MacRumors

9to5Mac shares an email sent to Apple employees by CEO Tim Cook announcing that the company has donated $2.5 million to the American Red Cross in support of Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.

Team:

For the past week, our thoughts have been with those affected by Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. And Apple employees and customers the world over have raised millions of dollars toward the relief effort so far. But we can always do more.

That's why, on behalf of all our employees, Apple is making a donation of $2.5 million to the American Red Cross to benefit Hurricane Sandy relief. We hope this contribution will help families, businesses, and communities recover and rebuild.

Tim Cook
November 8, 2012

Apple's own donation comes in addition to its program facilitating donations from iTunes Store users. Under that program, users can donate by simply clicking a button in the iTunes Store, with the amount of the donation being charged to the credit card on file for their account. Apple is not taking a cut of those donations, passing 100% of the amount along to the American Red Cross.

Apple has just posted new downloads of iOS 6.0.1 for the forthcoming cellular-capable models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad. The downloads, which arrive as Build 10A8426, signal that Apple is preparing to launch the devices, which are scheduled for a "Mid-November" debut in the United States. We've seen signs that Apple will be delivering pre-orders of these devices as soon as Friday, November 16.

The new downloads include:

iPad mini
- iPad2,6
- iPad2,7

Fourth-generation iPad
- iPad3,5
- iPad3,6

Apple posted downloads of iOS 6.0 for the Wi-Fi models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad three days before they launched on November 2.

A number of U.S. customers who pre-ordered cellular-capable models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad are now reporting that their order statuses have been updated to reflect delivery estimates right around Thanksgiving.

Many MacRumors forum members are reporting that they are now seeing delivery dates of Wednesday, November 21, although several are seeing deliveries scheduled for Tuesday, November 20.

We've received a couple of reports regarding the cellular-capable models of the fourth-generation iPad, with delivery of those orders currently scheduled for November 23, which is Black Friday.

Apple had previously listed similar delivery timeframes for U.S. pre-orders, but removed those dates and replaced them with "mid-November" estimates before returning to the more specific dates today. Cellular-capable iPad mini and iPad models are arriving in the U.S. first, with other countries seeing deliveries following later in the month.

MacRumors has also received unconfirmed word from one source saying that AT&T will be launching in-store sales of the cellular-capable models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad on Friday, November 16. This would appear to be somewhat inconsistent with pre-order deliveries not occurring until the following week, as Apple typically times deliveries and in-person launches for the same timeframe. Apple's pre-order delivery dates may, however, be subject to change.

Update 2:07 PM: We've heard from one customer who called Apple and was able to have his standard shipping upgraded free of charge to Next Day Shipping due to his travel plans, and his fourth-generation iPad order is now showing delivery on Friday, November 16.

(Thanks, Michael!)

AT&T announced today that it is planning to allow any customer "with an LTE device" on a "tiered data plan" to use iOS 6's FaceTime over Cellular feature. Previously, only customers with a Mobile Share plan could use the feature.

AT&T today announced it will enable FaceTime over Cellular at no extra charge for iOS 6 customers with an LTE device on any tiered data plan. AT&T will also continue to offer FaceTime over Cellular to customers with any AT&T Mobile Share plan, as well as FaceTime over Wi-Fi, which has always been available for all customers. AT&T expects to roll out this functionality to customers over the next eight to ten weeks.

As part of its commitment to serving customers with disabilities, AT&T is also making FaceTime over Cellular available to deaf and hard of hearing customers who qualify for special text and data-only packages.

In practice, the change only affects iPhone 5 and iPad with LTE customers with tiered, though not unlimited, data plans. The company plans to roll out the functionality over the next 8 to 10 weeks.

Jim Cicconi, AT&T's head of External and Legislative Affairs, wrote a blog post explaining AT&T's thoughts on FaceTime. He notes that there was no way for the company's engineers to model usage and network impact and, as a result, the company was conservative in how it was rolled out.

In this instance, with the FaceTime app already preloaded on tens of millions of AT&T customers’ iPhones, there was no way for our engineers to effectively model usage, and thus to assess network impact. It is for this reason that we took a more cautious approach toward the app. To do otherwise might have risked an adverse impact on the services our customers expect – voice quality in particular – if usage of FaceTime exceeded expectations. And this is important for all our customers regardless of which smartphone they may use.

As we noted several weeks ago, Apple scheduled a meeting with members of its Made for iPod/iPhone/iPad (MFi) program for November 7-8 in Shenzhen, China to brief them on the latest developments with the new Lightning connector standard. With Apple having moved rather slowly to bring accessory manufacturers up to speed, Lightning-equipped accessories have been slow to appear and it was not until this week that the first official Lightning products were even announced.

TUAW now reports on a few details that have leaked out of the meeting, including the fact that the Lightning connector is waterproof and that all MFi accessory manufacturers must agree to abide by Apple's supplier responsibility code.

[D]uring the meeting this week a few interesting tidbits have made their way to us through the Great Firewall. Most are trivial (did not know: the Lightning connector is waterproof!) but one big one is not. According to our source at the event, Apple intends to make compliance with its supplier code of conduct a condition of MFi licensing. [...]

Pushing it out to the larger accessory ecosystem would be a concrete example of Apple using its 800-pound-gorilla status in the consumer electronics space to influence more companies to behave ethically on worker rights, environmental issues and more.

The report notes that details on requirements for adherence to the code and potential penalties are not yet known, and speculates that U.S.-based accessory companies may have an advantage in compliance with stricter controls already in place.

Back in June, one of the founders of the "Modbook" project to develop an OS X tablet based on the internals of a MacBook, announced that he was bringing back the concept with a new Modbook Pro product scheduled for launch in late 2012.

Pre-orders for the Modbook Pro, which starts at $3499, went live in early October with a launch target of mid-November. With the release timeframe now approaching and Modbook seeing strong customer response, the company has announced upgraded specs for the Modbook Pro, with all pre-order customers receiving a free upgrade to the new base specs. The launch of the Modbook Pro is also now targeted for late this month.

Beginning immediately, we’re doubling the pen pressure levels on the Modbook Pro from 512 to 1,024. At 1,024 levels, the Modbook Pro — which sports a state-of-the-art Wacom Penabled pen tablet digitizer — will now have four times the industry standard of 256 for pen-based tablets!

This dramatic enhancement in pen capability will give Modbook Pro users extraordinarily precise and subtle control of renderings and underscores the Modbook Pro’s usefulness as a portable content-creation platform.

In addition to the improved pen capabilities, the base Modbook Pro will also see a RAM boost from 4 GB to 8 GB and a solid-state drive boost from 64 GB to 120 GB using a faster asynchronous drive.

The Modbook Pro starts at $3499 and can be configured with additional processor, RAM, and storage options.

Research firm Strategy Analytics today released a report estimating that Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone overtook the iPhone 4S for the top spot in global shipments.

Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphone model shipped 18.0 million units worldwide during the third quarter of 2012. The Galaxy S3 captured an impressive 11 percent share of all smartphones shipped globally and it has become the world’s best-selling smartphone model for the first time ever.

Apple observers will of course be quick to note that the iPhone 4S saw waning sales during the third quarter leading into and following the launch of the iPhone 5, while the Galaxy S III is still riding relatively high as Samsung's flagship Android device since its launch in May of this year. Strategy Analytics also estimates that Samsung's position at the top will be short-lived, with the iPhone 5 expected to take back the crown for the current quarter.

The Apple iPhone 5 has gotten off to a solid start already with an estimated 6.0 million units shipped globally during Q3 2012. We expect the new iPhone 5 to out-ship Samsung’s Galaxy S3 in the coming fourth quarter of 2012 and Apple should soon reclaim the title of the world’s most popular smartphone model.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley had previously reported that the Galaxy S III overtook the iPhone 4S in sales at major U.S. carriers back in August.

As noted by CNET, Apple has tweaked its international sites to remove code that automatically pushed footer text including a court-order acknowledgment that Samsung had not infringed the protected iPad design in the UK below the scroll unless the user's browser window was extremely tall.

While Apple has used such vertically responsive design before to automatically adjust page layouts based on browser window size, its use on the company's international front pages (but not the main apple.com page) was seen as an effort to hide the notice on its UK page.

The international pages are now using the same layout as the main apple.com site, alternating between the iPad mini and the fourth-generation iPad as featured products and keeping a static layout. Previously, images within the iPad mini feature linking to the keynote and product videos automatically moved to underneath the feature section as the browser window was made taller, pushing the footer text where the Samsung acknowledgement was out of view unless the page was scrolled.

Apple's stock is now down 20% since its all-time high set in mid-September, with investors concerned about the company's prospects for the future amid a management shakeup and questions about where the company's next major revenue growth driver will come from. Samsung's rise to prominence in mobile device markets is also weighing on Apple as the iPhone's market share growth has slowed or even declined in recent quarters.

The difficulties being experienced by Apple are gradually gaining higher visibility outside of the financial markets, with ABC's Nightline running a segment (via Fortune) addressing the issues. The evening news show had previously been granted access to Foxconn factories producing Apple products in response to public criticism over worker treatment at the facilities.

Apple is expected to have a monster holiday quarter on the strength of the iPhone 5, iPad mini, fourth-generation iPad, and updated iPod and Mac models nearly across the board. But with Foxconn still struggling to meet demand for production of the iPhone 5, which is Apple's primary revenue driver, there are some concerns about whether the quarter's performance will be quite as big as many are hoping for.

Apple has updated its Apple Store app [App Store] with support for Siri, and the ability to email Passbook enabled gift cards to friends via the app. However, despite being in the release notes, neither the gift card feature and Passbook support appear to be enabled yet.

What's New in Version 2.4

- Buy new gift cards and email them to friends and family right from the app. These gift cards are easily integrated with the new Passbook app (U.S. only, iOS 6 required).

- Ask Siri to help you find prices and shop for Apple products. (Siri-enabled device required.)

Asking Siri things like "How much is the MacBook Pro?" routes users directly into the Apple Store app, generally to the section they've asked about. This adds to Siri's app-related abilities; on Monday it was reported that in iOS 6.1, Siri would support movie ticket purchases via Fandango.

The Apple Store app is available via the App Store. [Direct Link]

Today, DC Comics announced that its entire lineup of comics are coming to the iBookstore. Previously, only DC's graphic novels were available on the store.

DC Entertainment, the #1 comic book publisher in the U.S., announced today its entire line of periodical comic books are now available for download from the top three e-bookstores including Kindle Store, iBookstore and NOOK Store. The precedent setting new digital availability brings bestselling DC Comics and Vertigo periodical titles, including JUSTICE LEAGUE, BATMAN, SUPERMAN, DETECTIVE COMICS, ACTION COMICS, BATGIRL, WONDER WOMAN, GREEN LANTERN, FABLES and AMERICAN VAMPIRE, among many others, to an even broader audience of digital readers.

DC will continue to deliver comics through its DC Comics and Vertigo apps, as well as the comiXology platform. The inclusion of the comics on the iBookstore is intended to make it easier for comic readers to purchase via their preferred digital outlet.