MacRumors

Valve today announced that beginning September 5 it will expand its Steam store for digital distribution of gaming titles to include other types of applications. The expansion of Steam to other software categories could pose signification competition for other digital marketplaces such as Apple's Mac App Store.

The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.

More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the September 5th launch, and developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight.

Beyond simply serving as a comparable alternative for the Mac App Store, the Steam store could become a convenient distribution point for software that is not compatible with Apple's Mac App Store guidelines. Apple's limitations such as sandboxing requirements have resulted in some applications not being accepted for distribution through the Mac App Store or required that certain features be removed, and Valve's Steam store is likely to be more lenient in those regards.

Hints of an expansion for Steam appeared last month within the Steam app for Android, which briefly showed new categories of software for the store.

MacRumors has received word that Apple is making preparations to begin seeding builds of OS X 10.8.1 to developers. The release would be the first maintenance update to OS X Mountain Lion, which launched two weeks ago, and this new update will likely focus on squashing some of the more significant bugs that have been discovered in the original version.

The first maintenance updates for OS X releases tend to come fairly quickly after their initial debuts, due in part to a need to move some of the major bug fixes to the public as quickly as possible. Apple has also likely been working on OS X 10.8.1 since some time prior to the launch of Mountain Lion, as it seeded the final version to developers over two weeks ahead of the public launch and undoubtedly continued to find issues requiring attention after that time.

For comparison, OS X 10.7.1 launched 27 days after the debut of OS X Lion, while OS X 10.6.1 appeared just 13 days after the launch of Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

As a reminder, Apple is also continuing work on an update to Lion with developer versions of OS X 10.7.5 having been released for testing.

Former Apple ad man Ken Segall was interviewed by Time editor-at-large Harry McCracken in a special presentation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Segall published a book earlier this year about his experiences called Insanely Simple that posited "Simplicity" as the driving force behind everything Steve Jobs did.

Apple's unique advertising strategies have contributed greatly to the growth of the company in recent years and the discussion is worth watching for anyone interested in Apple's marketing. Segall and McCracken cover a wide variety of topics during the 1-hour discussion, including an extensive Q&A session at the end.

One topic that Segall addresses during the interview is his comments about Apple's recent 'Genius' series of ad spots -- TV ads that some felt missed the mark. He notes that there were a number of ads that Steve Jobs approved that were received poorly in the past, including the first iPod ad which featured a dancing iPod owner.

Ars Technica has been doing some testing after reports emerged that some Mountain Lion early adopters were experiencing degraded battery life after upgrading to OS X 10.8. A 46-page thread with nearly 700 replies has been growing over the past several weeks on the Apple Support Forums.

Ars writer Chris Foresman, after extended testing, discovered that the battery life of his Retina MacBook Pro review unit dropped 38% from its previous 8-hours. He was unable to narrow down blame for the battery loss to any particular bit of software or system process.

Our own testing revealed similar (and significant) drops in battery runtime after installing Mountain Lion. In previous tests, we were able to regularly achieve just over 8 hours of use by relying solely on our Retina MacBook Pro's integrated Intel HD4000 GPU. Performing the same "real-world" test using the same software applications and usage pattern, we never got the Retina MacBook Pro to run for more than a few minutes past 5 hours after a full charge.

[…]

Typically, the quad-core processor wasn't taxed beyond 5 percent capacity, except for occasional 10-20 percent spikes when loading webpages, reading or writing files, or other activities. Unexpected file system or network access, or less efficient use of the GPU, could cause additional power drain without showing significant CPU use.

One poster on Apple's support forums claims a company support representative told him that "an update will be issued via the [Mac App Store] as soon as they can work a fix".

Back in February, iMore was the first source to claim that Apple will be introducing a smaller dock connector for its iOS devices, with the claim now being supported by a number of other sources and evidence in the form of part leaks showing a much smaller opening in the casing of what is claimed to be the next-generation iPhone.

But other details on the new dock connector have remained unclear, with various sources reporting different numbers of pins for the new connector compared to the current 30-pin design. TechCrunch was the first to report that the new design would contain 19 pins, a claim that gained credibility when Reuters cited the same number last month.

Other numbers of pins have, however, been circulating with iLounge last week claiming just eight pins for the new connector. And just yesterday, 9to5Mac reported on a reference to "9Pin" in a section of iOS 6 code addressing core hardware features.

Regardless of the exact number of pins included in the new dock connector design, it appears that the connector itself will be even smaller than originally thought based on leaked photos of casings seen so far. French site Nowehereelse.fr today posted a new photo [Google translation] it has received showing that there is actually a metal ring inside the casing cutout for the new dock connector.

The purpose of the ring is currently unknown, but some have been hoping that Apple's new dock connector will include an attachment mechanism similar to the MagSafe standard used on the company's notebook computers. A MagSafe-like dock connector could allow users to insert the cable in either orientation, a feature suggested last week by iLounge, and make it easier for the cables to simply snap into place.

AllThingsD reports that the ongoing patent and design dispute between Apple and Samsung has yielded yet another interesting piece of evidence, this time in the form of a massive internal Samsung document from 2010 showing 126 different aspects of the company's Galaxy S smartphone that were considered to need improvement. Each shortcoming is displayed with a comparison to how the issue is handled on the iPhone and includes a recommendation that in most cases outlines how Samsung should make the behavior of the Galaxy S more like that of the iPhone.

Authored by Samsung’s product engineering team, the document evaluates everything from the home screen to the browser to the built-in apps on both devices. In each case, it comes up with a recommendation on what Samsung should do going forward and in most cases its answer is simple: Make it work more like the iPhone.

In short, the evaluation report makes the case that the Galaxy (identified here as the “S1″) would be better if it behaved more like the iPhone and featured a similar user interface.

As the report notes, the document itself is not proof of Samsung's infringement of Apple's utility or design patents or its trade dress, but Apple is clearly using it to build its case that Samsung was looking to the iPhone as a superior device and in many cases seeking to copy the iPhone's solutions to user interface and other issues.

Apple today posted a new television ad for the new iPad called "All on iPad". The ad is identical in style to Do It All which was released in June. The Retina Display remains a focus, with a number of different apps sharing the spotlight.

Read it. Tweet it.
Be surprised. Be productive.
Make a sale. Make some lunch.
Make it movie night.
Play a game. Or an old favorite
Do it all more beautifully, with the Retina display, on iPad.

This is the third television spot that Apple has released for the 3rd generation iPad.

The ad comes shortly after a new and controversial series of ads focused on an "Apple Genius". That ad debuted during the opening ceremonies for the summer Olympics and were sharply criticized. Those are ads no longer running which Apple's ad agency claims was the plan all along.

Wired reports that Apple has ordered its support staff to temporarily stop processing AppleID password changes over the phone.

The move is a response to the experience of Wired reporter Mat Honan who had his iCloud account hacked which resulted in the remote-wipe of his iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air.

An Apple worker with knowledge of the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Wired that the over-the-phone password freeze would last at least 24 hours. The employee speculated that the freeze was put in place to give Apple more time to determine what security policies needed to be changed, if any.

Wired was able to confirm the policy change by calling Apple Support and attempting to reset the password on an iCloud account.

Meanwhile, Amazon has also changed their policy in the wake of the hacking report. Amazon no longer allows people to call in and change their credit card or email address settings. Hackers had taken advantage of Amazon's policies in order to expose the last four digits of Honan's credit card which was then used to take over his iCloud account.

Update: Apple has issued a statement to Wired confirming the suspension of password resets over the phone and promising greater security once the functionality is restored.

“We’ve temporarily suspended the ability to reset AppleID passwords over the phone,” Apple spokesperson Natalie Kerris told Wired via email. “We’re asking customers who need to reset their password to continue to use our online iForgot system (iforgot.apple.com).

“This system can reset a password in one of two ways – either have a password reset sent to an alternate email address already on record or challenge the customer to answer security questions they had previously set up. When we resume over the phone password resets, customers will be required to provide even stronger identify verification to reset their password.”

Apple.pro posts scans of a story that first appeared in Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily. That publication obtained one of the many "iPhone 5" enclosures that have been available over the past few weeks and took measurements of them.

The thickness of the next generation enclosure was measured at 7.6 mm. The rest of the dimensions appear to be equivalent to circulating specifications leaked by case manufacturers in June:

One manufacturer we spoke to said that he was sure that the leaked images were accurate – so sure that he was already preparing to construct iPhone 5 cases and he’d be willing to ship replacements for free if they turned out not to be perfect. He enumerated three big changes from the old iPhone 4S to the iPhone 5:

1. The phone is much bigger, measuring 58.47 mm wide, 123.83 mm high and 7.6 mm thin. The screen is 4″.
2. The earphone jack has been relocated to the bottom of the phone.
3. The dock connector is much smaller, similar in size to micro USB.

The iPhone 4S measures 9.3mm in depth, so a 7.6mm thin phone would represent an 18% reduction in thickness. The width of the new iPhone is expected to be about the same as the iPhone 4S, but the height will increase in order to fit a 4" diagonal screen.

Apple is expected to introduce the new iPhone at a September 12th media event.

Update: Apple Daily's online version of the article is now available with higher-quality images. Apple Daily's sister publication Sharp Daily has also published photos and a video showing their measurements of the casing.

The dispute between Apple and Samsung continues to play out in U.S. court, with Apple working its way through its list of witnesses as it seeks to convince a jury that Samsung has infringed upon patents and designs related to the iPhone and iPad.

Among the interesting developments yesterday was the admission into evidence of an internal Samsung memo acknowledging that the company had suffered a "crisis of design" after the introduction of the iPhone, with Apple's lawyers arguing that the memo is evidence of Samsung's strategy to shift gears and copy the iPhone's design. AllThingsD has more on the memo:

It’s a memo that Samsung didn’t want admitted into the trial, and until now had kept it out. But this morning, when Samsung legal counsel John Quinn mentioned the “crisis of design” moment in a question to Samsung strategist Justin Denison, all bets were off, and the memo was in.

“Influential figures outside the company come across the iPhone, and they point out that ‘Samsung is dozing off.’ All this time we’ve been paying all our attention to Nokia, and concentrated our efforts on things like Folder, Bar, Slide,” Shin wrote. “Yet when our UX is compared to the unexpected competitor Apple’s iPhone, the difference is truly that of Heaven and Earth. It’s a crisis of design.”

Today has seen early Apple designer Susan Kare on the stand testifying based on her expertise in user interface and icon design. The Verge is providing live updates on Kare's testimony in which she is expressing her belief that Samsung's products and user interfaces are confusingly similar to the iPhone. In support of her testimony, Kare notes that even she was confused during a pre-trial meeting about her role as an expert witness in the case, mistakenly picking up a Samsung phone when she was attempting to reach for an iPhone.

It is my opinion that the overall collection of graphic features that makes the overall visual impression could be confusing for a consumer. Partly I base that on my visual analysis. Partly, I remember when I was at the law firm about being a expert witness in this case there was a big conference table with many phones on it... I could see the screen and went to pick up the iPhone to make a point about the UI graphics, and I was holding a Samsung phone. I usually think of myself as someone who is pretty granular about looking at graphics, and I mistook one for the other. So, I guess in addition to my formal analysis I had the experience of being confused.

Cross-examination of Kare has primarily focused on walking through granular details of differences between Apple's and Samsung's icons, where Kare has admitted some differences. Samsung followed a similar tactic with Apple's previous expert witness in industrial design, Peter Bressler, with Apple's witnesses acknowledging some differences between Apple's and Samsung's products but emphasizing their belief in the overall impression being similar enough to cause consumer confusion.

As Apple moves through its witness list that was headlined last week by Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall, Samsung will be preparing to bring its own experts in to provide testimony arguing against Apple's claims that Samsung copied Apple's designs and intellectual property. Samsung has repeatedly tried to call into question Apple's claims that Samsung did not shift to its current design aesthetic until after the introduction of the iPhone, and will certainly seek to press that point as the case continues.