MacRumors

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.

An Apple spokesperson says iTunes 11 will be late and should ship by the end of November, according to a report from CNET. The software had been expected by the end of October.

This follows recent analysis of Apple's recent executive reorganization moves suggesting that the company had been burned by schedule-driven software releases recently, and could move to a more ship-when-it's-done strategy.

"The new iTunes is taking longer than expected and we wanted to take a little extra time to get it right," Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr told CNET. "We look forward to releasing this new version of iTunes with its dramatically simpler and cleaner interface, and seamless integration with iCloud before the end of November."

iTunes 11 is expected to bring a complete overhaul to the user interface of the iTunes app itself and the iTunes Store.

Former Apple employee Matt Drance has an interesting take on yesterday's executive shakeup at Apple. He notes that the new division of responsibilities across three top executives is a sea change from how Apple has traditionally operated.

Not only is this a profound increase in responsibility for all three of these top executives, it’s a profound change in Apple’s organization going as far back as I can remember. There’s a long-standing pattern of separating watershed products important to the company’s future. The Mac and Apple teams. Mac OS X and Classic. The iPod division. iOS and Mac OS X. Suddenly, Tim Cook has pulled the reins in. Federighi owns software. Ive owns design. Cue owns services. Period.

Instead of separating products into different teams, Tim Cook has now divided responsibility for completing products across three separate divisions, each headed by a long-time Apple executive. All three divisions will be required to work together in order to finish and ship anything, necessitating increased collaboration and perhaps consistency across the company.

Om Malik has another take on why Apple's products -- in particular those in Scott Forstall's charge -- have faltered a bit in the past few years: releasing a product based on a schedule, rather than releasing it when it's finished.

The time-based schedule is one of the reasons why Siri and Maps arrived as half-baked products and were met with derision. Many engineers inside Apple could foresee problems with Maps. Why? Because Maps were driven by a time schedule.

Maps and Siri are complex products whose dependencies (for the lack of a better word) go deep into different parts of the phone and even the network. The schedule-driven release culture makes folks less daring — why take arrows in your back for failing to deliver a radical new feature on a pre-dictated time? If this cultural warp continues, Apple might have a bigger headache on its hands. Ive’s appointment as the Human Interface honcho means that more risk-taking needs to come into the products.

Apple has now sold out of its launch day pre-order stock of all six Wi-Fi models in its online store, with new pre-orders currently being quoted shipping estimates of one week. The company's retail stores should still have stock available beginning at 8:00 AM on Friday for those still interested in obtaining one on launch day.

iPad mini pre-orders are continuing to hold at two-week shipping estimates, while those who were able to get their launch-day orders in are monitoring delivery progress. Those who ordered iPad mini Smart Covers have been seeing their accessories delivered yesterday and today, while MacRumors forum members have been following progress of the devices themselves in an extensive thread.

While Apple's official online order status pages generally still show iPad mini pre-orders as "Preparing for Shipment", most of the orders are actually already en route. Some users have had success locating their packages by searching FedEx tracking using their phone numbers as references, while others have had success by looking up the serial numbers of their devices and using those as references to track via UPS.

Cellular-capable models of the iPad mini and fourth-generation iPad will not ship until later this month, with the earliest pre-order customers seeing estimated delivery dates beginning November 21 in the United States.

John Poole of Primate Labs posts about some 4th Generation iPad benchmarks that appeared in their Geekbench database on Sunday night.

True to Apple's claims, the 4th Generation iPad benchmarks about twice as fast as the 3rd Generation iPad. The new iPad is based on an A6 processor which was first introduced in the iPhone 5. The iPad's processor is called the A6X, signifying the inclusion of quad-core graphics (vs triple-core) to help drive the device's larger Retina display. The 4th Generation iPad's A6X processor also appears to be clocked at 1.4GHz, slightly faster than the iPhone 5's processor which runs at 1.3GHz. This speed boost is reflected in the benchmarks above. (Readers should note that the original iPhone 5 benchmarks suggested that its A6 ran at 1.0GHz, but later more accurate testing showed it to actually to be ~1.3GHz.)

The amount of RAM in the device remains at 1GB -- the same as the 3rd Generation iPad and iPhone 5.

The 4th Generation iPad is now available for pre-order and will officially launch on Friday, November 2nd alongside the iPad mini.

Earlier this evening, Apple announced a major change up in their executive management. Most notably, Apple Senior Vice President of iOS Software Scott Forstall will be leaving. Forstall moved over to an advisory role effective immediately, and will ultimately depart Apple in 2013.

As Senior Vice President of iOS Software, Scott Forstall has been a prominent public figure at Apple. He was originally recruited to NeXT, Inc. after college and came to Apple with Steve Jobs after Apple's acquisition of NeXT in 1996. He has been on stage numerous times during Apple keynotes to demo the latest iOS features. Forstall was even profiled as Apple's CEO-in-Waiting back in January. That article, however, was a not always flattering look at the executive who reportedly had many clashes with others at Apple.

More recently, there was described to be an internal political divide in Apple about the use of skeuomorphism, the inclusion of certain ornamental elements in a product that are carried over from previous tools addressing the same task for which the elements were required for functionality.

According to the report, Apple's iOS chief Scott Forstall has long been a proponent of incorporating skeuomorphic features in the company's software, with Steve Jobs having supported and even originated that design direction for Apple's products. But others such as hardware guru Jonathan Ive find the inclusion of such features distasteful, and Apple's designers have reportedly been divided into camps over which direction to take Apple's products.

In light of the shakeup, Jonathan Ive is now taking over Apple's Human Interface teams.

DaringFireball's John Gruber believes that Forstall was forced out of Apple:

Forstall is not walking away; he was pushed. Potential factors that worked against Forstall: his design taste, engineering management, abrasive style, and the whole iOS 6 Maps thing. I also wonder how much Forstall was effectively protected by his close relationship with Steve Jobs — protection which, obviously, no longer exists.

Inside Apple author Adam Lashinsky agrees with that sentiment and also cites the Apple Maps issue as a reason for his demise:

I also heard that Forstall refused to sign the letter apologizing for the mapping fiasco, sealing his fate at Apple.

Lashinsky is referring to a public apology posted by Apple CEO Tim Cook about iOS 6's Maps. The Map app in iOS 6 replaced Google Maps with Apple's own proprietary solution. After a significant amount of criticism after iOS 6's launch, Cook wrote an open letter apologizing to customers about not meeting expectations.

Update: The Wall Street Journal confirms a similar story with their sources.

In deciding how to manage the crisis, Mr. Forstall argued that the company could address the outcry without apologizing, as Apple had done when it shipped iPhones with faulty antennas a few years ago, one of these people said. Mr. Cook and others disagreed, these people said. Mr. Cook signed his name to the apology instead.

The article also reiterates that Forstall clashed with others at Apple. One source even said he was difficult to work with and "never fit into the culture of Apple".

Update 2: NYTimes also has a similar story:

A senior Apple employee who asked not to be named said Mr. Forstall had also incurred the ire of other executives after inserting himself into product development that went beyond his role at the company. One person in touch with Apple executives said the mood of people at the company was largely positive about Mr. Forstall’s departure.

Apple today published a press release announcing a major management restructuring for its executive team. Among the biggest changes are the immediate departure of retail chief John Browett and a 2013 exit for iOS chief Scott Forstall.

As part of the restructuring, Jony Ive, Bob Mansfield, Eddy Cue, and Craig Federighi are all taking on increased responsibilities.

- Jony Ive will take over leadership of Human Interface teams in addition to his role as head on Industrial Design.

- Eddy Cue will take over responsibility for Siri and Maps, consolidating online services under one unit. Cue was promoted just over a year ago to Senior Vice President for Internet Software and Services. He played a prominent role in the educational announcement earlier this year, and now has control of two of Apple's most prominent new iOS features.

- Craig Federighi will lead both the iOS and OS X teams. Earlier this year, he was promoted to Senior Vice President of Mac Software Engineering. Now, he gains the iOS team that was formerly under Scott Forstall.

- Bob Mansfield will lead a new "Technologies" group focused on innovation in wireless technology and semiconductors. Earlier this year, Apple announced that Mansfield would be retiring, but several months later announced he would instead be staying at the company. Later, it leaked that Tim Cook had faced an "insurrection" after Mansfield announced his retirement, and Cook gave him an extremely generous benefits package to stay at the company. It seems that Mansfield will be staying at the company for the foreseeable future.

Scott Forstall, the current SVP of iOS Software, is leaving the company next year. In the meantime, he will serve as an advisor to Tim Cook. Forstall was once considered a possible candidate to replace Steve Jobs as CEO, but more recently has come under fire for missteps regarding Apple's new mapping software and the continued impression that Siri is not ready for prime time. Also, Forstall was considered responsible for the skeuomorphic direction that Apple's iOS software had been taking recently. With Jony Ive taking over Human Interface teams, there could be more consistency coming to Apple's user interfaces across the company.

On the retail side, Senior Vice President of Retail John Browett is stepping down effective immediately, with the retail team reporting directly to Tim Cook on an interim basis. A search for a successor is underway.

John Browett raised some eyebrows when he was hired earlier this year. It is assumed that Browett was behind some staff cutbacks at the retail level and an increased focus on profitability at the expense, some say, of Apple's excellent customer service.

Update: Apple has updated its Leadership webpage removing Browett and Forstall, while adding the additional responsibilities for Ive, Cue, Mansfield, and Federighi.

Philips has announced a new iOS-controlled LED lighting system that can emulate nearly any color, as well as personalize the lighting experience with a wide array of dimmer and scheduling options. The company believes the new bulbs could reinvent "the way we think about and experience light in our homes."

Building on its innovation capabilities, today Philips unveils hue, the world’s smartest web-enabled LED home lighting system. Philips hue signals a new era in home lighting both in the way we think about and experience light in our homes. It allows you to create and control the light using your smartphone or tablet.

[...]

Philips hue can be setup in minutes. The intuitive app allows you to remotely control your home lighting to help secure your home, personalize your home lighting experience with custom settings and program timers to help manage your daily schedules, all through the convenience of a smart device. An intuitive and seamless system, Philips hue is upgradeable and future-proof, with the potential for more features to be downloaded and enjoyed in the future.

Philips is also working on new features including geo-location to automatically turn lights on or off when users approach or leave heir homes, as well as integrating with other media including sound and video.

The bulbs will be sold exclusively via Apple Stores beginning tomorrow. Hue is $199 for three bulbs plus the wireless link that can support up to 50 bulbs. Additional bulbs are available for $59 each.

Apple has been pushing app-enabled accessories heavily in its online and retail stores, offering products as varied as thermostats, weight scales, blood pressure monitors, a meat thermometer and a pet-tracking GPS collar.

Update: The starter pack ($199.95) and individual bulbs ($59.95) are now available in Apple's online store.

Apple's retail store unit has been generating some news over the past few days, so we've put together a roundup of some of the more significant items to summarize the latest developments.

- Apple opened its new Palo Alto store on Saturday. The new store replaces the company's previous downtown Palo Alto store that had typically been considered the company's "home store" and was occasionally visited by executives for major product launches. That store, opened in October 2001, was one of the first in Apple's retail chain.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was on hand for the opening of the new store, which is roughly 50% larger than the original one and is one of the first of a new prototype design based on the Upper West Side store in Manhattan. Houston's Highland Village store opened earlier this year with a similar design, while the company is also using the concept for a replacement store in Santa Monica, California.

- As the massive Hurricane Sandy approaches the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast coast of the United States, Apple retail stores are making their own preparations. Business Insider shared several photos from CNN producer Jonathan Wald showing Apple's subterranean Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan with sandbags piled in front and display products wrapped in plastic.

ifoAppleStore notes that at least 35 Apple retail stores are located within the landfall prediction zone, and with many areas shutting down in advance of the storm it seems that Apple will be temporarily closing at least some locations from this group.

- Finally, in line with Apple retail chief John Browett's announcement at the opening of the latest Beijing retail store earlier this month, Apple will be opening its new Holiday Plaza store in Shenzhen, China on Saturday.

The location is notable as Shenzhen is the hub for much of Apple supply chain for its products, with Foxconn having massive facilities in the city dedicated to assembly of iOS devices. The city is also a hub for the counterfeiting industry and is the main point of entry for scalped products coming across the border from Hong Kong.

While Apple sold out of white iPad mini pre-order stock in just minutes on Friday, supplies of the black models held out quite bit longer for those in the United States where Apple was showing greatest availability.

Availability of the black models in the U.S. online store began to slip on Saturday, when shipping dates for the 16 GB Wi-Fi model moved to two weeks. The 32 GB and 64 GB models have now followed suit, and all Wi-Fi iPad mini models are now being quoted two-week shipping estimates. Apple is still quoting its original "Mid November" estimate for cellular-capable models in the U.S., with other countries seeing "Late November" estimates.

The iPad mini will officially launch this Friday, November 2. For those who were not able place pre-orders in time, Apple's retail stores will begin sales at 8:00 AM on Friday.

Apple's fourth-generation iPad is also launching on Friday under a similar schedule that will see cellular-capable models delayed until mid-to-late November. New pre-orders for Wi-Fi iPad models are currently seeing shipping estimates of one week in many countries, with some seeing two-week estimates.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that French designer Philippe Starck was working with Dutch shipbuilder Feadship on a new yacht for the family of Steve Jobs. The yacht had been mentioned in Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs as a project he had been working on since 2009, but the ship was not completed before his death last year.

Dutch site One More Thing now reports [Google translation] that the ship, christened "Venus", has officially launched, with Jobs' widow Laurene Powell Jobs and their three children participating in the event.

The aluminum-hulled ship is said to be 70-80 meters in length and features seven 27-inch iMacs lined up in the wheelhouse to help run the controls.

Just 12 hours after iPad mini pre-orders went live, Apple has already begun preparing some of those first orders for shipment. The status reflects the final step before the packages are handed off to delivery companies. So far, we have seen a pair of reports in our forums with at least one of them coming from the UK, and another report from a Twitter user in Germany.

The first pre-orders of Wi-Fi models are scheduled for delivery on Friday, November 2, with Apple typically arranging with delivery companies to have shipments held until the launch date. It is not unusual, however, for a handful of orders to slip through early.

Apple sold out of its launch-day stocks of the white iPad mini models in the United States within minutes, and with the company still offering launch-day delivery on the black models it appears that supplies of the white models may be especially tight in the early going. Orders for Wi-Fi models in many other countries went to shipping estimates of two weeks essentially immediately upon opening, while cellular-capable models are projected for mid-to-late November availability.

(Thanks, Rob!)

Apple customers are no longer asking for Blu-ray drives in their Macs these days, according to Apple marketing head Phil Schiller. This is perhaps unsurprising given Apple's trend toward removing optical drives from its notebook and now desktop lines, but may regardless cause some consternation among Blu-ray fans.

A MacRumors post from June 2010 in which Steve Jobs told a reader that it appeared Blu-ray would be beaten by downloadable formats garnered more comments for a news post than any other in our history, and we still hear from tipsters asking when Apple will finally include a Blu-ray player in its Macs.

According to an interview Phil Schiller did with Time's Harry McCracken, native Blu-ray support will likely never come to the Mac.

Schiller pointed out that one major application for optical drives, software distribution, has gone largely digital. As for video, he said that "Blu-ray has come with issues unrelated to the actual quality of the movie that make [it] a complex and not-great technology…So for a whole plethora of reasons, it makes a lot of sense to get rid of optical discs in desktops and notebooks."

His preferred Blu-ray alternative? iTunes, of course, which lets you buy a movie and then watch it on all your Apple devices.

Once upon a time, people assumed that Macs’ lack of Blu-ray was a delay, not a permanent decision to fast-forward past it. I told Schiller that I imagined folks don’t ask about it much these days. "Correct," he said.

External Blu-ray drives are available currently via USB 2/3 and eventually via Thunderbolt but, given the overwhelming trend towards downloaded media, these are certainly niche products.