier this month as the deadline approached, with several developers noting that there were still questions and concerns over how to implement sandboxing in their applications. One developer noted to MacRumors at the time that there were likely to be major issues if Apple were to enforce the requirement on March 1, given lingering bugs and other issues, and Apple has clearly taken those concerns to heart and given itself and developers an additional three months to work through the issues.


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Earlier today, a report from The Daily claimed that Microsoft has a "working prototype" of its Office suite for iPad, with the app reportedly set to be submitted to Apple for App Store approval "soon".


The New York Times now reports that Microsoft has issued a statement denying at least some of the claims made in the original report, although the company offered no detail on what specific claims it was objecting to.

A Microsoft spokeswoman issued this statement: “The Daily story is based on inaccurate rumors and speculation. We have no further comment.”

Following the introduction of the original iPad back in 2010, Microsoft indicated that it was "looking at", the possibility of bringing Office to the device, but by the time the device launched a few months later the company said it had "no current plans" for such a project. Rumors of Office for iPad were revived by The Daily late last year with claims that Microsoft was "actively working" on an app.

Update: Microsoft has also responded to ZDNet, claiming that the screenshot accompanying The Daily's report is "not a real picture of a Microsoft software product".

A Microsoft spokesperson said the screen shot accompanying The Daily’s story is not a real picture of a Microsoft software product. But the spokesperson also said Microsoft is declining to comment as to whether or not the company has developed a version of Office for the iPad and/or when such a product may come to market.

Update 2: The Daily's Peter Ha has taken to Twitter to defend the original report, saying that "a working version of the app was demoed to us by someone at Microsoft."


Update 3: TechCrunch has also weighed in, offering another statement from Ha and its own confirmation that the project is indeed real.

Sure enough, they did their homework and Ha stands by the story and pic.

"We’ve been chasing this story down for weeks. We did not fabricate the image and Microsoft isn’t denying the existence of Office for iPad. All this fuss over a photo is nonsense. The story is real."

We also got confirmation from local sources in Seattle, who assure us that the software is real and being developed in-house. However, as the build in the picture is far from final, Microsoft can deny (in its overly specific way) that it’s not a real product.

Update 4: Microsoft's official Microsoft News account on Twitter has weighed in promising that the situation will become clear in the "coming weeks".

Great respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the “coming weeks.”

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