MacRumors

The Charlotte Observer reports that Apple has filed plans to double the size of its fuel cell facility at its data center in Maiden, North Carolina to 10 megawatts.

Fifty fuel cells adjacent to its $1 billion data center in Maiden are expected to be operating by January, Apple said in papers filed with the N.C. Utilities Commission. It will be fueled by “directed biogas” in which cleaned methane gas from a landfill is injected into a natural gas pipeline. [...]

California-based Apple says the initial 4.8-megawatt phase in Maiden began start-up and testing in October. In November it applied for an amended state permit to increase the project’s size.

Fuel cells at Apple's corporate headquarters in Cupertino, California

In yet another sign that Apple's iPhone 5 stocks are returning to normal, Apple has lifted its limit of two iPhone 5's per customer. The top boilerplate in this image is from last week when Apple began selling the GSM iPhone 5 unlocked in the U.S., and the lower boilerplate is from today.

In recent days, we've seen ship times for some countries drop as low as 2-4 business days. Additionally, an Apple Retail source tells us that the prior restrictions on retail iPhone 5 purchases -- two per transaction and a ten-phone lifetime limit -- have been changed to ten phones per transaction and no lifetime limit.

While normal customers are unlikely to need to purchase ten iPhones per transaction, the limits are likely aimed at the well-documented reseller phenomenon where entrepreneurs purchase Apple products in bulk and ship them to countries where those products are not yet for sale.

Since many of these devices are purchased for resale in China, it's possible that Apple's launch of the iPhone 5, iPad mini and 4th-generation iPad in that country later this month could lessen reseller demand.

The iPad mini retains its two-per-customer limit, however. Attempting to purchase more than two on the Apple Online Store displays the following notice:

A maximum of 2 iPad can be purchased per customer. Please adjust the total quantity of iPad in your order before checking out.

Soon after the launch of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro in June, we pointed to an analysis by AnandTech showing how the need to drive a massive number of pixels taxed the graphics capabilities of the machine to the point where it struggled to hit 20 frames per second while scrolling on resource-intensive web pages such as Facebook news feeds.

AnandTech now follows up with a new report based on a thread in our forums showing that the latest builds of WebKit, the open source browser engine upon which Safari is based, demonstrate dramatically improved frame rates during scrolling.

I grabbed a build (r135516 - it's no longer the latest build but I assume the later builds also contain the fix) and tried it out on the 13-inch rMBP. Scrolling down my Facebook news feed ended up being one of the best showcases for poor scrolling performance on the rMBPs, so that's obviously the first test I ran. As always I used Quartz Debug to measure UI frame rate.

The results show frame rates of around 20 frames per second (fps) under the standard Safari 6.0.2, but jump to nearly 50 fps when using nightly build r135516 of WebKit.

Frame rates approaching 50 fps when scrolling in WebKit nightly build r135515

The Wall Street Journal reports that Qualcomm has agreed to invest up to $120 million in Sharp as part of an effort to prop up the ailing manufacturer of displays for a wide range of electronic devices. The deal will also see the two companies working together to push Sharp's new indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) technology that has been rumored for use in a number of Apple products.

Sharp and Qualcomm will work together to develop screens based on the Japanese company's new IGZO display technology and Qualcomm's microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, displays. The former, named for a new material used—indium gallium zinc oxide—hold several advantages over silicon-based screens, Sharp says. These latter offer promise as a lower-power alternative to today's screens.

According to Sharp, the new displays making use of the two technologies allow mobile devices to go longer between charges, provide more pixels per inch for sharper resolution and enable touch screens to be more accurate and sensitive.

The report notes that Sharp is betting on IGZO to save the company, which is in dire financial straits. Sharp is viewed as a critical partner for Apple as the iPhone maker seeks to lessen its reliance on Samsung, and there has been speculation that Apple recently structured component prepayment and equipment deals worth as much as $2 billion to help shore up Sharp's financial situation.

Earlier today, we noted that the iTunes Music Store had gone live in Russia and Turkey, but now that changes have propagated throughout iTunes and we've had time to collect reports, it now appears that Apple is selling music through the iTunes Store in 56 new countries. The additions nearly double the number of countries in which the iTunes Music Store operates.

The new countries include:

- Europe: Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine

- Africa, the Middle East and India: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, India, Israel, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Swaziland, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Zimbabwe

- Asia Pacific: Fiji, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

- Latin America and the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago

Beyond music, four of the new countries have also seen Apple roll out access to movies: India, Indonesia, Russia, and Turkey.

Update 9:08 PM: Apple has published a press release confirming that it has launched the iTunes Store in 56 new countries.

Along with an announcement that the Ashton Kutcher-led jOBS [sic] will premiere this winter at the Sundance Film Festival, the festival has also released the first official image of Kutcher as Steve Jobs.

From Vanity Fair magazine:

Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival, which, just moments ago, announced that jOBS—weird capitalization choice theirs, not ours—would premiere at this year’s festival, the photo shows the Two and a Half Men lead in a cubicle. Outfitted in a button-down shirt, jeans, and a goatee—Kutcher’s Jobs, who leans against a desk in front of a poster bearing the IBM slogan THINK—bears an eerie resemblance to a vintage photo of an actual Steve Jobs floating around on the Internet. That vintage photo also features Steve Jobs’s Jobs in a button-down shirt, jeans, and a goatee, leaning against a desk in front of a poster bearing the IBM slogan THINK.

It was announced earlier this year that Kutcher would play the iconic CEO in an independent film that is separate from the Sony project that will be based on Walter Isaacson's autobiography. That film is being written by West Wing and Newsroom scribe Aaron Sorkin.

Sundance's description of the film:

jOBS / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Michael Stern, Screenwriter: Matt Whiteley) — The true story of one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history, jOBS chronicles the defining 30 years of Steve Jobs’ life. jOBS is a candid, inspiring and personal portrait of the one who saw things differently. Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, Matthew Modine. CLOSING NIGHT FILM

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival will take place in Park City, Utah from January 17th through the 27th.

Apple is hiring "dozens" of laid off Texas Instruments engineers to beef up its chip-making R&D operations in Israel, according to a report by The Next Web.

According to sources close to the situation, Apple has been hiring "dozens" of engineers from Texas Instruments after the company begun cutting around 250 jobs from its Ra’anana development center as it looks to lay off around 1,700 employees (about 5 percent of its total workforce) globally.

Many of the engineers working at the development center were focused on the development of TI’s OMAP and radio (including WiFi and Bluetooth) chips, which are used a number of new smartphone and tablet devices.

It's possible that the engineers will work with the crew from Anobit that Apple purchased a year ago, perhaps at Apple's new research and development center in Haifa.

The Next Web notes that the new hires will likely be in the Technologies group that Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield is now in charge of after last month's executive reshuffling at the company.

In line with reports of an Apple media event in Moscow tomorrow where the company has been rumored to be officially introducing the iTunes Music Store for Russia, it now appears that the store has started to go live in both Russia and Turkey.

iTunes Music Store live in Russia (left) and Turkey (right)