MacRumors

As noted by 9to5Mac, Apple has posted a job listing seeking a new software engineering manager focused on "next generation features for Apple TV".

The Apple TV team is looking for an experienced engineering manager to help deliver the next generation features for Apple TV. Bring your creative energy and engineering discipline, and help us bring the Apple experience to the Living Room. [...]

- Lead a team of engineers working on exciting new features and functionality
- Drive releases from initial concept to completion
- Work closely with cross functional teams, representing Apple TV across Apple
- Develop the engineering plan for upcoming projects
- Communicate status to key stakeholders and senior management

The managerial job listing comes roughly a month after the company posted another listing seeking an Apple TV software engineer interested in "delivering first in class home entertainment solutions".

While the listings unsurprisingly do not offer any specific information about Apple's plans for the Apple TV platform and are filled with typical human resources phrases designed to appeal to prospective employees, they do suggest that Apple may be increasing staffing to push forward on a television initiative.

Rumors of an Apple television set and/or a new set-top box with increased functionality have repeatedly surfaced over the years, although the company's efforts have reportedly been slowed by content negotiations. A new report from TechCrunch's MG Siegler indicates, however, that Apple may finally be ready to begin its push later this year with a focus on third-party apps for the Apple TV and future hardware.

Just over a year ago, a LinkedIn Q&A session with Inside Apple author Adam Lashinsky generated some attention for an exchange with a former Apple employee in the audience who reported that new Apple hires are sometimes placed on "fake" projects during a probationary period. The audience member's comment was sparked by Lashinsky's discussion of employees being hired into "dummy positions" where they do not know what they will be working on until they start at the company.

Ars Technica has now followed up on those claims of new hires being placed on fake projects and found that the claim is unlikely to be true.

I spoke to Apple employees from various areas of the company at differing levels, some who are still at Apple and others who have moved on, but all expressed the same sentiment. No one reported any direct experience of being put on a fake project at Apple, and no one knew a friend or colleague at the company who had. A single former employee acknowledged having heard about fake projects—but only from a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend, and the employee was quick to acknowledge that the rumor should be treated with a skeptical eye.

Sources noted that virtually all work at Apple is heavily covered by nondisclosure agreements, meaning that there is little need to resort to putting employees on fake projects as tests of their loyalty.

The report also describes how Apple works to track down suspected sources of leaks, occasionally putting an entire room on lockdown with security personnel working quickly to download data from computers and other devices. Such incidents are said to be rare, but they do leave lasting impressions on employees.

German site iPhone-Ticker reports [Google translation] that Apple is planning to release iOS 6.1.2 early next week to address both the Exchange bug and lock screen passcode issue affecting iOS 6.1 users. According to the report, iOS 6.1.2 is likely to arrive before Wednesday, February 20.

Like iOS 6.1.1 released for the iPhone 4S earlier this week, iOS 6.1.2 will be a limited update addressing only these issues in order to allow Apple to quickly release it to the public. Apple last week seeded to developers an initial iOS 6.1.1 beta including broader changes such as improvements to Maps in Japan, but it now appears that this release will become iOS 6.1.3 as Apple addresses a few high-priority bug fixes on a separate basis.

iPhone-Ticker has previously offered accurate information on iOS update schedules, including word of the iOS 6.1.1 update [Google translation] a few hours before it was released to the public.

Apple design chief Jonathan Ive has been awarded a gold badge by the BBC children's show Blue Peter, a show the British-born designer watched as a child and which encourages children to make things from ordinary household objects. Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having been on the air for over 50 years.

The show said that Ive was an "inspiration to children around the world". Blue Peter awards the badges to those it considers have encouraged and inspired children to develop their talents, with the gold badge awarded to Ive marking exceptional achievement.

The interview clip accompanying the BBC's article represents a rare public appearance by Ive, and it takes place in an Apple facility surrounded by equipment including a CNC machine for milling aluminum. Ive will also be featured in the half-hour Blue Peter episode airing tomorrow on CBBC.

Ive said that he had loved watching the show as a child, and described receiving the award as 'absolutely incredible'. He referenced the way the show encouraged children to make things from objects as ordinary as detergent bottles.

I loved the way there was just products that you thought were no longer useful, but reusing them. It was fantastic.

Ive in turn presented the show with a Blue Peter badge milled from a single block of aluminum, the approach famously used for the MacBook Pro.

TechCrunch's MG Siegler reports that Apple indeed appears to be moving closer to making a major push into television, perhaps leveraging the existing iOS-based Apple TV to pursue gaming as a focus point for the initiative.

Xbox founding engineer Nat Brown had noted earlier this week that he believes Apple could destroy the traditional console gaming business by opening up the Apple TV platform to third-party apps, and Valve founder Gabe Newell had expressed similar sentiments several weeks earlier.

But while Siegler has not heard any specific information about how Apple would open up the Apple TV to developers, multiple sources have informed him that something does appear to be brewing for later this year.

I haven’t heard anything specific about the SDK, but the chatter about Apple’s broader television plans has been picking up. And if that chatter is to believed, something is happening this fall — likely late fall. As always with Apple, those plans are subject to change (and, in fact, have changed a few times in the past — see: “Project Sphere”). As you might imagine, content deals remain a bitch, yet remain vital to such a project. But multiple sources suggest everything is finally lining up for this fall.

Siegler goes on to note that he does not know if the effort will include an actual television set at launch, but he argues that it doesn't really matter whether Apple does or not. The key is to bring apps to either the existing Apple TV concept or to new hardware, whether it be a new set-top box or integrated into a television set.

Siegler suggests that under this scenario Apple is likely to hold an event several months ahead of this projected late fall TV hardware launch, using the earlier event to introduce developer tools for the existing Apple TV, although whether that introduction might come mid-year at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference or at a separate event is unknown.

Earlier this week, analyst Peter Misek claimed that Apple would be holding a television-related product event next month, but the rumor was quickly refuted by The Loop's Jim Dalrymple.

Last month, MacRumors had heard reports that office supply retailer Staples would begin offering Apple products for sale in the United States. Staples already sells Apple products internationally but had been unsuccessful in completing a deal with Apple for the U.S. market.

Tonight, we'd received word that Staples had a meeting today with corporate employees announcing that Apple products were coming to their stores. 9to5Mac has since spotted that Staples executives have taken to Twitter to confirm that a deal with Apple has been finalized and that their stores will begin selling Apple products. Staples Senior Vice President of Global Human Resources confirmed the deal on Twitter (Tweet now deleted).

After Canada, #Apple products are coming to #Staples in US. Great news!

Other Staples employees also took to Twitter to confirm the news, including Strategic Accounts coordinator Erin LaFlamme and Field Services Manager Mike Goggin.

While there's no mention of what Apple products Staples would carry, MacRumors previously heard in mid-January that Staples would carry Apple's full lineup of Macs, iPads as well as the iPhone 5 in their stores.

Rene Ritchie at iMore has shared some insights on Apple's product roadmaps across a number of products. Ritchie is somewhat circumspect in his statements, but reading between the lines, he hints at a number of significant developments that have been rumored previously.

iMore has been very accurate in recent years, including reporting on the Lightning connector months before it was publicly released, the iPad mini's launch, as well as revealing the iPhone 5's announcement date more than a month ahead of time.

The full post is worth a read, but Ritchie says that sources "who have provided accurate information in the past" told him that the iWatch project is moving forward, though he has not heard anything regarding feature sets or timelines.

The iTV project is still in the works, but there is no significant movement on it as the realities of the TV and content markets remain the same. Rumors of an iPhone with a larger screen are accurate, but release "doesn't sound imminent", and its the same story for a less expensive iPhone. It's likely coming, but is a question of timing.

Finally, Ritchie talks of a redesigned iPad to match the iPad mini's bezel design (mockup pictured above):

To bring the full-sized iPad casing in line with the iPad mini's, and to bring the iPad mini display up to the full size iPad's Retina quality, will take improvements to the efficiencies of the screens, the LED that lights them, the chipsets that drive them, and the batteries that power them. All of those are coming, it's just a question of when they get here.

He notes that an iPad mini with Retina Display is on the drawing board, as soon as Apple can figure out how to cram the display into the mini's diminutive case. He also expresses excitement for Apple's software plans in particular, future releases of iOS. He wrote that his sources "sound excited about not just the atoms but the bits as well."

None of what Ritchie writes reveals anything particularly new or astonishing, but given his extremely accurate track record over the past few years, it's an important look into what Apple could be planning for the rest of 2013.

iPhone battery case maker Mophie, which recently announced the first battery case for the iPhone 5, explained some of the unique actions that Apple takes to lock down its Lightning connector to the New York Times.

In order to only allow authorized connectors to connect to new iPhone and iPad models, Apple includes a serialized authentication chip in the connectors it sells to companies in its "Made For iPhone/iPod/iPad" or MFi program. If a company sells those Lightning connectors to another company, Apple can determine that it came from a particular MFi member.

"If you took this apart and put it in another product and Apple got a hold of it, they’d be able to see it’s from Mophie’s batch of Lightning connectors," said Ross Howe, vice president of marketing for Mophie.

The chip inside the Lightning connector can be reverse engineered — copied by another company — but it probably would not work as well as one that came from Apple, Mr. Howe said. Apple could also theoretically issue software updates that would disable Lightning products that did not use its chips, he said.

iPhone accessories are a multi-million dollar business and Apple wants to ensure that users have the best experience possible by only allowing approved third-party accessories to be used with new iOS devices. This strategy has the side-effect of making accessories more expensive because companies are required to pay a licensing fee to Apple to be part of the MFi program. Some companies, like Monoprice and Amazon, offer cheaper connectors that are approved by Apple.

Following today's significant publicity surrounding a bug in iOS 6.1 that allows users to bypass the iPhone's passcode lock to access the device's phone functions and contacts, Apple has issued a brief statement to AllThingsD acknowledging the issue and promising a fix for it.

Reached for comment, Apple said it is hard at work on a fix. “Apple takes user security very seriously” spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “We are aware of this issue, and will deliver a fix in a future software update.”

The company did not provide a timeframe for the fix.

Apple issued a first developer beta of iOS 6.1.1 last week, but then delivered a public iOS 6.1.1 release only for the iPhone 4S earlier this week. We suspect that Apple rushed out the iPhone 4S bug fix update and that the original iOS 6.1.1 in developer testing will become iOS 6.1.2 as it proceeds through the development and testing process.

It seems reasonable to assume that Apple will have enough time to fold a fix for the passcode issue into this next release, but it is unknown when that update will be made available to the public.

Following its move to introduce a shorter Thunderbolt cable last month, Apple has made a similar move in launching a new 0.5-meter Lightning to USB cable.

The new cable is half the length of the standard Lightning to USB cable and provides an option for users looking for less cable clutter in more confined spaces. Interestingly, there is no price difference between the two cable lengths, with both cables priced at $19.

Apple has also made a minor tweak to its In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic. The only visible difference on the $79 earphones compared to their predecessor is a more rounded design for the remote, in line with the remote seen on the company's EarPods launched late last year.

(Thanks, Craig!)