MacRumors

A new series of claims are continuing to point to tightening supplies and an upcoming refresh of Apple's MacBook Pro line, possibly as early as late next week.

The first report [Google translation] from Italian site iSpazio claims that it has received word from an Apple employee that Apple is preparing to launch five new MacBook Pro models carrying order numbers MC720, MC721, MC723, MC724, and MC725. The five new models will reportedly span all three current MacBook Pro sizes of 13-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch. The new models are also said to be making their way to Apple Italy over the next few days in preparation of a launch "towards the end of this month".

Apple currently offers six standard configurations of the MacBook Pro, with two 13-inch models, three 15-inch models, and a single 17-inch model. It is unclear where a reduction to five total models would be made, although the most reasonable bet might for the 15-inch size to see a drop to only two standard configurations.

Remarkably similar information is being offered [Google translation] by another Italian site, Slide to Mac, causing us to wonder whether the same source claiming to be with Apple Italy has provided information to both sites. This second report's details include claims that Apple's schedule calls for a release on Thursday or Friday of next week and that the update will not simply be essentially a spec bump of the existing models.

Finally, we've been watching supplies of existing MacBook Pro models tighten over the past month, particularly through third-party retailers, but according to Apple Bitch, the squeeze has begun to hit some of Apple's own farther-flung retail distribution points in Asia.

Apparently websites for Apple Stores in several Asian countries have been updated today to reflect longer shipping times for the MacBook Pro. For example, the Malaysian Apple Store updated its website today to show that shipping times for the 13 inch MacBook Pro have slipped from 24 hours to 1-5 days. This is also reflected in other countries such as Hong Kong, Vietnam and Taiwan.

A current survey of some of Apple's online stores in Asia does show shipping estimates bouncing around over the past few days, with many standard configurations showing estimates of 2-4 or 3-5 business days where availability had just recently been pegged at "within 24 hours". Apple's North American and European stores are still showing immediate turnarounds on new orders.

Update: AppleInsider is also reporting that Apple appears to be gearing up for a "significant product launch" as early as next week.

Earlier this week, we noted that some observers were expressing concern over potential antitrust issues related to Apple's new App Store subscription program that forces content providers to at least offer users the option of subscribing through Apple's in-app subscriptions, which sees the company taking a 30% cut of revenue. The program also comes with restrictions preventing developers from including links to external subscription signup options within their apps and offering lower prices outside of their apps.

Any antitrust issues are likely to hinge on how the market addressed by in-app subscriptions is defined, and thus whether Apple is considered to hold a sufficiently dominant position in it that regulators might be interested in stepping in. According to The Wall Street Journal, several regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have begun "looking at" Apple's subscription program, although the inquiries are still in an early stage that may not proceed to a formal investigation.

U.S. antitrust enforcers have begun looking at the terms Apple Inc. set this week for media companies who want to sell their content on its popular iPad and other devices, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission's interest in Apple's new subscription service is at a preliminary stage, and might not develop into either a formal investigation or any action against the company. But it comes as Apple has attracted growing antitrust scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the European Union's executive arm, said Thursday that the commission was aware of the new subscription service and was "carefully monitoring the situation."

While a number of content providers have expressed concern over the new policies, subscription music services appear to be the most vocal opponents at this point, arguing that their slim profit margins simply won't allow them to give Apple a 30% cut of their revenue. But regulatory experts note that government officials may be unable to tag Apple's commission rates as anticompetitive given a lack of benchmark standards in the market and an unwillingness to interfere in complex pricing decisions.

The NYTimes reports that although Apple is working on making a cheaper iPhone as well as integrating voice commands, the company is not planning on launching a smaller iPhone:

But contrary to published reports, Apple is not currently developing a smaller iPhone, according to people briefed on Apple's plans who requested anonymity because the plans are confidential.

The next generation iPhone is being worked on by Apple engineers, and according to the newspaper it is "likely to be similar in size" to the current iPhone.

A smaller screen would require developers to rewrite Apps to accommodate the new form factor -- an issue Apple hopes to avoid. Apple executives also note that they plan on dropping the price of the previous model when the new model is introduced. That means the iPhone 4 will likely take the place of the $49 iPhone 3GS when a new model is introduced.

The NYTimes piece, however, does seem to confirm some of the details given in the original Wall Street Journal report. Notably, Apple is working on making it easier to use voice commands to navigate the device. Apple is also working on changing some of the internal components to reduce costs to possibly sell versions of the iPhone at a cheaper price.

"Although the innards of the phone, including memory size or camera quality, could change to offer a less expensive model, the size of the device would not vary," said the person, who has worked on multiple versions of the device.

Meanwhile, the details of the new MobileMe also seem similar. They believe the new MobileMe would be free and allow users to wirelessly sync and access photos and files online.

Apple today seeded a new version of Mac OS X 10.6.7, termed Build 10J858, to developers for testing. The update comes one week after the company pushed Build 10J855 to developers and has grown in size by a little over 20 MB to bring the delta update to 434.4 MB.

According to those familiar with the new build, Apple has added Safari to the list of areas in which developers are asked to concentrate their testing, joining Mac App Store, AirPort, Bonjour, SMB, and Graphics Drivers that had been included in previous builds. Once again, no known issues are listed in the documentation.

We still do not have an estimated target date for the public release of Mac OS X 10.6.7, as Apple's development cycles can be very unpredictable. This new build marks the fifth version of Mac OS X 10.6.7 to make its way into developers' hands since seeding began nearly one month ago.

There are obviously quite a few Apple retail store employees and ex-employees around, many of whom are happy to share details of what it's like to work for the company, but a new "confessions" report published by Popular Mechanics summarizes some of the more interesting points and dispels a few rumors about what employees do and do not know and how their performance is judged. Among the highlights:

- Apple retail store employees know nothing about future product releases, and find out about them only as they are publicly announced. Speculating about future products is severely frowned upon, particularly in the presence of customers.

I am asked five times per day about the next iPad or iPhone, and I quite simply don't know. But I would be in huge trouble if I said something like "The next iPad is going to have a camera." I actually avoid the technology section of the newspaper so I have no points of view to accidentally comment with or drop into conversation. I'd rather just be dumb about it.

- Retail store employees have to deal with a wide range of customers each day, including "evil" customers who scream or curse their way into replacements at the Genius Bar, "drug dealers" trying to buy iPhones with fake IDs and credit cards, gray-market exporters trying to load up on iPhones for export to other countries, and non-customers who visit Apple stores to post Facebook updates, send out live webcasts, and listen to music.

- Retail store employees are expected to sell significant numbers of add-ons such as AppleCare and MobileMe as they close sales on hardware products. The so-called "attachment rate" is very high for AppleCare, but MobileMe is reportedly generally a tough sell.

- Apple's training and motivational materials can make the company feel like a cult, and while employees aren't paid on commission, their sales performance is publicly shown to all store employees and low-performing employees are taken aside by management to attempt to find ways to increase their productivity.

All in all, there aren't any real surprises revealed in the report, but it does offer an interesting look into what it's like to work at an Apple retail store.

Last week, a pair of reports surfaced indicating that Apple is hoping to build a new retail store inside Manhattan's busy and historic Grand Central Terminal. Located less than a mile from the company's flagship Fifth Avenue store, the Grand Central Terminal location is reportedly being viewed as a means to ease the massive customer load on the landmark, but relatively small, Fifth Avenue store.

A new report issued today by Cult of Mac provides additional claims of an Apple retail store coming to Grand Central Terminal, but goes on to claim that the location would offer the company's biggest-yet retail sales floor, larger than those found in the company's Regent Street and Covent Garden stores in London.

While reports of the square footage for Apple's various locations have always been subject to significant variations, the Covent Garden location has been said to offer over 16,000 square feet of publicly-accessible space (with 40,000 square feet of total space including corporate offices) and Regent Square location is said to offer 25,000 square feet of retail space. Consequently, Apple's Grand Central Terminal store would appear to have to be in the range of 25,000 square feet to qualify as the company's largest, making it a significant presence inside the terminal.

The store will open in the fall, likely early September - and it will be Apple's largest retail space in the world.

The store already has a name: Apple Store, Grand Central, according to a source close the company. The source said Apple will be making an internal announcement within the next month or so.

"The company will certainly pull out all the stops on this one," said the source, who asked not to be named.

An early fall opening seems rather ambitious for what seems to be a massive project with historical implications and lease issues that do not appear to have been worked out yet, but the growing number of reports do suggest that Apple is looking at making a significant splash in the terminal.

Update: A look at the Grand Central Terminal leasing plan (PDF) shows few options for an Apple retail store of the rumored size, although Apple could attempt to combine spaces, even over multiple floors where possible, to put together a retail space.

And as mentioned in the earlier report from The New York Observer, selection of tenants for Grand Central Terminal is an open public process involving requests for proposals, casting some doubt on just how far along any such plans from Apple could be, given the absence of any word from Grand Central Terminal management.

A number of reports today are highlighting possible technical improvements for future Apple products, and while much of the information is based on patent applications that may or may not ever see the light of day, it does provide an interesting glimpse into some of Apple's areas of research.

First, 9 to 5 Mac reports on a recent job posting from Apple looking for a host of new engineers focused on display technologies including LCD and/or OLED. OLED technology for Apple's displays has been a popular source of rumors dating back many years, but various technological hurdles have slowed their adoption throughout the industry. But increasing numbers of smartphones are utilizing OLED technology, increasingly the likelihood that Apple is devoting at least some effort to the technology on a test basis to evaluate it against other options.

The job postings come just after a report from Patently Apple summarized a set of OLED-related patent applications filed by Apple over the past several years and published in recent months, indicating that the company is indeed thinking about how the technology could be used in future devices.

A second report today from AppleInsider looks at a newly-published patent application from Apple describing a MagSafe interface capable of providing both power and data connectivity to a device.

Thus, what is needed are circuits, apparatus, and methods that provide a power and data transfer system that can supply both power and data to a laptop or other mobile computing device using a single connection. To reduce the clutter caused by multiple cables, it is further desirable to have a power and data adapter that can provide power and data to the mobile computing device using a single cable. It is also desirable to have a connector system that can connect this single cable to the mobile computing device. To avoid the consequence of laptops being pulled to the ground when a cable is tripped over, it is desirable that the connector system easily disengages when the cable is pulled away from the mobile computing device.

Apple's proposed solution looks very much like the existing MagSafe power connector used on its notebook computers, but with some of its contact pins devoted to data transmission such as fiber optic lines, USB, DisplayPort, or other standards.

Finally, Patently Apple reports on a patent application describing the use of a device's housing as an input/output device, expanding on earlier patents addressing touch-sensitive bezels.

Apple's latest implementation, which could extend to computers, portable devices, and other equipment, extends use of the housing as an input/output device to also allow the device itself to reconfigure itself on a live basis. The reconfiguration would be accomplished by sensing via proximity sensors, RFID/NFC or other means such as events as the approach of a user or peripherals such as USB connectors, allowing the device to light up icons within the housing to offer the user relevant options for input via the housing or direct the user to the necessary external port required for the connector being used.

Further implementations include an entire virtual surface that could display a keyboard or other input methods and allow the user to easily configure operation, such as by moving a virtual number pad or volume controls to a preferred location.

As reported by Bloomberg, Sony today announced that it has launched its "Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity" streaming service in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, building on debuts in a series of European countries over the past few months. The new service takes aim at Apple's iTunes Store with two tiers of service: a basic tier priced at $3.99 per month that offers music channels, similar to what Pandora currently offers for free; and a premium tier priced at $9.99 per month that offers on-demand access to the service's full catalog of over six million tracks.

Interestingly, All Things Digital notes that the new service offers no compatibility with mobile devices at launch, although Sony is working to add compatibility with Android and has an eye on bringing the service to iOS devices.

A Sony executive made waves last week with his suggestion that Sony could eventually pull its music from Apple's dominant iTunes Store if the Music Unlimited service takes off, but Business Insider reports that another executive has now refuted that idea.

But Sony Network Entertainment COO Brandon Layden says no way:

"Sony Music as I understand it has no intention of withdrawing from iTunes, they're one of our biggest partners in the digital domain. I think those words were either taken out of context or the person who spoke them was unclear on the circumstances."

Whether or not Music Unlimited ever comes to iOS devices may of course be determined by how Sony feels about Apple's new policies requiring App Store developers offering subscription content to utilize Apple's in-app subscription functionality and limit links to external purchasing methods, driving subscription traffic through Apple's channels where the company takes a 30% cut of revenue. Rhapsody, which has long offered a streaming music service similar to the premium tier of Music Unlimited, has noted that the model is "economically untenable" for such services and that it is exploring its legal and business options for responding to Apple's move.

Digitimes reports that Apple has secured nearly 60% of the global touch panel capacity of 2011 in order to fulfill its internal goals of shipping 40 million iPads this year.

Sources from tablet PC makers also pointed out that the component shortage is causing their shipment volumes to be unable to catch up with their orders, especially for second-tier players. Touch panels are currently suffering the most serious shortage due to Apple holding control over the capacity of major touch panel makers such as Wintek and TPK, and with US-based RIM, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard (HP) also competing for related components, second-tier players are already out of the game, the sources noted.

So called "second tier" players are seemingly unable to obtain supply due to the high demand from Apple and other companies.

Apple had previously revealed that they had prepaid $3.9 billion to three companies in order to guarantee long term supply of a certain component, but stopped short of revealing which one. This news seems to further indicate that Apple spent its $3.9 billion investment towards securing LCD supply for its future products.

In light of Jobs' medical leave of absence, it is notable that ABC is reporting that Steve Jobs will be meeting with President Obama Thursday evening:

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who recently took a medical leave of absence from his company, and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt will be among the attendees of President Obama's event with business leaders in San Francisco Thursday evening, a source familiar with the event tells ABC News.

Steve Jobs and Barack Obama have previously met to discuss issues related to technology and the economy. Obama is also said to be meeting with Google's Eric Schmidt, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, as well as others.

The explosion of rumors that Apple is working on a variety of iPhone designs including smaller ones and iPhones with 4" screens has spawned a significant amount of speculation and mockups about the possibilities.

In particular, the talk of a 4" screen and rumors of an "edge to edge" screen resulted in this mockup by mjay2k which shows that a 4" screen could fit on an existing iPhone 4 sized device by extending the screen to the left/right edges. Similarly a smaller iPhone could use the existing 3.5 screen in a similar fashion.

Another take on the "edge to edge" screen, submitted by a reader. This image tries to look like a "spy" shot, but we believe is just another creative mockup.

Finally, this old design mockup pre-dates the iPhone 4, but shows another take on a large screen format with a reduced prominence of the home button.

Cult of Mac reports that it has received information from a source regarding Apple's efforts to revamp its MobileMe service, suggesting that the company is going well beyond simple cloud-based media streaming to include social and location-based services.

Among the many services Apple is working on are:

- A live video-streaming service like Ustream
- A location-based check-in system like Gowalla or Foursquare
- A geo-tagging system codenamed "Tokens" that tags real-world locations, like Facebook Places on steroids.

According to the report, the focus of the revamped MobileMe will be on a "dynamic webpage" that is constantly updated with the user's latest activity with their iOS device, from locations to photos and videos to music.

"The concept is that you would have you own website that's dynamic, all based on what you are doing at that moment," said our source. "Apple thinks of it as having a webserver in your pocket... everything will be dynamically updated to MobileMe."

With "Tokens", users would be able to tag GPS locations with photos, reviews, and other information that would be available to other MobileMe users visiting those locations.

While Apple is not known for being on the cutting edge of social networking and its Ping component of iTunes has struggled to catch on as a music-focused network, the company has clearly shown interest in developing social features, particularly when it comes to location-based technologies. Over a year ago, the company advertised for a software engineer who could help take the iOS Maps application "to the next level", while more recent job postings have hinted at integrated navigation software. And more recently, builds of iOS 4.3 have hinted at a feature called "Find My Friends" that could easily be a part of the rumored MobileMe revamp.

Differing schools of thought regarding a MobileMe revamp have arisen over the past few days, with some suggesting a very strong focus on true cloud-based services beaming data from Apple's servers to a variety of devices, while others have suggested that the user's own home computer will be the source from which data is disseminated to portable devices.