MacRumors

The first reviews of the 2013 MacBook Air models are beginning to come out and, aside from new CPUs and a new SSD architecture, the biggest new feature is a dramatic increase in claimed battery life.

Apple has increased the battery capacity of the 13" MacBook Air from a 7.3V 6700mAh unit to a 7.6V 7150mAh battery. As a result, the claimed battery life of the 13" model has increased from 7 to 12 hours. In its review, Engadget found the 13" MBA achieved 12 hours and 51 minutes on a charge under their standard battery test.

Engadget:

If that didn't impress you enough, there's one area where the performance has really gone off the charts, and that's battery life. Apple rates the 2013 edition of the MacBook Air for up to 10 hours of battery life playing video or 12 hours of wireless web surfing. Our standard rundown test, as it happens, also entails playing video and last year's machine managed just over six and a half hours before expiring. We were, then, skeptical that this new edition could manage nearly twice that longevity -- but it actually did better. This year's Air survived 12 hours and 51 minutes on a charge. That's a stunning number from a laptop this thin, achieved with WiFi enabled and without any external batteries.

Laptop Magazine's test unit achieved 10 hours and 53 minutes on a home Wi-Fi connection suggesting that, while mileage may vary, Apple's claims appear to be largely legitimate.

A review from Forbes found that the battery life would be somewhere between 8 and 9 hours under more strenuous use conditions. Competing 13" notebooks don't come close to reaching 12 hours of battery life without external batteries.

Apple says OS X Mavericks, when its released this fall, will include a number of battery-saving software features which could push the battery life of the new Air even further.

Other notes from the review confirm previous reports of significant increases in flash storage read/write. Engadget reported similar numbers for reads and writes to the new PCIe-based SSDs, while also saying boot time has decreased to 12 seconds from 18 seconds on the 2012 models.

Reviews also indicated substantial increases in both CPU and graphics performance on both benchmarks and real world tests. Laptop Magazine found the 13" MacBook Air returned 44.6 fps in a World of Warcraft test on 'good' settings, comparing favorably to similar Windows machines that returned between 30 and 33 fps in a similar setup.

Back in March, an MIT report suggested that Apple and other smartphone manufacturers could potentially switch to sapphire crystal displays rather than the standard Gorilla Glass displays currently in use.

As it turns out, Apple has already experimented with sapphire screens. In an interview with Swiss news site Tages-Anzeiger [Google Translation], Vertu COO Perry Oosting revealed that Apple investigated the possibility of a sapphire display, recruiting an unspecified number of Vertu employees to work on the project.

Vertu is a British company that produces luxury cell phones, some with sapphire displays, and at least two former Vertu employees appear to have joined Apple in the last year.

According to Oosting, Apple ultimately shelved the sapphire project because the material is unsuitable for production in the numbers that Apple requires at the current point in time. Corning, the company that manufacturers Gorilla Glass 3 for Apple's displays, has also stated that sapphire is an inferior option for mobile displays.

The company believes that Gorilla Glass offers greater strength, lower weight, less energy cost in production, and lower pricing; all important features for mass manufactured products.

Though Apple may not have current plans to utilize sapphire displays, it has incorporated sapphire crystal into the iPhone, as a cover for the rear camera on the fifth generation iPhone. Rumors have suggested that sapphire may also be used as part of the home button in the iPhone 5S.

(Thanks, Rainer!)

Last December, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that Apple would be bringing some Mac production back to the United States. He offered more details on the effort last month, and earlier this week the company announced that its radically redesigned Mac Pro coming later this year will be the product line assembled in the U.S.

Apple had been presumed to be working with current manufacturing partner Foxconn on the U.S. production, but KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo told Taiwan's Economic Daily News [Google translation, via Mac Otakara] that Apple will actually be partnering with Flextronics for the new Mac Pro.

Last week, we received an unconfirmed tip making a similar claim about Flextronics' role in the "Made in the USA" Mac, with the source alleging that Flextronics will be assembling the product at its new facility in Texas. That claim is line with Tim Cook's disclosure during a Senate hearing on Apple's tax practices last month that the product would be assembled in the state.

Flextronics' new Texas facilities are housed in a 450,000 square foot building in Fort Worth formerly used by Nokia. Flextronics will be using the site for production of Motorola's Moto X smartphone, but our source indicated that Apple's production will also take place there.

Apple's new Mac Pro will be launching later this year, but Apple has yet to reveal pricing or a more specific launch timeframe following Monday's "sneak peek" at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote.

Reuters reports that Apple is looking closely at larger screens for upcoming iPhone models, indicating that the company is specifically testing display sizes of 4.7 inches and 5.7 inches for iPhone models that could launch next year. The iPhone 5 carries a 4-inch display, up from the 3.5-inch displays found in prior models.

Apple is looking at introducing at least two bigger iPhones next year - one with a 4.7-inch screen and one with a 5.7-inch screen - said the sources, including those in the supply chain in Asia. They said suppliers have been approached with plans for the larger screens, but noted it is still unclear whether Apple will actually launch its flagship product in the larger sizes.

"They constantly change product specifications almost to the final moment, so you're not really sure whether this is the final prototype," said one person with direct knowledge of the matter.

The report also addresses Apple's plans for this year, claiming that the company is expected to deliver both an iPhone 5S with fingerprint sensor technology and a lower-cost iPhone in multiple colors in the September timeframe.

For this year, Apple is expected to launch two new models, widely referred to as the iPhone 5S, with new fingerprint technology, and a cheaper version in plastic casing, supply chain sources have said. Apple plans to dress up the cheaper phone in a range of 5-6 colors to differentiate it from the more expensive model that has traditionally come only in black and white.

The U.S. firm has discussed a price of $99 for the cheaper phone, the timing of which could slip to next year, one of the people said. It's not yet clear what the final price would be.

A separate report from Mac Otakara today claims that the cheaper iPhone will adopt colors from Apple's line of iPhone 4 bumpers, while the iPhone 5S will add a gold model in addition to the traditional black and white models.

Now I got an information from reliable source what the color set of low-cost iPhone seems to be same as iPhone 4 Bumper color.

Black, white, pink, orange and blue will be set. Green seems to be removed from it according to that information.

That source did not say if (PRODUCT) red-model is planed or not.

And, iPhone 5S, which will be shipped in August, has new color model. It is Gold, which color is reported by BGR with showing SIM-tray photos.

Finally, Reuters corroborates an April report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, claiming that trial production of the lower-cost iPhone had been planned to occur this month but that issues with color coatings have slowed that progress.

Rumors of a fingerprint-sensing iPhone 5S and lower-cost plastic iPhone have been ramping up for some time, and there have also been sporadic rumors of larger-screen iPhone models as competitors have increasingly embraced displays in the range of 5 inches or more.

Several state and city law enforcement officials are teaming up to launch an investigation on why smartphone manufacturers including Apple have not done more to combat device thefts, reports the Huffington Post.

The investigation will be conducted by attorneys general in six different states along with district attorneys and police officials from eight additional cities. Included in the group are New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who previously called for a summit with several smartphone manufacturers to discuss device theft and San Francisco district attorney George Gascón, who has been pushing for a "kill switch" that would permanently disable stolen iOS devices

The group intends to probe why Apple and other smartphone makers have failed to create a so-called “kill switch” that would render their devices inoperable if stolen – a feature that could undercut the value of stolen gadgets now trading on a global black market. The officials also plan to investigate whether smartphone manufacturers have not adopted effective anti-theft measures out of simple financial interest – a stolen phone generates new business as crime victims buy replacements.

On Monday, Apple announced anti-theft plans for an "Activation Lock" feature in iOS 7, which is designed to require an Apple ID and a password to disable Find My iPhone or to reactivate a phone if it is wiped.

Though the implementation of the Activation Lock will likely cut down on thefts, Schneiderman and Gascón believe that it is ultimately inadequate as a kill switch because it requires customers to utilize both iCloud and the Find My iPhone app.

Gascón and Schneiderman will be meeting with representatives from Apple, Samsung, Google, and Microsoft on Thursday to discuss a possible solution, as part of the aforementioned summit. If the companies fail to come to a suitable agreement with officials, a source close to Schneiderman believes that a lawsuit may be considered in the future.

In iOS 7, Apple has included a new Notification Center feature called Today, which the company says is designed to provide users with the day's events at a glance, including information like birthdays, weather details, and traffic reports.

We've unearthed additional details about how Today works, including how Apple gathers information to provide traffic details on frequently traveled routes. In the location settings section of iOS 7, there’s a new feature called "Frequent Locations," which Apple says "suggests locations of interest based on historical location usage."

Frequent Locations stores information about locations that have been visited multiple times and it appears to pair with another "Traffic" setting to provide commute details on locations a user visits on a regular basis, as seen in the screenshot below. It is unclear, however, if these traffic notifications appear based on the time of day. For example, they could appear only during a morning or evening commute to work.

Users have found other interesting items in the 'Today' panel, including a suggestion of an early bedtime for an upcoming busy day.

It appears that location settings in iOS 7 have a wide range of capabilities, which could see the Notification Center including even more detailed information as iOS 7 evolves. In a report earlier today, The Next Web estimated that iOS 7 would see a number of design changes before being released this fall. We have additional details on iOS 7, including major changes, small updates, and new APIs.

(Thanks Olivier and John!)

The Next Web has given us a peek behind the scenes at the development of the new and controversial user interface in iOS 7.

One of the more revealing points in the piece is that Jony Ive, recently put in charge of software as well as hardware design, tapped Apple's marketing and communications team -- MarCom -- to design the look and feel of the icons. Then, with those as a guide, the iOS design teams went to work.

First of all, many of the new icons were primarily designed by members of Apple’s marketing and communications department, not the app design teams. From what we’ve heard, SVP of Design Jony Ive (also now Apple’s head of Human Interaction) brought the print and web marketing design team in to set the look and color palette of the stock app icons. They then handed those off to the app design teams who did their own work on the ‘interiors’, with those palettes as a guide.

The site goes on to note that the design is "firmly a 'work in progress'", and that the look and feel of the icons and other new UI bits are likely to change significantly as the iOS 7 beta proceeds.

Apple has posted a new entry in its branding campaign, this time a ten-minute piece entitled 'Making a difference. One app at a time.'

The video looks at how Apple customers are using its technology and third-party apps to make a difference in communities around the world. The first example features an interview with Okari Denzil, a community health nurse in Lwala, Kenya.

I've never considered myself a visitor to this community. I'm a son of this community, I work here, this is my home. I have the opportunity as a community health nurse to ensure that there is health care available to this very rural setting. This is my goal.

I try to see 5-6 clients a day. Talking about those mothers who need prenatal care, mothers who are ready to deliver, mothers who have young babies at home.

We sit down with them and talk about how to ensure that we give the babies the best start in life. I also have an opportunity to ensure that the wellbeing of the entire family is taken care of.

We use Skyscape to diagnose and prevent any complications from setting in. The iPad is a resourceful tool. It's a doctor, it's a nurse, it's a public health officer in my bag.

Apps featured in the video include Skyscape Medical Resources, Orthocare's Galileo, Thornton Media's Cherokee Language App, and AssistiveWare's Proloquo2go.

During Monday's WWDC keynote, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, mentioned that iOS 7 would add 1,500 new APIs to Apple's SDK, including iBeacons, MFi game controllers, and new multitasking options.

These APIs reveal promising new features that developers will be able to incorporate into future app and hardware releases, offering new gaming technology, new location tracking options, and more. Here's a closer look at a few of the most notable APIs:

iBeacons - According to MacWorld, iBeacons are designed to use the Bluetooth Low Energy profile for microlocation, allowing iOS devices to use Bluetooth 4.0 devices to access location data.

AirDrop from Activity Sheet - Apps will be able to incorporate AirDrop support, giving users the ability to share photos, documents and more with friends from within an app.

Apple Maps - iOS 7 will let developers include additional mapping features in apps, including 3D viewing experiences, direction related route information and map-based images.

MFi Game Controllers - iOS 7 includes support for MFi "Made for iPhone" Apple Certified hardware game controllers, which will allow manufacturers to create dedicated iOS gaming controllers, turning the iPhone and the iPad into gaming machines on par with handheld gaming systems. Apps will be able to be designed around the Game Controller framework, allowing for seamless connectivity. Our sister site TouchArcade has shared an image from Apple's developer library detailing a reference design of both a standalone controller and an iPhone enclosure.

Sprite Kit - The Sprite Kit framework is designed to allow developers to create high-performing 2D games, controlling sprite attributes like position, size, rotation, gravity, and mass. It includes built-in support for physics to make animations look realistic and it also includes particle systems for additional game effects.

Game Center - iOS 7 adds new turn-based gaming modes (including simultaneous turns, chats, and trades) along with new methods for player authentication and secure game score transmission. This feature is likely designed to cut down on hacked Game Center scores from jailbroken devices.

Multitasking and Background Downloads - Apple's new multitasking APIs are designed to allow apps to update and download content in the background at intelligently scheduled times. For example, a Twitter app might incorporate this functionality, downloading new content in the background while the phone is not otherwise in use, staying up to date without unnecessarily draining battery. Push notifications can also initiate content downloads.

Inter-App Audio - With Inter-App Audio, apps are able to share audio streams with other apps, an API that will make it even easier to use Apple's iDevices to create music.

60-fps Video Capture - iOS 7 will allow apps to capture video at up to 60 frames per second.

Peer-to-Peer Connectivity - This data transmission API is designed to allow users to discover nearby devices and initiate direct communication without Internet connectivity.

Apple has a slew of other APIs available for developers, which should bring a lot of changes to apps when iOS 7 is released. For additional information on iOS 7, we detailed many of the upcoming features and we also explored some of the hidden tidbits.

Apple, and Tim Cook personally, have been sued by a conservative activist and three others as part of a class action lawsuit [PDF] over alleged privacy violations resulting from the company's supposed participation in the NSA's PRISM intelligence program.

The plaintiffs have also sued President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA Director Keith Alexander, the NSA itself, the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Skype, AOL, Yahoo, PalTalk, AT&T and Sprint -- and all the CEO's of those companies personally.

As one of the largest companies in the world, Apple is routinely sued over a wide variety of issues. The company has a large legal teams to handle these lawsuits, though the sheer number of defendants in this case could make for interesting court filings.

Plaintiff Larry Klayman issued this statement:

This and the Verizon class action will serve to unify all political and social persuasions in our great nation to wage a second American revolution, one that is peaceful and legal – but pursued with great resolve and force. Government dishonesty and tyranny against the people have reached historic proportions during the last three administrations in particular, and the time has come for We the People to rise up and reclaim control of our nation. If not, the government will control us and this will mark the end of individual liberties. The American people can thus use these class actions to 'man the barricades of freedom' against the establishment government despots and their corporate enablers who seek to enslave them through coercive abuses of their privacy. This Orwellian power grab can only be intended to blackmail the masses into submission in order that these modern day greedy tyrants achieve their corrupt ends.

This isn't the only class action lawsuit filed or planned over the PRISM disclosures. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) has said he will file a lawsuit against the Obama administration over what he says are "unconstitutional" surveillance programs. Paul wants to get the customers of all the offending companies to join a class action suit and take it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The American Civil Liberties Union has also filed a lawsuit, though it is focusing on the Government itself rather than the alleged corporate partners. The suit alleges that the Government's tracking of phone records violates Section 215 of the Patriot Act.

It's important to note that both Rand Paul and the ACLU are, at least to this point, primarily speaking out about Verizon Business Network Services giving call logs to the NSA for millions of calls both within the United States and abroad. However, both the Verizon/NSA issue and the Apple-related PRISM allegations were revealed on the same day last week and are largely seen as connected in the eyes of most critics.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the comment thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All MacRumors forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Publishers Weekly reports (via paidContent) that testimony from Apple executive Keith Moerer in the ongoing e-book price fixing trial has revealed that Apple holds approximately 20% of the e-book market in the United States, roughly double many of the previous estimates made by third parties.

The government also focused on the relative success of the iBookstore asking Moerer what marketshare the store held in the months after launch (about 20% Moerer said) and what its marketshare was after several years of operation and adding Random House in 2011 (also about 20%).

Beyond the market share claim, Moerer pointed to strong growth of the iBookstore in vigorously challenging the U.S. government's assertion that Apple's e-book effort has been a failure.

The government called the iBookstore “a failure,” and charged that “Apple pricing was unfair to consumers,” and that “Apple sold fewer books because of the higher price caps.” Moerer challenged that characterization, “I disagree. E-book sales grew 100% last year at the iBookstore and it had over 100 million customers.” The government countered that “when you drop prices you sell more books,” and Moerer said, “sometimes, yes.”

But the government bluntly said, “Apple forgot to focus on customers that’s why the iBookstore is a failure.” Moerer: “that’s not true.”

Testimony in the case is now in its second week, with Apple senior vice president for Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue scheduled to take the stand tomorrow.

While iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks drew most of the attention at this week's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, another one of Apple's introductions also generated a significant amount of discussion and controversy: redesigned AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule Wi-Fi base stations.

The new vertical designs take up considerably more volume than their predecessors, although footprints have been reduced to just 3.85 inches square. The new base stations include support for the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, and Apple has increased the number of antennas from three to six. The vertical design is intended to optimize range and signal strength by elevating the antennas, while also helping the base stations offer beamforming, which automatically finds 802.11ac devices and targets Wi-Fi signals toward those devices for optimum performance.

The teardown experts at iFixit have obtained one of the new AirPort Extreme units and have torn it apart to examine its internals. Given that the AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule have identical external designs, it should be no surprise that the AirPort Extreme contains space for a hard drive, although it appears that users will not be able to build their own Time Capsules by simply adding hard drives to their AirPort Extremes.

We free the top cover, only to find...3.5″ of empty space. While the AirPort Extreme doesn’t come equipped with storage, we dug up a standard 3.5″ SATA hard drive, just to test it out. Perfecto!...Except we can’t find any connectors where we’d plug in the hard drive, only empty spaces on the logic board—so chances of DIY AirPort Extreme to Time Capsule upgrades are slim.

Looking further, iFixit found the usual array of chips on the logic board, and was also able to trace the antenna cable up through the center of the device to a large plate at the top which serves to distribute the Wi-Fi signals. And overall, iFixit gives the AirPort Extreme a repairability score of 8 out of 10, citing standard Torx screws, a relative lack of glue, and modular components as positives and slightly difficult prying to open, difficult fan access, and breakage-prone connectors as negatives.

Apple's new AirPort Extreme is priced at $199, while the AirPort Time Capsule base stations incorporating hard drives for wireless backup storage are priced at $299 for 2 TB and $399 for 3 TB.

The Wrap reports that Ashton Kutcher's film "Jobs" will now debut on August 16 in the United States. The film, which premiered at the Sundance Music Festival in late January to mixed reviews, had been scheduled for an April 19 wide release, but was delayed.

Five Star Institute's Mark Hulme financed and produced the movie, which Open Road acquired in a service release deal prior to this year's Sundance Film Festival, where "Jobs" was the closing night film. Both sides decided to wait and create proper buzz before releasing "Jobs" rather than rush the movie out so soon after Sundance.

By opening after most summer blockbusters (Sony's "Elysium" is the last major title on Aug. 9) rather than mid-April, "Jobs" now stands a better chance to succeed and distinguish itself in the marketplace.

"Jobs", which stars Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, is one of several Jobs-related films in the works or already released. Back in April, rumor site Funny or Die released a rather poorly received "iSteve" comedy film starring Justin Long, who had played the "Mac" character in Apple's long-running "Mac vs. PC" ad campaign.

A third film is being written by Aaron Sorkin and is the official adaptation of Jobs' authorized biography by Walter Isaacson. The film, which is still in the early stages of development, is planned to encompass three 30-minute scenes showing Jobs backstage just prior to the launches of the original Mac, NeXT, and the iPod.