MacRumors

Earlier this week, we gave a brief preview of Delicious Monster's Delicious Library 3, a brand-new version of the company's popular cataloging app for OS X. The app is now available in the Mac App Store [Direct Link], and Ars Technica has a thorough overview of the new features.

Among the most immediately obvious changes for existing users of Delicious Library is its updated look, which includes the use of SceneKit to boost the realism, along with subtle animation that allows shelf items to constantly move to face the user's mouse cursor.

"We cranked up all the visuals and then cranked down every visual effect so it was something you didn't notice very much," [Delicious Monster CEO Wil] Shipley said. "This has all the graphics effects and polish of a game from a couple years ago. As far as I know, nobody else has used OpenGL in consumer products like this at all, much less the environment mapping and other stuff like that."

Other enhancements include a new stats pane to give users quick overviews of their collections, as well as a completely revamped recommendation engine.

"This isn't about what I own, it's about getting my personality in the computer," Shipley said. "Now, if you scan your whole DVD collection, it provides a bunch of recommendations based on the aggregate of that information. Then if you rate them all, it'll refine the recommendations."

Finally, Delicious Monster has released a free companion iOS app, Delicious Scanner [Direct Link], that will pair with the user's Mac over Wi-Fi and allow his or her iOS device to serve as a mobile barcode scanner.

Delicious Library 3 is available now in the Mac App Store for $24.99. [Direct Link]

Earlier this month, a report revealed that Apple's upcoming "spaceship" campus in Cupertino is both behind schedule and $2 billion over budget. Apple was said to be looking to cut costs on the project, which is apparent in the revised campus plans that it submitted to the city today.

Apple originally planned on constructing a 600,000 square foot area of buildings (known as the Tantau Development) in two phases. Phase 1 was to take place alongside the construction of the main Apple campus, while Phase 2 would be delayed until later.

In order to trim 300,000 square feet of construction costs from its budget, Apple has pushed the entire Tantau Development to Phase 2, which means it will be completed after the main campus is built.

Phase 2 includes 600,000 square feet of office, research and development buildings for up to 2,200 employees along North Tantau Avenue, providing flexibility to address future business needs. Construction of Phase 2 will follow completion of Phase 1. The Tantau sites will have small satellite plants.

Apple's revised campus plan includes the addition of an expanded section detailing bicycle access improvements, which comes with an included visualization of what bike pathways and sidewalks might look like on the campus.

Also notable in the plan is a minor increase to parking availability and updates to public improvements, as well as a new section on Public Art that details four locations where the company plans to install art near the campus.

Apple Campus 2's budget rests near $5 billion, which is said to be because Steve Jobs insisted on design quality and expensive construction methods. The Campus, a circular 2,800,000 square foot 4-story building, is designed to hold 12,000 employees and has a prospective completion date of 2016.

Charity auction site CharityBuzz kicked off a charity auction for a cup of coffee with Tim Cook this morning and the listing, which has an estimated value of $50,000, went from $5,250 to $100,000 in a matter of hours.

Here are our best guesses of the identities of the top contenders vying to win a coffee date with Cook:

owclarry - Larry O’Connor, the founder and CEO of Other World Computing, a company that provides computer upgrade products and services for Macs. "We would love the opportunity to sit down with Tim and maybe get some insights on where the future lies in his eyes," he told MacRumors.

rory.oneill3 (now charitybidder10) - Rory O’Neill, Vice President of Product & Channel Marketing at BlackBerry.

PasswordBox.com - PasswordBox is a secure password management app which is currently restricted to VIP members only and is available on a wait list basis. Its CEO and co-founder is Daniel Robichaud.

USocketUSBOutlet - U-Socket is an AC receptacle with two built-in USB ports, produced by FastMac, so this bidder is likely someone from the company.

stephen.gill.777 - Stephen Gill, an online marketing executive and co-founder of Leadnomics.

BGStucki - Brian Stucki, Owner of Macminicolo, a Mac Mini colocation service that stores users Mac minis in data centers for use as servers.

At the moment, Other World Computing founder Larry O'Connor, who has been actively bidding throughout the day has the winning bid. Prolific bidder O'Neill previously had the username rory.oneill3, which has now been changed to charitybidder10.

While we have confirmed that Stucki and O'Connor are the bidders behind their usernames, the remaining guesses are based on usernames that match up with known people in tech.

The auction, which ends on May 14, will allow two attendees to spend 30–60 minutes with Cook at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino. Proceeds will benefit the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights.

Update: We have received an email alleging that the Rory O'Neill bidding in the auction is not affiliated with BlackBerry.

Update 2: The Charitybuzz website appears to utilize Facebook logins (thanks, Johan!) which means some usernames correlate to Facebook usernames. That suggests Rory O’Neill is not the same Rory O’Neill who works at BlackBerry. Bids have now reached $155k, with Sebastijian Bauman in the lead.

Former Apple employee and JailbreakMe.com hacker Nicholas Allegra, better known as Comex, will be interning at Google, reports Forbes.

Comex, who tweeted the news on Tuesday night, was hired by Apple as an intern in 2011. News broke that he was no longer with Apple late last year, after he forgot to respond to an email that offered him continued employment at the company.

Though Comex did not mention what he will work on at Google, he did mention his disdain for Android.

He added on Twitter that he won't be working on Android, an operating system that he has never "like[d] enough to ever want to hack it."

Before interning for Apple, Comex famously ran JailbreakMe.com, a site that offered a simple way for iOS users to jailbreak their devices. His clever exploits highlighted his talents and in an interview with Forbes, he likened jailbreaking to "editing an English paper… You just go through and look for errors. I don't know why I seem to be so effective at it."

Apple announced its 2013 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) this morning, with plans to put tickets up for sale tomorrow at 10am.

Tickets for WWDC can be hard to come by and sold out within two hours last year, but current students might be able to attend the conference through a WWDC 2013 Student Scholarship.

Apple has set aside 150 scholarships for full or part-time students aged 13 years or older. Students must be current members of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer University Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program.

To win a scholarship, students must submit an application and create an app that demonstrates both creativity and strong coding abilities.

Use your creativity and coding skills to build an app that tells us about you. Your app should highlight development projects you've worked on, your educational and professional background, technical skills, and interests.

Scholarship applications must be submitted by Thursday, May 2, 2013 and will be judged on technical accomplishment, creativity, essay questions, and technical/work experience.

WWDC 2013 is set to take place from June 10–14 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow, April 25 at 10 a.m. PDT for $1599 each.

Charity auction site CharityBuzz is hosting a listing to have coffee with Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple's Cupertino headquarters (via The Next Web).

The proceeds from the auction will benefit the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights, a fitting charity as Cook said at the D10 conference that Bobby Kennedy was one of his heroes. The high bid on the listing, which closes on May 14th, is currently at $5,250, with an estimated value of $50,000.

Legendary investor Warren Buffett routinely auctions lunch with himself for charity. Last year's auction sold for nearly $3.5 million. The winner won lunch for eight with Buffett at Smith & Wollensky in New York.

The auction covers two attendees for a 30-60 minute meeting at a mutually agreed upon date.

Update: The RFK Center has issued a press release announcing the group of roughly 100 celebrity auctions, specifically drawing attention to the coffee meeting with Cook.

In an unprecedented donation, Apple CEO Tim Cook is offering the opportunity for a winning bidder and guest to join him for coffee at the Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, CA. The experience, valued at $50,000, marks the first time one-on-one access to Cook has been offered on the auction block.

Amazon is developing a set-top box to stream video over the Internet via its Amazon Prime and Instant Video services, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The box will compete with similar offerings like the Apple TV and the Roku, though both Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's Playstation have moved into the streaming video arena in recent years.

The set-top box is being developed by Amazon’s Lab126 division, based in Cupertino (Calif.), which has toyed with building TV-connected devices for several years, the people familiar with the effort say. The project is being run by Malachy Moynihan, a former vice president of emerging video products at Cisco who worked on the networking company’s various consumer video initiatives. Moynihan also spent nine years at Apple during the 1980s and 1990s. Among the other hardware engineers working at Lab126 with considerable experience making set-top boxes are Andy Goodman, formerly a top engineer at TiVo and Vudu, and Chris Coley, a former hardware architect at ReplayTV, one of Silicon Valley’s first DVR companies.

Amazon has stepped up its streaming content offerings recently, producing 14 original television pilots and using customer feedback to decide which get made into full shows, as well as spending significant amounts of money to secure exclusive rights to shows like Downton Abbey and The West Wing. The tactic takes on both Netflix's subscription streaming service and Apple's iTunes content store.

Currently Amazon's Instant Video service is available on iPads and iPhones, the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, the Sony Playstation 3, smart televisions from LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, and Vizio, TiVo, the Roku box, as well as a number of Blu-ray players.

With the 10th anniversary of the iTunes Store coming up on Sunday, April 28, Apple has posted a new iTunes Store feature honoring the event. The feature is an expanded version of the iPod + iTunes Timeline that has long been available on the company's site.

The feature walks through a number of important events over the ten-year history of the iTunes Store, from the launch day when U2's "Stuck in a Moment" and Beck's "Sea Change" topped the sales list to the 2010 launch of The Beatles on iTunes to new milestones of 40 billion app downloads and 25 billion songs reached earlier this year.

iTunes has maintained its dominance in both the music and video markets in the United States and other countries for many years, with the music store now available in 119 countries following a major expansion last December. Apple's App Store is even larger, with Apple noting in yesterday's earnings conference call that the marketplace is now available in 155 countries covering 90% of the world's population.

Apple today announced that its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will take place June 10-14 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. The company also announced that tickets for the event, which will be priced at $1599, will go on sale tomorrow at 10:00 AM Pacific Time.

“We look forward to gathering at WWDC 2013 with the incredible community of iOS and OS X developers,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “Our developers have had the most prolific and profitable year ever, and we’re excited to show them the latest advances in software technologies and developer tools to help them create innovative new apps. We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into their hands at WWDC.”

In past years, Apple has put tickets on sale simultaneously its announcement, but with tickets selling out in shorter and shorter amounts of time, it appears that Apple has decided to announce the on-sale time a day early in order to give developers equal chances at obtaining tickets. Tickets for WWDC 2012 sold out in less than two hours.

As was the case last year, Apple's requirements for purchasing a ticket to WWDC include membership in one of the company's paid developer programs. With the advance notice of ticket sales, Apple is also requiring that developers have been members of a paid program prior to today's announcement, preventing last-minute signups.

Developers between the ages of 13 and 17 must also have their tickets purchased by a parent or guardian who is also a member. Tickets are limited to one per person and five per organization.

For developers who are unable to obtain tickets to WWDC, Apple notes that it will be posting session videos during the conference rather than afterwards as it has in the past. Apple previously charged hundreds of dollars for access to the session videos, but made them free for registered developers several years ago and by last year had shortened the time lag between the end of the conference and the video launch to just a few days.

Tim Cook was asked during today's earnings call about his feelings regarding the mobile payments market. While he didn't address the topic directly, he did note that the mobile payments were "just getting started" and still "in its infancy."

In a different part of the call, Cook said Apple would continue to augment the existing "iTunes ecosystem with new services and make existing ones even better."

There have been persistent rumors for several product cycles that the iPhone would gain some sort of mobile payments system, perhaps through near field communications (NFC). Passbook, the system that Apple released last year to make it more convenient for customers using gift card or ticketing apps, could be a precursor to a larger mobile payments play by the company.

Apple already has a mobile payments system of sorts, allowing Apple Retail Store customers to self-checkout with the Apple Store app. The company has hundreds of millions of credit card numbers stored in its iTunes system, providing a natural groundwork for a possible future payments system.

During the Q&A portion of today's earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked about the number of product releases in the fall of 2012 and whether he wished Apple had done things differently.

His answer was somewhat revealing, as Apple is usually hesitant to disclose internal discussions and deliberations, but Cook said that looking back, he would have delayed the release of the new iMac until 2013 to avoid some of the delays that many customers experienced after ordering a new Mac.

I don't spend a lot of time looking back except to learn from it. If we could run it over, I'd announce the iMac after the turn of the year. We felt customers had to wait too long for that specific product.

Apple's new iMacs, first announced in October, experienced significant delays in shipping, presumably due to the thinness of the machine. The displays required a new manufacturing process along with advanced welding techniques, causing some customers to wait for weeks before receiving their orders.

During Apple's Q1 earnings call, Tim Cook admitted that the iMac was constrained for the entire quarter, resulting in a "significant shortage".

The above quote is from a rough transcript of the earnings call

There have been numerous rumors claiming that Apple is working on an iPhone with a larger screen to compete with phones from competitors like Samsung, but Tim Cook's comments during today's Q2 financial results call indicate that the company is not quite ready to make a phone with a 5-inch screen.

My view continues to be that iPhone 5 has the best display in the industry. We always strive to create the very best display. Some customers value large screen size. Others value other factors such as resolution, color quality, white balance, reflectivity, power consumption, compatibility of apps, and portability. Our competitors have made some significant tradeoffs in many of these areas to ship a larger display. We would not ship a larger display iPhone while these tradeoffs exist.

It appears that Apple will not be releasing an iPhone with a larger screen until the company's manufacturing partners can supply it with a 5-inch screen that meets its demanding criteria.

The above quote is from a rough transcript of the earnings call