MacRumors

Earlier this week, there was some speculation that Apple might be planning to hold its upcoming September 9 iPhone event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, and now there are new details that further hint towards Apple's involvement with the site.

Beginning on Monday, SFPD officers and private security guards began patrolling the grounds at the auditorium, prompting San Francisco news site Hoodline to do some digging into what was going on. It turned out the auditorium was booked for a "trade show" set to run from September 4 until September 10, but because it was registered to a company called "Adams and Associates," nothing linked the booking back to Apple.

Hoodline now reports that a "trusted source" has confirmed the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium will indeed be used for Apple's September iPhone event.

Our source, who wished to remain anonymous due to the extreme privacy surrounding the event, has shown us documentation from event logistics indicating that Apple is renting the building through September 12th. This timing is consistent with what we were told by a security guard on Monday.

Hoodline has also unearthed information on planned street closures that heavily lines up with the timeline when we expect Apple to hold its event. One street will be shut down from 6 p.m. on September 8th until 11:59 on September 10th, while another will be closed on Wednesday, September 9 between 4 a.m. and 11:59 p.m.

The mysteriousness surrounding the booking at the auditorium combined with the information obtained by Hoodline and the upcoming street closures all seems to point towards Apple, but there continues to be no concrete evidence Apple has rented the site for its iPhone event.

In an interview with SFGate, the project director for the Civic Center said he had no knowledge of what the building was being used for, while a spokeswoman for the Planning Department said the "trade show" information was all department was told.

"I'm even the landlord of the building, and they won't tell me," said Rob Reiter, project director for the Civic Center. "I've never seen anything like it before, but I'm just a guy in the basement," he said of his office in the bowels of City Hall.

As was shared on Monday, the San Francisco Planning Department is involved because four window panels are set to be removed to accommodate an "exterior wall mounted star graphic sign," which may be a placeholder for an Apple logo.

In past years, Apple's iPhone-centric September events have been held at a variety of locations around the Bay Area, so it would not be a surprise to see the company hold its event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. With just two weeks to go until Apple's September 9 event, it won't be long before the company's plans are unveiled. Media invites for the event will most likely be going out soon, confirming the event location.

(Thanks, Tom!)

As of today, Apple has begun selling third-party Apple Watch accessories in its retail stores. The first third-party Apple Watch product Apple is offering on store shelves is ElevationLab's NightStand for Apple Watch.

Priced at $29.95, the NightStand is a simple, affordable Apple Watch stand that was one of the first Apple Watch stands on the market. The NightStand was originally offered only in blue, black, and red, but it appears the company partnered with Apple to offer stands that match each of the Apple Watch Sport bands. Apple is selling the NightStand in pink, blue, green, black, and white.

We visited an Apple Store in North Carolina, where the NightStands are on display next to the Apple Watch Sport bands, Apple Watch chargers, and matching Beats headphones.

The NightStand is one of the few Apple Watch stands available for purchase that supports watchOS 2's upcoming Nightstand Mode, which may be one of the reasons why Apple chose it for retail stores. With Nightstand Mode in watchOS 2, the Apple Watch is able to serve as an alarm clock while charging.

According to a source that spoke to MacRumors, the NightStand from ElevationLab is the only Apple Watch accessory Apple is offering for now, but additional accessories might start appearing in stores in September. ElevationLab's NightStand is currently only available in retail stores and is not yet being offered online.

Apple's decision to begin offering third-party Apple Watch accessories comes amid a major revamp of its retail stores. As of today, Apple retail stores no longer have iPad "smart signs" that display pricing information and product details next to each product for sale.

Instead, Apple's display products, such as iPhones, iPads, and Macs, now include a dedicated "Pricing" app that users can open up to get pricing information.

In recent months, Apple Stores have been undergoing some significant transformations. Along with the removal of the smart signs to reduce clutter and confusion, Apple has also slimmed down on the number of accessories for a more refined look. In the future, many accessories will also feature Apple-designed packaging.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President Eddy Cue received 560,000 and 350,000 restricted stock units respectively this week, worth a combined $93.8 million based on AAPL's closing price of $103.12 on Monday, according to a pair of filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Cook was awarded with 280,000 performance-based restricted stock units in full based on Apple's performance relative to the other companies in the S&P 500 over a two-year period ending August 24. Apple needed to achieve a total shareholder return (TSR) of at least 41.36% to place in the top third of companies in the index, and Apple's TSR for the two-year period was 76.76%.

Cook and Cue did not sell any of their RSUs, although 290,836 and 171,853 shares were withheld by Apple respectively to satisfy the minimum statutory tax withholding requirements on vesting of RSUs. Cue transferred his remaining 178,147 shares that vested to a family trust, and he has now been awarded all 700,000 shares granted to him on September 2, 2011.

Cook has a remaining 4.76 million RSUs scheduled to vest as follows per the SEC filing:

700,000 RSUs on August 24, 2016; 700,000 RSUs on August 24, 2021; 1,680,000 vest in six equal annual installments commencing August 24, 2016; the remaining 1,680,000 are all subject to performance based vesting requirements and will potentially vest in six annual installments commencing August 24, 2016.

Cook must remain employed at Apple to receive his unvested RSUs on their applicable vesting dates.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

We've already seen a number of part leaks from the upcoming "iPhone 6s", and a source has now provided MacRumors with several photos and videos showing how those parts can be combined to build a partially functioning iPhone. Specifically, the new photos and videos reveal an iPhone 6s logic board and display assembly paired with a number of iPhone 6 components such as the rear shell and battery to create a device that starts up enough to be able to display a screen showing a gear icon.

The video shows the device booted to the gear screen and then opened, showing the various iPhone 6s and 6 components laid out and connected inside the rear shell. Several components such as the rear camera are missing, but there are enough parts present to deliver data to the iPhone 6s display.

One heavily rumored feature for the iPhone 6s is support for Force Touch, allowing the device to sense how hard the user is pressing on the display and activate differential controls depending on how much pressure is being applied. While the partially booting phone does not prove Force Touch support is present, there are some definite differences from the iPhone 6 such as the shielding on the rear of the display being glued in place rather than screwed in.

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Early this year, Apple acquired popular music plug-in and effect maker Camel Audio, largely known for its Alchemy software, which bundled a range of plug-ins, synthesizers, effects, and sound libraries. Alchemy's powerful audio manipulation tools have now been built into Apple's own music software, Logic Pro X and MainStage 3, via updates that are available today.

Described by Apple as "the ultimate sample manipulation synthesizer," Alchemy introduces additive, spectral, formant, granular, sampler, and virtual analog sound generators, along with 3,000 presets for electronic music ranging from electronic dance to hip hop and rock.

There's a built-in preset browser built around keywords that's designed to let users find sounds quickly, and reshaping them can be done with the Transform Pad. Up to four synth modules can be combined to create multi-layered sounds, and there are 100 modulation sources that can be used to create dynamic instruments. The full release notes for Logic Pro X are below:

What's New
- Introducing Alchemy - the ultimate sample manipulation synthesizer

- Next generation synthesizer plug-in with multiple sound generators including; additive, spectral, formant, granular, sampler, and virtual analog
- Over 3,000 presets for all types of electronic music including electronic dance, hip hop, rock, and sound for picture
- Integrated keyword preset browser for finding the right sounds quickly
- Performance controls like the Transform Pad make it easy to explore and reshape sounds
- Combine up to four synth modules to create complex multi-layered sounds
- Virtual analog oscillators produce authentic recreations of iconic synth sounds
- Wide selection of modeled analog and special effect filters for producing sounds with vintage character and tonal complexity
- Create animated, dynamic instruments using over 100 modulation sources that include flexible LFOs, AHDSR and MSEG envelopes, and step sequencers
- Manipulate and combine samples in new ways using a collection of morphing and resynthesis tools
- Import EXS24 instruments or create your own using a robust set of sampler features
- Apply independent arpeggiators to each of the 4 sound sources to transform simple chords into elaborate performances
- Integrated effects rack with reverb, modulation, delay, compression, and a range of distortion effects

- New tabbed Transform Pad and X/Y Pad Smart Controls for Alchemy instruments
- Share directly to Apple Music Connect
- Adds support for Force Touch trackpad
-Create custom track icons with your own image files
- 1,000 new Apple Loops from a variety of popular instruments and genres including EDM, Hip Hop, Indie, Disco, Funk, and Blues
- Expanded MIDI clock options improve sync compatibility with external MIDI devices
- Multiple additional enhancement and stability improvements

Today's Logic Pro X update also includes support for the Force Touch trackpad in the new Mac models and it introduces tools allowing artists to share their music directly to Apple Music Connect.

Logic Remote, the iPad companion app for Logic Pro X on the Mac, has also gained new smart controls for Alchemy instruments.

Logic Pro X can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $199.99. [Direct Link]

MainStage 3 can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for $29.99. [Direct Link]

Logic Remote can be downloaded from the iOS App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Michael Stuhlbarg, who plays early Apple employee Andy Hertzfeld in Aaron Sorkin's upcoming Steve Jobs movie, spoke with Collider about his experience shooting the movie and shared some insight into the three-act structure of the film.

According to Stuhlbarg, the Steve Jobs movie was a "very unique project" with a rehearsal process that was split between each of the acts, with the actors spending two weeks rehearsing and then two weeks shooting the movie at each different location where the product unveilings took place. The film is centered around three product launches for the original Mac, the NeXT Computer, and the iMac.

This shooting method, says Stuhlbarg, was "unlike anything I've ever done to this point and probably unlike anything I'll ever do again. He said it brought the actors together "in an extraordinary way."

Also, it kind of gave us something in the telling of the story that you don't often get, which is a sense of momentum of what a story is telling you. He got the opportunity to get the barrage of nonsense that was being thrown at him throughout the entire story. It was just unlike anything I've ever done before.

Stuhlbarg also spoke about the experience of working on a highly desirable Aaron Sorkin screenplay and his take on Andy Hertzfeld's relationship with Steve Jobs, all of which can be read in the original interview on Collider or seen in the video below.

The Steve Jobs movie will premiere at the 53rd annual New York Film Festival on October 3 before seeing a wider release on October 9. The film, which was written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, stars Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffman, and Jeff Daniels as John Sculley.

Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly today announced that the company plans to accelerate support for the Apple Watch by having the wearable device be sold in every one of its 1,050 retail locations across the United States "by the end of September" (via Fortune).

The move follows Best Buy's initial plan to deploy retail support for the Apple Watch in just 300 of its stores by the holiday season, but recent strong sales of the device have encouraged the retailer to back Apple in not just Apple Watch support, but with all of the Cupertino company's products.

Currently undergoing renovations at 740 locations in the United States are the Apple branded sections of Best Buy's retail stores, "including new fixtures and more display tables for phones, computers, and tablets." The company has already completed the update at 350 of its stores and has plans to get another 170 completed before the holiday shopping rush coming later this year.

We've also been working with Apple to update the 740 stores-within-a-store that were first implemented in 2007. The stores-within-a-store will have new Apple fixtures and are larger with more display tables for phones, computers, and tablets. We've already implemented approximately 350 of them, and expect to upgrade a total of approximately 520 by the holidays.

The additional display tables are great for the merchandising of Apple Watch, which went on sale at BestBuy.com and in more than 100 of our stores in August. Now, because demand for Apple Watch has been so strong in these stores and online, we are excited to share that beginning September 4 we will be carrying Apple Watch in more than 900 of our big-box stores. Apple Watch will be available in all 1050 of our big-box stores and approximately 30 of our Best Buy Mobile stores by the end of September.

Best Buy began selling the Apple Watch in-store and online in early August, along with a few third-party accessories for the wearable, like charging docks and various bands. The retailer will even begin selling AppleCare and AppleCare+ warranty plans in mid-September, no doubt hitting just in time for the launch of the next generation iPhones. Apple has avoided attaching specific sales figures to the Apple Watch, but Best Buy's doubling down on the company's wearable device is no doubt a sign of the Apple Watch's success.

VMware today launched Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro, the latest versions of its virtualization software for running Windows on a Mac without rebooting. Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro include full support for Windows 10, OS X El Capitan and the latest Retina Macs, in addition to always-on access to Microsoft Cortana.

Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro support DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 for up to 65% faster graphics, alongside compatibility with USB 3.0 and multiple monitors with different DPIs. The virtual machine platform also delivers full 64-bit support with up to 16 vCPUs, 64GB RAM and an 8TB hard drive for a single virtual machine.

Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro are optimized for the latest Macs, including the iMac with Retina 5K Display and 12-inch MacBook. DirectX 10 support enables Mac users to run Windows virtual machines with native resolution on a 5K display, with USB-C support and Force Touch pass-through also in tow for the latest MacBooks.

Fusion 8 Pro has additional advanced features and improvements, including the ability to connect to VMware vCloud Air, IPv6 support for both bridged networks and IPv6-to-IPv4 Network Address Translation (NAT), improved integration with VMware vSphere and support for several new Linux distributions and other operating systems.

Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro are available today for $79.99 and $199.99 respectively through the VMware Online Store, while existing Fusion 6 or 7 customers can upgrade to Fusion 8 for $49.99 or Fusion 8 Pro for $119.99.

Parallels Desktop for Mac users also receive 40% off Fusion 8 and Fusion 8 Pro.

Apple may soon end its $99 "One to One" tutoring program for Mac and iOS users, according to a source that has provided MacRumors with reliable information in the past. Our source says Apple is stopping the program to allow retail employees to focus on hosting a greater number of free workshops, which multiple people are able to attend at once.

One to One is a long-running Apple program that allows customers who purchase a Mac to pay an additional $99 for one year of Mac, iPhone, and iPad instruction from Apple retail employees. One to One sessions include 30 or 60 minute Personal Training sessions, 90-minute Group Training sessions, and 90-minute group-based Open Training sessions.

One to One members can get help with a wide variety of topics, like getting started with an iPhone, iPad, or Mac and using Apple services like iCloud, and iTunes. Training sessions on Apple apps, including Photos, Mail, iMovie, Final Cut Pro, and more, are also included.

One to One will help you do more than you ever thought possible with your Mac. First, we'll set up your email, transfer your photos, music, and other files, and show you how to keep everything in sync with iCloud. Then, we'll work with you to create a curriculum tailored to your goals, learning style, and experience level.

Apple is planning to fold its One to One service into free open workshops, amid some larger changes being made to Apple's teaching methods. In the near future, workshops will be restructured around themes like "Discover" and "Create," and will be more accessible on Apple's main website.

Apple plans to honor existing One to One memberships until they expire, but will not sell new memberships to the program going forward. Customers who need assistance will still be able to sign up for dozens of free, open workshops.

British power technology company Intelligent Energy has developed an iPhone 6 prototype with a built-in fuel cell that supports hydrogen cartridges delivering up to a week's worth of battery life, according to The Telegraph. It also demonstrated a hydrogen-powered MacBook Air.

The patented fuel cell system, reportedly poised for its first major commercial deployment in cell towers across India over the next few weeks, creates electricity based on the chemical reaction of combining hydrogen and oxygen, which produces only small amounts of water vapor and heat as waste.

Intelligent Energy also introduced a hydrogen-powered iPhone charger called Upp based on the same technology last year, but its latest breakthrough has seen it fit the fuel cell portion of the technology alongside an iPhone 6 battery pack without altering the size or shape of the smartphone.

Henri Winand, CEO of Intelligent Energy:

To our knowledge this has never been done before. We have now managed to make a fuel cell so thin we can fit it to the existing chassis without alterations and retaining the rechargeable battery. This is a major step because if you are moving to a new technology you have to give people a path they are comfortable with.

The only cosmetic difference on the iPhone 6 prototype is the addition of rear vents allowing a small amount of water vapor to escape. The Telegraph reports the device it saw at the company's Loughborough, United Kingdom headquarters also had a modified headphone socket for refuelling hydrogen gas, although likely only because it was a prototype.

Intelligent Energy plans to sell a disposable cartridge that will attach to the bottom of a smartphone and provide enough hydrogen-releasing powder "for a week of normal use," and the company's corporate finance chief Mark Lawson-Statham vaguely mentions having a "partner" on board -- speculated to be Apple, although both companies declined to comment as expected.

Nevertheless, the rumours and clues are overwhelming. Apple has a series of patents around fuel cell technology on public record. In recent research on Intelligent Energy, Zeus Capital analyst Dr Tom McColm wrote that he believes it is working closely with Apple.

The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are powered by 1,810 mAh and 2,915 mAh lithium-ion batteries respectively.