MacRumors

Apple will build a new 700-employee manufacturing facility in Mesa, Arizona, to make sapphire glass, according to releases from the State of Arizona and GT Advanced, a New Hampshire-based materials manufacturing company. Apple purchased the vacant manufacturing building from First Solar, and has contracted with GT Advanced to "own and operate furnaces and related equipment" at the facility.

The State of Arizona reports [PDF] that the plant will create at least 700 jobs in the first year, plus an additional 1,300 construction-related jobs. Apple will also be investing in new renewable energy projects to power the new facility.

Apple provided a statement to Pocket-Lint confirming the facility:

We are proud to expand our domestic manufacturing initiative with a new facility in Arizona, creating more than 2,000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing and construction. This new plant will make components for Apple products and it will run on 100% renewable energy from day one, as a result of the work we are doing with SRP to create green energy sources to power the facility.

Apple 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, however this would seem to be an expansion of Apple's sapphire glass efforts. 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.

Other reports have suggested that Apple has experimented with sapphire displays but found them infeasible. Additionally, Corning has claimed its Gorilla Glass 3 is a better glass solution than sapphire.

One possible destination for Apple's new sapphire glass production is in a potential smart watch project. Sapphire is already extensively used in high-end watchmaking and could be more feasible on a small screen than the larger display on a smartphone or tablet.

The move is a major expansion of Apple's own production efforts -- in recent years, Apple has exclusively contracted with third parties to build and supply components for its products. Many pundits have speculated that Apple would begin using its $150 billion cash pile to grow its manufacturing efforts.

The new plant is also noteworthy because it is in the United States. Apple will assemble its first computer in years in the United States at a Flextronics plant in Austin, Texas. Apple is prominently featuring the Mac Pro's manufacturing location in product videos and in the press.

iPad activations on AT&T more tripled from last year's iPad launch, according to a statement released by AT&T today. The carrier did not release any specific activation numbers, however.

Last year, the cellular 4th-generation iPad and the first-generation iPad mini launched several weeks after the Wi-Fi only models did. AT&T's statement does not differentiate between the iPad and the iPad mini.

iPad activations on AT&T increased more than 200% over the past three days compared to last year’s launch weekend, driven by consumer excitement around the new iPad Air and the popularity of AT&T Mobile Share, which lets customers add an iPad to their existing data plan for just $10 a month. We also saw strong demand for AT&T Next, which offers customers an iPad for $0 down on the nation’s fastest and most reliable 4G LTE network.

The iPad Air went on sale Friday across the U.S., though the new iPad mini is not yet available.

AT&T offers zero-down and zero-percent financing on iPads to its customers through its AT&T Next program with standalone data plans, session-based on-demand data plans, or a $10/month addition to its Mobile Share plans.

Update: Though AT&T's press release says activations "increased more than 200%" from last year, suggesting that activations had tripled from 2012, AllThingsD says an AT&T spokesperson clarified that sales were double those of a year ago, not tripled as the statement still claims on AT&T's website.

Update 2: AT&T has clarified again, stating that the original press release is correct and activations are more than triple what they were last year, and that the numbers are compared to the November 2012 cellular iPad launch weekend.

After several leaks hinting at its upcoming release, Apple has pushed an iOS 7-inspired redesign of its Remote app to the App Store.

The new app, which allows control of iTunes and Apple TV products directly from the iPhone and iPad, has been completely redesigned for iOS 7 and adds support for iTunes 11.1. The last major update to Remote came nearly a year ago with support for iTunes 11, with a bug fix release coming this past January.

Remote is designed to be in perfect sync with the new iTunes. It is simpler, easier, and gives you new ways to browse your library and see upcoming songs with Up Next. With just a few taps on your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, you can add new songs to hear them next from iTunes on a Mac or PC, or an Apple TV. Choose playlists, songs, and albums as if you were in front of your computer or Apple TV. Or play them from iCloud with iTunes Match on Apple TV. Change a song, pick a playlist, or browse your entire library from anywhere in your home. Control your Apple TV with the flick of your finger or use the keyboard to quickly tap out a title instead of clicking letters on the Apple TV screen.

Aside from Remote, iBooks, iTunes U and Find My Friends are still awaiting iOS 7 redesigns.

Remote is a free download from the App Store for the iPhone and iPad. [Direct Link]

Contrary to T-Mobile CEO John Legere's assurances that all customers would get 200MB of free monthly iPad data with "no exceptions" and "no strings attached", new T-Mobile customers who wish to take advantage of the carrier's 0-percent financing offer on the iPad will be required to sign up for a $20/month 500MB data plan in order to get an additional 200MB of monthly data "free".

Last week there was some confusion around T-Mobile's so-called "uncarrier" plan. Legere claimed via Twitter that "everyone" would get 200MB of free monthly iPad data, but CNET's Roger Cheng discovered otherwise.

T-Mobile clarified to CNET that new customers who want to take advantage of T-Mobile's no-money-down plan are required to sign up for a $20-a-month plan.

Unlike the On Demand plan, which was simply a fee for staying on T-Mobile's network, the $20 plan does provide for an additional 500MB of data at its 4G LTE speed. The 200MB of data is "free," but doesn't kick in until after you sign up.

Existing T-Mobile customers with a phone plan can access the 200MB of free data without signing up for additional plans. New customers who paid full price for their iPad Air or any other tablet will be able to get the 200MB data plan for free. Or customers can bring in their own T-Mobile-compatible tablets.

While many customers will be able to take advantage of T-Mobile's 200MB/month offer for no charge, there are some exceptions. Customers who do not have an existing monthly voice account with T-Mobile that wish to purchase an iPad with T-Mobile's financing plan will need to purchase a $20-per-month 500MB data plan, and will receive an additional 200MB of data for free.

iPad owners that purchase an iPad elsewhere and bring it to T-Mobile -- or buy an iPad from T-Mobiile at full price -- or that have an existing voice account with the company and finance the iPad, can receive the 200MB data plan for free.

AT&T, for its part, offers similar zero-down and zero-percent financing on iPads to its customers through its AT&T Next program with standalone data plans, session-based on-demand data plans, or a $10/month addition to its Mobile Share plans. It does not offer free data, however.

Apple is preparing updates to the Mavericks versions of iBooks, Safari, and Remote Desktop, in addition to a Mail.app fix for Gmail users that was revealed last week, according to 9to5Mac.

The site does not reveal any of the changes that are coming, but says they have Apple's standard "improvements to performance and stability" patch notes.

For iBooks, Apple says that the new version (1.0.1) “includes bug fixes and improvements to performance and stability.” iBooks is a new application in Mavericks that allows the reading and downloading of iBooks and iBooks Textbooks.

Apple is yet to specify to employees what the new Safari version entails, but is labeled as version 7.0.1. The slight version number increase indicates that this is a bug-fix and performance-focused release, not a new version with several new features.

9to5Mac notes that the Mail.app update will come separate from a larger OS X 10.9.1 update and could go live as soon as a few days from now.

For those customers interested in taking advantage of the iPad Air's ability to allow other devices to tap into its LTE data connection, Apple's latest iPad continues to offer a robust 24 hours of battery life as an LTE hotspot, far more than dedicated MiFi hotspot devices, reports AnandTech.

While the 24-hour hotspot battery life is not new to the iPad Air, confirmation of the feature is comforting given that Apple has taken advantage of more efficient technologies to reduce battery capacity in the iPad Air by nearly 25% compared to the previous two generations without compromising performance.

I set the iPad Air up as a personal hotspot, wirelessly tethering it to a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display. I started a constant 100KB/s transfer on the MacBook Pro (2x the transfer rate of my iPad 3 test) and with the iPad Air's display off I measured battery life. Last time I chose 50KB/s as it was the average transfer rate across our old WiFi web browsing battery life test, I doubled the workload to be more reflective of more strenuous demands. In reality I'd expect to see a burstier usage profile, but that's something for me to test down the road.

A total of 24.08 hours and over 8GB of transfers later, the iPad Air finally died. Just like last time, you'll likely burn through your monthly data allotment before you run out of power.

The iPad Air is of course a much larger hotspot solution than dedicated MiFi devices, but for those who may already be carrying an iPad Air to use on its own, it continues to provide a solid option for delivering cellular data access to other nearby Wi-Fi devices.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly spoken out in support of the pending Employment Nondiscrimination Act in the form of an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, stating the company's feelings toward the current issue of workplace equality in the United States. The legislation would prohibit many civilian, nonreligious employers in the United States from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity for the purposes of hiring or other employment practices.

Cook explains in his article that Apple has made it a point to create "a safe and welcoming workplace for all employees, regardless of their race, gender, nationality or sexual orientation", while also elaborating on employee rights to express identity in a working environment.

Apple's antidiscrimination policy goes beyond the legal protections U.S. workers currently enjoy under federal law, most notably because we prohibit discrimination against Apple's gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employees. A bill now before the U.S. Senate would update those employment laws, at long last, to protect workers against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

We urge senators to support the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, and we challenge the House of Representatives to bring it to the floor for a vote.

A U.S. Senate vote on the act is currently scheduled for November 4, 2013.

Note: Due to the potentially controversial 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.

iOS engineering vice president Henri Lamiraux has retired from Apple after 23 years with the company. His retirement last month is mentioned on his LinkedIn profile and was confirmed by Lamiraux himself to 9to5Mac.

He says that he retired from Apple a "couple of weeks" ago, following the release of iOS 7.0.3. Lamiraux decided a "little while ago" that iOS 7 would be his last release.

Sources within Apple's iOS division say Lamiraux is respected and he was in charge of developing the applications that come with iOS. The executive also led feature-implementation across the operating system, and he managed both bug-fixing processes and feature distribution to consumers. He also managed the frameworks within the operating system that power features and allow developers to build applications.

Lamiraux joined Apple in 1990, spending ten years as a Mac OS and later OS X software engineer before being promoted into more senior positions. He moved over to iOS in late 2005, more than a year before the original iPhone was shown to the public, and served in several managerial roles, culminating with his being named Vice President of Software Engineering for iOS Apps and Frameworks in September 2009.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted today to clarify his company's free 200MB monthly plans for iPads on its network. He reiterated that "everyone" gets 200MB of free data with no strings attached.

Earlier today, customers trying to buy iPads on T-Mobile were told they would have to pay a $10 monthly fee to access the "free" data, contradicting an offer from last week.

The $10 per mo./fee written about today is incorrect. We had an executional mistake that we will make right. - @JohnLegere

Yes. Everyone gets the 200MB of free data. No exceptions. No strings attached. - @JohnLegere

Apple continues to have strong stocks of the iPad Air on its Online Store. Only the Space Gray iPad Air with 128GB of storage on T-Mobile is not in stock, showing an available-to-ship time of 5-10 business days.

T-Mobile is offering the 16GB Cellular iPad Air for $0 down and 24 monthly payments of $26.25 per month, with an additional $100 and $200 down payments for the 32GB and 64GB models respectively.

According to a survey by PiperJaffray, 75 percent of U.S. iPad Air purchasers on launch day already owned an iPad, compared to only 58 percent for last year's iPad mini launch.

Gene Munster, a PiperJaffray analyst, believes the U.S. market may be getting slightly more saturated.

Surveying 71 day-one iPad buyers, Munster found that the early-adopter upgrade cycle is around 23 months, significantly shorter than the general public's upgrade cycle of 30 months. Also, the average capacity purchased today was 59.7GB versus 40.5GB for the 3rd-generation iPad launch.

Of the iPad Air buyers who already own an iPad (75%), only 18% expected to keep using the old device and essentially all of those users were owners of an iPad Mini. We noted a similar trend in our iPad Mini survey in that 76% of iPad Mini buyers expected to use the Mini along with their prior full-sized iPad. We believe this makes sense as the majority of consumers that already own an iPad seemed to be replacing it with the Air entirely, but viewed the Mini as a companion device to the larger iPad. In other words, if a consumer owns more than one iPad, it is more likely to be an iPad Air and an iPad Mini than multiple full-sized iPads.

With Apple likely selling millions of iPads this weekend, PiperJaffray's survey of 71 buyers is a small fraction but the broader trends could be consistent with the larger U.S. market. 1 in 5 of today's buyers picked up the 128GB iPad Air, while a 94 percent of buyers said they owned an iPhone.

The iPad Air still remains in stock on the Apple Online Store with nearly all configurations available to ship within 24 hours.

Launch day supplies of the iPad Air in the U.S. appear to be dwindling slightly, with new orders of the tablet in all colors and capacities shipping within 24 hours and carrying a delivery estimate of November 6.

When the iPad Air launched on November 1 at 12:01 AM Pacific Time, Apple declined to provide a shipping estimate, instead offering a blanket November 4 delivery date for all U.S. orders.

Earlier this morning, in-store supplies of the iPad Air of began weakening at some retail locations, and the T-Mobile Space Gray 128 GB Wi-Fi + Cellular iPad Air was the first model to see its shipping time slip to 5 to 10 business days.

Other countries around the world have also seen dwindling supplies, with some countries seeing 5–10 day shipping times for certain models. Higher capacity iPads and the Space Gray models appear to be selling out the fastest.

Though some stores are seeing less availability of higher end models, in-store supply of the 16 and 32 GB iPad Air remains strong in most areas. Prospective iPad Air buyers in the United States can use Apple-Tracker.com to check on local availability of the iPad Air.

Unity plugin developer Icoplay has come up with a new way for developers to monetize free apps on the App Store while avoiding in-app purchases, through the use of bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin is a digital currency first developed in 2008 that has soared in value in recent years. While bitcoin value fluctuates wildly, a single bitcoin today is worth approximately $200, which makes Bitcoin mining a potentially lucrative endeavor.

Because new bitcoins are generated via complex math problems, Bitcoin mining requires an incredible amount of processing power. Icoplay is aiming to use mining software hidden within apps and games to take advantage of the latent processing power of mobile devices, rewarding the developer with bitcoin. Like distributed computing projects such as SETI@home, Bitcoin mining can be done in small chunks over hundreds or thousands of devices.

As described by Icoplay's Simon Hill on PocketGamer.biz, the company has developed the Icominer Unity plugin, which is designed to be built into an app or game, running in the background to mine for bitcoin while a player uses the application.

The core concept we worked towards is this: A developer installs the software, and every instance of its game running at any time, anywhere mines Bitcoins using the latent power of the device it's being used on.

The developer then takes its Bitcoins to spend or invest.

At Icoplay, we’ve spent the last few months making this a reality. We've ended up with software that can just be dropped into a Unity project (on any platform at all) and make this distributed model of 'passive grinding' work.

According to Hill, Icoplay's plugin is dynamically designed not to interfere with apps that it is built into, so much so that users will never "even notice the plugin is humming along in the background."

Regardless of the solution you choose, our bitcoin miner will seamlessly integrate into your game with no interference, earning you cash in perfect harmony with your existing app monetisation strategy. There’s no catch - it's just awesome.

What Hill doesn't mention, however, is that an app or game continually drawing power for a background process would certainly be a drain on system resources, quickly exhausting battery life.

Icoplay's Icominer plugin is currently in the final stages of beta, and according to the company's website, it will be released in the near future. The plugin, priced at $80, is designed to integrated seamlessly into Unity-based apps.

OS X Mavericks includes a new feature that leverages the light sensors included in many Macs to detect movement in front of the machine and prevent the system's Energy Saver sleep functions from activating even when the user is not actively using the machine, notes The Verge.

First highlighted by Moshen Chen of Radiantlabs and confirmed by developer Jonathan Wight, the feature was initially thought to use the iSight camera to monitor movements but was quickly discovered to actually be tapping into light sensors.

The sensor is already used to adjust screen brightness to ambient light, but the new OS puts it to a different purpose, tracking changes in the light as "movement," and resetting idle time accordingly. Verge tests confirmed this on two separate Mavericks laptops: after covering the camera but not the light sensor, we were able to delay sleep mode by changing the ambient lighting conditions.

Users have long been able to set separate thresholds for display and system sleep based on lack of interaction with their Macs, but under Mavericks, many Macs have now become smarter about being able to detect whether or not the user is sitting in front of the machine.

With the iPad Air now having launched in over 40 countries today, supplies of the device are starting to weaken in some of Apple's online and retail stores. The most significant signs of tightening supplies are appearing in higher-capacity models in some countries, specifically 128 GB and 64 GB cellular models and 128 Wi-Fi models. In a number of countries these models are now listed as shipping in 5-10 business days.

Apple's U.S. online store continues to list delivery dates of November 4 for new orders of all models, while those looking to use Personal Pickup to order their devices online and pick them up today at a nearby U.S. Apple retail store will find that supplies are beginning to dry up with increasing combinations of models and stores now listed as "Ships to store" rather than "Available today".

In countries other than the U.S., Apple's online stores list shipping estimates rather than delivery estimates, and the following combinations of models and countries have seen estimates slipping to 5-10 business days:

- Australia: Cellular 128 GB in space gray

- Austria: Wi-Fi and Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

- Belgium: Wi-Fi 128 GB in space gray

- China: Wi-Fi 16 and 128 GB in space gray, all Wi-Fi models in silver (Cellular models not available yet)

- Czech Republic: Cellular 64 GB and 128 GB models in both space gray and silver, Cellular 32 GB and Wi-Fi 128 GB in silver

- Denmark: Cellular 128 GB in space gray

- Finland: Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

- France: Cellular 128 GB in space gray

- Germany: Wi-Fi and Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

- Hong Kong: All models quickly became unavailable for shipping

- Hungary: Cellular 64 GB and 128 GB models in both space gray and silver, Cellular 32 GB in silver

- Ireland: Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

- Netherlands: Cellular 128 GB in space gray

- Norway: Cellular 128 GB in space gray

- Poland: Wi-Fi and Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

- Portugal: Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver, Wi-Fi 128 GB in space gray

- Singapore: Cellular 128 GB in space gray

- Sweden: Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

- Switzerland: Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver, Wi-Fi 128 GB in space gray

- UK: Cellular 128 GB in both space gray and silver

Update: U.S. users interested in checking availability of Personal Pickup for various models may want to take advantage of Apple-Tracker.com for a much more efficient method than going through Apple's online store manually for each model.

Update 2: The Space Gray 128GB iPad Air w/cellular on T-Mobile is the first model to see its shipping time slip on the U.S. store. It is now available to ship in 5-10 business days.