MacRumors

iFixit is currently working on a teardown of the iPad mini, revealing the internal components of the device for the first time.

One interesting development is the discovery of a Samsung display driver chip. It is unclear, however, whether this means that Samsung is also responsible for the display itself, as the codes found on the back of the display do not provide immediate evidence of its manufacturer. Display production had been reported to be split between AU Optronics and LG, with Samsung being left out on the iPad mini.

The teardown has also reached the logic board, revealing the A5 chip powering the device. The A5 chip found in iFixit's model carries date codes indicating that the package was put together in the 31st week of 2012, which would correspond to the end of July or the beginning of August.

iFixit has also confirmed that the iPad mini contains stereo speakers, although the relatively small spacing between the two speakers means that the benefit of stereo sound will be marginal under most scenarios.

iFixit's teardown is still underway, and we will update this post with any additional observations of interest that may surface.

Last week, Apple posted a statement on its UK website acknowledging that Samsung had not infringed upon the protected design of the iPad, in line with a court order following the trial. But Apple took the opportunity to playfully quote statements from the judge's ruling saying that the Samsung Galaxy Tab was "not as cool" as the iPad and note that it had won cases against Samsung in other jurisdictions.

Bloomberg now reports, however, that Apple's version of the statement is not in line with the intent of the order, which was to present a simple reference to the court decision ruling against Apple. The court has requested that Apple alter its website statement within two days, but Apple claims that alterations could take up to two weeks.

“I’m at a loss that a company such as Apple would do this,” Judge Robin Jacob said today. “That is a plain breach of the order.” [...]

The court’s initial order to post a notice was designed to correct the impression that the South Korean company was copying Apple’s product. Apple’s post, criticized by judges today, inserted four paragraphs including excerpts of the original “cool” ruling and details of similar German lawsuits that the court today said weren’t true.

The original court ruling required that Apple keep the acknowledgement linked on its website for one month and to purchase advertisements in a number of newspapers and magazines to publicly make the same admission. Those advertisements have, however, yet to appear.

Apple has launched a new page on its iTunes Store allowing users to easily donate money to the American Red Cross toward Superstorm Sandy relief efforts. The donation page, which is accessible through the desktop iTunes Store as well as the iTunes and App Store apps on iOS, permits donations at the $5, $10, $25, $50, $100, and $200 levels.

Apple will transfer 100% of each donation directly to the American Red Cross, allowing users to have their donations seamlessly billed to their existing iTunes Store accounts. With Apple currently holding over 400 million iTunes Store accounts with credit cards attached, the company has a very significant customer base that can take advantage of the donation program.

Apple has conducted several similar campaigns in the past, most recently in March 2011 following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami and in January 2010 following the Haitian earthquakes.

Update: Apple has now added a link to the iTunes Store donation page on the main apple.com page.

Apple today filed its 2012 annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and the document reveals a few interesting tidbits of information:

- Apple now has 72,800 "full-time equivalent" employees, up from 60,400 last year. The company also went from employing 2,900 "full-time equivalent" temporary employees and contractors to 3,300. 42,400 "full-time equivalent" employees are in the retail division, up from 36,000 last year.

- Apple went from 357 stores at the end of fiscal 2011 to 390 stores at the end of fiscal 2012, up 33 from the year prior. Apple earned an average of $51.5 million per store, up from $43.3 million last year. The average number of "full-time equivalent" employees per store grew from 100.8 to 108.7. Apple expects to open 30-35 new stores in 2013, with 75% of those located outside the US.

The Company’s headquarters are located in Cupertino, California. As of September 29, 2012, the Company owned or leased approximately 17.3 million square feet of building space, primarily in the U.S., and to a lesser extent, in Europe, Japan, Canada, and the Asia-Pacific regions. Of that amount approximately 10.9 million square feet was leased building space, which includes approximately 4.1 million square feet related to retail store space. Of the Company’s owned building space, approximately 2.6 million square feet that is located in Cupertino, California will be demolished to build a second corporate campus. Additionally, the Company owns a total of 1,077 acres of land in various locations.

As of September 29, 2012, the Company owned a manufacturing facility in Cork, Ireland that also housed a customer support call center and facilities in Elk Grove, California that included warehousing and distribution operations and a customer support call center. The Company also owned land in Austin, Texas where it will build office space and a customer support call center. In addition, the Company owned facilities for research and development and corporate functions in Cupertino, California, including land for the future development of the Company’s second corporate campus. The Company also owned data centers in Newark, California; Maiden, North Carolina; and Prineville, Oregon. Outside the U.S., the Company owned additional facilities for various purposes.

- As this document is designed mainly for prospective and current investors in the company, Apple also lists a number of risk factors that could affect investments in the company. These include "[Apple] could be found to have infringed on intellectual property rights", the ability to "successfully manage frequent product introductions and transitions", "the Company’s ability to obtain components in sufficient quantities", and numerous more.

- Unlike last year, when Apple said it had no plans to pay a dividend, the company now "expects to pay quarterly dividends in the future."

The document is thick with financial information, including breakdowns of all sorts related to how the company makes money, invests its money, and pays taxes, among other things.

In something of a surprise, Friday's launch of the iPad mini will apparently mark the first time an iOS device carries stereo speakers. It appears that Apple's move to the smaller Lightning dock connector has left enough space for an additional speaker along the bottom edge of the device, although the company has elected not to make a similar addition to the fourth-generation iPad.

There has been speculation about the iPad mini's speaker setup ever since early case designs leaked showing two sets of small holes, one on each side of the Lightning port. Similar setups have been seen on iPhone models with one side housing a speaker and the other side a microphone for phone conversations. iPad models have, however, until now only contained a single off-center speaker grille.

Apple did little to clear up the speculation at the iPad mini introduction last week, making no mention of stereo speakers and using the singular "speaker" on its tech specs page addressing the device's input/output capabilities. Amazon seized upon the assumption that the iPad mini did not contain stereo speakers, using it as part of a checklist comparison touting the Kindle Fire HD on its front page.

But when the first wave of advance reviews of the iPad mini were released last night, The Verge's Joshua Topolsky mentioned that the device does indeed contain stereo speakers. Topolsky later highlighted the feature in a Tweet, noting that it had been confirmed by Apple.

Seeking further confirmation, a 9to5Mac reader emailed Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller to ask about the situation, and Schiller responded to simply state "It is stereo." Notably, Amazon has since removed the comparison checklist between the Kindle Fire HD and the iPad mini from its main page.

With two weeks to go until the one-year anniversary of the public launch of iTunes Match in the United States, Apple is sending out emails reminding user who have opted for auto-renewal that their credit cards will be charged the next $24.99 annual fee on November 14.

Continue to enjoy your entire music collection in iCloud on your iOS devices, iTunes, and Apple TV. iTunes Match stores not only your songs purchased on the iTunes Store, but all of the other great music you have acquired over the years, including music from CDs.

This is just a reminder that your subscription for iTunes Match will automatically renew on 11/14/12 and you will be charged $24.99 at that time. To view your subscription or change your auto-renewal settings, sign in to iTunes on your computer and go to your Account Information page.

Additional information on subscribing to iTunes Match or turning off auto-renewal is available in an Apple support document.

With Apple's management changes announced earlier this week, several current executives have seen expansions of their responsibilities. Among those is Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president for Internet Software and Services, who is seeing Siri and Maps added to his portfolio.

Cue's responsibilities have grown substantially throughout during his 23 years at Apple, from the company's online store to the iTunes Store to the App Store. More recently, Cue has added the iBookstore, iCloud, and iAd to his responsibilities, and just over a year ago he was promoted to the senior executive team.

CNET today published a profile of Cue, offering an interesting glimpse of the executive who has reportedly played a crucial role in holding Apple's content services together in a landscape that involves frequently contentious negotiations with third parties.

The 48-year-old Cuban-American played a major role in the creation of Apple's Web store, iTunes, and iPods. And as Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, he's kept the peace with key partners and helped fix product messes. Few people know that five years ago, he helped prevent the relationship between Apple and the large record companies from collapsing when the sides almost "went nuclear." When MobileMe, the division that oversaw Apple's Web services and software, appeared to run hopelessly off track, it was Cue who salvaged the operation and transformed it into iCloud.

The entire lengthy profile is a solid background on the challenges faced by Cue and how his calm temperament served as a bridge between Steve Jobs and media executives involved in negotiations.

"If you were going to be successful with Steve you couldn't compete for oxygen," [former Warner Music executive Paul] Vidich said. "You had to allow him to be him and shine in the greater glory that Steve sought for himself, and Eddy had this calm demeanor. He never said: 'Hey look at me,' to anyone. He just did a great job."

"Eddy doesn't care about those other guys, the flashy executives who want the spotlight," said an executive who has negotiated with Cue. "He's the kind of person who is happy to be in the engine room making sure that everything is clicking along."

Cue certainly remains busy, not only maintaining the ever-increasing stable of licensing agreements with content providers across music, movies, books, and more, but also taking on the more recent challenges of building out iCloud and now fixing Siri and Maps.

One of the interesting additions to Apple's iMac and Mac mini lines announced last week is Fusion Drive, a hybrid storage system that combines a 128 GB solid-state drive (SSD) with a 1 TB or 3 TB traditional hard drive into a single volume to offer the best of both worlds in terms of performance and storage space. Apple's software automatically manages the combined volume, placing the core system and other frequently used applications and files on the solid-state drive for faster access while keeping lower-priority applications and data on the traditional hard drive.

Mac developer Patrick Stein has been toying with his own Mac Pro setup and has managed to build his own Fusion Drive using command line tools. Stein configured an internal solid-state drive and a USB-attached traditional hard drive on his system and was able to combine them into a single logical volume as used for Fusion Drive.

Attached are a 120GB SSD (disk1) and a 750GB HDD (disk7) to my Mac. I attached the SSD via SATA to be sure that the system could figure out that it’s a SSD via SMART. The HDD is attached via USB. USB I chose to clearly see a difference in speed.

Stein then proceeded to test the setup, writing data first to the SSD and then to the traditional hard drive once the SSD had filled up. By preferentially accessing data that had initially been written to the traditional hard drive, Stein was able to watch as the data was automatically transferred to the SSD for faster access. Upon stopping the process, the system automatically pushed the data back to the traditional hard drive, and in one final step Stein began accessing the data once more and after about an hour was able to see it pulled back onto the SSD.

In several follow-up Tumblr posts, Stein details further explorations into how Fusion Drive works, noting that he was able to use not only the default HFS+ file system for OS X with it, but also ZFS. All of Stein's work was performed with a standard installation of OS X 10.8.2.

Yesterday, we noted that early iPad mini pre-orders were en route to customers and that resellers were receiving shipments ahead of Friday's official launch for the Wi-Fi models.

French site igen.fr now shares some unboxing photos [Google translation] from a customer who pre-ordered a white iPad mini from French reseller Darty and has already received his shipment.

The unboxing photos do not reveal any significant surprises, with Apple opting to maintain its usual box layout for the new device in placing the iPad mini on top of a support surface containing the documentation and accessories. The iPad mini comes with a Lightning to USB cable and a power adapter, although the adapter is not visible in these photos.

Wi-Fi models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad will officially debut this Friday, November 2 in 34 countries, with Apple's own retail stores opening at 8:00 AM to begin sales. Cellular-capable models will follow several weeks later.

Besides the iPad mini, Apple is launching another new iPad on Friday -- the 4th Generation iPad. The embargo has been lifted on those reviews as well, though they contain no real surprises. The 4th Generation iPad came out only seven months after the 3rd Generation model.

The changes include a faster A6X processor running at 1.4GHz allowing the device to run twice as fast as its predecessor. The new processor doesn't worsen battery life. Engadget's testing even showed it to be slightly improved. The front facing camera has been upgraded to take HD video, and the only other external change is the replacement of the 30 pin dock connector with the new smaller Lightning connector. CNet sums it up:

The latest iPad adds several tweaks and improvements to secure its position at the top of the tablet heap. It's better all around, but third-gen owners need not apply.

The other interesting effect the new iPad has on Apple's product line is that it increases the gap between the iPad 2 and the "new iPad". Apple has chosen to keep the iPad 2 at the $399 starting price point and simply retired the 3rd Generation model, replacing it with the new one. That $100 difference between the two models now represent a larger feature gap than before.

Full reviews:

- Engadget
- CNet
- SlashGear
- The Verge

The embargo has just lifted on the first iPad Mini reviews. Apple has provided some publications with an early review unit of the iPad Mini. We are collecting some of the more interesting points from each review, but you can click each title to read the full writeup. The iPad Mini will officially launch on November 2nd and will likely be available in retail stores beginning at 8am.

CNet

- "What's unique about the Mini? Without a doubt, it's the design. It's cute, it's discreet, and it's very, very light."
- "If you're an obsessive over crisp text, you'll notice the fuzziness. If you're comparing the Mini to a laptop, you won't."
- "A Retina Display and a lower price would have made the iPad Mini perfect."
- "it's really shockingly nice to hold."
- Regrading smaller bezel: "All I know is that when reading books on the Kindle app or iBooks, holding on the side wasn't a problem."

The Verge

- "I actually had a little trouble holding onto the device when I wasn't using the Smart Cover due to the back being as smooth as it is, and the frame being so thin."
- "There's something endearing about the mini that makes you want to keep it on-hand and use it often."
- "I don't think the lower resolution is a deal-breaker in this product, but it is a compromise you have to be aware of."
- "Battery life was — not surprisingly — everything Apple claimed it would be."
- "The iPad mini hasn't wrapped up the "cheapest tablet" market by any stretch of the imagination. But the "best small tablet" market? Consider it captured."

Engadget

- "Overall, the tablet is very comfortable to hold; its thinness and lightness are both attributes that must be perceived first-hand."
- "Colors are very pleasing to the eye and viewing angles, as ever with an Apple display, do not disappoint."
- "In our standard battery run-down test, which entails looping a video with WiFi enabled and a fixed display brightness, the iPad mini managed an astounding 12 hours and 43 minutes."
- "This is, in many ways, Apple's best tablet yet, an incredibly thin, remarkably light, obviously well-constructed device that offers phenomenal battery life. "
- "To consider it just a cheap, tiny iPad is a disservice. This is, simply, a great tablet."

The Guardian

- "Lining those pluses and minuses up against those for the Nexus 7 – which garnered four stars – there's no doubt that this is indeed a five-star device. The 20% difference in comparative price is more than made up by the difference in build quality and software selection."

Loop Insight

- "What I found was surprising to me. I actually used the iPad mini more than my iPad."
- "If you want to save $50 and buy a cheap-ass tablet, go ahead. If you want quality the iPad mini will be waiting for you when you come to your senses."
- "Everything just works on the mini — all of your old apps, iCloud, everything."

Google has given its iOS app a new search feature that squares it directly at Apple's Siri. Google even calls it the "most advanced voice search" on iOS. Google gives a number of examples of how the service can be used.

- "What does Yankee Stadium look like?" Google will show you hundreds of pictures instantly.

- "Play me a trailer of the upcoming James Bond movie." The trailer starts playing immediately right within Google Search.

- "When does daylight savings time end?" The answer will appear above the search results, so you can set your clock without having to click on a link.

- "Who’s in the cast of The Office?" See a complete cast list and find out who made you crack up last night.

The service feels notably faster than Siri, recognizing words as they are spoken rather than all at once in the end. It even works on devices that aren't supported by Siri. One commenter on Hacker News confirms that the voice search works on his iPhone 4.

Google Search for iOS is available free on the App Store. [Direct Link]

MacRumors has received word from several Apple reseller partners that they have already begun receiving shipments of Wi-Fi iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad models ahead of their launch scheduled for this Friday, November 2.

We're hearing mixed news on stocks, with one reseller indicating that it has received roughly 500 iPad minis but no fourth-generation iPads. The iPad mini stock level is reportedly about double what the reseller received for the third-generation iPad launch, which also included cellular-capable models. Cellular-capable models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad will follow several weeks after this Friday's launch of Wi-Fi models.

A second reseller is reporting a somewhat contrasting scenario, noting that it has received roughly 25 iPad minis and about 80 fourth-generation iPads so far. This reseller is, however, reporting that it expects to receive additional shipments throughout the week leading up to Friday's launch.

As we noted earlier today, all launch day pre-orders of Wi-Fi iPad mini and iPad models have now sold out, and many of those who were able to place orders for delivery on Friday are tracking their shipments that left China earlier this week en route to their destinations.