MacRumors

Just a couple weeks after it was revealed that Natalie Portman was in talks to play an unspecified part in Aaron Sorkin's Steve Jobs movie, Variety is reporting that the actress has decided to pass on the movie, though it's unclear why.

Other actresses are already meeting with filmmakers over the potential role, and the film is still on track to begin filming in the Spring of 2015. The film is rumored to have several female parts, including Steve Jobs' daughter, Lisa Brennan, and Katie Cotton, Apple's well-known former PR lead.

The movie has seen its share of ups and downs thus far, with both Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale passing on the role of Steve Jobs before Sony Pictures dropped the movie due to a disagreement on the filming schedule with director Danny Boyle. According to Fusion, internal data from Sony Pictures, leaked via a data dump by hackers who infiltrated Sony Pictures' systems, reveals the studio's revenue forecasts for the film dropped 25% after DiCaprio dropped out, indicating the studio wasn't as confident in the movie's financial success as it used to be. However, the movie was quickly picked up by Universal Pictures.

The film, based on Walter Isaacson's Steve Jobs biography, will consist of three 30-minute scenes depicting three of Apple's product launches.

Back in October, Apple removed all Bose audio products, both demo and sellable, from its retail stores around the world, but it appears the company may be planning to reintroduce Bose products to store shelves in the near future.

According to a source that spoke to French Apple website iGen.fr [Google Translate], some Apple retail stores have begun receiving shipments of Bose products with orders to put the products back on store shelves next week.

It was not clear why Apple removed Bose products from its retail stores, but the decision did follow Apple's acquisition of Beats Electronics and a July patent infringement lawsuit that Bose filed against Beats. In the lawsuit, Bose accused Beats Electronics of infringing on several patents related to noise cancellation and other audio technologies with its Beats Studio and Studio Wireless headphones.

Shortly before Bose products were removed from Apple Stores, Beats and Bose agreed to settle the dispute between them, so it's possible that a planned removal and reinstatement of Bose products may be related to now-settled disagreement between the two companies. The move to remove Bose products from stores may have been initiated ahead of the settlement, with the products now able to return due to the end of the feud.

While a return of Bose products to the Apple Store following the end of the lawsuit makes some sense, it remains unclear whether iGen.fr's information is accurate. Beats and Bose still offer competing products, and recently, Bose teamed up with the NFL to ban NFL players from wearing Beats headphones during games. Rather than taking offense at the move, however, Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine was pleased with the attention the ban garnered Beats, saying "I can't believe I'm this lucky" and that it made Beats "look like superheroes."

Bose products are not the only products that Apple has removed from its store shelves in recent months. The company also pulled Fitbit fitness accessories from its retail and online stores in November, without explanation.

Update 12/9: 9to5Mac has acquired internal store information that confirms Bose products such as the SoundLink III Bluetooth Speaker will be returning to store shelves shortly.

TIME today posted its shortlist of people who are being considered for the publication's annual "Person of the Year" award, and Tim Cook is once again on the nomination list. TIME is recognizing Cook for the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and his recent decision to come out as gay.

Back in late October, Tim Cook made the bold move of announcing his sexual orientation in a letter written for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he said that his decision was done to "bring comfort to anyone who feels alone" and to "inspire people to insist on their equality."

Alongside Tim Cook, other nominees include the Ferguson protestors, the Ebola caregivers, Russian president Vladimir Putin, pop artist Taylor Swift, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma, acting president of the Iraqi Kurdish Region Masoud Barzani, and National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell.

Tim Cook, who introduced Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple Watch, and Apple Pay this year, and whose decision to come out made him the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO.

TIME's Person of the Year award is given to "a person, couple, group, idea, place, or machine" that has "for better or for worse done the most to influence the events of the year," with the publication's editorial team ultimately deciding on a winner.

Tim Cook was previously nominated in 2012 alongside Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, Bill and Hilary Clinton, and the three scientists who discovered the Higgs Boson, but the award went to U.S. president Barack Obama. In 2013, the Person of the Year award went to Pope Francis, and in 2010, it went to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the only tech company CEO to receive the award since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos won in 1999.

Update December 10: TIME has named the "Ebola Fighters" as its Person of the Year for 2014.

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.

Panic's file management app Transmit made its way to iOS with the launch of iOS 8, bringing several useful capabilities that took advantage of iOS features, including "Extensibility" options that let any app upload files to a server using Transmit and a "Send" feature that let files be shared to multiple services like Dropbox and iCloud Drive.

As of last week, the function that let files be sent to Dropbox or iCloud Drive was removed from Transmit, at the request of Apple. As Panic explains in a blog post, Apple has asked the company to remove the "Send" feature from Transmit because Apple's rules state that apps cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless content was created in the app itself.

In short, we're told that while Transmit iOS can download content from iCloud Drive, we cannot upload content to iCloud Drive unless the content was created in the app itself. Apple says this use would violate 2.23 -- "Apps must follow the iOS Data Storage Guidelines or they will be rejected" -- but oddly that page says nothing about iCloud Drive or appropriate uses for iCloud Drive.

Though Panic is only barred from uploading files to iCloud Drive, the company says that it was forced to remove the "Send" feature entirely because the Share Sheet used to send documents to other services automatically lists iCloud, and it can't be altered.

Panic is hoping that its blog post will attract the attention of Apple employees who may be able to fix the frustrating position Apple has put the company in, either through making the Share Sheet alterable or by simply allowing Transmit to upload to iCloud Drive.

iOS 8 brought quite a few changes to iOS, including Notification Center widgets, third-party keyboards, and deep integration between apps in the form of extensions. Apple has had difficulty sorting out how it wants various features in iOS 8 to be used, however, and the company's indecision and its unclear documentation has led to several instances where developers were asked to remove key functions from their apps.

Useful Notification Center widget Launcher was pulled from the App Store in September, and more recently, Apple has asked apps like Neato and Drafts to remove widget functionality that violates the company's guidelines. There is some hope for Transmit, however, as Apple has reversed course on one notable removal request. In late October, Apple asked calculator app PCalc to remove the calculator functionality from its Notification Center widget, a decision that was later reversed after the issue received significant attention.

Transmit can be downloaded from the App Store for $9.99. [Direct Link]

China's minister of the Cyberspace Administration recently sat down with Tim Cook for a meeting that included discussion about the Apple Watch and Chinese security concerns, reports China.com.cn (via Bloomberg Businessweek). Lu's visit to the U.S. also included meetings with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

Cook was photographed showing off his wrist watch to Internet Information Officer Lu Wei, who is holding the device in his hand. Though the device is not identified in the source photo, it certainly appears to be the Apple Watch with white Sport Band frequently worn by Cook, and a translation of the original report quotes Cook as telling Lu he is the first outsider to see the watch.

The comment is not strictly true as executives have shown the watch to others on occasion since its unveiling and it has been featured in Vogue China and at Parisian fashion boutique Colette, but Lu may be one of the first government officials to handle the device.

Apple may face some regulatory hurdles with Apple Watch in China, as Lu reportedly reiterated to Cook that China is willing to open its markets to new products and technology, but the devices must face scrutiny before they are released. Each device must pass an official network security assessment that ensures national security is not being compromised, and the user's information is being accessed properly.

Apple may be willing to subject its watch to Chinese government oversight to a certain degree, as China already is a hotbed for smartwatches with more than half of existing devices coming from Chinese companies. Most of these smartwatches are low quality, off-brand products available in the largely unregulated Chinese marketplace.

In the latest phase of its Priceless Surprises promotion that rewards cardholders for simply using their credit and debit cards, MasterCard is partnering with Gwen Stefani to offer private performances, unique experiences, and other surprises for customers. The campaign comes with a new ad featuring Apple Pay and Stefani's new single, "Spark the Fire."

To kick things off, MasterCard will debut a new 30 second TV spot today featuring Stefani who, with the help of a “Surprise launcher,” sends Priceless Surprises to cardholders paying with their MasterCard with Apple Pay. The spot features Stefani’s new song, Spark The Fire.

Surprises include everything from handbags and golf experiences to concert tickets, and even a chance to hang out with Gwen Stefani herself. The spot, directed by Sophie Muller of Wondros, exemplifies what the MasterCard platform is about: surprising cardholders with unbelievable prizes while also inspiring them to give, and share their own Priceless Surprises whether they’re paying with traditional credit, debit or prepaid cards or using innovative new payment options like Apple Pay.

MasterCard previously featured Apple Pay and its Priceless Surprises program alongside the World Series in October, encouraging Apple Pay users to take advantage of the opportunity to win rewards such as tickets to World Series games and meet-and-greets with baseball stars.

Credit card issuers have also proven to be firmly behind Apple Pay due in large part to increased security. Last month, Chase launched its own ad campaign featuring Fun front man Jack Antonoff's side project Bleachers using Apple Pay around Los Angeles while preparing for a rooftop concert.

Apple is continuing to expand its digital audio expertise with the recent addition of digital signal processing (DSP) expert Dana Massie to its team as an SoC Audio Architect. Massie has over 30 years of extensive experience working with DSP hardware and software architecture with high-profile companies such as Audience and Waves, as well as prior brief stints at Apple and NeXT.

While at Audience for the past nine years, Massie was the Director of DSP chip architecture, focused on developing "the most advanced audio processing algorithms available for speech enhancement." Massie also formerly worked at Apple starting in 2002 as the manager of audio hardware. In his year-long stint, Massie was responsible for the audio input/output system on Apple desktops and notebooks.

Apple and Audience have a history of working together, with Apple licensing Audience's voice processing technology to use in its iPhone 4 and 4s. The Cupertino company used a standalone voice processing chip from Audience in the iPhone 4 and opted to incorporate this signal processing functionality directly into the A5 chip used in the iPhone 4s. Audience's earSmart noise cancellation technology was a key component powering Siri in the iPhone 4s.

Massie joined Apple this month as an SoC Audio Architect following a six-week sabbatical upon leaving Audience. It's unclear what his exact duties at Apple will involve, as Massie not surprisingly only says he will work on "audio stuff" in his LinkedIn profile. Given his work history, Massie may be tasked with improving either voice recognition technology or audio quality in upcoming Apple hardware.

Massie joins other audio pioneers employed by Apple in recent years. The growing list includes Audio expert Peter Eastty of Oxford Digital Limited who was hired earlier this year and THX pioneer Tomlinson Holman who joined Apple in 2011.

(Thanks, Manu!)

Apple today released the 2014 version of its iTunes Store awards, which highlights the best music, movies, TV shows, apps, books and podcasts of the year.

Here are some of the top-level winners for 2014:

Apps:
iPhone App of the Year: Elevate - Brain Training
iPhone Game of the Year: Threes!
iPad App of the Year: Pixelmator
iPad Game of the Year: Monument Valley

Music:
Best Artist: Beyoncé
Best Album: 1989 by Taylor Swift
Best Song: Fancy (feat. Charli XCX) by Iggy Azalea
Best New Artist: Sam Smith

Movies:
Best Blockbuster: Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Family Movie: The LEGO Movie
Best Director: Richard Linklater
Best Discovery: Obvious Child

TV Shows:
TV Show of the Year: Fargo
Best Performances: True Detective, Season 1
Best Discovery: The Honorable Woman
Best Breakthrough: Key & Peele, Volume 4

Books:
Best Fiction: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Best Nonfiction: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs

Apple has also given its end of the year charts for the most downloaded and top grossing iPhone and iPad apps. For the iPhone, Heads Up!, Facebook Messenger, and Clash of Clans finished as the top paid, top free, and top grossing app, respectively. For the iPad, Minecraft - Pocket Edition, YouTube, and Clash of Clans finished as the top paid, top free, and top grossing app, respectively.

As customary for its end of the year listings, Apple has also highlighted various games and apps from a wide variety of categories. The company is also featuring content across the various genres and categories for each content type.

A list of previous winners are also available here: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009

Apple today debuted a new ad for the iPad Air 2 named "Change" which showcases the new tablet being used in a wide variety of professions and situations. The ad shows the tablet being used by artists, motorcycle enthusiasts, photographers, and schoolteachers as its full-screen visuals shrink to resemble the form of the device itself.

The new "Change" ad campaign for the iPad Air 2 follows Apple's "Your Verse" campaign for the original iPad Air, which debuted last January and showed the specific use in the iPad in a number of dedicated fields. Those stories noted the iPad's use in mountaineering, sports, choreography, oceanography, travel, musical composition, and more.

Apple is in court this week dealing with an ongoing class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of purposefully crippling competing music services and inflating prices by locking iPods and iTunes music to its own ecosystem.

Evidence from Steve Jobs, in the form of a series of emails, has played a large role in the case so far, and today, the former Apple CEO was featured in the trial again, when a deposition videotaped in 2011 was shown in court. CNET has been attending the trial since it started earlier this week, and has relayed what Jobs had to say.

In the deposition, taped six months before his death, Steve Jobs echoed much of what Eddy Cue said earlier in the week, suggesting Apple's contracts with record companies forced it to maintain airtight Digital Rights Management (DRM) policies that locked out music from other sources.

"We had pretty much black and white contracts with the labels," Jobs said in the deposition. Those contracts stipulated that if people violated Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system, a technology that would detect other music stores' song files and prevent users from loading them onto the iPod, "... that would be in clear violation of the licenses we had from the labels and they could cease giving us music at any time."

Jobs went on to say that Apple was "very concerned" with RealNetwork's efforts to bypass Apple's DRM. In 2004, the competing music store reverse engineered the FairPlay DRM, gaining access to the iPod. Apple was unhappy with the move, painting RealNetworks as a hacker and later updating iTunes to once again prevent RealNetworks music from playing on the iPod.

According to Jobs, preventing the iPod from playing music from competing services was "collateral damage" caused by record companies confusing demands asking Apple to both open its platform to competitors and prevent hacking via DRM.

During the case, the plaintiffs have argued that Apple had an obligation to allow third-party companies to load music onto the iPod, and that its move to block competitors created a monopoly. Apple, meanwhile, has argued that pressure from record companies and a desire to protect customers from malicious content kept it from making iTunes and the iPod more accessible to third-party companies.

Apple has also suggested that it did not have a monopoly in the market at the time as there were several other MP3 players available, including Microsoft's Zune. As noted by CNET, Jobs' deposition may somewhat undermine that argument, however, as he told the court "We were the only big company involved in this stuff at this time, the one with the deepest pockets."

The iPod antitrust lawsuit, which seeks $350 million in damages, is expected to last for several more days, though Apple is currently attempting to get the case dismissed entirely, as one plaintiff has been removed from the lawsuit and another's iPod purchase dates are in question. The plaintiff's lawyers are fighting Apple's dismissal request and have asked the judge to add a new plaintiff -- a Michigan man who bought an iPod touch in 2008.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are widely recognized as the major driving forces behind the creation of Apple computer, but there were also several other key employees in the early years who helped establish what is now one of the most valuable companies in the world.

TechRepublic has published an in-depth profile and interview with Bill Fernandez, who was Apple's first employee when the company was incorporated in 1977. Fernandez, who helped build the first Apple I and Apple II computers and is credited with introducing Jobs and Wozniak, shares some details on working with a young Steve Jobs, the early days of Apple, and more in the piece.

We both also were not at all interested in the superficial bases upon which the other kids were basing their relationships, and we had no particular interest in living shallow lives to be accepted. So we didn't have many friends."

Jobs reportedly spent quite a bit of time over at Fernandez's house, which his mother had decorated in a "meticulous Japanese style" that Fernandez credits as an early influence on Jobs' interest in minimalist design.

Fernandez was also a close friend of Steve Wozniak and introduced him to Steve Jobs, which led to the famous partnership between the two. After Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple, they hired Fernandez as an electronic technician and he became the first official full-time employee.

According to Fernandez, he drew the first completed schematic of the working Apple II after reverse engineering Wozniak's design to standardize it for production. The schematic went on to be used to build the Apple II, making history.

"When Woz designed something, most of the design was in his head," said Fernandez. "The only documentation he needed was a few pages of notes and sketches to remind him of the overall architecture and any tricky parts. What the company needed was a complete schematic showing all the components and exactly how they were wired together."

As the first Apple computers grew in popularity, the company began hiring more employees and started inching its way towards an IPO. Despite his position as one of the early employees, Fernandez, as a technician, was not able to advance in the company and wasn't offered stock options. "There was no growth path for me," he said, stating that he became bored and dissatisfied with the work.

With no prospects for advancement, Fernandez left Apple just 18 months after he started working for the company. Fernandez later returned as a member of the technical staff after spending some time in Japan, going on to work on the first Macintosh. Though he was never officially awarded stock, Wozniak gave out shares of his own stock to many early employees, including Fernandez, Chris Espinosa, and Daniel Kottke.

Bill Fernandez's full interview, which goes into far more detail about the early days of Apple and his life after leaving the company, can be read over at TechRepublic.

Foxconn recently deployed robots to help assemble iPhones and other Apple devices, but so far the program may not be as successful as first anticipated. According to the Chinese economic website Jiemian (via G for Games), the first-generation Foxconn robots are not precise enough to meet Apple's standards.

In the first stage of deployment, the "Foxbots" have been tasked with menial jobs that include the assembly of larger components and tightening screws. Unfortunately, the bots are proving to have an accuracy to 0.05 mm, which is above the 0.02 mm tolerance required to assemble Apple's products.

Part of the issue involves the lineage of the robots, which were adapted from the car manufacturing industry. The larger, clunky robots are not designed with the flexibility necessary for the assembly of Apple's thin and complex devices. Foxconn reportedly is working on the second-generation Foxbot, but the technology still may need additional years of refinement before it can make a meaningful contribution to the assembly process.

Foxconn has been seeking ways to improve production to meet Apple's demand for iPhone and iPad units. The company routinely increases its hiring ahead of planned Apple product launches with the company reportedly hiring up to 100,000 new workers to help assemble the iPhone 6. The manufacturer also may be looking to enter the display market with a new display manufacturing plant in Taiwan.