MacRumors

Apple is continuing to expand its digital audio expertise with the recent addition of digital signal processing (DSP) expert Dana Massie to its team as an SoC Audio Architect. Massie has over 30 years of extensive experience working with DSP hardware and software architecture with high-profile companies such as Audience and Waves, as well as prior brief stints at Apple and NeXT.

While at Audience for the past nine years, Massie was the Director of DSP chip architecture, focused on developing "the most advanced audio processing algorithms available for speech enhancement." Massie also formerly worked at Apple starting in 2002 as the manager of audio hardware. In his year-long stint, Massie was responsible for the audio input/output system on Apple desktops and notebooks.

Apple and Audience have a history of working together, with Apple licensing Audience's voice processing technology to use in its iPhone 4 and 4s. The Cupertino company used a standalone voice processing chip from Audience in the iPhone 4 and opted to incorporate this signal processing functionality directly into the A5 chip used in the iPhone 4s. Audience's earSmart noise cancellation technology was a key component powering Siri in the iPhone 4s.

Massie joined Apple this month as an SoC Audio Architect following a six-week sabbatical upon leaving Audience. It's unclear what his exact duties at Apple will involve, as Massie not surprisingly only says he will work on "audio stuff" in his LinkedIn profile. Given his work history, Massie may be tasked with improving either voice recognition technology or audio quality in upcoming Apple hardware.

Massie joins other audio pioneers employed by Apple in recent years. The growing list includes Audio expert Peter Eastty of Oxford Digital Limited who was hired earlier this year and THX pioneer Tomlinson Holman who joined Apple in 2011.

(Thanks, Manu!)

Apple today released the 2014 version of its iTunes Store awards, which highlights the best music, movies, TV shows, apps, books and podcasts of the year.

Here are some of the top-level winners for 2014:

Apps:
iPhone App of the Year: Elevate - Brain Training
iPhone Game of the Year: Threes!
iPad App of the Year: Pixelmator
iPad Game of the Year: Monument Valley

Music:
Best Artist: Beyoncé
Best Album: 1989 by Taylor Swift
Best Song: Fancy (feat. Charli XCX) by Iggy Azalea
Best New Artist: Sam Smith

Movies:
Best Blockbuster: Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Family Movie: The LEGO Movie
Best Director: Richard Linklater
Best Discovery: Obvious Child

TV Shows:
TV Show of the Year: Fargo
Best Performances: True Detective, Season 1
Best Discovery: The Honorable Woman
Best Breakthrough: Key & Peele, Volume 4

Books:
Best Fiction: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Best Nonfiction: The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace by Jeff Hobbs

Apple has also given its end of the year charts for the most downloaded and top grossing iPhone and iPad apps. For the iPhone, Heads Up!, Facebook Messenger, and Clash of Clans finished as the top paid, top free, and top grossing app, respectively. For the iPad, Minecraft - Pocket Edition, YouTube, and Clash of Clans finished as the top paid, top free, and top grossing app, respectively.

As customary for its end of the year listings, Apple has also highlighted various games and apps from a wide variety of categories. The company is also featuring content across the various genres and categories for each content type.

A list of previous winners are also available here: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009

Apple today debuted a new ad for the iPad Air 2 named "Change" which showcases the new tablet being used in a wide variety of professions and situations. The ad shows the tablet being used by artists, motorcycle enthusiasts, photographers, and schoolteachers as its full-screen visuals shrink to resemble the form of the device itself.

The new "Change" ad campaign for the iPad Air 2 follows Apple's "Your Verse" campaign for the original iPad Air, which debuted last January and showed the specific use in the iPad in a number of dedicated fields. Those stories noted the iPad's use in mountaineering, sports, choreography, oceanography, travel, musical composition, and more.

Apple is in court this week dealing with an ongoing class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of purposefully crippling competing music services and inflating prices by locking iPods and iTunes music to its own ecosystem.

Evidence from Steve Jobs, in the form of a series of emails, has played a large role in the case so far, and today, the former Apple CEO was featured in the trial again, when a deposition videotaped in 2011 was shown in court. CNET has been attending the trial since it started earlier this week, and has relayed what Jobs had to say.

In the deposition, taped six months before his death, Steve Jobs echoed much of what Eddy Cue said earlier in the week, suggesting Apple's contracts with record companies forced it to maintain airtight Digital Rights Management (DRM) policies that locked out music from other sources.

"We had pretty much black and white contracts with the labels," Jobs said in the deposition. Those contracts stipulated that if people violated Apple's FairPlay digital rights management system, a technology that would detect other music stores' song files and prevent users from loading them onto the iPod, "... that would be in clear violation of the licenses we had from the labels and they could cease giving us music at any time."

Jobs went on to say that Apple was "very concerned" with RealNetwork's efforts to bypass Apple's DRM. In 2004, the competing music store reverse engineered the FairPlay DRM, gaining access to the iPod. Apple was unhappy with the move, painting RealNetworks as a hacker and later updating iTunes to once again prevent RealNetworks music from playing on the iPod.

According to Jobs, preventing the iPod from playing music from competing services was "collateral damage" caused by record companies confusing demands asking Apple to both open its platform to competitors and prevent hacking via DRM.

During the case, the plaintiffs have argued that Apple had an obligation to allow third-party companies to load music onto the iPod, and that its move to block competitors created a monopoly. Apple, meanwhile, has argued that pressure from record companies and a desire to protect customers from malicious content kept it from making iTunes and the iPod more accessible to third-party companies.

Apple has also suggested that it did not have a monopoly in the market at the time as there were several other MP3 players available, including Microsoft's Zune. As noted by CNET, Jobs' deposition may somewhat undermine that argument, however, as he told the court "We were the only big company involved in this stuff at this time, the one with the deepest pockets."

The iPod antitrust lawsuit, which seeks $350 million in damages, is expected to last for several more days, though Apple is currently attempting to get the case dismissed entirely, as one plaintiff has been removed from the lawsuit and another's iPod purchase dates are in question. The plaintiff's lawyers are fighting Apple's dismissal request and have asked the judge to add a new plaintiff -- a Michigan man who bought an iPod touch in 2008.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are widely recognized as the major driving forces behind the creation of Apple computer, but there were also several other key employees in the early years who helped establish what is now one of the most valuable companies in the world.

TechRepublic has published an in-depth profile and interview with Bill Fernandez, who was Apple's first employee when the company was incorporated in 1977. Fernandez, who helped build the first Apple I and Apple II computers and is credited with introducing Jobs and Wozniak, shares some details on working with a young Steve Jobs, the early days of Apple, and more in the piece.

We both also were not at all interested in the superficial bases upon which the other kids were basing their relationships, and we had no particular interest in living shallow lives to be accepted. So we didn't have many friends."

Jobs reportedly spent quite a bit of time over at Fernandez's house, which his mother had decorated in a "meticulous Japanese style" that Fernandez credits as an early influence on Jobs' interest in minimalist design.

Fernandez was also a close friend of Steve Wozniak and introduced him to Steve Jobs, which led to the famous partnership between the two. After Jobs and Wozniak formed Apple, they hired Fernandez as an electronic technician and he became the first official full-time employee.

According to Fernandez, he drew the first completed schematic of the working Apple II after reverse engineering Wozniak's design to standardize it for production. The schematic went on to be used to build the Apple II, making history.

"When Woz designed something, most of the design was in his head," said Fernandez. "The only documentation he needed was a few pages of notes and sketches to remind him of the overall architecture and any tricky parts. What the company needed was a complete schematic showing all the components and exactly how they were wired together."

As the first Apple computers grew in popularity, the company began hiring more employees and started inching its way towards an IPO. Despite his position as one of the early employees, Fernandez, as a technician, was not able to advance in the company and wasn't offered stock options. "There was no growth path for me," he said, stating that he became bored and dissatisfied with the work.

With no prospects for advancement, Fernandez left Apple just 18 months after he started working for the company. Fernandez later returned as a member of the technical staff after spending some time in Japan, going on to work on the first Macintosh. Though he was never officially awarded stock, Wozniak gave out shares of his own stock to many early employees, including Fernandez, Chris Espinosa, and Daniel Kottke.

Bill Fernandez's full interview, which goes into far more detail about the early days of Apple and his life after leaving the company, can be read over at TechRepublic.

Foxconn recently deployed robots to help assemble iPhones and other Apple devices, but so far the program may not be as successful as first anticipated. According to the Chinese economic website Jiemian (via G for Games), the first-generation Foxconn robots are not precise enough to meet Apple's standards.

In the first stage of deployment, the "Foxbots" have been tasked with menial jobs that include the assembly of larger components and tightening screws. Unfortunately, the bots are proving to have an accuracy to 0.05 mm, which is above the 0.02 mm tolerance required to assemble Apple's products.

Part of the issue involves the lineage of the robots, which were adapted from the car manufacturing industry. The larger, clunky robots are not designed with the flexibility necessary for the assembly of Apple's thin and complex devices. Foxconn reportedly is working on the second-generation Foxbot, but the technology still may need additional years of refinement before it can make a meaningful contribution to the assembly process.

Foxconn has been seeking ways to improve production to meet Apple's demand for iPhone and iPad units. The company routinely increases its hiring ahead of planned Apple product launches with the company reportedly hiring up to 100,000 new workers to help assemble the iPhone 6. The manufacturer also may be looking to enter the display market with a new display manufacturing plant in Taiwan.

Apple is continuing to work on improvements to its Maps app for iOS and OS X, and a new job listing suggests that better use of crowdsourcing and integration with Siri and Passbook are the next features the company will introduce to provide a better Maps experience.

The job posting, first shared by 9to5Mac, seeks a "Maps Community Client Software Engineer" to join Apple's Maps team. The engineer will focus on "building and extending the Maps application to allow Apple to crowdsource improvements to the Maps experience," and the position calls for high-level UI development and refining of the "Report a Problem" feature in Maps.

According to the job description, deeper integration between Maps and other system services like Passbook and Siri may be on the horizon to improve crowdsourcing.

As an engineer working on Maps Community, your primary responsibility will be high-level UI development and architecture of the "Report a Problem" feature of the Maps application, and you will work closely with designers and engineers across the company to add new features and build the very best crowd-sourcing experience. You'll also be working on the frameworks and plugins that enable Maps to integrate deeply and seamlessly with parts of the system such as Siri and Passbook, to extend and enhance the feedback experience.

Since Maps received a highly critical reception following its launch alongside iOS 6, Apple has gone to great lengths to improve the software by leaps and bounds. In addition to terminating several people involved with the Maps project and restructuring its entire executive structure, the company has also acquired a glut of mapping companies over the past several years, including C3 Technologies, Broadmap, Embark, Hopstop, WifiSlam, Locationary, and most recently, the developers behind Pin Drop.

The company has also hired a range of "ground truth experts" around the world to improve the quality of the information given by its Maps app, and it's utilized crowdsourcing to introduce significant improvements to Points of Interest (POI) data.

Apple is said to be working to add much-needed features like transit directions and indoor mapping improvements to Maps, but development has reportedly been stymied by internal issues and poor project management.