MacRumors

Thank you for making the Mac OS X Download site a great destination with apps that offer users new ways to work, play, learn, and create on their Mac.

We recently announced that on January 6, 2011, the Mac App Store will open to users around the world, presenting you with an exciting, new opportunity to reach millions of customers. Since the introduction of the App Store in 2008, we've been thrilled with the incredible support from developers and the enthusiastic response from users. Now we're bringing the revolutionary experience of the App Store to Mac OS X.

Because we believe the Mac App Store will be the best destination for users to discover, purchase, and download your apps, we will no longer offer apps on the Mac OS X Downloads site. Instead, beginning January 6, we will be directing users to explore the range of apps available on the Mac App Store.

The move isn't entirely surprising as it makes sense for Apple to consolidate listings in one single location. It's not clear how much traffic the Mac OS X Downloads section receives on a daily basis, but if the iOS App Store is any guide, the Mac App Store should do quite well.

iAd Producer makes it easy for you to design and assemble high-impact, interactive content for iAd. iAd Producer automatically manages the HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript behind your iAd to make creating beautiful, motion-rich iAd content as easy as point and click.

The tool is available for members of the iOS developer program and significantly opens up the iAd creation. While Apple's iAds have generally been seen as a success, the slow content creation process has been cited as significant hurdle for some of their early partners. Prior to this tool, it was said that Apple handled all of the ad creation in house.

Apple's choice to use HTML5 for iAd creation has likely been part of this issue as the tools have not been as mature as those for Adobe Flash. iAd Producer offers visual layout and design with Page Templates, Pre-built animations/effects, advanced Javascript editing and more.

This new tool called AirFlick now allows Mac users to stream video content to their Apple TVs. This includes both locally saved files as well as streaming from files hosted on the internet.

It also allows you to open videos located on the Internet by pasting a URL and clicking the play button. I was able to watch a number of Internet Archive (archive.org) mp4 videos on a big screen TV by browsing that website, selecting URLs, and opening them with AirFlick.

The software is still in an early alpha state. Still, it's an interesting proof of concept and hopefully someone will pick it up and run with it, or maybe Apple will provide this functionality themselves in the future.

In this teaser video called Tablet Evolution, Motorola hypes its upcoming Android-based tablet that will be unveiled at CES 2011. In the video, Motorola labels the iPad as "It's like a giant iPhone, but... it's like a giant iPhone" and even takes a shot at the Galaxy Tab which is described as "Android OS, but Android OS...for a phone".

The Consumer Electronics Show 2011 kicks off the first week of January 2011.

We've been tipped off to Sam's Club now offering the AT&T-locked device for a $147 fee, subject to the usual two-year agreement. This offer will run all the way until Christmas day, so if you have to have the cheapest possible fourth-gen iPhone, this'll probably be it.

The offer is only valid until Christmas, and you must be a member of Sam's Club which comes with its own annual fee.

The 16GB iPhone 4 currently retails for $199 at other outlets, and either price requires a 2 year contract with AT&T.

We are not building any more chipsets, we are building SoCs now. We are building Tegra SoCs, and so we are going to take integration to a new level. [...] The chipset business [has] not grown largely this year because we have not really been expanding the sales of it,

We had known that NVIDIA had exited the chipset business due to ongoing litigation with Intel over licensing, but there had been a belief that the issue would be settled. This quote preceded reports of a possible settlement between Intel and NVIDIA in December. That settlement discussion led to speculation that NVIDIA's return to the chipset market could help boost processor speeds in future MacBook Airs and MacBooks.

NVIDIA CEO, however, had this to reveal about Apple's business:

The second thing is the MCP89, the latest and the last generation of Intel chipset that we built was just a really wonderful piece of engineering and the work that we did with Apple was great, and they are going to continue to use that for some time.

The MCP89 is the chipset that has been used in older MacBooks as well as the new MacBook Air. Apple's use of this NVIDIA chipset limits its choice of processors to the previous-generation Core 2 Duo. This tradeoff allows Apple to incorporate the faster integrated graphics cards from NVIDIA in these low-end machines. According to NVIDIA's CEO, Apple plans on continuing to use these older chipsets for some time.

Note that high end MacBook Pros are unaffected as those machines have the luxury of incorporating both the latest Intel processors and discrete graphics cards from 3rd party manufacturers. The tradeoff primarily affects Apple's low end machines.

But Google has asked the TV makers to delay their introductions, according to people familiar with the companys plans, so that it can refine the software, which has received a lukewarm reception.

Stand alone Google TV set top boxes such as the LogiTech Revue were introduced at $299 and has been met with poor reviews. The Google TV product was seen as a big competitor to Apple's own Apple TV product. Apple has since redesigned the Apple TV to be based on iOS and managed to drop the price to only $99.

At the D8 conference, Steve Jobs was particularly candid about the hurdles that faced all set-top-box manufacturers, and how it was difficult to break into that market:

- On the future of television: "Subsidized set-top boxes have squashed innovation because no one wants to pay for separate boxes...ask TiVo, Roku, us, Google in a few months. The set-top box needs to be torn up and redesigned to get people things they way they want them. And there's no go-to-market strategy for that. With the iPhone, and now the iPad, we could partner with carriers, but television is very balkanized...everything is local.

Apple continues to describe the Apple TV segment as a "hobby" but with the recent integration of iOS, there have been hopes that Apple will eventually introduce an Apple TV App Store as well.

Apple has since given the date of January 6th, 2011 as the launch date for the Mac App Store. Last we heard, Apple was still debating whether or not they would also offer a retail box version of their productivity suite or keep it a Mac App Store exclusive.

Promotional materials for the Mac App Store have shown the three iWork applications, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, available on an individual basis for $19.99 each, below Apple's current $79 price for the complete retail box suite.

Apple is hiring outstanding engineers to deliver the next generation of Apple products. Seize this ground floor opportunity to help us build the world's best hosted platforms at massive scale.

Requirements
* +3 years' experience with developing high quality, robust software systems
* Expert knowledge of C++
* Excellent problem solving and analytical skills
* Outstanding understanding of data structures and algorithms
* Fully comfortable with base technologies like networking, TCP/IP, HTTP, Sockets, Threads, STL and templates.
* Good interpersonal and communication skills

Valuable knowledge:
* Deep knowledge of Computational Geometry or Graph Theory
* Experience with Linux server-side development of distributed systems
* Experience developing navigation software

While the note is only one among a number of requirements and recommended attributes for job applicants and Apple has previously posted job listings soliciting expertise in maps and other geo-focused skills, the fact the company is hiring four core iOS engineers preferred to have experience specifically in navigation suggests that the company may be looking to make a push into the competitive field of turn-by-turn navigation.

Google introduced free turn-by-turn navigation for Android smartphones in late 2009 and at the time noted that it was working with Apple to bring the functionality to the iPhone. Google later backpedaled from those claims, noting that it has never confirmed that it will bring navigation to the iPhone.

Apple has increasingly looked to beef up its own mapping and geolocation services in an attempt to distance itself from Google, which has provided the core Maps application for the iPhone since the device's 2007 debut. Apple acquired mapping company Placebase in July 2009 and followed that up by purchasing small Canadian mapping firm Poly9 one year later. Apple also moved its location services for iOS in-house with the release of iOS 3.2 on the iPad in April of this year, separating itself from Google-owned Skyhook Wireless for such services.

In November 2009, we noted an Apple job posting specifically looking for an iPhone software engineer "to take Maps to the next level".

We've been following News Corp.'s reported tablet-focused news product, The Daily, for some time as the newspaper industry's most significant foray into digital-only publication looking to harness some of the technological capabilities of tablet devices, but have yet to hear firm word on launch details for the publication.

Despite rumors of a December launch, it appears that The Daily's debut will not occur until early next year, possibly due in part to delays on Apple's side as it prepared iOS 4.2 for release pushing back its work on rolling out iOS support for recurring billing and for automatically pushing content from apps like The Daily to users' devices.

All Things Digital now reports that News Corp. is preparing to launch The Daily during the week of January 17th.

News Corp. plans to launch the publication the week of January 17, multiple sources tell me.

The caveat here is that launch plans have moved around a couple of times in the past few months; until recently, lots of folks expected to see this thing in December. But this latest date looks like a much safer bet.

According to reports, The Daily will be published on a daily basis at a subscription rate of 99 cents per week and offer substantial video and multimedia content, "including some kind of 3-D effect that lots of people are very excited about."

The Daily is also expected to be the first application to use Apple's forthcoming recurring billing feature, allowing users' iTunes Store accounts to be automatically charged on a weekly or monthly basis to keep news content flowing to their devices. Other content-focused apps are obviously expected to quickly adopt the feature once it goes live.

The Wall Street Journal now reports that four additional corporate managers who worked with Primary Global Research on the side have also been charged in connection with the investigation. One of those managers, Walter Shimoon, worked for Apple supplier Flextronics and is alleged to have distributed information on the then-unreleased iPhone 4 and iPad.

In their most significant move yet in a sweeping insider-trading investigation, federal prosecutors charged four corporate managers with peddling financial details about prominent technology companies and with leaking secrets about popular consumer products such as Apple Inc.'s iPhone in exchange for cash.

"The information trafficked by the four 'consultants' went way beyond permissible market research," said Janice Fedarcyk, a Federal Bureau of Investigation assistant director in charge. "It was insider information."

Fortune summarizes the key information divulged by Shimoon to a "cooperating witness" for the federal government known as "CW-2".

During this conversation, secretly taped by the FBI and now entered into evidence, Shimoon allegedly gave CW-2 actual third quarter iPhone sales figures -- numbers that wouldn't be publicly released for another two and a half weeks and could, in theory, move the stock.

Then he dropped his two bombshells:

- Apple, he is heard telling CW-2, was "coming out next year" with a new iPhone that's "gonna have two cameras ... It'll be a neat phone because it's gonna have a five-megapixel auto-focus camera and it will have a VGA forward-facing videoconferencing camera." Apple announced the iPhone 4 -- with its two cameras -- eight months later.

- Then he is heard telling CW-2 that "they [Apple] have a code name for something new ... It's ... It's totally ... It's a new category altogether... It doesn't have a camera, what I figured out. So I speculated that it's probably a reader. ... Something like that. Um, let me tell you, it's a very secretive program ... It's called K, K48. That's the internal name. So, you can get, at Apple you can get fired for saying K48." The iPad -- code named K48 -- was unveiled four months later.

According to reports, Shimoon had signed a non-disclosure agreement with respect to his work with Apple through Flextronics, but revealed the information to Primary Global Research, which paid him more than $22,000 for his role as a "consultant" to the firm.

Other corporate managers arrested in conjunction with the information have been alleged to have shared inside information on a number of other companies including Dell, AMD, Seagate, and Western Digital. Federal regulators appear to still be working hard on the case, reportedly working to build cases against even larger Wall Street players including major hedge funds investing in the companies that saw their insider information leaked to outsiders.

In what seems like a rerun of Monday's news, a report has surfaced in the Japanese newspaper Nikkei claiming that Apple and Sharp are partnering to build a 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) plant in China to produce LCD displays for the iPhone.

Sharp Corp (6753.T) will spend about 100 billion yen to build production lines for small and midsize LCDs, with Apple Inc (AAPL.O) slated to purchase bulk of the output for its iPhone, the Nikkei business daily said.

Apple will shoulder a large portion of the 100 billion yen investment and buy most of the panels produced by Sharp, which has supplied LCD panels for Apple's iPod touch music player, the paper reported.

Mass production at the factory would not begin until the second half of 2012.

Monday's report in the same newspaper had claimed that Apple and Toshiba were partnering on a $1.2 billion plant to produce iPhone LCDs and set to come online in the second half of 2011. Toshiba responded to the report, denying any investment by Apple or even a commitment to build a new plant.

With the new report being remarkably similar to the one from earlier this week, it is unclear whether the newspaper is claiming that both companies are pursuing $1.2 billion plants to produce iPhone LCDs with the assistance of Apple or if perhaps the original report pointed to the wrong company, which would obviously represent a significant error.

In a brief commentary on the the overall OLED industry published today, DigiTimes specifically points to supply constraints as one of the primary reasons Apple has yet to shift to the technology.

With backlight unit (BLU) makers set to be suppliers for the second generation of iPad, AMOLED will still be unable to enter Apple's supply chain. Panel makers have noted that a major reason for Apple to overlook AMOLED for iPads is insufficient supplies.

A major challenge for OLED vendors is that manufacturing capacity isn't the only factor holding them back from producing panels for an OLED-based iPad, as the current technology isn't even appropriate for mass production of panels in that size, particularly at competitive price points.

Moreover, the current AMOLED technology is not suitable for volume production of 7- to 11-inch tablet PC panels, and the mass production cost will not be able to compete with TFT-LCD panels.

DigiTimes has been one of the most prominent sources suggesting that Apple has been looking at OLED technology, reporting that sources indicated Apple was considering an OLED display for the second-generation iPad even as it questioned the economic feasibility of the rumor, and also claiming that Apple had investigated using an OLED screen on the iPhone 4.

Amazon's share of the paid digital-download market rose to 13.3% in the third quarter, from 11% the year earlier, according to estimates from research firm NPD Group. Meanwhile, iTunes' share rose to 66.2%, from 63.2%.

Distribution executives at record labels say the disparity between the two may be even steeper, with Amazon commanding just 6% to 10% of the market in any given week, and Apple closer to 90%.

The report points to Amazon's strategy of specific deep discounts, such as offering a new Kid Rock album for only $3.99, as examples of successful promotions run by Amazon to entice customers, but on a day-to-day basis iTunes continues to serve as the place customers turn to for their digital music.

Amazon's deep discounts tend to come in two forms: bargain basement deals such as monthly promotions of $5 albums that generally involve the music industry cutting wholesale prices for Amazon in order to support the pricing, and "Daily Deals" such as the Kid Rock offer in which Amazon pays normal wholesale prices typically in the $7-8 range but charges customers only $3.99, taking a loss in hopes of drawing customers in for additional purchases. Amazon had partnered with certain labels for one-day exclusives on some Daily Deal content, but earlier this year Apple reportedly pressured the labels into reducing their participation in the program and Amazon backtracked on the exclusive offerings. In response, federal investigators launched an antitrust inquiry into the digital music industry, including an examination of Apple's efforts to keep labels from participating in Amazon's program.

Overall, the market for digital download tracks appears to be stagnating, with Billboard seeing only 0.3% growth so far in 2010 with over 1 billion tracks sold. Digital album sales, however, continue to boom, growing 13% this year as sales of physical CD albums have declined 20%.