MacRumors

Yesterday, we noted that a 6-core version of Apple's upcoming Mac Pro had shown up in the results database of popular benchmarking tool Geekbench, the third variety of the machine to appear there since June. We compared performance of that machine to an 8-core version from late September but noted that a 12-core version from June was tested using an older version of Geekbench with a different baseline, making direct comparisons with that machine difficult.

John Poole of Primate Labs, the company behind Geekbench, has now put together a good overview of what users should expect for the new Mac Pro when it comes to processor options and performance. With Geekbench being a cross-platform tool, Poole has taken several results from Windows machines running the processors that will be offered in the Mac Pro to develop an estimate of performance of the various Mac Pro models.

As we noted in yesterday's report, the 6-core and 8-core versions showed nearly identical Geekbench scores for single-core tests, and Poole highlights how that will be expected to hold true for the as yet unseen quad-core model due to consistent Turbo Boost frequencies of 3.9 GHz. The 12-core version will, however, score approximately 15% lower on single-core tests due to its slower 3.5 GHz Turbo Boost.

These estimates suggest that single-core performance will be similar for the 4-, 6-, and 8-core models. Since all of the processors have the same Turbo Boost frequency, and since the processors run single-core tasks at the Turbo Boost frequency, this isn't surprising news. However, it is welcome news since users will not have to sacrifice single-core performance when choosing between the 4-core and the 6- or 8-core models.

Where the 12-core version unsurprisingly shines is in multi-core situations, showing roughly 20% improvement over the previous high-end 12-core model and scores approaching 30,000. Other processor options also compare favorably to their corresponding models from the previous generation of Mac Pro.

CPU capability is of course only one part of the overall system performance, and the new Mac Pro will also offer significantly improved graphics performance in the form of standard dual AMD FirePro GPUs. In addition to the systems being able to drive up to three 4K displays simultaneously, Apple clearly expects developers of high-end software to embrace OpenCL to allow Mac Pro users to tap into that vast GPU power for general computational tasks.

Apple's new Mac Pro is launching in December, and the company has so far only released pricing on base configurations of the quad-core ($2999) and 6-core ($3999) models. Customized configurations boosting to the available 8-core or 12-core CPU and the high-end D700 GPU, as well as other options such as RAM and flash storage, will push prices much higher for customers interested in maximum performance.

Several times in recent days, we've mentioned a website called Apple-Tracker.com that was allowing customers to easily monitor in-store Personal Pickup availability of iPhone 5s and iPad Air models.

The site offered a much more efficient method of checking for availability than on Apple's online store, showing product availability of all capacities of a given color/connectivity combination at the 20 closest retail store locations to a given zip code on a single screen. In contrast, Apple's online store requires users to select a single color/connectivity/capacity combination, enter a zip code, and then navigate through four pages of availability listings to see all 20 closest stores.

Late yesterday, the site's operator suddenly shut down the stock tracker, citing a takedown request from Apple's lawyers sent to Heroku, the cloud app platform where the tool had been built. The request had been sent by Apple on October 17 when the site was tracking iPhone 5s availability, but it had since expanded to include iPad Air and was preparing to track Retina iPad mini stocks as well. In particular, Apple cited the tracker's violations of the terms of use for its own site:

Your Use of the Site. You may not use any “deep-link”, “page-scrape”, “robot”, “spider” or other automatic device, program, algorithm or methodology, or any similar or equivalent manual process, to access, acquire, copy or monitor any portion of the Site or any Content, or in any way reproduce or circumvent the navigational structure or presentation of the Site or any Content, to obtain or attempt to obtain any materials, documents or information through any means not purposely made available through the Site. Apple reserves the right to bar any such activity.

"Mordy", the tool's author, notes that he has no interest in fighting Apple on this issue, and so he has shut down the site.

Apple is set to add new manufacturing partners in Asia to handle production of its current line of iOS devices, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The company will contract with Wistron to produce the cheaper iPhone 5c and Compal Communications to assemble the iPad mini, though the report does not say whether the latter will assemble the iPad mini or Retina iPad mini. Apple is reportedly expanding its supplier list as its primary supplier, Foxconn, is focused on producing the iPhone 5s.

Furthermore, Apple is reportedly said to be unhappy with the labor issues that have surrounded Foxconn over the past few years, along with the repair costs said to have come with the high return rate of defective iPhones:

Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, has also been under scrutiny for its labor practices, creating a headache for Apple, they said. According to J.P. Morgan analyst Alvin Kwock, the high return rate of defective iPhone 5 smartphones also led to tensions between Apple and Hon Hai over which company would be responsible for repair-work costs.

Last month, Apple notified Pegatron and Foxconn that it would be reducing orders of the iPhone 5c, with another report stating that iPhone 5s production was to be boosted by 75 percent to meet demand. The iPhone 5s remains in very short supply, with carriers such as Verizon and T-Mobile indicating that they could have sold even more units of the device had supplies been readily available. The iPhone 5c, in contrast, has seen good supplies throughout Apple's distribution channels, allowing the company to meet demand.

"Apple has raised this quarter's iPhone 5S orders from Hon Hai as demand has been stronger than expected. But it takes time to boost production capacity and Apple can't find other assemblers to increase production to meet demand immediately," said the Hon Hai executive.

Meanwhile, Apple's upcoming iPad mini with Retina display is said to be in very short supply, with Apple CEO Tim Cook stating last week during the company's fourth quarter earnings call that it was "unclear whether we will have enough for the quarter or not" and a report last week stating that the company is turning to Samsung as low display yields for the Retina iPad mini continue. Currently, it is not known when specifically the second-generation iPad mini will be released, as Apple has only stated that the tablet will be out by the end of November.

Apple today released iTunes 11.1.3, two weeks after iTunes 11.1.2 and OS X Mavericks were first released.

The update fixes issues with the equalizer and performance when switching views in large libraries.

iTunes 11.1.3

This version of iTunes resolves an issue where the equalizer may not work as expected and improves performance when switching views in large iTunes libraries. This update also includes additional minor bug fixes.

Note: If you are using OS X Mavericks, your book library can now be found in iBooks for Mac.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

iTunes 11.1.3 is a free download through the software update mechanism of the Mac App Store.

Apple today published a Report on Government Information Requests [PDF], outlining statistics on government and law enforcement requests it has received seeking information about individual users or devices from January to the end of June.

We believe that our customers have a right to understand how their personal information is handled, and we consider it our responsibility to provide them with the best privacy protections available. Apple has prepared this report on the requests we receive from governments seeking information about individual users or devices in the interest of transparency for our customers around the world.

In the report, Apple specifies that it has "no interest in collecting customer data" and details the number of law enforcement requests that it has received, the number of accounts specified within the requests, the number of accounts that Apple supplied data for, and the number of requests Apple objected to.

According to the data, Apple received 3,542 device information requests, for 8,605 devices. Apple provided data for 88 percent or 3,110 of those requests. The company also received between 1,000 and 2,000 requests for account information for 2,000 to 3,000 accounts, but is unable to disclose the information that it provided. Apple also provided information for law enforcement agencies in a number of other countries.

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Apple's new iPad Air marks a significant technological step forward for the company, improving performance while reducing the device's volume and weight by over 25%. Much of the size and weight savings have been enabled by improved power efficiency, allowing Apple to reduce the device's battery thickness and capacity by roughly the same 25%.

As noted in IHS iSuppli's component cost analysis released earlier today, the iPad Air now uses just 36 LEDs to light its display, down from as many as 84 in previous generations. Apple has also reduced the thickness of the display assembly, and so it appears that the display is indeed one of the areas where Apple has been able to make the most improvement on size and weight, both in the components themselves and in the battery capacity needed to drive them.

In a new analysis comparing the iPad Air's display to that of the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 and the Google Nexus 10, Ray Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies confirms that Apple has indeed changed display technologies in the iPad Air, moving to indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) semiconductor materials from the amorphous silicon (a-Si) compounds used in previous iPads. While rumors of Apple moving to IGZO for the iPad and other products have circulated for several years, Sharp has experienced difficulties ramping up production and it has taken until now for Apple to bring the technology to its products.

Among the evidence cited by Soneira for his claim that the iPad Air has moved to IGZO technology are power measurements showing that the iPad Air's display offers a 57% improvement in power efficiency compared to previous iPads, a jump that simply would not be possible with a-Si technology. IGZO offers significantly better electron mobility than a-Si, allowing for much lower power requirements. The shift in technology has also enabled other improvements in the display of the iPad Air compared to its predecessor, and Soneira notes that Apple continues to offer an excellent display on its tablet lineup.

Compared to the 4th generation, the screen Reflectance decreased by 23 percent, the Peak Brightness increased by 7 percent, and the Contrast Rating for High Ambient Light increased by 32 percent – all good. Absolute Color Accuracy and Image Contrast fidelity are very good (but somewhat below the Kindle Fire) and are discussed in detail below. The emphasis for the iPad Air is in reduced size, thickness, and weight. The most important under the hood display improvement is the switch from a-Si amorphous Silicon LCDs up to a much higher performance IGZO LCD backplane, which was discussed in our iPad 3 Display Shoot-Out article last year. The switch to IGZO produces an impressive 57 percent improvement in display power efficiency from previous Retina Display iPads – so the iPad Air doesn’t get uncomfortably warm like the earlier iPads.

MacRumors spoke with Soneira about the state of the display industry and Apple's potential plans for the future, and Soneira noted that he expects the Retina iPad mini launching later this month to also adopt IGZO technology. If anything, a move to IGZO is more important on the iPad mini than on the iPad Air due to higher pixel density on the smaller device, with a-Si being infeasible for a Retina display at that size.

While the iPad Air's display is excellent, Soneira notes Apple is no longer at the top of the heap, with Amazon's Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 display actually performing better than the iPad Air's display. This is made possible by Amazon's use of low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology, which offers even better performance and lower power requirements than IGZO.

LTPS is commonly used on displays for smaller devices such as the iPhone, but Amazon has pushed the technology to the edge by bringing it to tablet-sized displays despite high costs and complicated production. Apple is unlikely to follow Amazon's lead in the near future, in large part due to scalability issues that simply won't support the tens of millions of tablets Apple is producing each year.

IGZO also offers a more natural transition for display manufacturers, as they can in many cases simply upgrade their existing equipment from current a-Si production, while moving to LTPS would require a complete change in production. IGZO is also just the first of a number of metal oxide semiconductors that show promise for improved display performance, pointing to solid opportunities for the technology to continue to evolve.

Overall, Soneira notes that the iPad Air display has seen a very solid incremental upgrade, although he does have a few quibbles such as the continued presence of an air gap between the display and the cover glass when Apple has been moving toward laminating the two components together in other products. And with Amazon able to pursue LTPS technology for the Kindle Fire HDX due to its smaller size and lower unit volumes, Apple is finding itself facing stiffer competition in displays where it has long been the industry leader.

Yesterday, the State of Arizona and GT Advanced announced that Apple is building a new 700-employee factory in Arizona to make sapphire glass. Apple will contract with GT Advanced, with that company owning and operating furnaces and related equipment at the facility.

Back in April, Pocketnow went to GT Advanced's factory in Massachusetts to find out how sapphire displays are made. It's likely that the facility in Arizona will use a similar process, though we do not yet know what Apple will use the sapphire for. A safe bet would be the company's rumored smart watch product -- many luxury watches use sapphire glass because of its durability.

The process is relatively straightforward: a sapphire seed, about the size and shape of a hockey puck, is placed at the bottom of a single-use molybdenum barrel called a crucible. The crucible is then filled with a mixture of condensed corundum -a crystalline form of aluminum oxide- and a material called “crackle,” sapphire material left over from previous runs. The full crucible is then placed inside the furnace, where it sits atop the “finger,” a small liquid helium-cooled platform that prevents the sapphire seed from melting too early. The furnace is sealed, the air is evacuated, and the temperature is brought up to 2100 degrees Celsius to allow the materials to melt together. (The video says 2200, but that’s wrong. It’s 2100, for all you making-sapphire-at-home hobbyists.) The material is put through a series of cooling cycles over the next 16 or 17 days, during which time the sapphire slowly crystallizes from bottom to top. The end result is this: a 115kg cylindrical section of industrial sapphire called a “boule.”

The new factory is expected to use next generation, large capacity furnaces with an emphasis on lower cost, higher volume sapphire glass manufacturing.

Apple currently uses small pieces of sapphire glass -- which provides superior durability and scratch resistance to other forms of glass -- to protect the cameras on the iPhone and on the home button for the new Touch ID-equipped iPhone 5s. A report from earlier this year suggested that future smartphones may use sapphire, a crystalline form of aluminum oxide, instead of more traditional forms of glass.

While Apple's new Mac Pro doesn't launch until next month, the machine continues to occasionally surface in the results database for the popular Geekbench benchmarking tool. The first appearance came in June just after the redesigned Mac Pro was teased at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, with that machine running the high-end 12-core 2.7 GHz Xeon E5-2697 v2 from Intel's Ivy Bridge-E family. And in late September, a second entry appeared sharing details on a Mac Pro running the 8-core 3.0 GHz Xeon E5-1680 v2 chip.

A third Mac Pro entry has now shown up in the Geekbench results database, revealing the 6-core 3.5 GHz Xeon E5-1650 v2 chip that will also be an option in the new Mac Pro. As with the previously seen machines, this new Mac Pro is running a custom version of OS X Mavericks, build 13A4023. The machine's appearance leaves only the entry-level quad-core 3.7 GHz Xeon E5-1620 v2 yet unseen in early benchmarks.

While both the 6-core and 8-core machines were tested using Geekbench 3.1.2 in 32-bit mode, which allows for direct comparison of their benchmarks, the 12-core Mac Pro was tested using Geekbench 2.4.3, which used a different baseline and means that scores can not be directly compared. But between the 6-core and 8-core machines, the two unsurprisingly show similar single-core scores of around 3300 in Geekbench 3, while the newly surfaced 6-core machine sees a lower multi-core score of 18309 compared to the 24429 seen on the 8-core version.

The new 8-core Mac Pro had previously shown benchmark scores essentially on par with that of the highest-end 12-core Mac Pro models from 2010 and 2012, and while this new 6-core machine unsurprisingly falls short of that level, it does still easily top the fastest 8-core machine seen in the 2009 and 2010 models.

New Intel Xeon processors are certainly not the only horsepower improvements included in the new Mac Pro, as all machines will come standard with dual AMD FirePro graphics chips. And with the Mac Pro able to tap into those chips for general computation tasks via OpenCL, users will see significant improvements in real-world performance.

Apple's new Mac Pro launches in December, but the company has yet to announce a specific date in the month when it will become available.