MacRumors

Earlier this week, we reported that Apple was planning to launch a pilot program that would allow customers placing orders through the company's online store to pick up their orders at their local Apple retail stores. Following a maintenance period that took the online store offline earlier today, in-store pickup is now available for Apple's three retail stores in San Francisco.

Users adding products to their shopping cart are now presented with an option of whether to have their order shipped or made available for pickup. Customers can search for their closest Apple retail stores based on zip code, although options are obviously limited with the pilot program currently including only three stores: San Francisco flagship, Stonestown, and Chestnut Street. Apple promises that more locations will offer in-store pickup in the near future, with 9to5Mac indicating that other Bay Area locations may join the program in as little as a few days from now.

Testing of the new in-store pickup shopping method suggests that delivery may be slightly slower than for direct shipment, as evidenced by a sample order for a custom-configured iMac that was offered a pickup date of November 3rd. Direct delivery of the same order was pegged within a window of October 29th through November 2nd.

It is possible, however, that in-store pickup dates may simply be conservative estimates based on the worst-case direct delivery estimate plus one day for processing at the store. Consequently, orders may arrive at stores ahead of their estimated availability date, with customers being emailed when the orders are ready for pickup.

Orders for standard items stocked by Apple retail stores will indicate same-day availability for the three San Francisco locations, allowing customers to place their orders online and simply visit the store for immediate pickup.

The Charlotte Observer reports that Apple has begun work on a solar farm adjacent to its massive new data center in Maiden, North Carolina. The new solar farm will likely generate a significant amount of power for the facility, although Catawba County officials have yet to see building plans for the facilities.

Apple has quietly begun work on a solar farm that apparently could help power its sprawling data center in southern Catawba County.

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.

Permits issued so far only address grading and erosion control on the site, but Apple has disclosed in those permit applications that it intends to build a solar farm on the site.

The Hickory Daily Record adds some detail to the situation, noting the plot of land is indeed across the street from the data center and that nearby residents have been upset by the smoke from fires set to help clear the land.

That smoke is Apple clearing more than 100 acres of land across from its data center, which opened earlier this year at 5977 Startown Road. It was reported earlier this year that the data facility will be a cloud-computing center for Apple.

Across the street, at 6028 Startown Road, Apple has filed a soil erosion permit with Catawba County for about 170 acres of land. Apple applied for the permit on Aug. 9, and the county reviewed and approved it on Aug. 10.

In the application, Apple described the work as “Solar panel farm A” for the 170.99 acres of land.

The erosion control permit (PDF) indicates that Apple has pieced together three separate parcels of land for the solar farm, with the most recent addition coming just last week. An initial 70-acre parcel at the project address was identified as having been bought by Apple last October, but it is unclear what constitutes the remaining 100 acres of the project site.

For many years, Macworld Expo served as one of the main events for Apple product introductions, with the annual January event in San Francisco in particular being the stage for some important events such as the unveiling of the original iPhone. Apple last presented at Macworld Expo in January 2009, deciding that trade shows were no longer important for allowing the company to reach consumers as the Internet and the company's network of retail stores provided better opportunities for interaction.

Macworld Expo has reinvented itself since 2009, naturally refocusing on third-party companies offering products of interest to Apple users following the loss of Apple's presence. While attendance is down from Apple's last few years of involvement, the event has still been drawing crowds in the neighborhood of 25,000 attendees, and Macworld Expo organizers are now looking to continue rebuilding the show with a new rebranding that will emphasize the rapid increase in visibility of the iOS side of Apple: Macworld|iWorld.

“The brand is evolving from Macworld [Expo] to Macworld|iWorld to illustrate that the show is about the whole ecosystem of Apple products,” said Paul Kent, the event’s vice president and general manager.

The exhibits and conference sessions that have characterized past expos remain with Macworld|iWorld. But show organizers are also adding elements aimed at providing what Kent characterized as a “dynamic culture experience.”

Among the new showcases for Macworld|iWorld are the "Music Experience", which features performances and sessions from musicians who use Apple technology, and the "Film Event", which highlights Apple's role in television and movies.

Even with the rebranding, Macworld|iWorld will reportedly retain a heavy OS X presence, with organizers introducing new packages to attract OS X developers.

Macworld|iWorld will be held at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco from January 26-28, 2012, and registration for the event is now open.

While reading through Steve Jobs' biography, we discovered a number of interesting behind-the-scenes facts related to the development of the iPad.

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Earlier this month, Sony Pictures acquired the movie rights to Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs, seeking to adapt the story for the big screen. Sony was viewed as being a good fit for the film, as the studio's Columbia Pictures arm had successfully transitioned the story of Facebook to film with last year's release of The Social Network.

The writer behind The Social Network was Aaron Sorkin, who also gained fame for his work on A Few Good Men, The West Wing, and most recently Moneyball. And according to The Los Angeles Times, Sony is once again trying to pair up with Sorkin for the Steve Jobs screenplay.

Sony is moving forward with a Steve Jobs movie based on Isaacson's book. And one of the writers being courted by producers to pen his story, according to a person who was briefed on the project but not authorized to speak about it publicly, is Aaron Sorkin, Hollywood's chronicler-in-chief of the complicated visionary.

The "Moneyball" and "Social Network" writer was said by the person to be considering the prospect but had made no decisions. Sony and a Sorkin representative declined to comment on the writer's potential involvement.

Sorkin and Jobs actually did have a bit of history with each other, as Jobs had tried to convince Sorkin to write a film for Pixar, a proposal Sorkin declined because he didn't "think [he could] make inanimate objects talk."

STEVE: Once you make them talk they won’t be inanimate.

ME: The truth is I don’t know how to tell those stories. I have a young kid who loves Pixar movies and she’ll turn cartwheels if I tell her I’m writing one and I don’t want to disappoint her by writing the only bad movie in the history of Pixar.

A timeline for the potential Jobs movie is not yet firmed up, and casting is obviously still a ways off. Former ER star Noah Wyle, who played Jobs in the 1999 made-for-TV film Pirates of Silicon Valley, has expressed interest in reprising the role.

Are you kidding? I would give my eye teeth, in the heartbeat, of a New York minute. There are certain roles you wish you could tackle over and over again. That's one for me.

Isaacson's Steve Jobs experienced very strong pre-orders and early sales, and is headed toward the top of Amazon's list top-selling books for 2011, currently ranked #12.

Jeff Robbin, who built iTunes and was co-lead in the creation of the original iPod with Tony Fadell, is heading up Apple's television efforts, according to a Bloomberg report.

Apple Inc. is turning to the software engineer who built iTunes to help lead its development of a television set, according to three people with knowledge of the project.

Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public.

Earlier today, Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster issued a research note with several tidbits of evidence to support his long-held assertion that Apple is working on a television.

Rumors of an Apple television have been getting significantly louder since this weekend, when Steve Jobs' biography quoted Jobs as saying he had "finally cracked" the problems standing in the way of an Apple television set.

In the days after the iPhone launched on Sprint, a number of customers complained about extremely slow data speeds on Sprint's network. Sprint initially denied that there were any problems, but now a report from TheNextWeb suggests that is a problem with Sprint's iPhone data speeds:

Now it seems that an internal email has been sent to Sprint representatives, informing them that Apple and Sprint are working together on a “confirmed nationwide issue” dealing with the slow data rates many users are experiencing. There was no information about what the cause of the issues are or what the expected resolution date might be.

The email did contain a reference to a ‘Service Settings’ update, which sounds like it could be referring to the carrier settings file that contains access point info for the carriers.

The iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S broke Sprint's "device family" one-day sales record on October 14, the first day the phones were available on the network.

Following the debut of the iPhone 4S as the first phone to support the Bluetooth 4.0 standard, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) has begun promoting the technology under the new "Bluetooth Smart" marketing term. In a press release issued today, the Bluetooth SIG outlined the types of devices that will fall into the Bluetooth Smart categories.

The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) announced two new brand extensions to its globally recognized logo today in an effort to create consumer awareness around compatibility for new devices implementing Bluetooth v4.0 – the Bluetooth Smart Ready trademark and the Bluetooth Smart trademark. Bluetooth Smart Ready devices are phones, tablets, PCs and TVs that sit at the center of a consumer’s connected world and implement a Bluetooth v4.0 dual mode radio. Bluetooth Smart devices are sensor-type devices like heart-rate monitors or pedometers that run on button-cell batteries and were built to collect a specific piece of information. Bluetooth Smart devices include only a single-mode low energy Bluetooth v4.0 radio.

Bluetooth Smart has been promised as a way to allow devices to interact wirelessly using low-power standards, enabling countless new potential uses.

Bluetooth Smart devices are designed to gather a specific type of information—are all the windows on my house locked, what is my insulin level, how much do I weigh today?—and send it to a Bluetooth Smart Ready device.

Examples include heart-rate monitors, blood-glucose meters, smart watches, window and door security sensors, key fobs for your car, and blood-pressure cuffs—the opportunities are endless.

While the iPhone 4S is not yet able to make extensive use of the features specific to Bluetooth Smart due to a lack of peripheral single-mode Smart devices capable of transmitting data to the iPhone, it is clear the Bluetooth standards bearers and manufacturers will be quickly pushing forward to promote the adoption of Smart technology in a host of new product categories.

Beyond the iPhone 4S, Apple has also been building Bluetooth 4.0 support into several of its latest Mac lines, including the Mac mini and MacBook Air introduced back in July. Notably, today's MacBook Pro update did not bring Bluetooth 4.0 support to that line, although the update was an extremely minor one that Apple is not even acknowledging as a refresh on its promotional product pages. Consequently, the update appears to have been limited to core "plug-and-play" features such as CPU, GPU, and hard drives that could be easily upgraded rather than features like new Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities that could require more significant engineering work.

Reuters reports that Walter Isaacson's just-released authorized biography of Steve Jobs is poised to become Amazon's top-selling book of the entire year, highlighting the extraordinary interest in the private Apple co-founder's life following his passing early this month.

The book is the best-selling book on Amazon.com and is also listed as the top-selling electronic book on the company's Kindle eBook store.

"The way things are trending, it could very likely be our top-selling book of the year," Amazon spokeswoman Brittany Turner said in a statement.

Amazon declined to comment on the split between digital and physical versions of the book, although one analyst suggests that digital sales of best sellers have typically been coming at 50-70% of total sales, suggesting that the digital version of Steve Jobs is likely to outsell the print version for at least the next six months.

Steve Jobs is already ranked #13 on Amazon's list of best sellers for the year on the strength of pre-orders. The book was already highly anticipated before Jobs' death, but immediately shot to the top of Amazon's charts with a sales increase of as much as 40,000% following his October 5th passing.

One of the major revelations pulled out of the new authorized Steve Jobs biography has been Jobs' disclosure that he "finally cracked" the problems standing in the way of an Apple television set.

Rumors of an Apple-branded television have been circulating for years, but have been gaining steam following the release of the iPad as observers look to Apple's "next big thing". One of the strongest proponents of an Apple television set has been Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who has issued a number of reports about Apple's prospect for such a device.

With Jobs' comments once again fanning the flames of speculation regarding an Apple television, Munster has weighed in (via Fortune) to claim that all evidence is pointing to a launch as soon as next year. Among the newly presented evidence from Munster is a claim that prototypes of the Apple television set are now "in the works".

- Based on Jan-11 meetings in Asia (not with component suppliers), we believe Apple is investing in manufacturing facilities and securing supply for LCD displays. These displays could range from 3.5" mobile displays to 50" television displays.

- More recently, in Sept-11 we met with a contact close to an Asian component supplier who indicated that prototypes of an Apple television are in the works.

Munster also points to several patents and patent applications filed by Apple addressing the company's work into television-related technologies as further evidence of the company's interest. And while Apple routinely files for patents on technologies that never appear in its products, it is clear that the company has been thinking about how it could make a bigger impact in the television-related market if it elected to go down that route.

While any specifications on an Apple TV remain unknown beyond Jobs' suggestion that it would integrate iCloud presumably with iTunes Store video content, Munster believes that Apple could sell 1.4 million television sets at an average selling price of $1800 in 2012, ramping up to 4.3 million units by 2014 as costs drop to an average selling price of $1400. Munster's estimates, which are of course essentially guesses informed by current market trends, put Apple's share of the connected TV market at 3% in 2014, with the company bringing in $6 billion in revenue from the segment.

Alongside today's quiet MacBook Pro refresh, Apple has also updated its iPad 2 Smart Cover offerings, perhaps most notably discontinuing the orange polyurethane cover and replacing it with a new dark gray cover.

Other changes include:

- Interior color now matches exterior color. The interior side of the Smart Cover facing the iPad screen had previously been a uniform gray color on all models with the exception of the (PRODUCT) RED version. All Smart Covers are now a consistent color inside and out.

- More vibrant colors for polyurethane covers. Aside from the replacement of the orange cover with a dark gray one, sources indicate that the colors on the polyurethane models are now more vibrant. Polyurethane Smart Covers come in blue, green, pink, light gray, and dark gray.

- Color adjustment on navy leather cover. Apple offer five different leather Smart Covers, and sources reports that Apple has slightly tweaked the color on the navy version to make it "more navy" than the original version. All other colors (tan, black, cream, and red) remain unchanged.

Pricing on the Smart Covers remains the same, with polyurethane covers coming in at $39.00 and leather covers priced at $69.00. While Apple's store pages have been updated with the new colors, the company's Smart Cover page does not yet reflect the changes.