MacRumors

Apple and China Mobile have not yet finalized a deal that will allow the world’s largest carrier to sell the iPhone, reports Reuters. Earlier in December, a report from The Wall Street Journal suggested that negotiations were all but complete, with the two companies on track for a release sometime around December 18, the expected date for the carrier’s 4G launch.

While China Mobile did launch its 4G network earlier today, bringing 4G speeds to its more than 700 million customers, there has been no sign of an iPhone deal.

Xi Guohua, the chairman of the world’s largest mobile phone carrier, said on Wednesday morning that his company had no announcement to make on any deal to carry Apple’s smartphones. Xi was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Guangzhou, a southern city of China.

Multiple signs of an approaching deal between the two companies have popped up during the final months of 2013, with Apple receiving licensing needed to operate on China Mobile’s TD-LTE standard in September and releasing the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c with TD-LTE support.

Though a deal has not been struck, it is clearly in the final stages as China Mobile has been accepting iPhone pre-orders and heavily promoting both the iPad and the iPhone in stores across China.

China Mobile is expected to bring millions of new customers to Apple, significantly increasing the company's presence in China. While Apple currently has deals with smaller carriers China Unicom and China Telecom, both carriers combined have fewer subscribers than China Mobile.

Apple's stock price is currently down nearly 1.8 percent following the lack of a deal announcement.

Apple today announced that its redesigned Mac Pro will go on sale tomorrow through the company's online and retail stores, as well as select authorized resellers.

Apple today announced the all-new Mac Pro will be available to order starting Thursday, December 19. Redesigned from the inside out, the all-new Mac Pro features the latest Intel Xeon processors, dual workstation-class GPUs, PCIe-based flash storage and ultra-fast ECC memory.

Designed around an innovative unified thermal core, the all-new Mac Pro packs unprecedented performance into an aluminum enclosure that is just 9.9-inches tall and one-eighth the volume of the previous generation.

Pricing for the Mac Pro begins at $2999, with a second stock configuration available for $3999. Apple has yet to announce full build-to-order pricing, but earlier this week we outlined expected retail pricing based on price quotes being offered to some business customers. Based on these quotes, a fully loaded Mac Pro will cost approximately $9999.

Update: Apple CEO Tim Cook has posted a Tweet regarding tomorrow's launch, including a photo of new Mac Pro units on the assembly line in Austin, Texas.

Samsung has signed a contract to produce 30% to 40% of Apple's 14-nm A9 chip family in 2015, with the remainder of the production load being handled by other Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), reports Digitimes.

The news comes after a report back in July stating that Apple had signed a deal with Samsung to cooperate in producing A9 processors based on a 14-nanometer process node, though it was not known then whether Samsung would be the sole supplier of the chips. The claim also came weeks after TSMC confirmed a deal with Apple to begin producing A-series chips in 2014, but was also followed up by a report in September stating that Samsung would also be helping out with A8 chip orders as well.

Apple has apparently been seeking to reduce its reliance on Samsung as a component supplier as the two companies have become fierce rivals in both the mobile marketplace and in the courtroom. The two companies have, however, continued working together in several areas, particularly where Samsung's competitors in the component market are unable to match its technology, production capacity, or pricing.

Furthermore, a look into the A7 processor in September revealed that Samsung was indeed the manufacturer for the chip, with the chip produced at a smaller 28-nm node compared to the 32-nm A6. Currently, the A7 chip is used in the iPhone 5s, the iPad mini with Retina Display, and the iPad Air. Teardowns of all three devices revealed that the iPad Air includes a slightly faster variant of the A7 chip clocked at 1.4 GHz compared to the iPhone 5s and Retina iPad Mini which both include an A7 chip clocked at 1.3 GHz.

Apple has added the ability to gift ebooks to friends and family through the iBookstore, reports Macworld. Users have long been able to purchase songs, movies or TV shows through iTunes, as well as standard gift cards, but the ability to gift a particular book is new.

Books can be gifted immediately, or the gift email notification can be held for a particular date, making holiday shopping particularly easy. Apple added the ability to gift App Store apps back in 2010.

Gifting in the iBookstore works identically to Apple’s iTunes and App Store counterparts: Just choose the book you’d like to gift, then tap either the dropdown arrow next to the price (on a Mac) or the Share button (on an iOS device). On a Mac, select “Gift This Book”; on iOS, choose “Gift”—then add the recipient’s email, the sender’s name, a brief message, and the date you want it sent (now, or later). One note: On iOS, it looks like you have to tap the “Today” field under “Send Gift” in order to change to a different date.

Users can only purchase gifts for recipients using their same country store; there is no ability to gift books internationally.

Continuing our series of roundups summarizing the latest news and rumors about each of Apple's products, today we are publishing five new roundups covering the company's iPod and AirPort lineups. The new roundups include iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod classic, and AirPort.

Apple's iPod lineup has not seen much in the way of updates recently, with a September refresh seeing only a slight change to color offerings for the iPod touch, iPod nano, and iPod shuffle with the previous slate color option being replaced with a new space gray option carried over from iPhone 5s. The new color later made its way to the iPad Air and iPad mini as well. Given that Apple typically updates its iPods in the fall each year, new iPods are not expected until late next year.

The AirPort line of Wi-Fi base stations is currently divided, with the larger AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule models having been updated in June with new designs and support for the latest 802.11ac networking standard. The AirPort Express has not been updated to support 802.11ac and was last updated in June 2012 when it received an Apple TV-like redesign.

As with our previous roundups, the goal of our iPod and AirPort roundups is to simply answer the question of "What are you expecting" for Apple's future products at any given time. That opinion evolves over time as new rumors surface, and our roundups will be updated regularly to reflect the latest rumors.

All of our roundups remain accessible through a dedicated index page showing a time-ordered list based on the last date each roundup was updated, as well as directly through the "Roundups" tab in the navigation bar on all MacRumors pages.

Samsung has hired Tim Gudgel, a senior Apple Retail Store designer and five-year veteran of the company, reports The Information. Gudgel, who has worked for Apple since March of 2008 according to his LinkedIn page, previously worked for Novartis, and as an architect at Gehry Partners. Earlier this year, Samsung hired another former Apple Retail executive who had previously been hired away by Microsoft for its retail efforts.

Earlier this year, Samsung and Best Buy announced that the electronics maker would open 1,400 store-within-a-store concepts at Best Buy locations across the country. Apple has a number of similar dedicated "Apple Shops" inside Best Buy locations.

The Information suggests that the hire is part of a continued retail push by Samsung. The New York Times looked at the efforts of technology companies like Samsung, Microsoft and Google as they attempt to build up their own retail efforts.

Forget the floating Google showrooms. When it comes to retail, Samsung Electronics is contemplating a bigger plunge.

The South Korean company's U.S. telecom unit recently hired a senior Apple store designer, Tim Gudgel, as it ponders a deeper investment in U.S. retail, according to two people close to the company. Mr. Gudgel specializes in store design and planning.

Gudgel is mentioned in a patent application as one of the inventors of the glass design of the Upper West Side Apple Store in New York City.

For comparison, Apple has more than 400 retail stores worldwide, with more than 250 located inside the United States. Microsoft currently operates 81 stores, including 31 temporary locations, though the company has not found significant success with its retail efforts.

Samsung's hardware products are significantly more popular than the Windows-based devices that Microsoft sells at its stores, and the company could see more foot traffic and sales as a result. Currently, the vast majority of Samsung's U.S. smartphone sales occur at the thousands of cellular carrier stores across the U.S.

Google has released its annual Google Zeitgeist feature highlighting popular and trending searches for 2013 in various categories. As usual, several Apple-related terms rank highly among most popular searches for the year, led by "iPhone 5s" at #3 and "iOS 7" at #11.

Rounding out the list of Apple products included in the main list was "iPad Air", which took the 68th spot among most popular searches. Other popular tech products included Samsung's Galaxy S4 in eighth place, PlayStation 4 in ninth, and Xbox One in 19th.

Google also includes a number of rankings broken down by category and geography. In the United States, for example, the trending tech gadgets category was led by the PlayStation 4 and Samsung Galaxy S4, but Apple took the next four spots with iPhone 5s, iPhone 5c, iPad Air, and iPad mini. Even the iPhone 6 made an appearance in tenth place among trending tech gadget searches for 2013.

Apple has been awarded a patent by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (via AppleInsider) detailing a wireless "desk-free" computer system that consists of only a computer housing with a built-in unique smart projector including advanced capabilities.

The patent, which was filed in 2008, details a computer system housing a unique projector with advanced technology that would hold the same power as a desktop or laptop. The smart projector would also allow the "computer" to be set up anywhere, allowing any suitable surface to be used for a display screen.

The computer systems and methods described herein may achieve a synergy that is not possible with conventional computers and projectors, which may be realized in terms of the operating system, system interaction, and/or performance. This may stem, for example, from the computer system's knowledge of the computer system's projection output and the surface on which it is projecting. The operating system may be designed to include larger icons and/or text and/or a different style based on the knowledge that the user is likely further away from the displayed image than conventional computer experiences.

In detail, the projector would also be configurable to run solely for certain purposes, such as turning off all components except the DVD drive and the projector to run as a mobile cinema, or turning off certain components to run like a normal computer. The projector itself would also be able to automatically calibrate and perform keystoning on itself to provide the best picture possible based on sensor data, even going as far to color correct and discard lesser pixels to display a high-resolution image.

Meanwhile, Apple describes the computer system as also allowing for peripherals such as a wireless mouse or keyboard to be connected, with the device as a whole being powered in a number of potential ways, such as having a single power cord to connect to a power supply or through the inclusion of an inductive wireless charge system or integrated batteries.

It is unknown whether Apple plans to create such a product or not, but the company has researched unique projector technology before. A patent in 2011 revealed the company's interest in developing a pico projector that would be able to take advantage of built-in cameras to automatically recognize and adjust gestures and shadows, which would result in interactive uses for situations such as presentations. Apple also currently includes a section for presentation accessories in its online store, where it sells various projectors from manufacturer Epson.

Apple has released the 2013 version of its annual iTunes Store awards, which showcases the best music, movies, TV shows, apps, books and podcasts of the year.

Here are some of the noteworthy winners for 2013:

Apps:
-iPhone App of the Year: Duolingo - Learn Languages for Free
-iPhone Game of the Year: Ridiculous Fishing - A Tale of Redemption
-iPad App of the Year: Disney Animated
-iPad Game of the Year: Badland

Music:
-Best Artist: The 20/20 Experience - The Complete Experience by Justin Timberlake
-Best Album: The Heist by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
-Best Song: Royals by Lorde
-Breakthrough Album: Good Kid, M.A.A.D City by Kendrick Lamar

Books:
-Best Fiction: Tenth of December by George Saunders
-Best Nonfiction: One Summer by Bill Bryson
-Best Teen Novel: The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson and Ben McSweeney
-Best Multi-Touch Book: Breaking Bad: Alchemy by Sony Pictures Television

This marks the first year that a language app has won App of the Year, and also marks the first time that an app from Disney has appeared on the annual list. As customary for its end of the year listings, Apple highlights various games and apps from a wide variety of categories, so it's well worth skimming the full list for hidden gems.

Beyond the top-level awards for music, movies, TV shows, apps, books, and podcasts, Apple is featuring a number of other awards and Editors' Choice selections across various genres and categories for the content types.

A list of previous winners are also available here: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009