MacRumors

Hidden files in the Mountain Lion version of Boot Camp appear to confirm the next generation of both the Mac Pro and iMac, according to information dug up by AppleInsider.

Within a Boot Camp configuration file lies information that tells the software what models of Mac can boot Windows from a USB-drive, a task that only Macs of a more recent vintage can accomplish. The file includes mention of the existing Mac Mini and MacBook Air, but also mentions iMac 13,0 and MacPro 6,0 models -- machines that don't currently exist.

Earlier this year, Geekbench 2 benchmarks for an unreleased iMac 13,2 model were discovered that appear to be legitimate and fueled speculation that the iMac would be updated soon. The current model iMacs have gone more than a year -- 464 days -- without an update, and are well overdue.

After the Mac Pro was given a quiet update this year, many were wondering about the future of Apple's desktop line of Macs. Both Apple CEO Tim Cook and an unnamed Apple spokesperson have confirmed that the Mac Pro will receive a full redesign for delivery sometime in 2013, nearly three years after the last significant update to the product.

Update: It's been pointed out that these strings were in Boot Camp as early as November 2011.

With a number of retailers and carriers beginning to drop prices on the iPhone as the introduction of Apple's next-generation hardware approaches, Apple has officially continued to maintain standard on-contract pricing of $199/$299/$399 for the iPhone 4S, $99 for the iPhone 4, and free for the iPhone 3GS.

But a source has now revealed to MacRumors that Apple's retail stores have been given authorization to match these discounted prices from approved major retailers and carriers. In all cases, Apple will discount iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 models by $49.01 upon request to bring pricing down to $349.99/$249.99/$149.99 for the iPhone 4S and $49.99 for the iPhone 4. As with most price matching offers, consumers will likely need to cite the source offering the lower pricing in order for Apple to honor the price match.

Notably, the price matching policy applies only to Apple's retail stores and is not available for orders through the online store.

In line with last month's report on negotiations between Google and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the company's circumvention of privacy settings in Safari, the FTC has officially announced that Google has agreed to pay a record $22.5 million penalty to settle the case.

The settlement is part of the FTC’s ongoing efforts make sure companies live up to the privacy promises they make to consumers, and is the largest penalty the agency has ever obtained for a violation of a Commission order. In addition to the civil penalty, the order also requires Google to disable all the tracking cookies it had said it would not place on consumers’ computers.

“The record setting penalty in this matter sends a clear message to all companies under an FTC privacy order,” said Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the FTC. “No matter how big or small, all companies must abide by FTC orders against them and keep their privacy promises to consumers, or they will end up paying many times what it would have cost to comply in the first place.”

Google took advantage of a loophole in Safari's privacy settings designed to prevent placement of third-party cookies by default, using invisible web forms to trick Safari into thinking that users had interacted with Google's ads and thus allowing cookies to be placed on the device.

The FTC specifically charged Google with violating an October 2011 order related to a previous case of privacy violations. In the new Safari case, FTC commissioners voted 4-1 to approve the settlement, with the dissenting commissioner arguing against the settlement allowing Google to deny all liability related to the issue.

Following up on a fresh leak of claimed next-generation iPhone parts, Nowhereelse.fr now shares [Google translation] new photos from the same source that provide an interesting comparison between several of the new components and their predecessors found in the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4.

As shown in the top row, Apple appears to be returning to the rotational electric motor design for the vibrator that was used in the GSM iPhone 4 and earlier devices. In the CDMA iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S, Apple has been using a larger drum-shaped linear oscillating vibrator that gives a softer feel and sound.

Apple's flex cable designs have also continued to evolve through the generations, with the company tending to group components on cables by function and physical proximity. With the move of the headphone jack to the bottom of the device and tweaks to the camera and sensor arrangements, it appears that Apple has in some respects been able to simplify its cable designs.

The second row of parts shows how Apple has modified the design of the volume control cable over time. While the part previously included the volume control button/mute switch assembly and the headphone jack, with the headphone jack having moved to the bottom of the device the cable now stretches across the device to also contain the power switch, consolidating all of the exterior button and switch functionalities on a single cable.

In previous iPhones, the power switch was included on the sensor cable, which also contained both the proximity sensor and the ambient light sensor, as shown in the third row of parts. But with the power switch now having been moved over to the volume control cable, the sensor cable has been simplified.

Not shown in these photos is the headphone jack and dock connector part. That part was one of the first to leak back in May, but the dock connector was initially misidentified as the earpiece before it was discovered that the headphone jack would actually be located on the bottom of the next-generation iPhone.

French site Nowhereelse.fr points [Google translation] to several new photos of what are claimed to be parts for the next-generation iPhone. While a number of the parts are similar to those that have previously been seen, including a SIM card tray leaked earlier this week that appears to have come from the same company, one notable addition in the lower left of today's photos is what appears to be the protection shield that will attach to the back of the new iPhone's larger 4-inch display.

Other parts include the home buttons and front panel that have been seen a number of times previously, as well as flex cables for the device's sensors and external buttons and switches at the top left of the photos.

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.