MacRumors

Just yesterday, we noted that Apple was planning two retail store openings for this week, with the Stratford City store in London opening today and the Jungfernstieg store in Hamburg, Germany following suit on Saturday. Apple has now announced two additional store openings for this Saturday, continuing its third quarter retail push to bring dozens of new stores online ahead of the holiday shopping period.

- Cielo Vista Mall (El Paso, Texas): Apple's first Texas store west of San Antonio, the Cielo Vista Mall location will fill a significant hole in Apple's retail store coverage. The nearest existing store is over 250 miles north in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The nearest store to the west lies over 300 miles away in Tucson, Arizona, while the San Antonio stores are over 500 miles to the east.

- Via Rizzoli (Bologna, Italy): Apple's eighth Italian store is the company's first in Bologna and is located about 60 miles from the Florence store that opened just over a month ago. The standalone store is the company's first in Italy to not be located inside a shopping mall.

AppleInsider reports that Apple is preparing to release an updated version of its compact AirPort Express wireless base station. Hints of the imminent refresh come from shortages of the existing model being observed at several third-party retailers, but the most concrete evidence comes from a source reporting that Apple is finishing work on its AirPort Utility 5.6 software which makes reference to the new model.

Although Apple's online store still reflects availability of "AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes," authorized resellers like DataVision report that the same model (MB321LL/A) is discontinued, while Amazon estimates it will have new stock sometime in the next "2 to 5 weeks."

Additionally, a person familiar with the matter says Apple is wrapping up the release of AirPort Utility 5.6, makes reference to a second-generation 802.11n AirPort Express in its developer notes:

"Adds support for the AirPort Express 802.11n (2nd Generation) base station"

Similar references to updated Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme models were discovered in the public release of AirPort Utility 5.5.3 back in June, with the new models debuting a week later.

That update brought increased storage capacities for Time Capsule models, as well as improved range and performance. It is unclear exactly what changes Apple has in store for the AirPort Express, but similar wireless performance improvements may be the focus of the update.

Apple today released MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.1, a 3.99 MB update addressing a pair of issues on the company's latest MacBook Air models. The fixes include enhanced stability for Lion Recovery over the Internet and improvements for Thunderbolt-related issues including compatibility with Apple's forthcoming Apple Thunderbolt Display.

This update includes fixes that enhance the stability of Lion Recovery from an Internet connection, and resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on MacBook Air (mid 2011) models.

For more information about Lion Recovery, please visit http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/.

The MacBook Air EFI Update will update the EFI firmware on your notebook computer. Your computer's power cord must be connected and plugged into a working power source. When your MacBookAir restarts, a gray screen will appear with a status bar to indicate the progress of the update. It will take several minutes for the update to complete. Do not disturb or shut off the power on your MacBookAir during this update.

We noted last week that the new Apple Thunderbolt Display was beginning to ship to stores in anticipation of a launch in the near future, and today's release to ensure compatibility with the new MacBook Air offers further evidence that a launch for the display is near.

Apple announced the display back in July with a shipping date of "within 60 days", a timeframe that is rapidly approaching. Apple's order page for the $999 display is showing a 2-3 week estimate for new orders, but earlier pre-orders will likely ship sooner than that. We have yet to hear, however, of any pre-orders being prepared for shipment.

Business Insider reports on new sales data from market research firm NPD, as shared by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster. According to NPD, Apple's U.S. Mac sales are up 22% year-over-year for the the first two months of the third calendar quarter of 2011, setting the company up to set a new record for quarterly Mac sales. The strong performance has unsurprisingly been driven by new MacBook Air and Mac mini models released on July 20th.

Wall Street analysts have been predicting Mac growth of 16% for the full quarter, and while Mac sales may slow slightly in September as Apple's product lines begin to age a bit and the back to school period winds down, the company is reportedly still on track to ship approximately 4.5 million Macs this quarter. Apple's current quarterly record for Mac sales was set in the holiday quarter last year with 4.13 million Macs sold.

NPD has also reported iPod sales down 16% year-over-year for the first two months of the quarter, which actually puts Apple at a slightly better pace than analysts had been expecting. Despite continued strong sales of the iPod touch, Apple's overall iPod sales have been declining for the past year or two as customers have turned more toward smartphones such as the iPhone as single-device options for their phone, music, and other portable media needs.

Late last week, NBC announced that it had enhanced its iPad application to offer viewers access to full-length episodes, providing a significantly improved set of offerings for users.

"We are thrilled to offer our fans full episodes via our NBC.com app. Now the app truly reflects the deep fan experience that we have created online at NBC.com," said [NBCUniversal Digital Entertainment President Vivi] Zigler. "And our fans are going to love the latest update to the NBC Live app which now offers them more content, better access and a unique social television experience."

In addition to full episodes, the NBC app for iPad, which launched in June 2011, gives fans access to content from their favorite shows and features such as thousands of video clips and highlights, exclusive photo galleries, recaps, games and news, making it all customizable from the myNBC dashboard.

NBC is not the only network to roll out new support for full-length episodes, as Turner Broadcasting has also released new TNT for iPad and TBS for iPad applications offering access to full episodes from those channels for users who are eligible through their cable company subscriptions. The company also updated its iPhone applications for TNT and TBS with the same functionality.

Apple is continuing to press forward with new retail store openings this week, working toward making good on plans to open over 30 new stores during the third quarter of this year.

One unusual store opening will take place tomorrow as the Stratford City store opens up in the new Westfield Stratford City shopping center in the northeastern portion of London. The rare mid-week opening for Apple coincides with the grand opening day for the mall itself, a nearly 2 million square foot facility that will be the largest urban shopping center in Europe and serve as a key component of London's plans for hosting next year's Summer Olympics.

Apple will also be opening its new Jungfernstieg store in Hamburg, Germany this Saturday. The store will be Apple's seventh German store and second in the city, joining the existing Alstertal store a few miles away.

Finally, M.I.C gadget reports that Apple is getting close to an opening for its massive new Nanjing Road store in Shanghai, adding the company's "curtain opening" promotional signage that frequently appears at flagship store locations as the final touches are put on the new stores. The new Nanjing East location will span five levels, with the first floor devoted to product demos and sales and the second floor dedicated to Genius Bar and customer training activities. Portions of the third floor will offer support for business customers, with the remainder of the facility serving as offices for Apple's operations in the region.

In a new research note provided to MacRumors, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports that Apple is scheduled to send the golden master version of iOS 5 to its iPhone and iPod touch assembling partners during the timeframe of September 23rd through 30th, suggesting a launch for the new hardware around mid-October once the assemblers have had time to install the software on already-produced hardware and ship it out. The claims are in line with other reports suggesting that Apple will debut the next iPhone around the middle of next month.

Perhaps more interestingly, Kuo specifically tells us that he has seen no evidence of the rumored redesigned "iPhone 5" in the supply chain. Instead, his sources point to the "N94" iPhone that has been popularly referred to as the "iPhone 4S" as the sole new iPhone model set to ship, with Apple planning for 30 million units through the end of the year. Apple is also planning production of an additional 5 million units of the existing iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS models as it transitions to the new model.

While many have been holding out for a significantly redesigned iPhone 5 offering a thinner, tapered profile as shown in third-party cases supposedly based on leaked design documents, essentially no evidence for such a model has surfaced in the form of parts leaks or other details. While some have suggested that the N94 is a decoy/scrapped/backup model and that Apple is keeping the redesigned model under tighter wraps, Kuo is not seeing signs of such a model anywhere in Apple's supply chain.

As for the N94 iPhone, Kuo also shares a few details on the device:

- 512 MB of RAM: This is to be expected, as the next iPhone should be using the same A5 chip found in the iPad 2, which does in fact offer 512 MB of RAM.
- Camera module height "almost same" as in iPhone 4: Camera thickness is the major limiting factor for overall device thickness, meaning that the next iPhone is not likely to be significantly thinner than the iPhone 4. Sony is said to have started shipping camera sensors to Apple's manufacturers back in July, with OmniVision coming online to assist in September or October.
- 3.5-inch display: A number of rumors have claimed that Apple will be using a larger display for the new iPhone, but Kuo's sources indicate the screen will be the same size as that found in the iPhone 4.
- Glass front and back: Although not 100% confident on this item, Kuo's sources suggest that Apple will continue to utilize the same basic design of the iPhone 4, with glass on both the front and back of the device.
- Manufacturing shares: Foxconn is scheduled to handle 85% of the production load for the new iPhone, with Pegatron taking the remaining 15%. As previously noted, Pegatron will be a bit slower to ramp up production, and will primarily be supplying Apple's Asia-Pacific markets.

As for the next-generation iPod touch, Kuo sees very few enhancements over the current fourth-generation models. The most visible change will be the addition of white models, with Apple said to be targeting production at a 60-40 split between black and white for both the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPod touch is said to be set to see a major redesign for the 2012 release.

Apple today seeded a new version of OS X 10.7.2, termed Build 11C55, to developers. Notably, the build appears to fully incorporate iCloud functionality for the first time. The iCloud components had previously been included as a separate download to be installed on top of earlier OS X 10.7.2 builds.

OS X Lion Software Update 10.7.2 is an update to OS X Lion 10.7 and includes support for iCloud beta. Please refer to the seed note for more details and installation instructions.

The new build comes nine days after the previous seed of OS X 10.7.2 Build 11C48 with the associated iCloud beta 10.

Apple continues to list no known issues with the latest build, and asks developers to focus their testing on AddressBook, GraphicsDrivers, iCal, iChat, iCloud, Mac App Store, Mail, MobileMe, Safari, Spotlight, and Time Machine.

Just this past Friday, Apple seeded new developer builds of iTunes 10.5 and iWork for iOS as part of continued testing for iCloud compatibility. The company has also been seeding builds of iPhoto 9.2 to support the Photo Stream component of iCloud, but has not seeded a new iPhoto build since August 26th.

Apple is of course also continuing to seed iOS developers with builds of iOS 5 leading up to the public launch of the next-generation operating system for Apple's mobile devices. The current developer seed is iOS 5 beta 7, released on August 31st.

Apple has sent out an email to registered developers today notifying them that the company has opened the iTunes Match beta to additional developers in the United States. The iTunes Match beta was initially opened late last month, but closed to new registrations within a few hours after the initial quota of developers was reached.

iTunes Match beta testing has now been expanded to additional developers in the United States.

iTunes Match stores your music library in iCloud and allows you to enjoy your collection from anywhere, any time, on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or computer. Any of your songs, including music you've imported from CDs, that matches with the 18 million songs in the iTunes Store will become available in iCloud and will play back at iTunes Plus quality (256 Kbps DRM-free AAC) — even if your original was of a lower quality.

Apple goes on to note that developers must upgrade to the new iTunes 10.5 beta 8 in order to use iTunes Match, and continues to warn that all iCloud libraries will be deleted at the end of the beta testing period, so users should be sure to retain copies of their music libraries.

iTunes Match is priced at $24.99 per year, and Apple is providing developers who sign up for the service with additional time on their subscription to carry them through the beta testing period and the first full year of public availability.

Apple today seeded new builds of iTunes 10.5 and iWork for iOS to developers, continuing to push forward on work toward a full launch of the company's iCloud services. The releases include iTunes 10.5 beta 8 and iWork for iOS beta 3.

The new iTunes 10.5 build supersedes beta 7, which was released alongside iOS 5 beta 7 on August 31st, while the new iWork for iOS version is an update over the beta 2 version released on August 19th.

Both releases are being targeted to support Apple's iCloud services, which have been announced for release this fall. iCloud is widely expected to launch alongside iOS 5 and new iPhone and iPod hardware by the middle of next month.

Adobe yesterday announced the release of Flash Media Server 4.5 and Flash Access 3.0, updated tools to allow publishers to host streaming Flash video content. As noted by Computerworld, the release includes a new solution to allow Flash content to be repackaged and streamed to iOS devices, which famously do not support Flash Player directly.

"With Adobe Flash Media Server 4.5, media publishers now have a single, simple workflow for delivering content using the same stream to Flash-enabled devices or to the Apple iPhone and iPad."

In other words, Adobe's solution repackages content in real-time, changing the protocol to suit the target device, HTTP Dynamic Streaming or HLS, for example. This should mean that iOS devices will get much of the advantages of Flash video support, without the processor degradation and battery life cost of the format in use on other devices.

Consequently, as media publishers begin to adopt the new Adobe software, they will be able to easily deliver HTML5-compatible content to mobile devices alongside the traditional Flash Player content. Because the feature utilizes video streaming technology rather than running the Flash content directly on the device, it does not yet support interactive Flash content such as games and banner ads, but the ability to access streaming Flash video on iOS devices will certainly be a welcome addition for many users.

A number of media providers have of course already taken to providing HTML5 versions of their video content in order to bring compatibility to iOS devices, but direct integration of the functionality into Flash Media Server should simplify the process for those content providers who have invested in the platform.

Business Insider offers some details from one of the first outside developers to work with the original iPad before its debut, describing the steps Apple went through to ensure secrecy. While some of the same details were reported last year, the new account offers a few additional items of interest.

The criteria was that we had to have a room with no windows. They changed the locks on the door.

Three developers and I were the only people allowed to go in the room. Apple needed the names and social security numbers of the people who had access.

Apple needed to be able to drill a hole in the desk and chain the devices to desk. They used those bicycle cables.

They had these custom frames built around them so we couldn't even tell what the iPads looked like. We could plug into them so we could code to them and we could touch the screen and play with that, but we couldn't see the form factor.

Then they took pictures of the wood grain. If any pictures leaked out, they could trace it back to which desk they came from.

While those security measures were obviously quite strict, they were not enough to prevent several photos of the device in testing from leaking out the night before the iPad was unveiled.