MacRumors

iMore reports that Apple is "currently targeting" an October launch for a smaller iPad, with the device carrying a display of roughly 7 inches and being priced in the $200-$250 range.

According to our source, which has proven reliable in the past, the reason for such aggressive pricing is to do to the tablet market what Apple did to the MP3 market in 2004 with the expansion of the iPod product line -- leave absolutely no space for competitors.

Interestingly, the report's source claims that the 7-inch iPad will be "identical in every way" to the current iPad with the exception of the display size, apparently including a Retina display. That would give the smaller iPad a pixel density roughly identical to that of the iPhone 4S.

It remains unclear how Apple would be able to meet a $200-$250 price point for the smaller iPad given the apparent specs, although the device will reportedly come with only 8 GB of storage. Still Apple's current iPod touch starts at $199 and this smaller iPad will undoubtedly carry significantly higher component costs.

Reports of a smaller iPad have been circulating ever since the launch of the original iPad, enhanced in recent months by perceived competition from Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire. The sheer number of rumors suggest that Apple has at least been working on such a device, and reports of a planned launch for later this year have been increasing. Most observers have, however, believed that the device would carry a non-Retina display in order to allow Apple to meet lower pricing targets.

iMore has been rather accurate with its recent iOS device rumors, correctly pinpointing the third-generation iPad launch event date back in February and backing claims of LTE compatibility for the device ahead of its launch.

The site has since offered claims of a smaller dock connector for the next-generation iPhone, an idea which has been gaining traction with other rumors. The site has also issued claims of a fall (likely October) launch of an LTE iPhone anticipated to carry the same 3.5-inch display size seen in all iPhone models to date.

Last week, Network World shared a long-lost internal Apple video from 1984 featuring a brief cameo by Steve Jobs in the role of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Given the early 1980s production value and Apple's alternate universe take on its battle with IBM, the video naturally sparked an array of reactions from around the Apple community,

But now another internal Apple video from the same timeframe is gaining some renewed attention for its inclusion of Jobs in another cameo appearance. The video, entitled "Blue Busters", is a spoof of the movie "Ghostbuster" using a reworked version of the film's theme song. And while edited clips of the video including an appearance by Steve Wozniak have been floating around for some time, Network World earlier this week posted an uncut version of the video which includes Jobs' brief appearances.

Jobs' cameos appear at the 3:00 and 4:04 marks in the video, while Wozniak makes an appearance at 2:21.

Apple's "1944" and "Blue Busters" videos demonstrate the company's commitment to taking on IBM in the corporate world, an effort that saw Apple making forays into printers and other peripherals in an attempt to gain a foothold with businesses. But between expensive machines and a lack of software, Apple experienced only limited success despite some devoted fans of its innovations.

Reuters reports on comments from Foxconn chief Terry Gou, who claims that Apple and Foxconn will be splitting the initial costs to improve working conditions at Foxconn's facilities in China.

"We've discovered that this (improving factory conditions) is not a cost. It is a competitive strength," Gou told reporters on Thursday after the ground-breaking ceremony for a new China headquarters in Shanghai.

"I believe Apple sees this as a competitive strength along with us, and so we will split the initial costs."

It was unclear if the split would be 50/50 or in some other ratio.

Foxconn has raised wages several times over the past couple of years as it has faced scrutiny over the treatment of its employees. And following a series of audits, Foxconn and the Fair Labor Association reached an agreement in late March to reduce overtime while boosting compensation packages to compensate for the reduction in hours.

It is unclear how much the actions are costing Apple and Foxconn and how the costs are being split, but with Foxconn operating on a very slim profit margin it has limited ability to finance such improvements without raising costs for its customers or receiving direct support from Apple to assist with the changes.

Two months after the public release of Photoshop Lightroom 4, Adobe has now brought the software to the Mac App Store [Direct Link]. The release marks the most substantial Mac App Store release yet for Adobe, joining Photoshop Elements 10 Editor and Premiere Elements 10 Editor as well as the subscription-based Revel (formerly known as Carousel) in Apple's online marketplace for OS X software.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 is priced at $149.99 in the Mac App Store, identical to Adobe's suggested pricing for the boxed version, although Adobe also offers a $79 boxed upgrade version for users of previous Lightroom versions. Adobe also offers the boxed Lightroom 4 at a discounted $99 when purchased with one of the company's new Creative Suite 6 bundles. Per its standard policy, Apple takes a 30% cut of purchases made through the Mac App Store.

The Creative Suite package has of course been one of the major software titles users have been looking for to come to the Mac App Store, with Microsoft Office being another popular software package high on users' wish lists. And while Adobe has not yet made the leap to offering any of the Creative Suite packages or even standalone applications from those bundles available through the Mac App Store, the addition of Lightroom is certainly a significant step for Adobe in the direction of offering higher-end titles through the marketplace.

Apple today released OS X 10.7.4, the fourth maintenance update to OS X Lion. The update is currently available via Software Update and should appear on Apple's download pages soon.

The 10.7.4 update is recommended for all OS X Lion users and includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac including fixes that:

- Resolve an issue where the “Reopen windows when logging back in” setting is always enabled
- Improve compatibility with certain British third-party USB keyboards
- Address an issue that may prevent files from being saved to a server
- Improve the reliability of copying files to an SMB server

Detailed information is available in the full release notes. Notably, the update also includes a fix for the password security hole detailed earlier this week.

An issue existed in the handling of network account logins. The login process recorded sensitive information in the system log, where other users of the system could read it. The sensitive information may persist in saved logs after installation of this update. See http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4272 for more information about how to securely remove any remaining records. This issue only affects systems running OS X Lion v10.7.3 with users of Legacy File Vault and/or networked home directories.

Available versions include:

- OS X Lion Update 10.7.4 (Client) (692.68 MB)
- OS X Lion Update 10.7.4 (Client Combo) (1.4 GB)

- OS X Lion Update 10.7.4 (Server) Client (738.71 MB)
- OS X Lion Update 10.7.4 (Server) Combo (1.49 GB)
- Server Admin Tools 10.7.4 (212.4 MB)

Apple has also released Security Update 2012-002 to bring security fixes to users running systems with Mac OS X Snow Leopard:

- Security Update 2012-002 (Snow Leopard) (238.73 MB)
- Security Update 2012-001 Server (Snow Leopard) (258.11 MB)

Apple has separately pushed out a Safari 5.1.7 update containing several improvements including disabling out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player for security reasons.

Out-of-date versions of Adobe Flash Player do not include the latest security updates and will be disabled to help keep your Mac secure. If Safari 5.1.7 detects an out-of-date version of Flash Player on your system, you will see a dialog informing you that Flash Player has been disabled. The dialog provides the option to go directly to Adobe's website, where you can download and install an updated version of Flash Player.

Finally, Apple has also released Apple Remote Desktop 3.5.3 Client (3.80 MB) to address general compatibility issues.

Apple customers who purchased an iPod between September 12, 2006 and March 31, 2009 are being informed via email that they are being included in a class-action lawsuit filed against Apple in 2004. The lawsuit was granted class-action status by the courts last year and includes millions of customers who purchased any of a broad number of iPod music players. Notices are being distributed to customers covered by the class, directing them to the lawsuit's webpage.

The class-action suit was filed in January 2005 by a customer complaining about the exclusive nature of Apple's digital music offerings encoded with FairPlay, preventing users from playing music purchased from the iTunes Store on other companies' music players and other music stores' digital offerings from being played on iPods. In particular, Apple's efforts to thwart RealNetworks' reverse engineering of FairPlay with its own "Harmony" technology served as the impetus for the lawsuit.

In 2011, then Apple CEO Steve Jobs was instructed to provide a deposition in the case. Apple of course no longer sells DRM-encoded music through the iTunes Store, but the lawsuit argues that Apple sought to build monopolies in the digital music and portable music player markets by integrating its products and services while preventing interoperability with competitors' products.

Three individuals who bought iPods have sued Apple seeking to recover money for themselves and other people who bought iPods. The lawsuit claims that Apple violated federal and state laws by issuing software updates in 2006 for its iPod that prevented iPods from playing songs not purchased on iTunes. The lawsuit claims that the software updates caused iPod prices to be higher than they otherwise would have been.

The Court in charge of the case is the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and the case is known as In re Apple iPod iTunes Antitrust Litigation, C-05-00037-JW.

The list of affected iPods is extensive, including all 5th generation iPods; the iPod Classic; the U2 Special Edition iPod; first, second and third generation iPod Shuffle models; first and second generation iPod Touch models; and, first, second, third and fourth generation iPod Nano models.

Customers who wish to be excluded from the class must inform the court by July 30, 2012. Members of the class who wish register with the court can sign up on the lawsuit's website.

With the introduction of its new ENVY Spectre XT Ultrabook today, HP is finding itself defending the lightweight notebook's design as observers have raised comparisons to Apple's MacBook Air. The issue was addressed directly in a Q&A session with HP design executive Stacy Wolff, with Engadget reporting on Wolff's response to a question speculating that Apple might try to sue over the design. Wolff argued:

I would go back to the TC1000 [Tablet PC] from about 10 years, and that's a tablet. I think if you look at the new Spectre XT, there are similarities in a way, not due to Apple but due to the way technologies developed. Apple may like to think that they own silver, but they don't. In no way did HP try to mimic Apple. In life there are a lot of similarities.

Engadget followed up with Wolff after the session, and he offered some more thoughts on how there are only so many solutions to a given design problem and how HP's design differs from Apple's.

The thing is that you have to design what's right, and that is that sometimes the wedge is the right solution, silver is the right solution. I see a lot of differences as much as the similarities. I think anybody that's close enough to the business sees that there are differences in the design. Ours is rubber-coated at the bottom. We use magnesium; they didn't do that -- they use CNC aluminum. We did a brush pattern on our product; they didn't. We did a different kind of keyboard execution. We did audio as a component; they didn't. So there are a lot of things I can list off that are differences; but if you want to look at a macro level, there are a lot of similarities to everything in the market that's an Ultrabook today. It is not because those guys did it first; it's just that's where the form factor is leading it.

Wolff goes on to cite the "form follows function" argument in claiming that there are only so many ways internal components can fit into a notebook and that the wedge shape is a natural result of how those physical constraints manifest themselves in a usable product design.

Responding to comments about the black "chiclet" keyboard on silver body being similar to Apple's implementation, Wolff notes that a simple color choice doesn't amount to copying and that HP's work with chiclet-style keyboards dates back to the mid-1980s.

HP is far from the first ultrabook manufacturer to be the subject of questions about potentially copying Apple's MacBook Air. Most notably, ASUS was one of the first company's to show off an ultrabook design in the middle of last year, with that design bearing an even more remarkable similarity to the MacBook Air. PC manufacturers have been rushing to bring ultrabooks to the market, now taking advantage of Intel's new Ivy Bridge processors in an effort to take on the MacBook Air in what is predicted to be the future of notebook computing.

Digitimes has had a hit-or-miss track record when it comes to Apple rumors, but with the site having offered some accurate information in the past, its claims continue to be closely watched. In its latest report, the site lays out a timeline for Apple's iPhone and iPad plans for the remainder of the year, basing its claims on sources within Apple's supply chain.

The report focuses on Pegatron, which has served as an alternate assembly partner to Foxconn for a number of Apple products. According to Digitimes, Pegatron has landed orders for both a new iPhone planned to launch in September and a new iPad scheduled to debut "in the fourth quarter".

The iPhone claim appears to be a reasonable one given current thinking that Apple will return to a roughly one-year interval between iPhone updates, with a September launch coming just under a year after the early October introduction of the iPhone 4S last year.

But the iPad claim is a more troublesome one, as Apple has so far stuck to a yearly schedule for iPad hardware updates centered around the March-April timeframe. A late 2012 release of a new "10-inch iPad" presumably arriving as a next-generation version of the current device would mark a significantly shorter lifecycle for the current model than would be expected.

Similar rumors of a late-year iPad update surfaced last year before being quashed amid reports that work on the new Retina display would keep Apple on its yearly update cycle.

Digitimes makes one final claim in its latest report, indicating that Foxconn will be a manufacturing partner for a smaller 7-inch iPad, which is planned for release in August. Claims of such a device have been circulating for some time with some reports similarly pointing to a Q3 launch, and it seems likely that Apple has at least toyed with the idea. It is unclear, however, whether the company truly has any intentions of bringing it out of its design lab.

Apple has been pushing its own nano-SIM design as a replacement for the current micro-SIM for a year. As of a couple months ago, however, Apple was fighting with rival phone makers who were pushing their own SIM designs. Apple has even offered a royalty-free patent license to its design in order to convince other companies to sign on.

The Verge reports that the votes on the next SIM card standard are finally being taken and should be concluded by mid-May. Apple has attempted to counter Nokia's concerns by slightly reworking its design.

We just spoke with SIM card maker (and pioneer) Giesecke & Devrient here at CTIA about progress on the creation of the 4FF standard — the so-called nano-SIM — over which Apple and Nokia have been warring in recent months.

[...]

The company tells us that the ETSI vote on the 4FF standard that had been delayed back in March is actually now underway. Voting began for ETSI members in mid-April and wraps up in mid-May, mere days away. G&D is a voting member, though it wouldn't tell us which way it's leaning — needless to say, the presence of Apple's design here signals that they'll almost certainly put their votes in that direction and away from Nokia's more radical design that limits backward compatibility with micro-SIM and mini-SIM slots on older phones.

G&D also noted that since the nano-SIM design is being "driven by a supplier" -- in this case, Apple -- there wouldn't be a long lag before the new design was implemented. The current standard, the micro-SIM, took five years from ratification as a standard to appearing in the iPhone 4.

Recently, a purported micro-SIM tray for the next iPhone leaked from a part supplier, suggesting that Apple will continue to use that standard in the forthcoming device. Being that the new nano-SIM standard hasn't been ratified, and the fact that Apple would need some lead-time to incorporate the design into the iPhone, it seems likely that the nano-SIM standard would not be ready in time for the next iPhone.

Fortune yesterday released its 2012 "Fortune 500" list, ranking America's largest companies by revenue. As a result of its continued strong growth, Apple rose 18 spots from last year's rankings to land at #17 in the new rankings, which are based on companies' fiscal year reports.

The company emerged from the tragic passing of co-founder Steve Jobs saddened but in no perceptible way weakened. Under CEO Tim Cook, the company continued pumping out new products -- like a significantly upgraded version of the iPad tablet. Apple nearly doubled its earnings per share in 2011, compared to 2010. That helped nudge management to announce plans for the firm's first dividend since 1995, returning some of the $97.6 billion in cash it had accumulated. Apple fans and analysts alike also continue to await a long-rumored television set from the gadget maker.

Apple's 2011 profits of $25.9 billion led the company to a new high as the third most profitable company behind energy giants Exxon Mobil ($41.6 billion) and Chevron ($26.9 billion). Microsoft sits in fourth place with profits of $23.2 billion.

Overall, Exxon Mobil ($453 billion in revenue) surged to barely overtake Wal-Mart ($447 billion) in the race for the top spot in the Fortune 500.

With very strong performances in the first two quarters of fiscal 2012, Apple is putting itself in position to surge even higher in next year's Fortune 500. Apple's official revenues totaling $85.5 billion in just the first half of the year could allow it to threaten to enter the top five next year, as the fifth position is currently held by General Motors at $150 billion for 2011.

As revealed by Apple's iPad selection page for Latin America, the new iPad will be launching in 13 new countries in that region this Friday, May 11. The most significant new addition is Brazil, where Apple's manufacturing partner Foxconn has been ramping up production on iPhone and iPad production.

A further examination of Apple's country-specific store pages reveals that this weekend's iPad launch will actually include a total of 30 countries. The majority of those countries will see the new iPad launch on Friday, May 11, but seven countries in the Middle East will debut the new iPad on Saturday, May 12. The full list of launch countries includes:

May 11: Argentina, Aruba, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Curaçao, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malta, Martinique, Mauritius, Morocco, Peru, Taiwan, Tunisia, Vietnam

May 12: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates

The new iPad appears to still be awaiting certification before it can be sold in China, Honduras, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and the Philippines, and Apple is now promoting lower pricing on the iPad 2 in those countries as it awaits final approvals for the new device.

Apple also quietly launched the new iPad in Turkey this past Saturday, May 5, and following this weekend's launches the new iPad will be available in close to 90 countries around the world.

Apple's new senior vice president of Retail, John Browett, has introduced himself to Apple Retail employees in an email obtained by IFO Apple Store.

Team,

At last I've officially started at Apple, and it's great to be here. I've had the chance to meet many of you at stores in the U.S. and across Europe, and one of my top priorities for the coming months is to meet many more people on our team around the world.

It's incredibly impressive to be on the inside of Apple Retail. Many of my friends, relatives, and former colleagues have written to tell me how lucky I am to be working with such a great group of people, and I couldn't agree more. While our stores are fantastic and our products are amazing, it really is our people who make the difference in creating the best retail experience.

There will be much more to share in the weeks ahead, and I'm looking forward to meeting everyone over time.

I am thrilled to work with all of you as we build the future of Apple Retail together.

Browett, who joins Apple from British electronics retailer Dixons, started work at Apple on April 20, nearly six months after former retail head Ron Johnson left the company to head up JC Penney's turnaround efforts. Browett was awarded restricted stock units worth more than $60 million as an enticement to stay with the company for the next five years.