MacRumors

Claims of an "iPad mini" have been circulating for some time now, with a number of the reports indicating that Apple is planning to launch the device with a 7.85-inch display later this year. While the rumors have been evolving for quite some time now, things have been beginning to firm up a bit with a report last month from iMore, which has offered accurate information on several topics in recent months.

Unwired View now points to a report [Google translation] from Chinese site MyDrivers.com claiming that Apple will indeed be launching a 7.85-inch iPad later this year. According to the report's anonymous supply chain sources, the iPad mini will carry roughly the same thickness as the iPad 2, with Apple using Sharp's indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) technology to create a thinner and brighter display.

IGZO displays had been rumored for Apple's third-generation iPad, but they were apparently not ready in time, as Sharp did not begin mass production of such panels until mid-April.

Just days ago, Chinese site Apple Daily reported (via DigiTimes) that Apple will be refreshing the current iPad this summer with new IGZO displays. But with even DigiTimes calling the claim "highly doubtful", those waiting for such an update are likely to be disappointed.

With Apple opting not to release updated iMac models at its Worldwide Developers Conference last month, there has been considerable debate over the timing of the next update. Several of the hardware pieces such as Ivy Bridge processors are already available to support an update, and with the last update having occurred 427 days ago the time seems ripe for new models.

But one wild card has been the issue of Retina displays and whether they will be included in the next round of updates to the iMac. ABC News reported in mid-May that Retina displays would indeed becoming to the next iMac, but more recent claims have suggested that Apple will need to wait until next year to roll out the technology, especially given the horsepower needed to support massive numbers of pixels on the 27-inch iMac.

That latter report from Marco Arment suggested that the interim non-Retina iMac refresh would happen some time in the latter part of this year, perhaps in the September-October timeframe. Alternatively, we've speculated that Apple could release updated iMacs without Retina displays at any time given the availability of components and an apparently-legitimate benchmark, with the launch of OS X Mountain Lion later this month being one opportunity for such a launch. But with essentially no sign of Apple ramping up production on new iMacs, the company's plans remain unclear.

Now, a new report from DigiTimes claims that Apple's supply chain is indeed preparing to provide components for an updated iMac, with an eye toward a launch in October of this year.

Apple's supply chain reportedly will start supplying components for the mass production of Apple's upcoming new iMac all-in-one PC in July with the device's official launch possibly around October, according to sources from upstream supply chain.

Unlike Arment's sources, however, DigiTimes believes that Apple will include Retina displays in the new models.

DigiTimes has come under increasing criticism for a number of claims that have not been borne out, but the publication does occasionally offer correct information and weighing its information with other rumors can still help fill out a picture of Apple's roadmap. In this case, the new report offers a second data point claiming that new iMacs will arrive in the September-October timeframe rather coming sooner as many have hoped.

Leaks first appeared in May that Apple was planning to add web versions of the Reminders and Notes iOS apps to iCloud.com for access from desktop Macs and PCs.

The iCloud Beta portal has since been activated for developers enrolled the iOS 6 beta at beta.icloud.com. The site displays "Beta" tags on Calendar, Find My iPhone, Notes, and Reminders -- the last two being new additions to iCloud.

The web version of Find My iPhone has been polished, with a battery status icon as one new feature. The add-on gives users with lost gadgets some indication of how long they have to find their device.

Notes is a fairly faithful reproduction of the skeuomorphic notepad on the iPhone. Users can create, edit, and delete notes, with updates reflecting on iOS devices in near-real time.

The Calendar app doesn't have any immediately noticeable changes, other than the removal of Reminders to its own app:

Apple says it is using iCloud to "increase customer delight". With more than 125 million iCloud users as of April, it's unsurprising that the company is focusing so much effort on the service -- both on iOS and the Web. The new iCloud web apps will be live for all users with the launch of iOS 6, expected this fall.

Thanks Jono!

Apple today updated its investor relations page to note that it will announce its earnings for the third fiscal quarter (second calendar quarter) of 2012 on Tuesday, July 24. The earnings release typically occurs just after 4:30 PM Eastern Time following the close of regular stock trading, and the conference call is scheduled to follow at 5:00 PM Eastern / 2:00 PM Pacific.

MacRumors will provide running coverage of the earnings release and conference call.

The release should provide a look into the status of iPhone 4S sales after more than 8 months of availability -- and, perhaps most importantly, the strength of Apple's sales in China. Apple reported strong results three months ago and provided guidance for the third quarter of fiscal 2012 expecting revenue of $34 billion and earnings per diluted share of $8.68. If it meets that guidance, it will be the third consecutive quarter with total sales of more than $30 billion.

Late last year, Apple was fined $1.2 million by Italian regulators over warranty-related issues, with Apple being cited for not adequately disclosing standard two-year warranties required to be offered with new products sold in the country.

Following the ruling, Apple temporarily added disclosures to its Italian online store even as it was appealing the decision. Apple officially lost its appeal earlier this year, with the company being required to pay the previously-assessed fine.

Reuters now reports that Italian regulators remain concerned about Apple's sales and marketing tactics and are considering additional fines and an eventual temporary ban on Apple's ability to sell products in the country as further sanctions.

The AGCM said in its monthly bulletin that Apple was continuing to adopt unfair commercial practices in Italy and noted this could eventually lead to the closure of its Italian operations for up to 30 days.

The U.S. group has 30 days to respond.

The AGCM alleges that information provided by Apple about an extra guarantee scheme encourages customers to buy the service without clearly explaining that the company is obliged to offer a two-year free warranty, the source said.

Italy is not the only country where Apple is facing criticism over its warranty policies. Earlier this year, consumer groups in eleven European Union countries filed letters of complaint with their respective regulatory agencies asking them to take action against Apple's misleading warranty sales tactics in light of the EU's requirement for a standard two-year warranty. The company clarified the differences between EU protection and Apple's warranty policies, but concerns about its disclosures apparently still remain.

Update: Apple takes issue with the Italian antitrust authority, saying in a statement:

We have introduced a number of measures to address the Italian competition authority concerns and we disagree with their latest complaint.

Following this weekend's shutdown of MobileMe in favor of iCloud, Apple today sent out an email to users of its beta iWork.com service reminding them that it too will be discontinued on July 31.

Dear iWork.com user,

Remember, as of July 31, 2012, you will no longer be able to access your documents on the iWork.com site or view them on the web.

We recommend that you sign in to iWork.com before July 31, 2012, and download all your documents to your computer. For detailed instructions on how to save a copy of your documents on your computer, read this support article at Apple.com.

Moving forward, you can use iCloud to store your documents and make them available across your computer and your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Learn more about iCloud.

Sincerely,
The iWork team

iWork.com launched as a free beta in January 2009, with Apple intending to eventually offer the service with tools for collaboration on iWork documents for a fee. The service never exited beta, however, and with iCloud offering new options for moving documents around the company has decided to eliminate the program.

While iCloud does not replicate all of the features of iWork.com, Apple continues to expand the functionality of iCloud, with the next round of improvements coming with OS X Mountain Lion later this month and iOS 6 this fall.

ifoAppleStore posts a photo of Apple's concept for a redesigned Genius Bar for at least some of its retail stores, a move intended to increase capacity at the busy support location. Significantly, the change turns the entire Genius Bar by 90 degrees to provide stools for customers on both sides of the table.

The change also breaks down the barrier between customers and support staff, with Geniuses and customers apparently mingling on the same side of the table. As Apple has tweaked its support procedures so that Geniuses are assisting up to three customers at a time, the company can also more efficiently address customer needs with the new layout. In the example described by ifoAppleStore, the move allows the total number of stools to be increased from 7 to 12, although some of the newly-gained space will still be needed by Geniuses for their work with customers.

This new 90-degree Genius Bar turn solution would be particularly effective at narrow stores where there is limited room for seated customers. The improvement seems to come at the expense of the very popular kids area, with its round, black seats and iPads loaded with children’s software. It’s not clear if this design change will be rolled out to other stores or if it’s simply being tested at this specific store.

As the report notes, the move would sacrifice the kids' tables typically found near the rear of Apple's narrow store designs, certainly a disadvantage for some customers. Apple earlier this year replaced the iMacs at its kids' tables with new iPads, increasing the number of devices available for use and moving to a more natural touch-based exploration concept.

Associated Press reports that Apple and Chinese company Proview Technology have reached a settlement deal that involves Apple paying $60 million for the rights to the "iPad" trademark in China.

"The iPad dispute resolution is ended," the Guangdong High People's Court said in a statement. "Apple Inc. has transferred $60 million to the account of the Guangdong High Court as requested in the mediation letter."

Proview began publicly objecting to Apple's use of the iPad name in late 2010, with the situation eventually escalating to see Proview demanding bans on iPad sales in the country and up to $2 billion in compensation.

Settlement talks initiated earlier this year reportedly saw Apple offering $16 million to settle the case, but Proview was apparently holding out for a $400 million settlement that could save the company as it seeks to reorganize under bankruptcy.

Apple argued in several court cases that it had acquired the Chinese rights to the iPad name in late 2009 as part of a deal with Proview's Taiwanese arm. That deal, brokered by Apple dummy corporation IP Application Development, reportedly saw the rights to the name transferred in a number of markets around the globe for just $55,000. Proview later claimed that the Chinese rights to the trademark were owned by its Chinese subsidiary and that the Taiwanese arm consequently could not have sold them to Apple.

As promised, Apple has shut down the MobileMe web service but is still allowing users to migrate their data for a "limited time". Apple had been sending out warnings to users of the impending shutdown.

Apple announced the planned discontinuation of the MobileMe service last year. Apple expects users to migrate to their iCloud service, though not all services have been transitioned to the new service.

Just days after Apple won an injunction barring U.S. sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, Reuters reports that the same judge has issued a second preliminary injunction that would bar sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.

"Apple has made a clear showing that, in the absence of a preliminary injunction, it is likely to lose substantial market share in the smartphone market and to lose substantial downstream sales of future smartphone purchases and tag-along products," Judge Koh said in Friday's ruling.

The new Galaxy Nexus injunction is a much more significant victory for Apple than the Galaxy Tab 10.1 injunction, as evidenced by the $95 million bond Apple will need to post in order for the injunction to take effect. The bond money, which amounted to only $2.6 million in the Galaxy Tab 10.1 case, would be used to compensate Samsung should Apple ultimately lose the case when it goes to full trial.

The Galaxy Nexus has been Google's flagship device for showing off its Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" operating system since late last year, and was given away to attendees at this week's Google I/O conference as part of a package showing off the forthcoming Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" update.

Just after the launch of the Retina MacBook Pro earlier this month, AnandTech provided a first glimpse of the machine's display performance, noting the various resolution options available to users and examining how its color and contrast compares to other notebooks.

After having more time to analyze the new machine, AnandTech last week published its full review of the Retina MacBook Pro, bringing its thorough and technically-detailed perspective to the report. While the whole review is definitely worth a read, the section on graphics performance bears special attention.

With the integrated Intel HD 4000 and discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics units responsible for driving 2880x1800 pixels in standard Retina mode and as many as 3840x2400 pixels before downscaling to display 1920x1200 at its highest non-Retina resolution, Apple is clearly pushing the limits of the machine's graphics capabilities.

At the default setting, either Intel’s HD 4000 or NVIDIA’s GeForce GT 650M already have to render and display far more pixels than either GPU was ever intended to. At the 1680 and 1920 settings however the GPUs are doing more work than even their high-end desktop counterparts are used to.

AnandTech goes on to assess this graphics performance, noting that the Retina MacBook Pro at times struggles to maintain a "consistently smooth experience".

At 2880 x 1800 most interactions are smooth but things like zooming windows or scrolling on certain web pages is clearly sub-30fps. At the higher scaled resolutions, since the GPU has to render as much as 9.2MP, even UI performance can be sluggish. There’s simply nothing that can be done at this point - Apple is pushing the limits of the hardware we have available today, far beyond what any other OEM has done.

Focusing on browser scrolling behavior, which also involves substantial CPU load, AnandTech notes that the resource-intensive Facebook news feed pages can display at over 50 frames per second on a 2011 MacBook Pro, but that the new Retina MacBook Pro struggles to hit 20 frames per second as it pushes so many more pixels.

The report notes that OS X Mountain Lion will help address some of these issues by leveraging Core Animation, but in AnandTech's testing it was still only able to achieve 20-30 frames per second under Mountain Lion. Further improvements in performance will have to wait for hardware capabilities to catch up with demands imposed by these new ultra-high resolution displays.

In what should not be a surprise given Siri's beta status and its use of new technology for voice interaction with mobile devices, a study from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster finds that Siri's abilities are still eclipsed by the traditional text-entry Google searches that have been in place for years.

The study included presenting Siri with 800 queries in each of two environments, a quiet room and a busy urban street, and then assessing Siri's ability to correctly interpret the queries and provide correct responses. Specifically addressing the outdoor testing, Munster notes:

While Google comprehends 100% of searches, Siri was only able to comprehend 83% of the prompted questions on a busy Minneapolis street. In terms of answer accuracy, Siri correctly answered 62% of queries on the street compared to Google's estimated 86% answer accuracy. Based on these results, we give Google an A+ for comprehension and a B+ for accuracy while we give Siri a B for comprehension and a D for accuracy.

But while Siri has some room for improvement, Munster acknowledges that the technology is only in its infancy and he remains "optimistic about its future" with an eye toward iOS 6 as bringing substantial improvements.

Piper Jaffray's testing was conducted using the iPhone's built-in microphone in the quiet setting and Skullcandy microphone headphones for the outdoor setting, with Siri's ability to correctly comprehend queries falling from 89% to 83% when moving outdoors to the noisy urban setting. On the accuracy side, Google's 86% rating is derived from comScore data showing that Google generates 1.14 search result pages per search, suggesting that roughly 86% of time Google presents the data the user is looking for within the first few results.

Piper Jaffray also analyzed the sources for Siri's results, finding that Google provided 60% of the answers, with Yelp and other sources filling in the remainder.

Of queries excluding commands (i.e. call Jay, send text) Google would provide 60% of the answers, Yelp 20%, WolframAlpha 14%, Yahoo 4%, and Wikipedia 2%. Breaking down Siri's reliance further, Google provides 100% of navigation results, 61% of information results, 48% of commerce results and 42% of local results. Among other result aggregators, Yelp provided the most local results (51%) and commerce results (51%), while WolframAlpha provided 34% of information results.

Munster estimates that Google's share of Siri results will drop to 48% with the launch of iOS 6 as navigation, sports, and movie queries shift over to Apple and its new partners.

Last November, Adobe announced that it was ending development of Flash Player for mobile platforms, opting not to optimize the plug-in for new browser, operating system, and device configurations. Adobe's announcement came roughly a year and a half after Steve Jobs penned his "Thoughts on Flash" open letter outlining why Apple had decided not to allow Flash to run on its iOS devices.

Now nearly eight months after Adobe's announcement, the company is officially pulling Flash from the Google Play marketplace for Android for new users. Those users who already have Flash installed on their Android devices will, however, be able to continue receiving updates.

Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed. Devices that do not have Flash Player already installed are increasingly likely to be incompatible with Flash Player and will no longer be able to install it from the Google Play Store after August 15th.

Adobe also notes that Flash is officially not certified for use with the upcoming Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean" previewed earlier this week, and users are encouraged to uninstall Flash if and when they update their Android devices to Jelly Bean.