MacRumors

Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Government Affairs, Catherine Novelli, has been nominated to serve as Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, according to an announcement from The White House (via AllThingsD).

Catherine Ann Novelli is Vice President of Worldwide Government Affairs at Apple, Inc., a position she has held since 2007. Previously, Ms. Novelli was a partner at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, LLP from 2005 to 2007. From 1991 to 2005, she served at the Office of the United States Trade Representative and from 1997 to 2005, she was the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Europe and the Mediterranean.

From 1985 to 1991, Ms. Novelli served in the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Commerce. From 1982 to 1985, she practiced law in the Washington D.C. office of Debovoise and Librman. Ms. Novelli received a B.A. from Tufts University, a J.D. from the University of Michigan, and a LL.M. from the University of London.

Novelli, who works in Washington D.C., currently heads up a team at Apple that handles the company’s federal, international, and state government relations. She has been with the company since 2007, and it remains unclear if she will leave her position at Apple to take up the new post.

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.

Apple paid EA a "truckload of money" to delay the Android version of Plants vs Zombies 2 according to Frank Gibeau, head of EA Labels, reports gaming site Giant Bomb.

With the exception of China, Plants vs Zombies 2 has not launched on Android yet -- the fact that the game is iOS-only is a big win for Apple.

“Apple gave us a truckload of money to delay the Android version [of Plants vs Zombies 2],” said Frank Gibeau, head of EA Labels.

Giant Bomb confirmed the quote with several sources who watched the presentation today.

It is unclear what a “truckload of money” means, and we have no further details on the apparent agreement between Apple and EA.

Apple, for its part, categorically denies the report, saying that no money was exchanged. It's also possible that there was some sort of marketing agreement between the companies where the app was launched on iOS first in exchange for prominent placement on the App Store.

If the report is accurate, it would be the first known instance of Apple paying developers outside of the standard App Store revenue and shows how important AAA-level games are to the App Store. It also shows how important Apple is to the developers of AAA titles, with the App Store on par with other consoles with regards to exclusive launches. Apple has a tendency to show favoritism with regards to App Store placement and promotions to developers that release exclusively on iOS.

Plants vs Zombies 2 is a free download for the iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]

Update: EA has issued a statement to Metro acknowledging that no money changed hands and that the issue was an "unfortunate misunderstanding".

‘A comment from an internal meeting taken out of context has created an unfortunate misunderstanding. Reports of a paid relationship between Apple and EA are factually inaccurate, and we apologise for any confusion,’ said a later EA statement.

Over the weekend, the Chaos Computer Club announced that it had bypassed Apple’s Touch ID sensor using a photograph of a fingerprint to create a fake fingerprint model.

The full fingerprint emulation process has now been detailed in a new video from CCC member Starbug and replicated by security expert Marc Rogers, who believes the average consumer has nothing to worry about.

As seen in the video, the CCC uses a fingerprint taken from the screen of the iPhone 5s and then uses a complicated multi-step process to convert it to a usable print. According to Starbug, who spoke to Ars Technica, the process "was way easier than expected," taking just 30 hours to complete.

I was very disappointed, as I hoped to hack on it for a week or two. There was no challenge at all; the attack was very straightforward and trivial.

The Touch ID is nevertheless a very reliable fingerprint system. However, users should only consider it an increase in convenience and not security.

While Starbug suggests that the hack is "very easy" and can be completed with "inexpensive office equipment like an image scanner, a laser printer, and a kit for etching PCBs," Marc Rogers, who also completed the bypass, disagrees, noting that it requires "over a thousand dollars worth of equipment."

But, the reality is these flaws are not something that the average consumer should worry about. Why? Because exploiting them was anything but trivial.

Hacking TouchID relies upon a combination of skills, existing academic research and the patience of a Crime Scene Technician.

Rogers goes on to explain the process, which requires an unsmudged, complete print of the correct finger and a way to “lift” the print using cyanoacrylate (super glue) fumes, fingerprint powder, and fingerprint tape. The lifted fingerprint must then be photographed, edited, and printed onto transparency film, where it is converted to a usable fingerprint via a PCB board or a laser printer.

Even when all of these steps are created, using the fake fingerprint was "tricky" and prone to failure.

So what do we learn from all this?

Practically, an attack is still a little bit in the realm of a John le Carré novel. It is certainly not something your average street thief would be able to do, and even then, they would have to get lucky. Don’t forget you only get five attempts before TouchID rejects all fingerprints requiring a PIN code to unlock it.

However, let’s be clear, TouchID is unlikely to withstand a targeted attack. A dedicated attacker with time and resources to observe his victim and collect data, is probably not going to see TouchID as much of a challenge. Luckily this isn’t a threat that many of us face.

With Touch ID able to be bypassed through a fake fingerprint, it remains unclear how the system functions. According to Apple, the sensor uses advanced capacitive touch and takes a high-resolution image from the “sub-epidermal layers” of skin, a process that, theoretically, should render a fake fingerprint useless. Starbug speculates that this is due to Apple's desire for usability over security, noting that the sensor will be defeated if the fake fingerprint is "sufficiently close" to the characteristics of human tissue.

Since its release, Touch ID has been the subject of much scrutiny. Senator Al Franken has sent a letter to Tim Cook asking a number of questions about the security of the system and the exact fingerprint storage process, and Apple has published an extensive knowledge base article about the benefits of the Touch ID system to alleviate some consumer concerns.

Apple is preparing a supplemental update for OS X 10.8.5 to address several issues with FaceTime HD cameras on the company's latest MacBook Air models, external drive handling, HDMI audio, and USB Bluetooth adapters, reports 9to5Mac. The update, which arrives as Build 12F42, has been seeded to Apple employees and should be making its way to a public release in the near future.

The OS X v10.8.5 Supplemental Update is recommended for all users running OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.5. This update:

- Resolves an issue that may prevent certain applications from using the FaceTime HD camera on mid-2013 MacBook Air systems
- Fixes an issue that may cause external drives to be ejected after the computer goes to sleep
- Addresses an issue that may prevent HDMI audio from working after waking from sleep
- Fixes an issue that may prevent certain USB Bluetooth adapters from working

The FaceTime camera issue in particular has been the subject of a number of complaints, with Skype issuing a notice acknowledging the issue.

The 10.8.5 update updated a CoreMediaIO plugin that accesses the MBA camera, but didn't bundle the 32-bits version of it.

Other (older and newer) versions of the OS do include a universal version (32 and 64 bits), but not 10.8.5.

This means 32-bits apps such as Skype or iMovie cannot load the plugin, making the built-in facetime camera invisible to these them.

Skype noted in its post two weeks ago that it would be in touch with Apple about addressing the issue.

IHS Suppli has released its estimate of the component costs involved in building the iPhone 5s, performing a virtual teardown based on information revealed by Apple and industry knowledge. The estimate, which does not include numerous other costs involved in product development, manufacturing, and sales, such as research and development, software, patent licenses, marketing, and distribution expenditures, pegs the component cost of the 16 GB iPhone 5s at $199.

The full report has not yet been released but AllThingsD received early access.

Apple spends at least $191 on components to build a 16 gigabyte iPhone 5s. The cost rises to $210 for a 64GB unit. The cost of assembly adds another $8 per unit, bringing the range to between $199 and $218.

That cost estimate is pretty close to that of the original iPhone 5, which IHS pegged at about $205 last year. Without a contract, the iPhone sells at prices ranging from $649 to $849, depending on storage capacity.

The bill of materials includes $41 for the iPhone 5s display, $32 for the RF chips, $7 for the fingerprint sensor, and $19 for the A7 chip manufactured by Samsung. The report says the cheaper iPhone 5c costs between $173 and $183, with the A6 processor costing $13.

However, from a material perspective, the iPhone 5c and 5s are very similar. With the exception of the fingerprint sensor, A7 processor and "some newer memory chips that consume less power", IHS analyst Andrew Rassweiler says they are "basically the same".

However, Apple appears to have spent "a lot of time and money combining [radio frequency] chips", says Rassweiler. "Apple seems to be pushing its RF suppliers to do things they don't do for anyone else."

Those vendors, according to IHS’s analysis, are Qualcomm, Skyworks, Avago, RF Micro Devices and TriQuint Semiconductor, all of which make chips that handle different aspects of the iPhone’s connections to various wireless networks. These efforts toward getting the radio frequency chips to work together have the effect, Rassweiler said, of allowing the phones to support more frequency bands in a single phone than before. “The iPhone 5 supported no more than five LTE bands. The 5s and 5c can support as many as 13, and that’s unique,” he said. “Unlike other phone designers, Apple has spent a lot of time collaborating with the RF chip companies to find novel solutions that its competitors don’t have.”

Some older generations of iPhones required a number of different models to cover all the different cellular frequencies, but Rassweiler says the progress Apple has made on RF chips suggests the company may soon be able to produce a single iPhone model that works on all cellular frequencies, increasing economies of scale significantly.

The full IHS Suppli report should be released tomorrow.

At its media event introducing the new iPhones earlier this month, Apple highlighted several chip innovations included on the iPhone 5s including a new A7 main chip with one billion transistors and a smaller M7 "motion coprocessor" designed to efficiently measure accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass data and thus allow for enhanced fitness tracking, navigation, and more.

Chipworks and iFixit have now posted a teardown revealing what's inside these chips, as well as several other components of the iPhone 5s, offering an interesting first glimpse at these components at the heart of the device.

In looking at the A7, Chipworks noted that it is indeed manufactured by Samsung using its 28-nm process node. Apple has been seeking to shift its A-series chip production from Samsung to TSMC, but TSMC's chip production will reportedly not start until early 2014.

For the A7, Apple and Samsung have reduced spacing between transistors to 114 nanometers, a 7.3% decrease compared to the A6 chip. That denser transistor packing plus a slightly increased die size has helped Apple to fit approximately one billion transistors on the chip.

It turns out that the A7′s “gate pitch” — the distance between each transistor — is 114 nm, compared to the A6′s 123 nm.

Those 9 nm are a big deal. Looking to improve on their current 32 nm process, Apple decided to make the A7 with the same 28 nm process as the eight-core Samsung Exynos 5410, the current flagship CPU for Samsung’s own Galaxy line.

Chipworks also took a look at the M7, which is actually an ARM Cortex-M3 part from NXP running at 180 MHz. The chip allows for low-power collection of motion data drawn from a Bosch Sensortec accelerometer, an STMicroelectronics gyroscope, and an AKM magnetometer.

After collecting information from the accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, the M7 performs some matrix math processing magic to produce an absolute orientation of the phone relative to the world. This data is then passed to the A7 in a neat package, probably in the form of three headings (roll, pitch, and yaw).

Using the A7 to monitor this sort of data would be mega-overkill, so the M7 was introduced to maintain a constant, low-power watch over these sensors.

Finally, Chipworks performed some analysis on several other components from the iPhone 5S, including the rear camera sensor and LTE modem, while iFixit pointed to the Wi-Fi module and various radio and power amplifier components that all work together to provide connectivity for the new iPhone.

Last October, Apple began construction on the first phase of its Prineville, Oregon data center, a project ultimately planned to include two 338,000 square-foot data center buildings on 160 acres.

But as reported by the Central Oregonian late last week and covered in The Oregonian today, Apple appears to be looking to add an additional 96 acres to its holdings in the area. While no deal has been struck, officials with the City of Prineville and Crook County are looking to make zoning and other changes to the property so that a deal can be completed quickly.

Though [assistant planning director for Crook County Phil] Stenbeck declined to identify the company behind Project Pillar by name, it's plainly Apple.

The property awaiting transfer is covered by the same tax break agreement that Apple now operates under. And Stenbeck said Pillar previously went by the code name Maverick -- that's the name Apple used last year when it paid $5.6 million to buy 160 acres of Crook County land for its first Prineville data center.

The property in question is also inaccessible without traveling through Apple's property, making it all but certain that Apple would be the only entity interested in acquiring it.

Apple has been on a data center building boom in recent years, opening a large facility in Maiden, North Carolina and moving forward on both the Prineville project in Oregon and another facility near Reno, Nevada.

Apple's push into new data centers comes amid continued growth of Apple's digital stores, as well as growing iCloud services that require significant server capacity for Apple. The company has committed to using 100% renewable energy at its data centers, building its own solar farms and fuel cell facilities in some cases and in other cases sourcing wind and hyrdroelectric power from local providers.

In something of a surprise move, Apple today announced the launch of updated iMacs based on Intel's Haswell processors, faster PCI Express-based flash storage options, and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

“iMac continues to be the example that proves how beautiful, fast and fun a desktop computer can be,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Inside its ultra-thin aluminum enclosure, the new iMac has the latest Intel processors, faster graphics, next generation 802.11ac Wi-Fi and faster PCIe flash storage.”

New models include:

21.5-inch
- $1299: 2.7 GHz quad-core i5 and Intel Iris Pro graphics
- $1499: 2.9 GHz quad-core Intel i5 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 1 GB video memory

27-inch
- $1799: 3.2 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M with 1 GB video memory
- $1999: 3.4 GHz quad-core Intel Core i5 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 775M with 2 GB video memory

All standard configurations come with 8 GB of RAM and a 1 TB traditional hard drive.

Build-to-order options include a 3.1 GHz Core i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM on the 21.5-inch model and a 3.5 GHz Core i7 processor and up to 32 GB of RAM on the 27-inch model. Storage options of up to 3 TB traditional hard drive, 3 TB Fusion Drive, and 1 TB flash storage are also available depending on model. The high-end 27-inch model also has an available graphics upgrade to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780M with 4GB of GDDR5 memory.

The new iMac is available today through Apple's online store with all standard configurations with the exception of the high-end 21.5-inch model showing availability of "within 24 hours". The high-end 21.5-inch model is currently showing a shipping estimate of 2-3 weeks.