July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

One of the surprises of yesterday’s Apple earnings — beyond the fact that record revenue and record profit simply wasn’t good enough for Wall Street — is that Apple has recast how it is reporting its revenue to separate hardware from services and software.

The six new categories are iPhone, iPad, Mac, iPod, iTunes (with software and services), and Accessories. All of them are billion-dollar businesses in their own right, but of course they’re not all the same size. iPhone revenues were $30 billion, 15 times the accessories business and dwarfing every other business category.

The new iTunes category, which came in at $3.687 billion for the first quarter of 2013, includes all the revenue from music sales, app sales, software sales via the Mac app store, and any other media sales (such as books and movies. Apple has also stuffed a few random items into iTunes that might otherwise fit in a “miscellaneous” category: AppleCare extended warranty revenue, licensing revenue, and services revenue.

But essentially, if Apple has a good iPhone and iPad quarter, Apple has a good quarter. Seventy-six percent of Apple’s revenue, which totals $41.42 billion, comes from those two segments alone.

Two numbers are particularly interesting.

One is digital media in the iTunes segment. Revenue from digital media is now almost worth more to Apple — top-line revenue — than all its iMac, MacBook and other Mac hardware sales. This will likely only grow. The second is Accessories, which also is almost worth more to Apple than iPod sales. Both are signs of the future.

Here’s the raw data:

• iPhone: $30.6 billion
• iPad: $10.7 billion
• Mac: $5.5 billion
• iTunes: $3.7 billion
• iPod: $2.1 billion
• Accessories: $1.8 billion

photo credit: Hans and Carolyn via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Philadelphia’s Drexel University has installed a Macbook vending machine in the university’s Haggerty library. The kiosk dispenses MacBooks free of charge to Drexel students, staff, and faculty, who can use the machines for up to five hours at a time.

The goal is simply to help students get better, safer access to technology. Students toting laptops are targets for muggers.

“We installed it in late December,” Niki Gianakaris, Drexel’s media relations director, said. “Students didn’t want to carry their laptops to the library late at night.”

To get a MacBook, students simply walk up to the vending machine, sign in with their student card, and receive a laptop. Between lending sessions, the Macbook’s batteries charge, and the kiosk wipes the hard drives clean. Late fees of $5 do apply. The vending machine holds 12 notebooks, and I’m guessing it’s generally empty.

For now it’s a demo project with single vending machine, but it could grow over time.

“This is obviously going to be very popular,” Gianakaris said. “We’ll evaluate their use and, depending on the results determine how many more we can install.”

The program is part of Drexel Library’ knowledge transfer mission. “Libraries are not only meant to house books,” Drexel dean Danuta Nitecki said in a statement. “They also house learning.”

Depending on students’ reaction and university finances, Drexel is considering installing kiosks at additional potential locations around campus. Two other universities on the East Coast are also trying the laptop-lending program, Drexel said on its blog, using technology from Texas-based LaptopsAnytime.

If the program is popular, iPads are next up on the list for consideration, Gianakaris added. Right now, that seems like a safe bet.

Image credit: Drexel University. Hat tip: Hacker News

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The original retina MacBook Pro, the 15″ model, earned a miserly 1/10 in iFixit’s repairability score. Now the teardown specialists have ruthlessly ripped apart Apple’s innocent new 13″ retina MacBook Pro, and the results are in.

2/10.

It’s not much of an improvement, but it does double the score for Apple’s pro lineup of notebooks. The biggest change? A battery that can be squeegeed out of its cocoon in just 15 minutes. In comparison, the 15″ MacBook Pro’s battery took 30 minutes on the third try — and the first two attempts resulted in punctured batteries.

Source: iFixit

Retina 13″ Macbook Pro – on the inside

Not cool, and not extremely safe.

Highlights of MacFixit’s teardown include an odd circuit board between the laptop’s battery control board and its logic board. MacFixit is befuddled — and so are we — but possibilities include yet another piece of Apple tech to eek out even more battery life. The new retina machine is rated at 7 hours, similar to Apple’s much weaker MacBook Air models.

The teardown revealed no fewer than 11 chips on the logic board, including three from Intel, two from Hynix, and oddly, a small two megabit serial Flash chip on the trackpad logic board.

The biggest change iFixit found inside the new laptop? The way Apple rearranged the battery cells, fitting the MacBook Pro’s flash drive underneath the trackpad assembly:

Source: iFixit

Removing the battery

Image credits: iFixit

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Retina has come to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and it’s gorgeous. Apple announced the update to its 13-inch pro-level laptop at an event today in San Jose, Calif.

Here are specs for the unit at the base price:

• Screen with 2,560-by-1,600 resolution
• 8GB of RAM (base config)
• 128GB SSD (base config)
• 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
• Two Thunderbolt ports, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, SD card slot, 3.5mm headphone jack, and MagSafe 2 power connector
• Ships with Mountain Lion OS

The devices starts at $1,700, $500 less than the 15-inch MacBook Pro.

More details on the MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina Display can be found in Apple’s official announcement.

MacBook sales have been extremely strong in the last quarter, jumping 30 percent even while the laptop market as a whole dropped almost five percent. The new Retina 13-inch model can only serve to increase that strong demand.

Photo credit: Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

Apple’s October Surprise

We expected Apple to announce an iPad mini today, and we got it. What we didn’t expect was the sheer number of new products the company unveiled. Here’s a rundown of the news.

• Apple debuts new MacBook, iMac, IPad 4 and iPad Mini (live blog)
• With the iPad Mini & an updated iBooks Author, Apple finally has a chance of revolutionizing the classroom
• Apple announces 7.9″ iPad Mini, measuring just 7.2mm thick
• Apple debuts full-size 4th-gen iPad with super-fast A6X chip & HD front camera
• Tablet domination: Apple has sold more than 100M iPads
• Apple’s Fusion Drive combines SSD speed with big storage
• Apple announces stunning 5mm-thick iMac
• Apple launches new iBooks with continuous scrolling, better iCloud support, and page filters
• Apple by the numbers: 200M devices running iOS 6, 125M docs in iCloud

Before any Apple-Store lurking fanboys get their hands on a MacBook, Apple Store employees meticulously open each display computer to a 70 degree angle before the store opens, reports Forbes. Equipped with an iPhone app, the employees tilt each display screen to the best-possible viewing angle.

You might think that Apple positions all its notebook computers for aesthetic reasons. That’s partly true. The tables are uncluttered and the products are clean. But the main reason notebook computers screens are slightly angled is to encourage customers to adjust the screen to their ideal viewing angle—in other words, to touch the computer!, writes Forbes’ Carmine Gallo.

Using a precise screen angle is just one tactic Apple uses to make a sale. Apple Stores’ clean layout is designed to showcase its world-famous products. The company wants its popular device design to shine in front of a nondescript white and light-wood backdrop.

Gallo’s article mentions the differences between how Apple Stores and Best Buy display their merchandise. I’m reminded of the few misguided times I’ve purchased a PC laptop at a big-box store where the device was thoughtlessly displayed next to several other models. I had to hunt around for prices and specs while trying to open and close the laptop that was connected to a cumbersome security device. Often the laptop wasn’t turned on or connected to a power source, so I couldn’t even test it out.

Apple on the other hand, strategically lays all the information you need out for you right in plain sight. There are no obtrusive security devices that get in the way of Apple’s design. And even Apple has its hands in Best Buy, creating a separate space from PC models that looks like a mini Apple store. The company emphasizes what Gallo calls the “multisensory experience” —  the way you can interact with Apple products in the store the same way you would in the real world.

It’s also no mistake that Apple lets you stand in a store for hours playing with its computers, iPads, and iPhones. The more you play around with its gadgets, the more you’ll fall in love and have to take one home with you, Apple hopes.

MacBook image via Flickr user Nelson Wu

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The 17-inch MacBook Pro is dead. Long live the MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

Apple’s MacBook behemoth met its quiet and unceremonious demise on Monday. Unlike the 13-and 15-inch versions, the 17-inch MacBook Pro did not get the refresh treatment from Apple, which has even removed the device from its Mac comparison page.

Clearly, big is out.

That Apple made the decision to axe the model should come as no big surprise: The high end of Apple’s MacBook line now belongs to the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display, whose most basic model starts at $2,199. The target demographics for the two models are almost completely identical: Like the 17-inch Pro, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display will mostly serve a niche demographic of highly mobile photographers and video editors, the kinds of people who never seem to have enough screen real estate.

But outside those groups, the appeal of the 17-inch MacBook Pro has been slim, which is likely why Apple sliced the device from its lineup.

The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display will likely follow a similar pattern: Industry people and Apple diehards will flock to it, but for pretty much everyone else, the device will be the computer equivalent to a Porchse — nice and eminently desirable, sure, but probably not worth the investment.

And then there’s the resolution issue. As impressive as the new device’s screen is, most existing content won’t upscale to it very well.

That’s because, unlike with apps on the Retina Display-equipped iPad, Apple doesn’t have the same amount of control over what appears on the screens of its MacBooks. It can upgrade software like Final Cut Pro X and Aperture, sure, but it won’t be enough: Everything outside Apple’s purview will still be in the dull, non-Retina past for now.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

As expected, Apple has announced a refresh for its popular MacBook Air thin-and-light laptop, with the new model pumped up with higher CPU power and larger hard drive. The announcement took place at WWDC 2012.

The last MacBook Air was already a striking and powerful machine. Now it will include the option to add a 3.2-GHz Intel Core i7 Ivy Bridge processor and a 512GB flash-based hard drive. It will also add in USB 3.0 slot, which is 10 times faster than USB 2.0.. Graphics will be 60 percent faster than before.

The 13-inch MacBook Air models will cost $1199 and $1499, while 11-inch models will run $999 and $1099.

Unfortunately, the new MacBook Air does not feature a high-density Retina display. If you want that, you’ll have to look at the MacBook Pro with Retina display, which starts at $2200.

Take a look at the 11-inch MacBook Air model specs below:

And here’s a look at the 13-inch MacBook Air specs:

Developing post. Refresh for updates.

Top photos: Heather Kelly/VentureBeat, Bottom photo: The Verge

Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicks off today with a keynote address from CEO Tim Cook and company. This year, Apple is expected to make announcements about  iOS 6, Mountain Lion, iCloud, and fresh Mac and MacBook hardware. (Check out our full round-up of predictions.)

VentureBeat reporters Dean Takahashi, Dylan Tweney, and Heather Kelly will be reporting  live from the keynote at the Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco starting at 10:00AM Pacific time. We’ll be updating this page with news and photos as it happens. We’ll also be tweeting from the event here, and following up with more in-depth articles on the announcements here.

Here are some of the biggest announcements from today’s keynote:

• Apple introduces thinner MacBook Pro with Retina Display
• Apple’s OS X Mountain Lion has 200 new features, including Power Nap, dictation, notification center, & more<
• iOS 6 revealed: Better Siri w/ iPad support, Facebook integration, & more
• Apple updates Siri for iOS6: cars, languages, games, sports, and yes, iPad!
• Apple takes its maps to new heights: free navigation, 3D, & more
• New MacBook Air powers up with Ivy Bridge processors and a 512GB SSD
• iOS devs earned $2.5B from apps year over year
• Non-Retina-display Macbook Pro adds in quad-core processors, USB 3.0

10:01am – Apple kicks off the event with a Siri video — Siri’s got jokes! “I am excited about the new Samsung. Not the phone: The refrigerator.”

10:02am - Tim Cook hits the stage. “This is our 23rd WWDC. Yes, it’s older than many of you are. This is the longest-running developer conference that we know of anywhere,” he said. This year’s WWDC sold out in 1 hour and 45 minutes — versus 8 days for last year’s conference.

Cook says that Apple now has over 650,000 apps in the App Store, 225,000 of which has been designed specifically for the iPad. Customers have now downloaded about 30 billion apps, and Apple has paid out more than $5 billion to app developers.

“There are such heartwarming stories out there, of what the combination of our incredible devices and your amazing apps have made in people’s lives,” Cook said. He paused, looked down, and looked emotional as he said that last line.

10:10am -A video starts playing, in which a blind man with a German accent is using an iPhone app to walk through a forest. “People write me from around the world, saying ‘You have changed my life,’” the developer of the app for blind people says.

Now there are kids learning anatomy in a classroom in India. Next, the video highlights someone who owns a tiny treehouse in the woods in Vermont, which they rent out using AirBnB on their iPhone.

“Apple makes it so easy for designers like us, for engineers like us, to stretch our imagination,” the Airbnb CEO says in the video.

Now they’re showing a cute little kid with speech development issues using an iPad to learn how to communicate. “iOS is so intuitive for anyone to use, regardless of age,” the developer says. [OMG barf. There's a a bunch of people saying "Thank you" to various app developers.]

Enter, new MacBooks

10:16am – Now Cook is back on stage. “On behalf of Apple, we would like to thank everyone in the developer community for the incredible apps you’ve done for us. Thank you.” He introdcues Phil Schiller, to discuss some “exciting changes in our notebook lineup.”

Here comes the news: First about the MacBook Air, which will once again be available in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. It will feature a third gen Intel Core processor (Ivy Bridge) and will sport up to a 2.0GHz dual-core i7 chip, with Intel Turbo Boost to 3.2GHz, and up to 8GB of 1600MHz memory. You can now install up to 512GB of flash drive storage, running at speeds up to 500 Mbps (SATA 3). They’re also adding USB 3.0, with USB 3/USB 2 ports on both sides (each port works with both types of USB). It will also get a 720p HD webcam.

It’ll cost you $999 and $1,099 for the 11-inch MacBook Airs, and $1,199 and $1,499 for the 13-inchers. Both models are shipping today.

Next up, the MacBook Pro: They’ll offer Ivy Bridge processors up to 2.7GHz on most models, as well as a quad-core i7 on the larger, 15-inch model. The MacBook Pros can be equipped with up to 8GB of 1600MHz memory, and discrete Nvidia graphics is also an option (Apple claims it’s 60% faster than last year’s). Both models also have USB 3.

The MacBook Pros will be priced at $1,199 or $1,499 for the 13-inch model, and $1,799 or $2,199 for the 15-inch model. Both will also be shipping today.

“Nobody turns over their entire line as quickly or as completely as we do,” Schiller said.

Now the slide reveals a black cloth-covered mystery computer. (The crowd cheers. They like secrets.)

10:25am – “You want a next-generation MacBook Pro to have a killer display…. You want it to be radically thin and light. You want to make something unlike any other notebook today,” Schiller said. “It’s the most beautiful computer we’ve ever made.”

Video on the screen shows that it’s very thin — lower part of the computer’s body is thinner than Schiller’s finger. Nice visual effect there: The black background made it look as if it were a rendering, but it was actually a video of the real computer onstage.

This new MacBook Pro is 0.71 inch thick — only a little thicker than a MacBook Air — and 4.46 pounds. It sports a 15.1 Retina Display with an astounding 2,880 x 1,800 resolution.From a normal working distance, your retina cannot discern individual pixels. The screen is 220 pixels per inch, with 5,184,000 pixels — “the world’s highest-resolution notebook display,” Schiller said.

The new display uses IPS technology for wide viewing angles, and reduced glare by up to 75 percent. It offers deeper blacks and brighter colors, Schiller says.

Lion applications have been updated to take advantage of the display, including Mail, Safari, iMovie, and iPhoto. Final Cut Pro is also being updated: You can now fit a 1080p video at full resolution in the upper right of the screen, with “over 3 million pixels left over” for timeline, video effects, thumbnails, etc.

Apps need to be updated to take advantage of the Retina display – if not, they can be pixel-doubled. Adobe is working on an updated, Retina-ready version of PhotoShop. Autodesk is working on a new version of Autodesk. And game developers are working on this too, including Blizzard for Diablo III.

“Everything inside this Macbook Pro has been redesigned,” Schiller said. The inside is symmetrical, black, minimalistic. It looks like they’ve covered all the logos and chip identifiers. There’s a huge, odd-shaped array of batteries, and what looks like two fans.

The new Macbook Pro sports up to 16GB of RAM, GeForce GT 650M processor (from Nnidia) with up to 1GB of video RAM, and up to 768GB of flash drive storage. It has up to 7 hours of battery life and up to 30 days of standby time. Ports include an SD slot, HDMI (full-sized), USB 3/2 (one on each side), a new, thinner MagSafe 2 plug, and two Thunderbolt ports. The laptop also has a backlit keyboard, 802.11n Wi-Fi. Bluetooth 4.0. HD Facetime camera, dual microphones, and nice speakers.

Schiller touts a few new Thunderbolt devices, and shows off a FireWire 800 and Gigabit Ethernet adapter for Thunderbolt.

10:37am – Now they’re rolling a video. It starts with Jony Ive, naturally.

“To create it, we rigorously questioned the ways we designed and built our portable products in the past,” Jony Ive says in a video.

For instance, the blades on the cooling fans are positioned irregularly (Ive says “asymmetrically”) in order to spread the fan noise across several frequencies, making it less noticeable. (That’s just insane. What’s next? Bespoke aluminum, hand-milled from organic Nepali aluminum miners?)

Pricing for the new MacBook Pro starts at $2,199, and it also starts shipping today.

“And that concludes our notebook lineup,” Schiller says. “It’s simply the best computer apple has ever made.”

OS X Mountain Lion, revealed

10:44am - Craig Federighi comes onstage to talk about OS X. There have been 26 million copies of OS X shipped to date — Apple’s best seller yet. 40 percent of OS X users are running Lion (after 9 months) — by comparison, Windows 7 took 27 months to get to the same level.

He formally announced OS X Mountain Lion, with an interface optimized for multitouch trackpads and mice, as well as easier integration with other devices. There are more than 200 new features, and he’s going to detail 8 of them.

First: iCloud. Several new apps in Mountain Lion, including Messages, Reminders, and Notes, will bring your documents to iCloud. There’s also a new app caled Documents in the Cloud, that will let you access other docs through Apple’s cloud storage service. “It provides a simple new way to access and organize your documents,” Federighi says.

Newest documents appear at the top, and all docs are available across all your devices. Docs in the Cloud works with Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Preview, TextEdit.

The Reminders app now supports multitouch for paging through your reminders, new animations. The Mountain Lion Notes app syncs with your iPad notes. Not surprisingly, the Messages app brings iMessage to the Mac, so you can respond from wherever you are, and your conversations are all available on your Mac, too.

Federighi describes the new Notifications Center as, “A consistent, elegant system based on banners and alerts.” Banners slide down into the upper right corner, just like Growl messages. After they go away, you can bring them back with a two-finger swipe from the right side of your trackpad. There will also be alerts, which function just like banners, except they stick around until dismissed.

Mountain Lion also sports built-in dictation and sharing features. There’s a “share” button in the toolbar in Safari (and other apps presumably), so you can share things to different services. It works in Preview, or you do it from “quick look” in any app that supports that. Sharing is built right into the OS, so you can enter your login (to mail, Twitter, Flickr, etc) from System Preferences.

10:54am – Ferighi calls the new Safari, “The fastest browser engine on the planet.” There’s a new unified search/URL bar, just like Chrome. You can just start typing, and it will autosuggest search phrases as well as items from your history and favorites. There’s an “iCloud” button on the toolbar. Click it, and it shows you a list of all the pages you have open in browsers on all of your devices.

A new tabbed interface supports multitouch gestures in Safari. You can also zoom in with multitouch (like in Lion). But if you zoom further out, you see all your open tabs and you can swipe between them, then pinch to zoom in on the one you want.

Slick feature here: There’s a quick-access “Tweet sheet” in notification center, so you can post a tweet. Federighi shows off by using Dictation to compose a tweet there.

A new feature called “Power Nap” fetches your email, calendar updates, and even syncs your photo stream while your Mac is sleeping. It Can also back itself up to Time Capsule and download/install system updates. “It’s operation is entirely silent … and easy on your battery,” Federighi says.

With AirPlay Mirroring, the Airplay menu now lets you select any nearby Apple TV and mirror your Mac’s screen at 1080p resolution. You also can send audio to AirPlay-enabled stereos and speakers.

Game Center, obviously, brings the iOS Game Center to the Mac. Uses the same account you might already have on iOS. It supports both turn-based and head-to-head gaming across Mac/iOS platforms.

11:06am – Time for another demo: A white-suited racecar driver with a helmet named Racer OS X comes onstage. He’s showing off CSR Racing.

Next they showed off a handful of other features, really quickly, including: Gatekeeper (anti-malware), Offline Reading List (in Safari — a read later feature). For developers, there are 1,700 new APIs. In China, there’s a new Pinyin input method, a Chinese dictionary, 8 new fonts, and sharing support for Sina, Youku, Tudou.

Mountain Lion will be coming to customers next month, via the Mac App Store for $19.99. That’s an upgrade price for anyone with Snow Leopard or more recent, and that single purchase will work across all of your Macs. Developers are getting a Developer Preview version today.

Everything you ever wanted to know about iOS 6

11:10am – Next up: Scott Forstall hits the stage for an update on iOS. He says there are over 365 million iOS devices shipped. Over 80 percent are running iOS 5.

84 of the top 100 social apps are pushing notifications via Notification Centers, he boasts. They’ve sent more than 1.5 trillion push notifications for these apps. 140 million iMessage users have sent more than 150 billion messages, more than 1 billion per day.

Twitter has seen a 3x growth in iOS users since integration, who have sent 10 billion tweets, Forstall said. 47 percent of Twitter’s shared photos come from iOS 5. There are now 130 million accounts on Game Center, with 5 billion score updates per week.

“I’m very happy to announce iOS 6,” Forstall eventually said. It offers over 200 new features, including improvements to Siri like sports awareness. You can ask “What was the score of the last Giants game?”, or “What is Buster Posey’s batting average?” The result shows a stats card.

Siri knows about baseball, basketball, football. Someone asks “Who is taller: LeBron, or Kobe?”

Siri also sports Open Table support, as well as better restaurant data, including average pricing, reviews, etc — via a partnership with Yelp.

“Siri’s become something of a movie buff,” Forstall says. New integration with Rotten Tomatoes includes integrated trailer playing (and likely reviews, and help movie showtimes). Siri can launch apps now too. “Play Temple Run,” and Siri launches it immediately.

There’s a new feature called “Eyes Free,” part of a a partnership with a number of car manufactures. A finger on a steering wheel button can bring up Siri (while your phone remains docked, and the screen remains dark). Car companies working with Apple include BMW, GM, Mercedes, Audi, Toyota, GM, Honda, Land Rover, and Jaguar.

Apple is adding Siri support for a bunch of languages and countries, including Korean, Mandarin (for Taiwan), Cantonese (for Hong Kong) and Mandarin or Cantonese for mainland China. This includes local search support “around the world” and in native languages.

Finally, Siri is coming to the iPad.

11:26am – Next up: Facebook integration. “We are integrating Facebook right into iOS 6.” You can log in through settings, and apps can then access your login for posting photos, locations, updates, etc.

Facebook is also integrated into the notification center, and you can tap to update Twitter or Facebook from within Notification Center. As part of the integration, the iOS API gives apps access to Facebook, your contact list also syncs with your friends’ contact information from Facebook, and Facebook events and birthdays appear in your calendar. (The same integration also appears in Mountain Lion on the Mac.)

There have also been some useful Phone application updates. The popup menu when you receive a call now includes a “remind me later” option so you can remind yourself to return incoming calls. A new “Do not disturb” option turns off notification of push notifications, text messages, phone calls — although you can designate exceptions to who can call you. There’s a “repeated calls” option so you can allow someone to get through if they call twice in under 3 minutes.

11:35am – FaceTime now works over cellular data connections, Apple confirmed. Facetime now links your Apple ID and your phone number, so if someone calls your phone number, you can take the call or reply to messages on your iPad or your Mac.

Two-thirds of all mobile web traffic comes from mobile Safari, Forstall says. Safari in iOS 6 adds ability to view open tabs on other devices (including your Mac), and the Offline Reading List feature. You can also upload photos from within Safari to sites like Shutterfly.

“Smart app banners” let websites display a banner to notify visitors about a native app. A single click takes you right into the App Store to install the app. If they have the app installed, Safari can pass data to the app so you can switch to the app and pick up where you were on the corresponding website.

Your Photostream can now be shared in iOS 6. You can check the photos you want to share, and choose friends from your address book. Friends receive a push notification, and your photos then appear in a shared album in their Photos app. Can also be viewed on a Mac, Apple TV, or web browser.

The Mail app has also received some nice updates. A new “VIP” feature lets you mark someone as an important person. When you get an email from a VIP person, you get a notification on the lock screen, just as if they’d sent you a text message. There’s also a special “VIP” mailbox for access to those messages. You can more easily insert photos and video, and you can open and view office documents within Mail.

Passbook, a new feature to iOS 6, consolidates passes, like airline boarding passes, Starbucks card, QR codes, and movie theater confirmation emails. Templates make it easy for developers to work with this. Passbook integrates into the lock screen, so it pops up on the lock screen at the right time. Unlock the phone, and there’s the QR code. Passbook has geolocation features, too, so if you walk by your favorite Starbucks, the app lets you know.

Forstall then introduced Guided Access, a new feature that allows you to circle controls with your finger that you want to disable, in any app. You can also disable the home button, so it keeps you in the app.

“We’ve been surprised by the number of children with autism who have been flocking to our devices, especially the iPad,” Forstall said.

Guided Access is also useful for schools that might want to lock an iPad-based test onto the screen, so kids can’t go to Safari to look up the answers.

Finally, Apple announces its own iOS Maps app

11:52am -”We have built an entirely new mapping system from the ground up, and it is beautiful,” Forstall said.

Apple’s long-awaited Map app offers worldwide coverage, all with Apple’s own cartography. 100 million business listings around the world are already included for local search (with Yelp integration). Apple is also building a traffic service, which not only shows slow areas but also includes little icons to show incident reports. The traffic functionality utilizes anonymous, realtime data from iOS users to keep the data updated.

Apple’s new Maps app will also include turn-by-turn navigation. Navigation will update ETAs based on traffic, and will reroute you if necessary. It’s also accessible via the lock screen, and is integrated with Siri.

“Are we there yet?” Siri answers: “Relax and enjoy the drive. You’ll be there in 14 minutes.”

The Maps app will also sport a new “Flyover” feature. Apple has been flying over metro areas in helicopters and planes to build 3D models and HD imagery. Maps are all vector-based images, so zooming and rotation is really fast. The app includes pop-up info cards on points of interest, as well as a quick 3D view.

The Flyover view is pretty cool: Pick a spot, and it renders a 3D photographic view that lets you zoom around and fly over that point.

The demo shows why Apple wanted to build its own maps application: This is faster and better-looking than any other maps app I’ve seen, plus it has the characteristic easy-to-use Apple UI and excellent integration with Siri.

Wrapping up, Forstall notes that all the OS X features for China are included in iOS 6 as well.

A beta of iOS 6 is available to developers today. It will ship this Fall, will support the iPhone 3GS and later, the 2nd and 3rd generation iPad, and the 4th generation iPod Touch.

Wrapping up

Now Tim Cook returns to the stage. (To enthusiastic cheers.) He recaps the day’s news: new Retina-display-sporting MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion, and iOS 6.

“Only Apple could make such amazing hardware, software, and services,” Cook said. “We are so proud of these products, because they are perfect examples of what Apple does best.”

This is why people come to work with Apple, he says: “To do the very best work of their lives… and to make a difference to so many people around the world. The products that we make, combined with the apps that you make, can fundamentally change the world.”

“I can’t think of a better reason for getting up in the morning,” Cook concludes.

And that’s a wrap.

New MacBook Air powers up with Ivy Bridge processors and a 512GB SSD

Taipei-based tech blog Digitimes, which has particularly close ties to the supply chain vendors of many major consumer electronics manufacturers, reports today that at least three new models will be coming in the first half of the new year.

The blog says sources in Apple’s supply chain are aware of a new MacBook Pro lineup that will feature display resolutions of 2880 by 1800 glorious pixels. These sources say to keep an eye out for the shiny new toys around the second quarter of the coming year.

The super-high pixels-per-inch models are rumored to be Retina display-like. The groundwork for Retina monitors lies in OS X Lion’s HiDPI display settings.

The MacBook Pro line got a relatively recent refresh in October of this year; we’ll see if and when these new models hit the shelves.

The blog’s sources also noted that Asus and Acer are planning to unveil new ultrabooks with (less impressive but better than currently available) resolutions of 1920 by 1080 pixels sometime in the first or second quarter of 2012. Currently, the companies are selling 1366 by 768-pixel display models.

Ultrabooks are ultra-thin, ultra-light laptops created to compete with Apple’s MacBook Air. As of this writing, most major PC manufacturers have skin in the ultrabook game.

Acer recently took the wraps off a 13.3-inch, 3-pound Aspire S3 Ultrabook, which started selling earlier this year. And in October, Asus announced its Zenbook line, including 11-inch and 13-inch models weighing in at 2.4 pounds and 2.9 pounds, respectively.

Also in the ultrabook business are HP and Toshiba. Toshiba also unveiled its own 13-inch ultrabook line, the Portege Z830 series laptops, in September. At the end of October, HP announced its ultrabooks would be coming soon.

The laptops will be available soon in 13-inch, 15-inch and 17-inch screen sizes.

9to5mac reports that Apple will be shipping two versions of the two smaller sizes and that the new laptops are appearing in internal inventory documents as K90IA, K91A and K92A, in ascending order by size. This information comes to the blog from an anonymous source.

Even though this comes fast on the heels of the recent MacBook Pro refresh that put slightly faster processors into the laptops, we’re not too surprised, since new models were expected to arrive in 2o12.

Currently, the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pro models contain 2Ghz to 2.3 Ghz chips, while the 13-inch MacBook Pro is running at 2.7Ghz. But the recently announced new hardware will bring Intel’s newest Sandy Bridge processors to the laptops. That announcement came just after Intel released its Core i7 Sandy Bridge processors, including quad-core 2.4 gigahertz, 2.5Ghz and 2.7Ghz chips.

The new models may or may not also include Bluetooth 4.0 technology, which Apple recently introduced on its iPhone 4S and the latest MacBook Air.

The MacBook Pro line last got a facelift back in February, when the current processors and Thunderbolt high-speed data ports were introduced. Although the new models were expected, it is a bit surprising to see this upgrade come so quickly after the Sandy Bridge upgrade; however, we’ve speculated in the past that the new-new processors are needed to keep the line current.

The MacBook Air and mini also got upgraded over the summer to feature Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors as well as Thunderbolt ports.

Image courtesy of Benjamin Nagel.

The list of iconic designs Steve Jobs made possible is long. But his most brilliant and ambitious design may be Apple itself.

Jobs, who announced his resignation as Apple’s CEO yesterday, is rightly hailed as one of the most design-savvy executives in the electronics industry. He’s also an impressive architect of business structures.

In the coming years, with Jobs out of the leadership role, we’ll see just how well-designed the company he spent 15 years assembling really is. My guess is that it’s very well put together indeed.

Jobs has been working on this “product,” Apple Inc., for a long time. Immediately after rejoining Apple in 1996, he killed Apple’s clone program, radically trimmed the product lines, and generally cleaned house. He hired designer Jonathan Ive, a smart move for a leader who knew that product design would be critical in the coming years. Just as critically, he also hired Tim Cook, a man known for ruthlessly efficient operations savvy.

Over the past decade and a half, Apple has quietly built not only an impressive product lineup, but also one of the most efficient and resilient manufacturing, distribution and retail systems in the world.

“You could argue that probably his greatest achievement was Apple itself,” said Leander Kahney, editor of Cult of Mac and the author of “Inside Steve’s Brain.” “He has embedded his DNA into the way it does things. I think it’s going to be around for decades, executing on that.

“It’s the corporate personification of his spirit.”

(Click here to see VentureBeat’s video interview with Leander Kahney about Steve Jobs and Apple.)

According to Kahney, there are two key components to Apple’s success: people and process.

The people side of that formula owes much to Jobs’s very hands-on approach to hiring.

“The single most important thing he does, himself, is recruit people,” said Kahney. Jobs hires the best talent he can find, whether it’s executive, engineering, or operational. Once the right people are on board, he helps ensure that those people are in an environment where they can do their best work.

That’s not to say that Jobs is a touchy-feely human resources type recruiter. He’s famous for terminating job interviews within five minutes if he senses that the candidate isn’t up to the task. And a good work environment doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t terrified of the boss, either. Jobs is a demanding leader who doesn’t hesitate to be rude to or even yell at employees if their work doesn’t measure up.

The second part of the formula is process: How Apple comes up with product ideas, again and again, and is able to manufacture those ideas consistently, in volume. It’s not just that the company has product design and engineering geniuses (it does), but it also has found a way of generating new ideas that is uniquely creative.

A big part of that is prototyping. Whereas other companies might make six or seven prototypes while developing a new product, Apple will make hundreds, Kahney said. “They discover these products through prototypes, and that’s what makes it so creative.”

Venture capitalist Stewart Alsop, of Alsop Louie Partners, also praises Apple’s internal process. For instance, Alsop says, the company plans on the first version of any given product failing. It knows that consumers and the market will uncover faults with a product that no amount of prototyping can resolve.

Because the company typically puts several years of work into each new product before unveiling it, that means it still has a substantial lead over its rivals, even if its first version doesn’t exactly surprise and delight the masses.

For instance, Apple put underpowered processors in the first version of its iPad in order to cut costs, and only upgraded the processor — significantly — with the iPad 2 when it recognized how important that was in the real world. But because Apple had already invested huge amounts of time into the engineering and manufacturing of the iPad (going so far as to acquire a chip company and create a custom chip for the iPad), it was already years ahead of competitors like Motorola, RIM and HP.

“Nobody can catch up with that, because they don’t have a process for creating great products,” said Alsop.

Manufacturing is another area where Apple has changed the game. The company has forged uniquely close relationships with Chinese manufacturers like Foxconn, and it regularly pushes the limits of what their factories are capable of doing.

The unibody aluminum shell of recent MacBooks, for instance, represents years of design and manufacturing work. The almost seamless way in which the front and back halves of an iPhone’s chassis fit together is another, less obvious innovation: Five years ago, that level of precision was impossible in mass-produced products.

Designer Jony Ive spends a lot of time in China, Kahney says, working with manufacturers on ensuring that their machines and processes are capable of mass-producing what Apple needs.

“I think they’ve reinvented mass production,” Kahney said. “As much of what they do goes into manufacturing techniques as the product themselves.”

“The whole process — how they manufacture products, how they source components — it’s totally amazing,” said Alsop.

Even the design of Apple’s proposed new campus reflects Jobs’s commitment to building a company to last. Its futuristic design has been compared to a flying saucer, and the renderings that the company included in its planning proposal to the city of Cupertino, where they hope to build it, have a celestial, otherworldly feel to them. Beams of sunlight shoot out from behind the sleek lines of the circular building, making it look like it is about to float off into space — or perhaps has just crash-landed on Earth like the Starship Enterprise.

It’s clear that the building is intended as an icon, a monument: a permanent reminder of what makes Apple unique. It’s even got a circular shape that encloses a central courtyard like the walls around a fortress keep, enclosing a special, secret, pristinely “Apple” space. Working there, you’d be constantly reminded of the man who made the company.

“Tim Cook can probably hold the team together, so the real question is 10 years out,” said Alsop, who foresees years of continued revenue growth for the Cupertino company.

To sum up: Jobs has spent 15 years building the ultimate machine for inventing, manufacturing and selling consumer electronics, and just because he’s retiring, the machine is not about to grind to a halt any time soon.

“This guy’s been thinking about it for a long time,” Alsop said.

Related stories on VentureBeat:

• Markets will punish Apple for the loss of its master magician
• Apple’s Tim Cook has some big shoes to fill
• Tributes to Steve Jobs from business executives start pouring in
• Top 10 Steve Jobs resignation reaction stories
• Why Apple employees avoid getting in the elevator with Steve Jobs

Top image: Rendering from Apple’s proposal to the city of Cupertino, Calif.

Miller, a security consultant at Accuvant, said he tried to make a MacBook “smart battery” explode, since the project was all in fun and videos of exploding batteries are big draws on YouTube. But he hasn’t been able to make that happen yet. Had he done so, he could have had one of the most popular talks at Black Hat and caused considerable alarm among a variety of vendors and consumers. It’s also another lesson that shows that if you put the intelligence of computing into an otherwise dumb device, that new smart device will be subject to hacking, as has been proven over and over again.

“I set out to see if I could hack the firmware of a battery,” he said. “I couldn’t make it explode. I took over the battery. It was fun, and I did cool stuff.”

Miller had to go through a long process to figure out which chips were used in the battery — some controllers and circuit protection chips from Texas Instruments. He conducted experiments to find out how the chips operated, how they communicated between the operating system and the battery’s charger, and then compared them to online manuals and other published data. He found that Apple had left a default password unchanged that gave him entry into a chip so that he could manipulate the settings for the chip. (Apple can try to fix this problem in the future, but Miller figures it wouldn’t be hard to crack the 32-bit password). Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Smart batteries such as those used in Apple’s MacBooks can be used to charge a battery more efficiently and report back to the operating system (and the user) the exact percentage charge remaining on the battery. The computer can thus talk to the firmware running on the chips within the battery. That firmware controls the charging process and safety parameters for the battery, which govern when to shut off charging to prevent overheating. Current, voltage and temperature can be calibrated.

Miller found it easy to change the settings on the batteries so that they were no longer recognized by the computer. This essentially “bricked” the batteries. He accidentally bricked his own machine a number of times. Once, he took a fried motherboard into an Apple store and they asked him what happened.

“I don’t know,” he told them, getting some laughs from the Black Hat crowd. “They should have a picture of me on the wall.”

Once he figured out how to break into the firmware, Miller then figured out how to change the settings of the battery and showed the code that proved that he did so. He is sharing his slides as well as atool that allows people to change the default passwords on their batteries. But that will only work so long as Apple makes no changes.

The dangers of hacking a battery remain theoretical so far. Coupled with a browser exploit, a malevolent hacker could send a virus or some other malware to a target. That virus could then deliver a payload such as sending commands to the battery to make it inoperable. That’s not as dangerous to a computer as wiping its hard disk, Miller said. But if someone could actually make a battery catch on fire from afar, that would be very dangerous.

Miller has no plans to undertake such hacking projects. But he continues with his battery research.

Unfortunately, the two items are not as alike as you might think. Not only do you get less screen real estate with the Air, you also get a lot less hard drive space with only 64GB on the $999 Air’s SSD drive. But the Air makes up for this with more powerful performance, a backlit keyboard, and a lighter design with an aluminum chassis. Since the products have different audiences in mind and fulfill different needs, it seems a little curious that Apple would shutter the white MacBook.

But Michael Gartenberg, technology analyst for Gartner, isn’t surprised. He thinks the strategy is to reduce the number of products Apple has in its lineup while still offering a laptop for less than $1000.

“Given the appeal of the new MacBook Air, with better specs and a much more appealing design, I’m not surprised that Apple decided to retire the MacBook as an entry-level machine,” Gartenberg told VentureBeat. “Ever since the new Airs were introduced at the same price point, it was likely many consumers were choosing the Air over the MacBook.”

I’d venture another reason: the iPad. Apple’s staggering third quarter iPad sales indicate that many consumers are willing to sacrifice some of the better aspects of a laptop for the ease and accessibility of a tablet. I even know a few casual users who use their iPads entirely as a primary device.

Now that Apple has the iPad available at a base price of $499 and the MacBook Air available at a base $999 price, the company surprisingly has most of its consumer bases covered, and people can spend a little more if they want to upgrade from that level. And let’s not forget that Apple could easily release more products this year or next to continue hitting each level of consumer.

What do you think of Apple’s decision to kill off the white MacBook? Are you interested in the $999 MacBook Air?

After months of rumors, Apple on Wednesday updated the super-slim MacBook Air laptop with the new Lion OS, Intel Sandy Bridge processor options and a Thunderbolt high-speed data port. It also returns the backlit keyboard that was perplexedly not included on the 2010 version.

Apple’s MacBook Air first saw the light of day in January 2008 and was one of the first big-budget laptops to take the leap of removing a CD drive, instead relying on the Web for all of its downloads. The move predicted the era of streaming content and software downloads through the Mac App Store.

Apple has typically refreshed the Air once each year to make the device smaller and faster. This refresh comes sooner than expected because the last Air version came out in October 2010. The missing backlit keyboard was likely a large complaint on that model, and the new Sandy Bridge processors offer a significant performance boost over the previous Core 2 Duo processors.

The latest MacBook Air runs the new Lion OS X, which adds more than 250 new features. The Sandy Bridge processor options, including Core i5 and Core i7 processors, will give the MacBook Air models more power than ever before.

The new MacBook Airs come with either an 11-inch or 13-inch display. The 11-inch model starts at just $999 with a 1.6-GHz Core i5 chip and has apparently replaced the $999 13-inch white MacBook. The 13-inch model starts at $1,299 and comes with a 1.7-GHz Core i5 processor. Each model gets more expensive with a bump in SSD hard drive space.

Apple Mac mini also refreshed

On a related note, Apple has also refreshed the less-demanded-but-still-useful Mac mini PC. The new Mac mini has Sandy Bridge processor options and gets a high-speed Thunderbolt port. However, the DVD drive has been removed from the entire Mac mini line.

The Mac mini comes in two standard configurations. For $599, you get a 2.3-GHz Core i5 CPU. $799 gets you a 2.5-GHz Core i5 chip with AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics. The removal of the DVD port means you’ll only be able to stream content rather than play it natively.

Will you pick up a new MacBook Air? Or perhaps you’ve got your eye on the new Mac mini?

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple today released details of its 2011 back to school promotion, which offers eligible buyers a $100 app store credit with the purchase of a Mac computer from Apple’s education store.

In years past, Apple offered an iPod as the promotional item of value, which is less practical for educational purposes than the plethora of iOS and OS X applications available for purchase with the $100 credit.

Apple probably chose the $100 credit because it not only helps promote the App Store but also saves the company money. Unlike with the iPod giveaway, the company will recuperate at least 30 percent of any purchase made using the credit — more if the purchase happens to be an Apple application like Pages or iWork.

However, this year Microsoft is running its own back-to-school promotion that is arguably a better deal for students (although maybe not such a plus for their study habits). As we reported in May, the company is offering an Xbox 360 with 4 gigabytes of storage (a $199 value) to any student who purchases a Windows 7 computer for $699 or more.

For $700, it’s not difficult to find a Windows machine that matches or beats the specs of Apple’s least expensive computer, which start at $899. And while Apple’s education store does knock off $100 from the regular price, it’s still the more expensive option.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft’s promotion digs into Apple’s back-to-school Mac sales through the beginning of September when both promos end.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Apple is reportedly planning to introduce new MacBook Pro laptops this week, based on stories leaking from retailers. The company may also use a new high-speed connection technology.

The latest moves show that, try as it might, Apple can’t really move secretly when it is one of the most watched companies in the world. Every company wants to keep its secrets, but if it’s selling a cool new technology, it also has to work with suppliers, retailers, and other partners along the way. Any of those sources can leak information.

The latest evidence on the MacBook Pro rumor is that Apple has stopped selling MacBook Pro laptop models and has warned retailers not to break the seal on pallets that may begin arriving as early as today. Apple also began telling its European resellers that they could expect the sealed pallets at their stores as early as today.

The new connection technology is rumored to be Light Peak, a high-speed technology that Intel has been working on for some time. Apple is expected to adopt the technology, though under a different name. Intel has said Light Peak will ship in the first half of 2011.

Intel originally proposed Light Peak as a fiber-optic connection to replace all of the cables that connect something to a computer. But initially, the usage for Light Peak looks more limited, and it will initially use copper wires instead of fiber-optic connections. The speed is faster than universal serial bus (USB) 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits a second in both directions at the same time. Sony is also expected to use Light Peak.

The news doesn’t come as a huge surprise, as Dell has been offering the Adamo at a deep discount since December. The Adamo launched at a pricey $2,000 in March 2009. But as of January, Dell was selling the laptop for $799. Now it’s yet another example of a PC manufacturer trying to compete toe-to-toe with Apple and failing.

The Adamo featured a solid-state hard drive like the Air, had a slick aluminum case and was ultra-thin at just .65 inches. It was more powerful and featured a higher resolution screen than the first-generation Macbook Air, but Apple struck back with an even more compelling Air last year. The new Macbook Air started at a mere $999 for the 11-inch version, and the more compelling 13.3-inch model started at a reasonable $1,299. After seeing the new Air, it was clear the Adamo’s days were numbered.

A source told CNet that the Adamo’s spirit may live on in a new Dell laptop set to be revealed within six months. Meanwhile, Samsung is set to launch its own Macbook Air competitor soon with the 9 Series ultraportable laptop.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

The iPad is Apple’s gateway to notebook PC dominance — if you agree with Deutsche Bank’s Chris Whitmore’s reasoning that investors will begin to look at tablets as notebooks. When viewed in that light, Apple is now the No. 3 notebook PC company — trouncing Dell, Asus, Lenovo, and Toshiba — reports Fortune.

Whitmore used IDC’s global portable computing market share survey for the last quarter, and added the 3.27 million iPads the company sold to its 2.47 million Macbooks and Macbook Pros. That brought the grand total of Apple’s portable computing devices to 5.74 million in the last quarter, and raised the company from N0. 7 in the global portable market to No. 3.

That growth isn’t stopping anytime soon, according to Whitmore:

Our retail checks suggest this share shift continues in July, where the iPad is directly cannibalizing demand for other vendors’ NB products. Remarkably, Apple’s traditional MacBook business posted accelerated unit growth on a Y/Y basis in 2Q despite the launch of the iPad while every other Top 5 vendor slowed.

Not surprisingly, the inclusion of the iPad shows some shocking growth in Apple’s portable computing market share (see Figure 3 below). Also interesting: Apple’s market growth based on Macbooks and Macbook Pros alone also grew, while all of its competitors slowed.

Whitmore’s calculations aren’t exactly complex, but given the growing importance of tablets, it may not be that far-fetched to include them among other portable computers. And if we’re adding the iPad to Apple’s mobile computing totals now, we’ll also be doing the same for competitors in the future as well.