MacRumors

Yesterday, AllThingsD reported that Apple is planning a late January media event in New York City that appeared to have something to do with Apple's publishing or advertising efforts rather than any hardware announcements. TechCrunch weighed in a few hours later with word that the event is indeed focused on publishing and the iBookstore.

At the time of our report on that information, we suggested that digital textbooks could be a possibility for the event given that Steve Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson has indicated several times that one of Jobs' last goals had been to revolutionize textbooks. According to Isaacson:

His idea was to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad. In addition, he held meetings with major publishers, such as Pearson Education, about partnering with Apple.

Adding to the speculation about textbooks perhaps playing a role in the upcoming announcement is information we've received from a source indicating that Apple last month filmed a series of short interviews with textbook industry executives. The interviews are said to have been of the type that would be used in one of Apple's promotional overview videos for a new product or service.

Our source cautions us that there is no direct evidence tying the interviews to the upcoming media event and that Apple frequently films promotional video segments and commercials that never see the light of the day, but the timing of the filming seems to be in line with possible preparations for the media event.

Even more fuel for the idea that the event may carry an education focus comes from a new blog post from Clayton Morris of Fox News, who claims that the event will focus on iTunes U and perhaps textbooks.

Here is what I know from sources involved:

- This event will focus on iTunes University and Apple in education
- I learned of the event back in September when it was originally scheduled for late Fall in New York but it was eventually postponed.
- The event will be in New York rather than in the Silicon Valley because New York is more centrally located for textbook and publishing.
- This initiative has been in the making for years.
- The announcement will be small in size but large in scope: a big announcement in a demure space.
- I expect at least two large project announcements as they relate to Apple in education.
- Steve Jobs was intinimately [sic] involved with this project before his passing. He gave a hat tip to the textbook side of this project in the Isaacson biography.
- This will not be a hardware-related announcement.

Morris has a bit of a mixed track record, having weighed in just ahead of Apple's original iPad introduction in January 2010 to correctly predict the device's appearance (an easy guess) but miss with his predictions of discussion relating to iOS 4 and an update to iLife.

At the time of the iPad's debut in early 2010, Apple was said to have struck deals with textbook publishers to bring their content to the iPad, but Apple has so far been rather quiet on the topic of textbooks on the iPad and offerings have so far been limited.

Update: 9to5Mac also indicates that the iTunes team in on "lockdown mode" heading into the media event, suggesting that the announcement is indeed related to content of some sort.

Update 2: Ars Technica adds its voice to the rumors surrounding digital textbooks:

And based on information from our own sources, we believe the announcement could likely involve support for the EPUB 3 standard, which enables a wider variety of multimedia and interaction features. [...]

Incidentally, one source who has worked with Apple to integrate technology in education recently suggested that Apple may have important changes coming to its iBooks platform directed specifically toward the academic set. Digital textbooks represent another nascent market that Apple could potentially upend as it did with music and mobile apps.

Apple has begun informing customers in several of its Asian markets regarding this Friday's one-day shopping event in celebration of the Lunar New Year. Termed "Red Friday", the event is similar to Apple's Black Friday shopping deals in many areas of the world, where the company offers discounts on a number of different items including Macs, iPads, and iPods, as well as accessories.

According to 9to5Mac, the Red Friday deals will be offered through Apple's online stores in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. The deals will be also available in the company's brick-and-mortar stores in China and Hong Kong.

The event also falls during the same week that Apple celebrated the new year in Japan with its annual Lucky Bag promotion, allowing customers to buy bags containing mystery Apple and third-party products at a discounted price of $430.

A rumored Apple event to be located in New York City later this month was originally reported to be "media-related" and not about an Apple television or iPad update. TechCrunch now reports the event will be focused on publishing and the iBookstore.

According to the source the event will not involve any hardware at and instead will focus on publishing and eBooks (sold through Apple’s iBooks platform) rather than iAds. Attendance also be more publishing industry-oriented than consumer.

One possible topic of the event is an expansion of the iBookstore to sell textbooks. In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson said the textbook industry was one Jobs looking to revolutionize with the iPad.

AllThingsD reports that Apple is said to be planning a special event in New York for the end of this month. The event is reported to be for a "media-related announcement" and not for the iPad 3 or an Apple television set.

According to sources close to the situation, Apple is planning an important — but not large-scale — event to be held in New York at the end of this month that will focus on a media-related announcement.

Per the usual caveat, the tech giant is well known for moving around their public show-and-tells, so this could certainly change at any moment.

As the report notes, the New York location makes it likely that the announcement has something to do with advertising or publishing. Several of Apple's media and advertising units under senior vice president Eddy Cue have significant presences in New York City, and Cue is also said to be set to play a role in the event.

Apple participated in a pair of New York-based media events last year, although both of those were primarily hosted by other companies: the Verizon iPhone introduction and the launch of The Daily. The company had previously been a participant in Macworld Expo events held in New York, but that event ceased to exist a number of years ago and Apple has now pulled out of trade shows entirely.

Update: The Loop's Jim Dalrymple tersely indicates that he is hearing similar information.

Just before Christmas, shipping estimates for Apple's 12-core Mac Pro model increased to 1-3 weeks, and while that specific model does tend to occasionally see some extra lead time, the shipping delays were later noticed to have extended to nearly any customized Mac Pro order. Even as simple a customization as increasing the RAM on an "In Stock" standard Mac Pro configuration increases its shipping estimate to 1-3 weeks.

Increases in shipping estimates in Apple's online store can sometimes be indicative of an upcoming product refresh as the company draws down supplies ahead of launching the updated models. The Mac Pro is most certainly due for an update, and there are several indications that components may be coming together for a significant upgrade to the line.

Most importantly, Intel's Sandy Bridge E Xeon processors are due for launch during the first quarter of this year after having been delayed from a late 2011 debut. Rumors have suggested, however, that continued issues with the chipset portion of the "Romley" platform utilizing the Sandy Bridge E Xeon processors may see a release being held back until the beginning of March, still several months from now.

On the graphics front, evidence of support for AMD's "Tahiti" line of graphics cards has been showing up in developer builds of OS X 10.7.3, and just a week and half ago AMD officially unveiled the first Tahiti graphics card for a January launch.

But while the pieces seem to be coming together at the right time for a substantial Mac Pro upgrade, a bigger question is whether the line will even continue to survive long enough to see another update. A late October report claimed that Apple is "questioning" the future of the Mac Pro given declining sales as customers have continued a trend of shifting toward portable computers, and we've heard similar rumblings that even pinpointed a discontinuation date in January.

Consequently, it is difficult to speculate on whether increased shipping estimates for custom configurations might be due to Apple tightening supplies ahead of a refresh or if the company could be drawing down production entirely ahead of a discontinuation of the line.

Tech in Asia reports on the Japanese tradition of "lucky bags" in which retailers celebrate the new year by offering customers grab bags filled with unknown items at a substantial discount from their retail prices. In exchange for the substantial discounts, customers must simply accept whatever products are in the bags.

Apple offers some of the most highly sought-after lucky bags, with customers paying hundreds of dollars for bags hoping to receive their favorite big-ticket items. This year's lucky bags from Apple were sold for 33,000 yen, or the equivalent of about $430.

I always considered myself a pretty big Apple fan, but this event seems to bring out the most hard-core fanboys. Back in 2010 I tried to queue for a lucky bag, arriving at the store at 5am only to find that overnight campers had filled all the spots. This year the bag cost 33000 yen (about $430), and most customers are hoping that there will be a big ticket item inside like an iPad 2 or a Macbook Air.

Japanese blog Mac Otakara posts a gallery of photos showing the contents of several lucky bags, with the biggest prize being an 11-inch MacBook Air bundled with a sleeve for the computer, a Magic Mouse, and a pair of headphones. Other lucky bags shown in the gallery offered either a 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 or an 8 GB iPod touch as the main item.

As noted by German sites Flo's Weblog [Google translation] and iFun.de [Google translation], a curious new iOS application that seems to be from Apple has appeared in the App Store. The new app, known as GameStore [App Store], debuted on December 31st and seems to be a test app of some sort, offering several racing-themed in-app purchases but without any actual functionality.

The app is priced at $0.99, with the three in-app purchases currently available through the app priced between $0.99 and $2.99. Additional in-app purchases shown in the single screenshot shown on the App Store page for GameStore show items as high as $26.99, but these other items are not currently visible in the app itself.

In-app purchases made through the app do go through and users' accounts are charged for them, but with no actual game supporting the content available, they have no functionality.

When the app's listing is viewed in the App Store from an iOS device, the posting date is listed as June 9, 2009, which was during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference just ahead of the public launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and the debut of in-app purchasing. Consequently, GameStore may simply be an internal testing app for the feature that was somehow accidentally published to the public App Store over the weekend.

Update: GameStore has now been removed from the App Store.

Update 2: TUAW's Erica Sadun took a closer look at the app from a developer's perspective, concluding that the app was likely sample code for an in-app purchasing developer test that somehow mistakenly got approved by Apple.

What developers do is upload a working skeleton application to iTunes Connect. You do this with the full understanding that you'll be replacing or, for tutorials, rejecting your binary at some point in the future. Once uploaded, you can test your IAPs, and make sure all your purchasing processes work. Looks like the app was submitted in order to provide a live testbed and may have gotten approved inadvertently.

After consulting with the TUAW team, our take on this is "likely sample code accidentally deployed to App Store" by Apple and then quickly pulled once people took notice. TUAW reached out directly to the developer we suspect was behind the app upload before it got pulled.

Over the past few days, iOS developers Steven Troughton-Smith and TheMudKip have managed to hack the 2nd generation Apple TV to run iOS apps at full resolution. The feat was accomplished using a custom Springboard (Home Screen) written by TheMudKip on a jailbroken Apple TV. Troughton-Smith has since been making progress running iPhone and iPad apps at full resolution.

Many existing apps seem to run well on the Apple TV, which is known to be an iOS device using an A4 processor. When this generation of the Apple TV was released, we noted that Apple may have had plans to incorporate native applications all along. In fact, Jobs said that an Apple TV App Store could launch when the time is right.

This video shows the Apple TV in action, running apps under the custom springboard:

The hack isn't available publicly yet, and remains more of a proof of concept at this time. It's feasible that such a hack could be released to the public at some point to encourage Apple TV specific apps that might be designed to work with the remote interface in mind.

Readers should note that the original iPhone jailbreaks enabled native iOS apps well ahead of Apple's official App Store launch. Lights Off was the first native iOS game, released for jailbroken iPhones in August 2007. The official App Store wouldn't launch for another 10 months.

BBC reports that Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive, has been awarded a knighthood in the United Kingdom.

Mr Ive, who can now style himself Sir Jonathan, has been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).

Ive began work at Apple in 1992, but found himself frustated during the early years before Jobs' return. Ive is seen as responsible for many of the iconic designs coming out of Apple over the past decade. Jobs described Ive as his "spiritual partner" and had given him complete operational freedom at Apple.

Mercury News quotes a statement from Ive, reacting to the news.

"I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making,'' Ive, 44, said in a statement. "To be recognized with this honour is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful. I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design. I feel enormously fortunate that I continue to be able to design and make products with a truly remarkable group of people here at Apple."

We received a tip that the following image had been posted to a Korean forum (registration required). Unfortunately, little other information was offered, but it was claimed to be an image of the upcoming iPad 3 Display panel.

We believe the top image represents the current iPad 2 screen, while the bottom image is the supposed iPad 3 display. Both are 9.7" in diagonal, but the bottom screen has a different configuration for the attached cabling.

For reference, iFixit provided us with this photo of what the current iPad 2 display looks like disassembled.

As you can see there are 3 brown ribbon cables leading from the screen itself to the circuit board. The small brown cable to the far left is the power cable, while the other two wide cables are for display data. This configuration matches with the top display in the leaked photo (though the power cable is missing).

The claimed iPad 3 photo shows 3 wide ribbon cables that might be used for data. The iPad 3 is expected to carry a high resolution screen of 2048x1536 which is four times the number of pixels of the current iPad 2, so the need for additional data bandwidth would be understandable.

No other details are available, though the increasing number of parts leaking on the web suggests that Apple is getting closer to production. Just last night, Apple was said to be using a new type of display (IGZO) to achieve higher resolutions and require lower power in the iPad 3. The iPad 3 is expected to be launched during the first half of 2012.

The Associated Press was recently given access to Stanford's Silicon Valley Archives which houses the largest collection of history on Apple. The collection of historical documents and videos was originally maintained by Apple with plans to make a company museum. Shortly after Steve Jobs' return in 1997, Apple contacted Stanford University and offered to donate the entirety of the collection to the school's Silicon Valley Archives.

The collection, the largest assembly of Apple historical materials, can help historians, entrepreneurs and policymakers understand how a startup launched in a Silicon Valley garage became a global technology giant.

The collection takes up more than 600 feet of shelf space, but is not open to the public.

Amongst the archives:

- Thousands of photos by photographer Douglas Menuez, who documented Jobs' years at NeXT Computer, which he founded in 1985 after he was pushed out of Apple.
- A company video spoofing the 1984 movie "Ghost Busters," with Jobs and other executives playing "Blue Busters," a reference to rival IBM.
- Handwritten financial records showing early sales of Apple II, one of the first mass-market computers.
- An April 1976 agreement for a $5,000 loan to Apple Computer and its three co-founders: Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, who pulled out of the company less than two weeks after its founding.
- A 1976 letter written by a printer who had just met Jobs and Wozniak and warns his colleagues about the young entrepreneurs: "This joker (Jobs) is going to be calling you ... They are two guys, they build kits, operate out of a garage."

There's no indication when or if Stanford plans to make the documents available for public viewing.

The legal battle between Samsung and Apple has going on around the world with Apple claiming that Samsung had "slavishly" copied the iPad design. Apple and Samsung have traded lawsuits in a number of countries trying to get each other's products banned from sale.

Outside of the lawsuits, Samsung has been aggressive with their recent set of U.S. TV ads openly mocking iPhone users.

Their newest Korean ad, however, seems to take cues from Apple's own advertising style, focusing on a more emotional connection with the viewer.

The ad depicts a father and daughter playing with a Galaxy Tab in a sequence of shots reminiscent of Apple's own iPad ads. The voice over says (rough translation):

You try to have fun with me, you try to win against me, you ask me millions of questions, you sit on my lap, you want to stay beside me all the time, strangely, when I stay with you time passes very quickly. This is a precious time.

The ad was posted to YouTube on December 14th. For reference, Apple's own ads have long followed a similar style, focusing on experience than specs: We'll Always, Love, and Learn. While Apple doesn't have an exclusive claim to this style of ad, it just shows how Samsung is trying to position their products comparably to Apple.

The song in the background of the ad is Blue Sky by Rabbit!

The latest Digitimes report claims that Apple will be utilizing IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) flat panels instead of IPS (in-plane switching panels) in its "next-generation mobile display products" such as the iPad 3.

Starting with the new iPads, Apple will utilize IGZO panels from Sharp in order to upgrade the display resolution of the new tablets to full HD level, the sources indicated.

Given Digitimes' misstep just yesterday about Apple's plans for Macworld, it might be hard to take their new report at face value.

However, this is not the first time that we've heard that Apple will be pursuing this new technology for the iPad 3. A research note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek back in November made very similar claims:

Also, we believe that Apple and Sharp together have a modified IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) technology to achieve 330 dpi, which is sufficient for an HD display while not using IPS nor having to include dual-bar LED backlighting. In our view, this should lead to several design advantages, namely the device can be thinner, battery life should be longer, and the overall experience for users should be meaningfully improved.

Sharp announced plans in April to commercialize these new IGZO panels for mass production later this year. The advantages of the new technology that should allow for lower power consumption and higher resolution displays. DisplayBlog recaps the advantages of this new technology:

The benefits of IGZO are plenty: lower cost of manufacturing, up to 30x higher electron mobility than a-Si (amorphous silicon), increased aperture ratio for improved light transmittance, higher resolution in terms of ppi, etc. IGZO would allow for significant cost reductions compared to LTPS (Low Temperature Poly-Silicon) based high resolution LCDs like the rumored 9.7-inch 2048×1536 IPS LCD for the iPad 3.

It sounds as if this new technology will allow Apple to avoid adding a second light bar system to the more traditional IPS display that is presently used in the iPad. It may also allow Apple to avoid making the iPad 3 thicker than the current iPad, and should consume less power.