MacRumors

With just a few weeks left in 2013, Apple's stock has finally rebounded to set a new 52-week high of $575.14 earlier today, although it has since pulled back by a few dollars. Apple's stock price peaked at just over $700 back in September 2012 before beginning a slide that took the price to under $400 by mid-April of this year.

Apple's march back to yearly highs began in late June and has been a fairly steady climb since that time, although the last two weeks have been particularly good for the company's stock with a roughly 10% increase over that time as investors have been buoyed by new product releases and optimism surrounding Apple's Black Friday weekend sales.

The company's stock price has undoubtedly also been boosted by a stock buyback program that has seen Apple take roughly 5% of its shares off of the market since late 2012. Some argue that Apple should be doing even more to repurchase its stock, believing it to remain undervalued and thus a cheap investment for the company. Just yesterday, activist investor Carl Icahn, who holds roughly $2.5 billion in Apple stock, announced that he has filed paperwork requesting that shareholders be included in an advisory vote encouraging the company to increase its buyback plan by an additional $50 billion.

Apple has filed for a United States patent detailing a smart dock that would allow users to access voice recognition functions such as Siri once a compatible device is connected, reports AppleInsider. The patent describes the dock as composing of multiple parts including a housing with a touch screen, integrated microphone, speakers and tactile buttons, along with a connector, wireless radio, and internal processor.

In detail, a user would assign an audio prompt to the device upon setup such as a spoken word, phrase, or hand clap that would trigger the dock for use, and can also "unpair" voice recognition functions with another specific audio prompt. This allows for the dock to filter out ambient noise and allow a voice recognition feature like Siri to perform effectively when listening and responding to the user upon being given a task. For example, a user could create an event on a calendar by giving a verbal cue to the dock holding a connected device and speaking the appropriate prompt.

In yet another embodiment, when the voice recognition mode of the portable electronic device is activated, the processor of the portable electronic device is further configured to receive voice input from the dock via the receptacle connector, the voice input including a use request. The processor retrieves the requested information and generates audio output including a response to the user request. The audio output is transmitted by the processor to the dock via the receptacle connector.

The patent also details other embodiments of the invention where the signals between the dock and device can be transmitted wirelessly, potentially allowing for things such as AirPlay functionality. Also described are potential add-ons to the dock, including removable storage media such as an external hard drive, a GPS receiver, and environmental sensors such as an accelerometer or temperature sensor.

It is not known if Apple will actually create a smart dock for its products, but the existence of a device as detailed in the patent would be of a new effort for the company. Currently, Apple sells docks for the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s, but both of them act merely as charging cradles for the devices. Other accessories such as the iHome family of clock-radios and speaker systems offer a bit more functionality, but very little in the context of deep interaction with a device.

AT&T has announced that it will be introducing new “Mobile Share Value Plans“ on December 8, which includes an option for no annual contracts that brings a $15 monthly discount to shared data customers that meet one of four requirements. The requirements include getting a smartphone for no down payment with the "AT&T Next" early upgrade program, bringing a separate off-contract device, purchasing a smartphone at full retail price, or switching to a new plan after a phone is no longer under contract.

With the ‘No Annual Service Contract’ options, smartphone customers can save $15 a month on Mobile Share Value plans. 2 Customers can receive these monthly savings when they: Get a new smartphone for no down payment with AT&T Next; bring their own smartphone; purchase a smartphone at full retail price; or when their smartphone is no longer under contract and they switch to the new plans. All Mobile Share Value plan customers will benefit from shared data plus unlimited talk and text on their phones. Consumers will have the ability to connect up to 10 devices, including tablets and other wireless devices, while business customers will be able to connect up to 10, 15, 20 or 25 devices, depending on the plan.

The carrier also announced that it is adding a new option for its "AT&T Next" early upgrade program on December 8, which allows a customer to get a new phone after 18 monthly payments and spreads total payments over the course of 26 months. This option joins the existing option of getting a new phone after 12 monthly payments and spreading payments over 20 months, and comes after the company cut pricing on the program in August after launching it in July.

In October, AT&T ended traditional voice and data plans for new customers in favor of offering Mobile Share plans, which were first introduced during the summer of 2012. AT&T's Mobile Share plans offer unlimited talk and text while providing a pool of data that can be used across multiple devices, and include a monthly data cost and a per-device charge that ranges from $10 to $50 based on the type of device and the selected data plan. Data is priced between $20 and $500, for between 300MB and 50GB of usage.

According to new a survey done by market research firm Parks Associates (via CNET), Apple desktops have become the most sought after desktop computers this holiday season, beating out longtime holiday desktop leader Dell and other competitors such as HP and Acer. This marks the first time that Apple products have taken the top spot in the history of the survey, as the company was ranked 3rd in the category in 2011 and 2nd in 2012. The Apple TV also remained at the top spot for the most sought after streaming media device, topping the Roku TV.

“Apple topped the list of intended brands for desktop purchases for the first time this year,” said John Barrett, director, Consumer Analytics, Parks Associates. “In 2011 and 2012, Dell was the top desktop brand, but Apple has displaced it, making Apple now the most popular brand across even more key CE categories.”

Apple quietly updated the iMac this past September with Intel's Haswell processors and faster PCI-Express based flash storage, which followed a major design revision to the desktop in 2012 that brought a thinner and lighter design. The company also currently sells its lower-priced Mac Mini and is getting ready to launch the high-end Mac Pro sometime in December, with a German retailer stating a possible availability date of Monday, December 16.

Apple and China Mobile have finally reached a deal that will see the world's biggest mobile carrier offering the iPhone on its network, reports The Wall Street Journal.

China Mobile, which has more than 700 million subscribers, is expected to begin selling the iPhone around December 18 following a China Mobile conference in Guangzhou where the company is also expected to debut its 4G network. Earlier today, the Chinese government finally granted TD-LTE licenses to China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, the country's three major carriers.

China Mobile is one of the last major carriers in the world that does not currently offer the iPhone, and the deal could bring a huge boost in sales to Apple. Currently, only China's smaller carriers, China Telecom and China Unicom, offer the iPhone on their 3G networks.

A deal with China Mobile would give Apple access to a subscriber base that is seven times the size of Verizon Wireless, the U.S.'s largest carrier. Greater China, including Hong Kong and Taiwan, is Apple's third biggest market after the U.S. and Europe in terms of revenue.

Apple and China Mobile have been in talks for several years, and CEO Tim Cook traveled to China to meet with China Mobile Chairman Xi Guohua back in July where the two made headway on a potential deal.

News of a finalized deal has been expected since September, as the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c were the first iPhones supporting China Mobile's TD-LTE standard. Apple also received the final license it needed to operate on China Mobile’s wireless standard back in September following the launch of the newest iPhones.

Update: A China Mobile spokesperson tells Reuters that the two companies are "still negotiating".

"We are still negotiating with Apple, but for now we have nothing new to announce," China Mobile spokeswoman Rainie Lei said, declining to elaborate. Apple also declined comment.

Activist investor Carl Icahn has filed paperwork to ask Apple shareholders to recommend a $50 billion share repurchase to Apple's board of directors.

The request is what's called a precatory proposal, meaning even if a majority of shares vote in favor, it would not be binding on Apple's management. In an interview with Time, Icahn said he believes CEO Tim Cook and Apple's management team are doing a good job, but he believes the company should be spending more of its capital on its own shares.

For his part, Icahn says he doesn’t consider his proposal an indictment of Apple CEO Tim Cook, or the company’s management, per se. "Tim Cook is doing a good job with the business,” Icahn tells TIME. "I think he’s good whether he does what I want or not." But, says Icahn, referring to the company’s huge cash stockpile, "Apple is not a bank."

[...]

I’m not against the management of this company. But they’ve got too much money on their balance sheet."

Icahn is able to withdraw his proposal before the shareholder's meeting if he no longer wishes to press the issue, either because Apple agrees with him or he believes a potential proxy fight is no longer in his favor. If not, Apple would likely recommend investors vote against the proposal, even though it isn't binding.

Since he first disclosed his position in Apple back in August, Icahn has been vocal about asking the company to increase its buyback at the same time he has dramatically increased his stake in the company.

Apple, for its part, announced a significant increase in its capital return program back in April of 2013, and management pledged to reexamine its share repurchase and dividend programs in the first half of 2014.

Following Apple's $200 million purchase of social analytics firm Topsy earlier this week, a wide variety of analysts and pundits have been considering what Apple might do with the company.

More than anything, Topsy is a search and analytics company, holding a number of search-related patents that could be implemented directly into the App or iTunes Stores to improve searches and discovery. One patent helps rank search results based on reputation and influence, which could be used to help higher quality apps rise to the top of App Store search results, for example.

Another patent details the return of search results to include popular items related to a specific query on a social media site. While not directly related, a similar technology could be incorporated into App Store search. For example, a user searching for Major League Baseball apps could be linked to other trending sports apps for the NFL or NBA.

Twitter considered buying Topsy as well because, according to AllThingsD, "Topsy’s search technology and tools were even more effective than Twitter’s own in-house search tools" but Twitter ultimately decided to pass on the purchase.

Apple has purchased companies in the past to boost its search results on the App Store, most notably Chomp, acquired by the company last year.

Apple has also been focusing on increasing its advertising revenue in recent years, first with iAd's in-app advertising, and more recently with iTunes Radio. Another Topsy patent relates to the display of certain advertisements to users based on an "influence score" that helps determine which advertisements are shown to a particular user.

As for what Apple will do with Topsy, TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino is thinking along these same lines.

If I had to hazard a guess, this might be related to Apple building out the relevancy engine of its App and iTunes Stores. Adding social signals to the search algorithms of its stores could help to improve the relevance of search results and help Apple surface apps that are hotter and more interesting to users. Tracking app trends across social networks would allow them to fine tune categories and collections of apps, and surface apps that are gaining steam more quickly.

Pulling the thread out a bit further, it's possible that Apple could even use the data from your Twitter feeds to recommend apps on a more personal basis, rather than ‘generically' to everyone. Apple has done little of this kind of personalized recommendation work to this point, but there's always a first time for everything.

The Wall Street Journal concurs, saying that "Topsy's insights could be useful in several Apple services, including the iTunes media store, Siri voice assistant or iAd advertising platform."

Another pundit, Azeem Azhar, argued on LinkedIn that Topsy's search platform could be part of the foundation for an Apple move against Google in search. The company already built a mapping app, displacing Google Maps in one of the iPhone's most fundamental features -- and an investment in search could be a logical place to spend some of Apple's enormous cash pile.

Wouldn't it be smart for Apple to deploy Topsy's search infrastructure as the search layer for iOS? Working to index both the social Web, but also the best bits of the Web that power Siri and Apple Maps, reduce the reliance on Google and reduce the flow of advertising dollars to the big G.

[...]

These are additional signals that could make the experience of search on iOS really different to the experience on Google. A search which encapsulates data on the web, databases of businesses, real, fresh social signals and purchase preference data from 900m consumers. All accessible from my iOS device, connected back to my Apple ID (and the credit card attached to it).

Topsy has full access to the Twitter 'firehose', meaning its technology can be used to deal with enormous amounts of data and its search engine technology is designed specifically for that. It's possible that Topsy's search engine could be used by Apple for more than just search, however. The company could combine iCloud, App Store purchase data, reviews, social network activity and more to get a better idea of their customer's activity for both advertising and search purposes.

While the purchase of Topsy is notable, the $200 million acquisition accounts for some 1/750th of Apple's current $150 billion in cash and will likely be the one of many acquisitions that Apple makes during fiscal 2014.

Last year, in fiscal 2013, Apple made a total of 15 acquisitions of varying sizes over the course of the year. In its public financial calls with analysts, Apple executives have repeatedly said that a number of new hardware, software and services products are in its pipeline for release in calendar 2014 and beyond.

At its October media event, Apple narrowed down the launch window for its redesigned Mac Pro to "December", but with the month having already begun the company has yet to announce a more specific launch date.

German retailer Conrad Electronic has, however, now begun taking pre-orders [Google Translate] for the two stock configurations of the new Mac Pro, citing availability of Monday, December 16.

It is unclear what Conrad is basing its availability citation on, but it appears to be the first specific claim of a launch date from a retailer, something many potential customers have been waiting for. Availability of the new Mac Pro is likely being constrained by new Intel Ivy Bridge-EP processors that were officially launched in September but which have apparently been somewhat slow to ramp up production.

Holiday shopping considerations would be less of a factor for the new Mac Pro than for most of Apple's other products, given the professional focus of the machine, but the end-of-the-month holiday season could present some logistical issues for Apple given employee vacations and other factors.

Also unclear is what kind of volumes the new Mac Pro will ship in at launch. If supplies are tightly constrained as it appears they may be, shipping dates may quickly slip into early 2014 with only a small number of units making their way to retailers and customers before the end of the year.

Update: French site MacGeneration posted a Tweet earlier this week claiming that delivery to customers may come on December 18, which could be in line with December 16 shipping availability.

Update 2: Conrad has removed its Mac Pro pre-order pages.

(Thanks, Martin!)

Following the seeding of the latest OS X Mavericks 10.9.1 beta to developers yesterday, Apple has now distributed the latest build of the OS to AppleCare employees, reports 9to5Mac.

This sort of internal release typically signals an imminent public release of the software, assuming the OS X development team does not find any mission critical bugs in final testing.

The update includes the following fixes:

- Improved support for Gmail in OS X Mail, and fixes for users with custom Gmail settings
- Improves the reliability of Smart Mailboxes and search in Mail
- Fixes an issue that prevented contact groups from working properly in Mail
- Resolves an issue that prevented VoiceOver from speaking sentences that contain emoji
- Updates Shared Links periodically when open in the Safari Sidebar

The first beta of 10.9.1 was seeded to developers back in mid-November following a public update specifically to address issues with Mavericks' Mail.app and Gmail.

A number of retailers have noted that the iPad Air was a top seller over the Black Friday shopping weekend, and new data from Localytics indeed shows that to have been the case. Localytics, which tracks the number of new devices showing up through its analytics network of over 20,000 apps and over one billion devices, saw a 51% increase in new iPad Air devices compared to the previous weekend.

The first-generation iPad mini also performed well, seeing 28% growth compared to the previous weekend, while the iPhone 5c came in third with 26% growth. All three products were available in significant quantities for the Black Friday weekend and in many cases saw steep discounts. Products with tighter supplies and lower discounts, such as the Retina iPad mini and the iPhone 5s, unsurprisingly saw smaller spikes in activations.

According to Localytics’ data, a whopping 51% more new iPad Air devices were seen than the previous week. This is due to a combination of factors, including Apple’s promotion of giving gift cards with purchases of the iPad Air and iPad Mini (but not iPad Mini 2nd gen) devices. This, combined with a smaller base of iPad Air devices and the novelty of the iPad Air (released on November 1st) resulted in the iPad Air dominating on Black Friday weekend. Apple’s older iPad Mini model finished second, and the iPhone 5c took third.

Data from Localytics of course does not include devices purchased over the Black Friday weekend but set aside as future gifts, suggesting that the spike in sales was likely even higher than shown in the data.

While Apple's iPad Air has seen strong sales in part due to its recent introduction and dramatically thinner and lighter design, the device has also benefited from a general surge in popularity for tablets, with 39% of consumer electronics shoppers over the Black Friday weekend indicating that they planned to purchase a tablet. Given the iPad's market-leading position and plentiful supplies of the iPad Air, it is unsurprising that the device saw strong sales over the weekend.

Exact Editions, a London based digital publishing startup, has begun implementing Apple's iBeacon microlocation receivers to deliver location-based access to iOS Newsstand publications, reports TechCrunch. The iBeacon receivers are used as a part of the company's “ByPlace“ service, which can trigger location specific publications and other content once an iPhone or iPad is nearby.

In the first implementation of the program, patrons of Bar Kick in Shoreditch, UK can access soccer magazine "When Saturday Comes" and style magazine "Dazed & Confused" free of charge while at the bar, with the apps reverting to regular subscription status once out of range of Bar Kick's iBeacons.

Exact Editions expects that selling subscriptions attached to iBeacon delivery will be particularly attractive to a magazine with a niche audience, and one that will be particularly associated with corresponding venues. The principal advantages for the venues are as follows:

1. Suitable content can be selected (eg film magazines for a cinema wifi zone, fashion magazines for an arty venue, finance or business magazines for a location in the City or in an airline lounge etc.)
2. The venue can choose its content to suit its audience, and the iBeacon will generate statistics which indicate which magazines are most used and when.
3. There will be discreet but noticeable in-app branding for the venue, through the use of ‘courtesy panes’ within the app, stating the sponsorship eg “When Saturday Comes brought to you by courtesy of Bar Kick”.
4. As the venues get statistics on the usage of the apps that they host, and as they get in-app credit for the use of those apps, they will be able to measure to an extent the degree to which freely magazine apps generate repeat business. The customer who really enjoys his app and walks out with the app synced to his iPhone has a reason to buy a subscription in iTunes, but he also has a reason to return to the bar where he got some free access.

First introduced at WWDC, iBeacon microlocation APIs are designed to access location data through the Bluetooth Low Energy profile on iOS devices, interacting with physical transmitters. The technology first appeared earlier this year, when Major League Baseball announced plans to begin incorporating Apple's iBeacon APIs into its MLB.com At the Ballpark app to create interactive experiences within stadiums in the near future.

Apple is also said to be incorporating iBeacon technology into its own Apple Store app and retail stores, providing customers with enhanced location-based product information and in-store services. Recently, shopping app Shopkick and Macy's teamed up for the first retail-based iBeacons, allowing customers to find location-specific deals, discounts, and recommendations in the Shopkick app while in a participating Macy's store.

Multiple Apple Stores in the United States have started price matching the iPhone 5c and the iPad Air, reports 9to5Mac. On those particular devices, some Apple Stores will match the prices of brick and mortar retailers that have been selling the products below retail price.

Walmart, for example, sells the entry-level 16 GB iPad Air for $479, a $20 discount off of the standard retail price Apple offers. MacRumors heard conflicting reports of Apple Stores price matching discounts over Black Friday, but following the major shopping holiday, it appears retail employees may have been given more flexibility when it comes to price matching options.

Released in September and October respectively, both the iPhone 5c and the iPad Air have been widely available since the launch, while supplies of the iPhone 5s and the Retina iPad mini have been far more constrained, which explains why Apple is not offering price matching on those particular products at this time.

Apple's price matching policies vary from store to store, and some stores may opt out of price matching all together. Price matching only applies to physical stores and is limited to a 10 percent total discount, which means customers can still find a better deal elsewhere in some cases, especially when it comes to the deep discounts offered on the iPhone 5c.

Update: According to a retail employee, Apple now has an official policy on price matching, which allows specialists to price match iPhones, iPads, and Macs, giving up to 10 percent off on products without authorization. Specialists are also allowed to give business customers up to 20% off a non-Apple accessory when purchased with an Apple product via special order.

Currently, the iPhone 5s and the Retina iPad mini are excluded from price matching.