MacRumors

Late last week, The New York Times reported that Apple and Twitter had had discussions "in recent months" about Apple making a significant investment of several hundred million dollars in Twitter, but The Wall Street Journal and other sources moved quickly to downplay the rumor with claims that the talks had taken place over a year ago and did not lead to any serious consideration of an investment.

The Wall Street Journal now follows up with more details on the discussions between the two companies, noting that they were primarily focused on product integration such as appeared in iOS 5 last year and OS X Mountain Lion just last week.

Apple Inc. floated the idea of investing in Twitter Inc. as the companies discussed integrating the social service into Apple’s mobile operating system last year, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Apple floated the idea at the time and it didn’t progress into serious discussions or negotiations, this person and other people familiar with the matter said.

The report notes that Apple and Twitter continue to work closely together as they explore additional ways in which their products can be integrated, with iTunes being one of the areas where the two companies believe Twitter can have a larger presence as Apple moves to phase out its own Ping social network for music.

Apple and Twitter remain tight and continue to talk about future product integrations. They include more deeply melding Twitter and iTunes, according to two people briefed on the matter.

While Apple and Twitter were able to move forward relatively quickly on product integration, negotiations between Apple and Facebook have proceeded somewhat more slowly. Those two companies do, however, appear to have ironed out their differences, with Facebook integration set to come to iOS 6 and OS X Mountain Lion later this year.

Yesterday, we noted that Apple was preparing to close the door completely on its MobileMe service, bringing to an end the grace period that had allowed users to retrieve their Gallery photos and iDisk files and to transition their accounts to iCloud following the June 30 shutdown of the service.

As of today, visitors to MobileMe.com are no longer given the option to convert their accounts to iCloud or to retrieve old photos and files, with Apple now simply pointing users to iCloud.

Also in line with previous announcements, Apple has officially discontinued its iWork.com service, automatically redirecting visitors to the main Apple home page. While the service was to officially shut down as of the end of the day yesterday, it did continue to function until just a short time ago.

We noted yesterday that Apple was unlikely to provide a grace period to allow users to retrieve iWork.com documents after the official discontinuation date, and that does indeed appear to be the case.

Amazon has released an iPad app for its Instant Video renting and buying service and its streaming Netflix competitor, Amazon Prime Instant Video.

The app allows users to download purchased and rented movies and TV shows for offline viewing, as well as stream Prime Instant Video titles when connected to the Internet. Amazon also keeps track of the user's place in a video, allowing it to be resumed at the same point on other supported devices like a TV, Mac or Kindle Fire.

With Amazon Instant Video, you can:

- Stream thousands of titles available from Prime Instant Video at no additional cost with a Prime membership, or watch over 120,000 videos available from the Amazon Instant Video store
- Download purchased and rented videos from Your Video Library
- Shop over 120,000 videos available from the Amazon Instant Video store by visiting Amazon
- Add videos to your Watchlist from a PC, Mac, or Kindle Fire for later viewing on your iPad
- Subscribe to a TV Season Pass by visiting Amazon and episodes will automatically be available on your iPad the day after they air
- Start watching on your iPad, and resume watching right where you left off on a Kindle Fire, PS3, PC, Mac, or hundreds of models of connected TVs and Blu-ray players with Amazon Whispersync.

Engadget says in a mini-review that "Amazon is really coming after Netflix with this one" and that the app is polished and runs smoothly.

Amazon Prime is available for $79/year and offers discounted overnight shipping and free two-day shipping on nearly every item that Amazon sells, as well as thousands of on-demand streaming movies and TV shows and Kindle Books.

Yesterday, Amazon also updated its Cloud Player service with an iTunes Match-like matching feature. This is a significant upgrade, as Amazon's cloud music offering previously required users to upload all their music which could take hours or days depending on the size of the user's music library.

Amazon Instant Video is available free on the iPad via the App Store. [Direct Link]

Alongside the introduction of the Retina MacBook Pro last month, Apple also announced two adapters to allow users to add Ethernet and FireWire 800 capabilities to the machine through its Thunderbolt ports. But while the Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter was available immediately, Apple's tech specs page for the Retina MacBook Pro has listed the FireWire adapter as launching in July.

Just as the calendar rolls over into August, Apple now appears to be making the Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter available in its online store with a $29 price tag and a shipping estimate of 1-3 business days.

As with the new Retina MacBook Pro configuration options, users are experiencing intermittent success in viewing the new adapter in the store, with some users able to view the adapter while others simply see a "page not found" error. The issue is almost certainly related to caching, and all users should hopefully be able to see the adapter shortly.

Dutch site One More Thing reported earlier this week [Google translation] that one of its readers had sent an email to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking about the status of the adapter, with Cook simply replying "Tomorrow", suggesting that Apple would just barely make its July shipping estimate.

iLounge shares a new report highlighting a couple of tidbits of information it has received about Apple's upcoming iOS device plans.

According to the report, the new dock connector set to to debut on the next-generation iPhone will contain just 8 pins, compared to the 30 pins used on the current connector and the 19 pins that have been rumored by several sources for the upcoming connector.

According to two sources, Apple’s new Dock Connector features only 8 pins, seemingly contradicting claims of “16-pin” and “19-pin” connectors. [...]

Both of our sources concur that there are eight pins in a line within the new Dock Connector, which may well receive a different name going forward.

One of iLounge's sources also claims that the new connector will include several other design features, "potentially" including the ability to mate devices with docks and cables in either orientation, eliminating the need to determine which side of the cable is the front before connecting. The report makes mention of Apple's MagSafe standard used for power connectivity on its notebooks, but this appears to be in relation to the connection orientation options rather than a specific claim that the new iOS device dock connector will use magnets for attachment.

On a separate note, Apple is also said to be working on an as yet undisclosed iOS 6 feature that would take advantage of the low-power Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity available in Apple's recent products to provide new levels of inter-device communication. While no specifics on the functionality have apparently been shared, the report speculates on a number of potential implementations:

Our source also claimed that Apple is working on an as-yet-undisclosed iOS 6 feature that will act as a bridge between its Bluetooth 4-capable devices. The feature would enable, say, a future iPod nano to display iMessages received by an iPhone, record voice memos that could be shared via the iPhone, and even initiate phone calls through its own headphones.

Apple will be introducing the next-generation iPhone on September 12, with availability apparently set for Friday, September 21.

Apple today quietly expanded the available configuration options for the Retina MacBook Pro, now offering a full slate of individual upgrade options on the base model that starts at $2199. Previously, customers who opted for the base model were locked into a 2.3 GHz Core i7 processor and 256 GB of flash storage, with the only configurable onboard option being a $200 RAM upgrade from 8 GB to 16 GB. Customers looking to boost either the CPU or storage were required to step up to the high-end $2799 model, which offers both a 2.6 GHz i7 processor and 512 GB of storage, with additional upgrades beyond that.

Apple is now offering all available upgrades on the low-end model, giving customers full control over their configuration needs. For example, users who want to upgrade storage on the low-end model can now do so with 512 GB ($500) and 768 GB ($1000) standalone options that do not also require an upgraded CPU. Similarly, users interested in boosting the base 2.3 GHz CPU to the 2.6 GHz chip can now do so on the base model for just $100 without having to step up the full $600 to the high-end model with both CPU and storage upgrades.

Apple continues to quote 1-2 week shipping estimates for the Retina MacBook Pro as the company continues to try to keep up with demand.

Update: Some readers have noted that selection of the new CPU and storage options on the low-end model does not seem to register with the online store system. Typically, changing options results in live updating of the price and shipping estimates during the configuration process, but changes to the CPU and storage are not having that effect. Consequently, customers are unable to place orders with these new custom configurations on the low-end model.

Update 2: Within minutes, Apple has now pulled the new configuration options entirely, once again leaving RAM as the only available onboard hardware upgrade for the low-end model.

Update 3: There are now conflicting reports on whether or not the new options have been pulled. Many readers are reporting still seeing the options and are able to add the configurations to their shopping carts, while others viewing the same pages are not seeing the new options.

Update 4: The new configuration options are now appearing more consistently, and Apple has also added the ability to have individual iWork apps preinstalled. With the move to the Mac App Store, it is not difficult for users to obtain the apps on their own, but some customers will undoubtedly prefer to have their machines as ready to go as possible upon delivery.

As of June 30, Apple officially discontinued MobileMe, the company's previous suite of online services that has been replaced by iCloud. But while the MobileMe services went offline as of that date, the company has continued to allow MobileMe users to migrate their accounts to iCloud and to download Gallery photos and iDisk files "for a limited time".

It now appears that the "limited time" is rapidly running out, and users who have yet to save their MobileMe data and/or convert their accounts to iCloud need to move quickly to ensure that they do not lose their data and registered user names. As noted by Ben Guild, Apple support staff indicated to him that as of the end of the day today Apple will begin shutting down those accounts that have not been migrated, beginning the process of opening those user names up to new users registering for iCloud.

We contacted Apple support staff to confirm the timing on the transition and were told a slightly different story, with the representative informing us that Apple would begin taking the old MobileMe servers offline as of the end of the day tomorrow. Some users' data could continue to be available after that time as Apple works through the process of purging all of the old MobileMe data, but users wishing to save their data and claim iCloud accounts with their MobileMe user names do need to move very quickly in order to ensure continuity.

Users who have already converted their MobileMe accounts to iCloud will be able to continue using the me.com versions of their email addresses, although the company is rolling out icloud.com equivalents to give users the option of changing domains.

Apple's final discontinuation of MobileMe services comes as the company is also shutting down its beta iWork.com service at the end of the day today. Apple has sent out several reminders warning iWork.com users that they must save any uploaded documents before the service is discontinued, and the support representative we spoke with today indicated that users should not rely upon a grace period for retrieving those documents after today.

Amazon today announced a significant upgrade to its Cloud Player music service, bringing iTunes Match-like "scan and match" technology to assist users in making their entire music libraries available in the cloud. The upgraded service also mirrors iTunes Match in delivering all matched tracks at 256 Kbps, even if the user's original material is at a lower quality.

New Cloud Player features include:

- Amazon MP3 purchases — including music that customers purchased in the past — are automatically saved to Cloud Player, which means that customers have a secure backup copy of the music they buy from Amazon, free of charge.

- Amazon scans customers’ iTunes and Windows Media Player libraries and matches the songs on their computers to Amazon’s 20 million song catalog. All matched songs – even music purchased from iTunes or ripped from CDs – are instantly made available in Cloud Player and are upgraded for free to high-quality 256 Kbps audio. Music that customers have already uploaded to Cloud Player also will be upgraded.

- Any customer with a Kindle Fire, Android device, iPhone, iPod touch, or any web browser — and soon, a Roku streaming player or Sonos home entertainment system — can play their music anywhere.

Amazon Cloud Player is available in free and paid tiers, with the free tier limited to 250 tracks, although tracks purchased from Amazon do not count against the total. Amazon's Premium tier costs $24.99 per year and allows users to store up to 250,000 tracks in the cloud, with tracks purchased from Amazon similarly not counting toward that limit. Apple's iTunes Match service is also priced at $24.99 per year, but currently limits users to 25,000 tracks, excluding those purchased through iTunes.

As part of the upgrades, Amazon is separating Cloud Player from its Cloud Drive service, which offers file storage in the cloud. Users with paid Cloud Drive storage plans will keep their current plan and receive free access to Cloud Player Premium for the remainder of their subscription periods. With the split in Cloud Drive and Cloud Player services, Amazon is also reducing pricing on Cloud Drive storage plans. Beyond the free 5 GB plan, users can choose from paid plans starting at $10 per year for 20 GB and moving up to a maximum of 1000 GB for $500 per year.

While court documents filed in relation to the high-profile U.S. legal battle between Apple and Samsung have yielded a treasure trove of images of prototypes and concepts for iPhone and iPad designs, the court case is just now getting underway. Reuters reports on some of the early developments today, including opening statements from Apple's lead lawyer outlining how the company will argue that Samsung's radical shift in phone design was driven by its desire to copy Apple's ideas for the iPhone.

Apple attorney Harold McElhinny started off by showing slides that featured old Samsung phones from 2006 and compared it to the Korean company's newer smartphones from 2010.

The key question, McElhinny said, would be how Samsung moved from the old phones to "these phones."

"As we all know it is easier to copy than to innovate," he told the court. "Apple had already taken the risks."

Key to McElhinny's presentation setting the stage for the trial was evidence in the form of internal Samsung documents showing that the company recognized the design challenges it faced and felt that the iPhone would be "easy to copy".

McElhinny showed jurors an internal Samsung product analysis which said the iPhone's hardware was "easy to copy." Another document prepared by a Samsung executive said the company was in a "crisis of design" due to the iPhone.

Samsung has yet to make its opening statement in the case, but its filings made so far have shown how it will attempt to undermine Apple's case by arguing that Apple had copied some of its design ideas from others and that it has refused to properly license key technologies controlled by Samsung.

Jurors in the trial face a complex task of weighing the merits of Apple's and Samsung's arguments on issues related to patents and trade dress infringement. IDG News Service highlights the instructions given to the jury by Judge Lucy Koh summarizing the basic allegations from each side and offering guidance on how to evaluate the evidence.

With less than 100 days to go until the Presidential Election in the United States, the candidates from both major parties have released several iPhone apps to connect with voters and volunteers -- and Mitt Romney says he will make a very major announcement via a dedicated app just released by his campaign.

Romney's campaign released a new app today called Mitt's VP. [App Store] The app promises to tell supporters who Governor Romney's choice for a running mate will be before it's released anywhere else -- via push notification. Typically, vice presidential announcements are elaborately scripted affairs that occasionally include a variety of diversionary tactics to throw the press off the trail before the campaign is ready to make the announcement.

Beth Myers, senior advisor to Mitt Romney, wrote this in an email to supporters today:

These last few months, I've had the privilege and honor of leading Governor Romney's search for a vice presidential running mate.

While I won't be breaking any news today, I wanted to let you know how to be the first to get the VP scoop with our new Mitt's VP app.

Just download the free app on your iPhone or Android device and when Mitt decides on his running mate, you'll get an exclusive notification of his VP selection before anyone else.

Not to be outdone, the campaign to reelect President Barack Obama just released a new Obama for America iPhone app [App Store] that connects supporters with local events, breaking news, opportunities to volunteer and more. The Obama campaign has another similar app called Obama 2012 that hasn't been updated since last November and appears to duplicate many of the features in the new app.

This is the first presidential election to take full advantage of mobile apps and devices. The smartphone revolution had only just begun when the last Presidential campaign was waged in 2008 and the App Store was only months old on election day.

Note: Due to the inevitable 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.

Yesterday, we reported on an appearance by Apple design chief Jonathan Ive at the UK Trade & Investment department's Global Business Summit on Creative Services in which he talked a bit about Apple's design philosophy and its focus on making great products rather than simply trying to maximize profits by cutting corners.

The Telegraph has another report on Ive's appearance, highlighting his discussion of how the iPhone was "nearly shelved" as Apple struggled to deal with a number of issues, apparently including a search for a proper proximity sensor that would reliably turn off the device's screen when it was held to the user's face.

"We nearly shelved the phone because we thought there were fundamental problems that we can't solve. With the early prototypes, I held the phone to my ear and my ear [would] dial the number,” he said. “You have to detect all sorts of ear-shapes and chin shapes, skin colour and hairdo...that was one of just many examples where we really thought, perhaps this isn’t going to work.”

Ive's comments on his experience with early iPhone prototype come just as a number of such prototype designs have surfaced in court documents filed as part of a legal battle between Apple and Samsung.

Apple actually began work on a tablet before the iPhone project got underway, with one early tablet prototype from that 2002-2004 period having surfaced just two weeks ago. Apple was working on a phone at the time, but once Jobs realized that Apple could bring the multi-touch interface of the tablet to a phone, the company focused its efforts on the iPhone project and essentially set the tablet project until it was reborn as the iPad.

Apple has quietly launched a Hulu Plus channel on Apple TV this morning. We've first received a report from one Apple TV owner who first found the channel to appear this morning and have since been able to confirm it ourselves. We've found that users may have to reboot their Apple TV for the channel to appear.

Hulu Plus is a U.S. online subscription streaming video service with support from many television networks and studios. The service has been notably absent from the Apple TV despite being available on the iPhone/iPad as well as other set top boxes such as Roku.

Existing Hulu Plus users can login, while new users can be billed for Hulu Plus service via their iTunes account.

Thanks Sami

More Screens:

Update: Hulu has issued a blog post announcing the addition.

Keeping up with the latest episode of Family Guy, MasterChef and New Girl on Hulu Plus just got a little easier. And my living room just got a whole lot happier.

Hulu Plus arrives on Apple TV today.

Following a report from iMore earlier today claiming that Apple will hold a media event to introduce the next-generation iPhone and the "iPad mini" on September 12 ahead of September 21 availability for the new iPhone, AllThingsD reports that it has confirmed an Apple media event will be taking place that week. While the report's sources have apparently not confirmed the topic of the event or the exact date, it certainly appears to corroborate iMore's claims.

Apple hasn’t yet officially announced the fall event at which it is expected to debut the next iteration of the iPhone, but it’s definitely planning one.

iMore was first to report that the company has scheduled a special event for Wednesday, September 12, and now we’ve confirmed it as well. Sources tell AllThingsD that Apple is currently planning an event for that week. And while we haven’t yet confirmed its focus, history suggests it will indeed be the new iPhone.

AllThingsD has been very accurate in the past regarding Apple rumors, and has on several occasions been the first to reveal dates for Apple media events, lending significant weight to this report's support of the September 12 date from iMore.

The report goes on to note that Apple's latest quarterly report has revealed a massive increase in component prepayments, signaling that the company is moving full speed ahead on preparing its supply chain for production on the next iPhone and perhaps other devices such as the iPad mini.

Update: The Verge has also "confirmed" the September 12 date with its own sources.

The rumor cycle this time around for the next iPhone has been a bit unusual — multiple leaks have all depicted the exact same components — but it looks like we'll be seeing what Apple has up its sleeves come Wednesday, September 12th. Our own sources have confirmed that date, and multiple websites have similar reports as well.

Update: The Loop's Jim Dalrymple also weighs in on the September 12 date:

Yep.

Update: Reuters, Bloomberg and NYTimes also confirm the date.

Wired UK reports that Apple design chief Jonathan Ive participated in a keynote session today at the UK Trade & Investment department's Global Business Summit on Creative Services in which he offered up some of his thoughts on the creative process at Apple and other anecdotes about his two decades at the company. While he had previously shared some of his thoughts on design, his comments today offer a bit more perspective on how things work at Apple.

"To me I still think it's remarkable that at a point in time on a Tuesday afternoon there isn't an idea and then suddenly later on there is an idea. Invariably they start as a tentative, barely-formed thought that becomes a conversation between a couple of people."

Apple then builds a prototype that embodies the idea and that's when the idea goes through "the most incredible transition". "You go from something tentative and exclusive to something tangible and -- by nature of it being a thing -- a table of people can sit around it and start to understand it; it becomes inclusive and it galvanises and points to a direction for effort."

Ive, who shared his unsurprising view that design should be a "prerequisite" and not simply one aspect of product development, also repeated several mantras that have been commonly quoted by Apple executives, calling good the enemy of great and noting that Apple says "no" to many, many good ideas in order to focus all of its energies on a select few great ones.

Ive also made reference to Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1997, noting that he brought a fresh view in which the company focused on making great products with the belief that profits would follow, rather than focusing first on profits.

"We are really pleased with our revenues but our goal isn't to make money. It sounds a little flippant, but it's the truth. Our goal and what makes us excited is to make great products. If we are successful people will like them and if we are operationally competent, we will make money," he said.

Ive has long been a very private individual, but has begun opening up a bit more to the public as Apple's stature has grown and accolades for his group's design work have continued to roll in. Ive was knighted in late May, and he noted at the time that Apple's current projects are "the most important and the best work" his team has done with the company.