MacRumors

Apple's Beats Electronics and Bose already compete in the headphone and speaker markets, but it appears that Bose may be gearing up to compete with Beats in another area -- streaming music.

A Bose job listing first noticed by Hypebot (via VentureBeat) seeks a Senior User Experience Designer to work on prototyping Bose's "next generation streaming music platform and ecosystem of products."

You will help to develop a holistic view of the customer journey through the Bose ecosystem as it relates to our streaming music experiences. You will work with a cross-functional team to implement meaningful and delightful design solutions into experiential concepts and prototypes. You will collaborate with development teams to realize the execution of your designs.

Aside from the information obtained in the job listing, details on Bose's potential music project have been kept under wraps. Bose does, however, ask for job candidates that have worked for Pandora, Spotify, Songza, Beats Music, SiriusXM, Rhapsody, iHeartRadio, RDIO, and several other radio-based streaming music services, suggesting a potential Bose music offering could emulate either the on-demand style of Beats Music or a radio-style service akin to Pandora.

Bose and Beats have had an ongoing rivalry since July of this year, when Bose sued Beats for product infringement. Though the two reached quickly a settlement, Apple briefly removed all Bose products from its retail stores before resuming sales last week.

Beats and Bose have also clashed over NFL players, after Bose signed a deal with the NFL that saw players banned from wearing Beats during games. Jimmy Iovine, Beats co-founder, praised Bose's "culturally inept" move to block the popular headphone brand and said it made Beats "look like superheroes."

Along with returning Bose products to store shelves, Apple has demonstrated that it's open to offering competing products by recently adding Master & Dynamic headphones to its online store and by continuing to offer several non-Beats headphones and speakers in its retail locations. While Apple has made an effort to allow competing products on store shelves, it will be interesting to see if the relationship between Beats and Bose shifts again should the latter company also enter the streaming music market.

Each year, Apple provides its employees with an exclusive Apple-branded holiday gift to thank them for their contributions to the company and to celebrate the holidays.

This year, Apple employees received an exclusive black Apple-branded Incase backpack that's similar to the Incase Staple Backpack. Incase's Staple Backpack, which has a slot for a MacBook along with several different pockets for accessories, typically retails for $59.99. Apple distributed the backpacks with an accompanying poem.

This is our gift to you.
But it can never compare to what you've given.

What does it take to give a gift?
It takes thoughtfulness. Compassion.
And sometimes, sacrifice of your time,
your talent, and your heart,

These are the gifts you give:
kindness, knowledge, humor, and patience.
You give them when you cover for a teammate,
so they can go on a much-deserved break.
When you send an email recognizing a job
well done. Or when you grab an extra coffee
for a friend before you clock in.

You give these gifts whether it's the beginning
of the season, or the end of a very long day.
You do it over, and over, and over again.

Amazing products are designed in Cupertino.
Amazing moments are made by you.
These moments are your gift this
holiday season -- to your customers,
to your team, and to the world.

Thank you.

As noted by 9to5Mac one of the Incase backpacks gifted to an Apple employee has already been listed on eBay and purchased for a buyout price of $99.99. In past years, Apple employees have received blankets, water bottles, hoodies, free apps, and more.

TD Bank plans to soft launch Apple Pay on Tuesday, December 16, according to a source with knowledge of the bank's plans. As of tomorrow, the U.S. subsidiary of the Canadian bank will begin allowing customers to add their TD Bank Visa Debit or Credit Card to Apple Pay, making purchases with their iPhone 6 or 6 Plus.

As with other credit and debit cards, TD Bank cards will be added via Passbook or in the Apple Pay Settings menu. Some customers may be required to confirm their cards by calling TD Bank's customer service numbers.

Eligible cards are listed below:

- TD Bank Visa Debit Card
- TD Bank Business Visa Debit Card
- TD Bank Private Client Visa Debit Card
- TD Easy Rewards Visa (Platinum & Signature) Credit Card
- TD Cash Rewards Visa (Platinum & Signature) Credit Card
- TD Payment Plus Visa Platinum Credit Card
- TD First Class Visa Signature Credit Card
- TD Business Solutions Visa Credit Card
- TD Simply Flexible Visa Business Card

TD Bank employees have been training for the Apple Pay launch since early December, and training wrapped up last week ahead of tomorrow's soft launch. Though Apple Pay is soft launching at TD Bank on Tuesday and will become available to customers, a full launch, complete with advertising, is not expected to come until mid-January.

TD Bank's Apple Pay support is launching later than many other banks, but TD Bank has been an eager partner and announced that it would support Apple Pay shortly after the service first launched.

Apple formed partnerships with many of the largest banks in the United States that saw them adding support for Apple Pay just after it was released, but Apple has also been hard at work getting additional banks on board. In November, for example, several major banks began accepting Apple Pay, including Navy Federal, USAA, US Bank, and PNC.

According to Apple, more than 500 banks are signed on to support Apple Pay and are working on Apple Pay support. A running list of banks that currently support Apple Pay can be found on Apple's site.

Amid the explosion in popularity of streaming music services, Warner Music Group continues to support the concept, as long as subscribers are paying for the music to which they are listening, reports Re/code. Warner's CEO Stephen Cooper spoke about the company's growing interest in streaming music during the company's latest earnings conference call which was held last week.

Streaming music is increasingly important to Warner, with revenue from online music up 74 percent year over year. In the same period, revenue from downloads plummeted 12 percent, echoing a similar downward trend also seen by Apple's iTunes music download service.

To offset the loss from downloads, Warner currently accepts the freemium model of ad-supported streaming music, but only as a means to convert users to paying subscribers. Paid subscriptions and not freemium plans are the future of the industry, states Cooper.

In our view, right now, enabling meaningful global growth in the number of paying subscribers is the best option for artists, for songwriters, for copyright owners and for the services themselves. Subscription streaming is not only a fantastic offering for music fans, it will propel the long-term health of the music industry. We look forward to continuing to work closely with our partners to turbo-charge the adoption rate for subscription streaming.

Warner's emphasis on paying subscribers may not bode well for Apple's reported plan of slashing monthly costs for its Beats Music service. The Cupertino company is rumored to be pushing music labels to cut current subscription prices in half to $5 per month as it negotiates the terms for its recently acquired Beats Music streaming service. Apple argues that lowering the monthly cost will encourage significantly more users to sign up for the paid service, but labels are obviously considering whether those gains will outweigh the lower per-user income that comes with the cheaper pricing.

Along with a goal of lowering consumer pricing, Apple is also said to be working on an early 2015 refresh for the Beats service, likely integrating it into the iTunes brand. With iTunes Radio and Beats Music, Apple offers both ad-supported and paid streaming service, although the two are not currently integrated. iTunes Radio is currently tied to Apple's traditional download offerings, offering easy access for users to purchase individual tracks they hear on iTunes Radio. Even so, iTunes Radio has seen a tepid reception and international expansion has been extremely slow with the service available only in the United States and Australia.

The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are both seeing improved inventory availability at Apple's retail stores across the United States, according to a new report from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who has been tracking in-store availability of various models across 80 different stores since the devices' launch in September.

According to the report, checks of Apple's online store for in-store pickup at the location found that 56 percent of "core SKUs" (AT&T and Verizon) of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were in stock as of last Friday, December 12, which was "up from almost no inventory in mid-November." Munster's previous tracking saw 6 percent availability as of October 14 and 0.4 percent as of November 14.

We believe that this tracking suggests that availability has improved, but we also note that we would have expected availability to be 100%. Previously, we believed that Apple would likely reach 100% availability by the end of the quarter. We now expect it to be closer to 80% by the end of the quarter.

Shipping estimates for online orders through Apple in the U.S. and other countries also began improving in late November and moved to 3-5 business days earlier this month. Munster noted, however, that "typically at this time in the cycle, we would expect online leads times to be same business day."

Looking back at the iPhone 5s, which was also considered constrained for quite some time after launch last year, Munster found in-store availability in the United States was essentially at 100 percent as of December 9, 2013, with online orders achieving "within 24 hours" balance just a day later.

With a little over a week until Christmas, it appears that the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are continuing to face far more shortages than any of their predecessors have in the past, despite the boost in online and retail availability over the past month.

Apple today released a new 90-second holiday ad entitled "The Song", following in the footsteps of last year's "Misunderstood" ad.

"The Song" centers around a girl who stumbles upon an old record, apparently a gift from her grandmother to her grandfather from 1952. The record includes a message about not being able to be together for the holidays and then a rendition of "Love Is Here to Stay" sung by the grandmother.

Upon finding the old record, the girl secretly learns the tune's vocals and puts together her own accompaniment on several instruments, eventually recording her own portions of the song alongside her grandmother's. The girl then leaves an iPad mini with a note saying "A Duet, Press Play" for her grandmother, who listens to the duet between her much younger self and her granddaughter, bringing her to tears as she looks through the old photographs left along with the iPad by the girl.

The new ad is currently being featured on apple.com and should be added to Apple's YouTube site shortly.

As a part of the ongoing class action iPod lawsuit Apple is facing in court this week, former iTunes engineer Rod Schultz testified that he worked on a project that aimed to block non-iTunes clients and shut out third-party music providers competing with the iPod, reports The Wall Street Journal.

A former iTunes engineer testified in a federal antitrust case against Apple Friday that he worked on a project "intended to block 100% of non-iTunes clients" and "keep out third-party players" that competed with Apple’s iPod.

Subpoenaed by the plaintiffs to prove that Apple's moves to block outside music from playing on the iPod drove up prices, Schultz told the court that his project was codenamed "Candy" and that he didn't really want to talk about his work on iTunes from 2006 to 2007.

Schultz went on to reiterate Apple's argument in the case, suggesting the security measures introduced in iTunes reflected the digital music landscape at the time. Record companies, Apple says, demanded DRM and forced Apple to keep the iPod secure.

Both Schultz and Apple also argued Apple's DRM efforts were designed to protect its systems and user experiences, which could have been compromised by being opened up to third-party music players and file formats. Schultz did, however, say that this also led to iPod's market dominance.

Schultz was the final witness in the case, and Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said she plans on sending the case to the jury for deliberations next week. The plaintiffs are requesting $350 million in damages, which could triple under antitrust laws.

Though Apple acquired its own headphone brand with the purchase of Beats Electronics earlier this year, the Cupertino company is demonstrating that there's still room for competitors in its Apple Store with the new addition of premium headphones by Master & Dynamic.

As of this week, Apple is now selling the Master & Dynamic MH30 On-Ear Headphones and the Master & Dynamic MH40 Over-Ear Headphones in its online store after launching in select retail stores last month. Priced quite similarly to premium Beats headphones, the $349 and $399 Master & Dynamic headphones focus on both design and high-quality audio, much like Beats.

In a July post, Forbes profiled Master & Dynamic's headphones, labeling them "the Anti-Beats by Dre." Rather than aiming for a more modern look with a bass heavy sound and flashy advertising, Forbes says Master & Dynamic headphones have been designed with a classic style, a focus on music, and a desire to provide a quality product for a niche market.

The niche that Jonathan Levine, the company's founder and CEO, saw was that Beats had blown open a massive market, but left a huge hole between premium headphones that prioritized style and those that focused on audio quality. Master & Dynamic seeks to wed design and quality in a way that attracts both audiophiles and users who wear their headphones as an accessory.

Master & Dynamic headphones, which are new to the market this year, have gotten largely positive reviews from music-focused publications, being lauded for their sound quality and their comfortable design, which includes earcups with calfskin and lambskin. One reviewer compared the headphones to the Parrot Zik, another set of high-quality headphones that have received excellent reviews.

In October, Apple removed Bose headphones from its Apple Stores, a move that some chalked up to Apple's reluctance to sell a product that competed with its line of Beats headphones, but Bose products began returning to the Apple Store earlier this week. It remains unclear why Bose headphones had been removed from Apple Stores, but it may have been related to a now-settled patent infringement lawsuit Bose levied against Beats.

Most Bose headphones have not yet returned to Apple's online and retail stores, but it is possible they'll be re-added in the near future. Though Apple has placed a heavy focus on Beats headphones, giving them a prominent place both in retail stores and online, Apple has shown few signs of cutting out all competition.

In addition to adding new headphones from competing brand Master & Dynamic, the company continues to sell a range of other headphones from companies like Bowers & Wilkins, Alpine, Parrot, SMS Audio, Marshall, Denon, Sennheiser, and more.

The popular PC "dystopian document thriller" Papers, Please launched on the iPad early this morning, after hitting Mac earlier this year and originally being released on Steam in August of 2013. As noted by our sister site TouchArcade, however, the new iOS version is bringing a bit of controversy with it as one of the game's somewhat adult elements has been removed after facing Apple's family-focused App Store censorship rules.

The game sets players as unlucky border control guards working for the fictional nation of Arstotzka. The entire game revolves around checking the documents of people attempting to immigrate into the country, cross-checking passports, ID cards, and work releases to ensure only those with proper documentation get past.

The focus of Apple's censorship lies in the full-body scanner introduced a few levels into the game that tasks the player with ensuring the person attempting to enter Arstotzka isn't carrying any kind of contraband. The PC, Mac, and Linux versions of the game depicted fully nude (albeit in low resolution given the nature of the game's graphics) versions of characters when put through this scanner, with an option to censor the nudity by including underwear on the characters.

Papers, Please for iPad, however, removes the choice from the equation, automatically covering the characters in underwear when scanned by the player. App Store rules have always skewed toward the more conservative, especially when compared to other content available uncensored through the iTunes Store, but even so, the App Store's rules are on occasion applied unevenly with some games from high-profile developers being approved without censored graphics.

Regardless of the minor censorship issue, the iPad version of Papers, Please appears to be an excellent port of the original game, including all 31 days and 20 possible endings of its desktop counterpart, with optimized touch screen controls enhanced for iPad. It also includes "unlockable multitouch support for faster paperwork, an enhanced inspection mode, Game Center achievements, leaderboards, mid-day resume, and more."

Papers, Please can be downloaded from the App Store for $5.99. [Direct Link]

Update 11:50 AM: Papers, Please developer Lucas Pope says that he was contacted by an Apple representative who reported that the initial rejection was the result of a misunderstanding and invited Pope to resubmit with the nudity option enabled. Pope says he will restore the option (defaulted to no nudity) this weekend and resubmit to Apple.

Manufacturing of Apple's A9 processor is reportedly underway in Samsung's Austin, Texas plant, according to Korea's ET News (via The Verge). Samsung is believed to be handling the bulk of the orders for the A9 using its 14-nanometer chip process, with rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) contributing a supplementary supply.

Samsung and TSMC have been competing for Apple's lucrative A9 processor contract after Apple in 2013 signed a multi-year deal with Taiwan's TSMC to supply A-series processors for Apple's iOS devices. TSMC took lead on the A8 chip, fabricating the SoC for both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The Taiwanese company also reportedly landed the contract to produce Apple's A8X chip, which is found in the new iPad Air 2.

Samsung semiconductor head Kim Ki-nam last month confirmed the company would begin producing 14-nanometer processors for Apple in a supply chain deal that will have a positive impact on Samsung's profits. A report from last year suggestsed TSMC would replace Samsung as Apple's lead chip supplier, but Samsung's technological progress with its 14-nanometer process may have swung the pendulum back in its favor.