MacRumors

Earlier today, labor rights group China Labor Watch issued a report making claims of poor working conditions at Apple's assembly partner Pegatron. As pointed out by Computerworld, the 60-page report (PDF) confirms that Apple is working on production of a plastic iPhone, a device that has been rumored for some time and seen in a number of recent part leaks.

Today’s work is to paste protective film on the iPhone’s plastic back cover to prevent it from being scratched on assembly lines. This iPhone model with a plastic cover will soon be released on the market by Apple. The task is pretty easy, and I was able to work independently after a five-minute instruction from a veteran employee. It took around a minute to paste protective film on one rear cover. The new cell phone has not yet been put into mass production, so quantity is not as important. This makes our job more slow paced than in departments that have begun mass production schedules.

Pegatron had previously been reported as Apple's manufacturing partner for the lower-cost plastic iPhone, which is rumored to be launching later this year alongside the iPhone 5S. The firm has long been an assembly partner for Apple, although it has been overshadowed by the much larger Foxconn. Pegatron has, however, been growing rapidly as Apple has been seeking to balance and expand its supply chain to provide more stability and flexibility.

Following last week's opinion piece from Verizon attorney Randall Milch outlining why the carrier objects to the impending U.S. ban on imports of older iPhone and 3G-capable iPad models, The Wall Street Journal notes that a number of other companies and regulators are lining up in support of Apple in the case.

Rather than taking a position on the details of the case, which revolve around a Samsung patent categorized as essential for 3G wireless functionality and thus subject to licensing under FRAND (fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory) terms, the companies are primarily objecting to the precedent of allowing products to be banned based on rulings of infringement of such patents.

AT&T said the ITC [International Trade Commission] ruling would eliminate a popular low-cost iPhone for AT&T customers and was "inconsistent with the president's goal of ubiquitous broadband deployment."” [...]

BSA, a trade group representing software makers including Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. and chip maker Intel Corp., said the use of essential industry patents to ban products shouldn't be allowed except under unusual circumstances.

Intel is scheduled to testify at the Senate hearing and previously filed its concerns with the ITC.

The report indicates that antitrust officials from the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have also been weighing in on the matter with their fears that companies may be unfairly wielding their standards-essential patents to hamper competition in the marketplace. For their parts, Apple and Samsung have disagreed over whether fair licensing offers have been made in the on-and-off negotiations over the relevant intellectual property.

The import ban is set to take effect on August 4, barring a veto by the executive branch of the government, which would come through U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. An executive branch veto of an ITC order would be a significant move, as such a veto has not been issued since 1987.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, a Chinese worker’s rights group has brought forth allegations of poor working conditions at Pegatron, a primary supplier to Apple and longtime electronics manufacturing company. Specifically, the worker group accuses that the company has made numerous safety and workplace violations, including the unethical holding of worker pay and identification cards, as well as poor living conditions within the factory including tight living quarters and packed cafeterias.

Apple has replied to the allegations, stating the following:

Apple is committed to providing safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain. We lead the industry with far-reaching and specialized audits, the most transparent reporting and educational programs that enrich the lives of workers who make our products. Apple is the first and only technology company to be admitted to the Fair Labor Association, and we are dedicated to protecting every worker in our supply chain.

As a part of our extensive Supplier Responsibility program, Apple has conducted 15 comprehensive audits at Pegatron facilities since 2007, covering more than 130,000 workers making Apple products including annual audits of Pegatron’s final assembly locations and surprise audits at both RiTeng and AVY within the past 18 months.

Additionally, we have closely tracked working hours at all of these facilities. Our most recent survey in June found that Pegatron employees making Apple products worked 46 hours per week on average. Excessive overtime is not in anyone’s best interest, and we work closely with our suppliers to prevent it. Apple surveys working hours for more than 1 million employees across our supply chain each month and we report the findings on our website.

Apple also confirmed that various labor brokers affiliated with Pegatron were withholding ID cards, and further committed to investigating claims against the company. Analysts estimate that Pegatron’s Pudong district factory now produces one-third of the world’s iPhone and iPads, with the company as a whole expanding its overall workforce from 50,000 workers in March to 70,000 presently.

The news comes after Apple announced last week that it was forming an academic advisory board for its Supplier Responsibility program, saying that it wanted to ensure “safe and ethical working conditions wherever its products are made.” Apple has also published Supplier Responsibility Progress Reports every year since 2007, tracking the ethical progress of its suppliers in order to bring transparency to its product manufacturing process.

Apple Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield has been removed from Apple's Leadership website in the past 24 hours with no explanation.

Update: According to AllThingsD:

“Bob is no longer going to be on Apple’s executive team, but will remain at Apple working on special projects reporting to Tim,” company spokesman Steve Dowling told AllThingsD.

He declined any further explanation, refusing to comment on the reasons behind Mansfield’s abrupt demotion or whether Apple plans to appoint a new SVP of technologies.

Mansfield is currently Senior Vice President of Technologies reporting directly to Tim Cook, a position he took last October, overseeing a group focused on innovation in wireless technology and semiconductors.

His page has been completely removed from Apple's website, though it is still visible on Google's cache.

Last year, Apple announced that Mansfield would be retiring, but several months later announced he would instead be staying at the company. Later, it leaked that Tim Cook had faced an "insurrection" after Mansfield announced his retirement, and Cook gave him an extremely generous benefits package.

At the time, it was reported that Mansfield had committed to stay at Apple through at least 2014, influenced in no small part by the departure of former iOS chief Scott Forstall.

Mansfield has been instrumental in Apple's success in recent years, overseeing the development of the very successful MacBook Air notebooks, as well as recent iPhone and iPad designs.

During quarterly retail meetings that took place today, Apple announced a new ‘iBooks Discovery’ initiative that will see Apple Store employees provided with free iBooks beginning next week in order to prepare the retail workers for the launch of OS X Mavericks and iOS 7, reports 9to5Mac.

While an iBooks app has been available on iOS devices since the debut of the original iPad in 2010, OS X Mavericks will mark the first instance of an iBooks app for the Mac.

The Mavericks version of iBooks offers a number of features that will appeal to readers and students alike, including full screen reading capabilities, note taking functionality, and a feature that allows study cards to be automatically created from notes.

With access to free ebooks, Apple Store employees will be able to familiarize themselves with both the iBookstore and the many features that iBooks offers, allowing the employees to answer customer questions and promote the apps and the new operating systems.

Apple has also provided some of its employees with beta access to OS X Mavericks and recently, it sent out a memo asking its retail workers for innovative ideas on how to improve the iPhone, the retail store environment, and sales techniques.

At a retail summit that took place in early July, Tim Cook announced plans to improve the in-store sales of iPhones, which are considered a “gateway product” to other Apple devices. As part of its push for greater sales, Apple has launched a new iPhone Back to School promotion and has plans for an in-store trade-in program for older devices.

The company also plans to heavily market both iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, which are expected to be released to the public this fall.

An image posted on Chinese site WeiPhone appears to show plastic retail packaging marked with the name "iPhone 5C". If the packaging is genuine, and it has not yet been confirmed to be, it could be for Apple's long-rumored plastic iPhone. The image was first noticed by French site Nowhereelse.fr [Google Translate].

The "C" designation would presumably refer to the various color options available on the rumored lower-cost device.

The packaging appears to be a white plastic box that would hold the device and associated accessories and documentation. A front cover, unseen in the photo but perhaps clear to show off the various color options for the device itself as seen on Apple's iPod lineups, would appear to rest on a small lip around the interior.

A number of photos showing plastic rear shells alleged to be for Apple's rumored lower-cost iPhone have surfaced in recent weeks, and Apple is rumored to be launching the device alongside the iPhone 5S later this year.

The WeiPhone forums are a fairly frequent source of Apple rumors, although the site itself does not frequently report on them, making it difficult to determine a steady track record as posting in the site's forums come from a variety of different posters. Still, the alleged plastic packaging and official look of the "iPhone 5C" moniker appear to have some legitimacy, and would increasingly make sense as Apple may be gearing up for a launch of the low-cost iPhone this Fall.

According to SemiAccurate, Intel will provide Apple with an ultra-high performance version of its Haswell for Apple's upcoming MacBook Pros. The report claims that the chips will include a special version of Intel's highest-end GT3e (Iris Pro 5200) integrated graphics.

Apple has requested a special top bin cream-of-the-crop GT3e selection from Intel, with "as much GPU power as possible." With the top chips going solely to Apple, that leaves the slightly less desirable remains for Intel's other customers.

It was widely assumed that Apple would release its next generation Haswell-based MacBook Pros at WWDC alongside the Haswell MacBook Airs, but that did not happen. Both the 13-inch and the 15-inch MacBook Pros have since shown up in benchmark results, however, suggesting that a release is coming soon.

The benchmarked 15-inch MacBook Pro revealed a Core i7–4950HQ chip running at 2.4 GHz, along with Iris Pro 5200 integrated graphics, which, as noted, are the best that Intel has to offer. Intel’s promotional materials have suggested that the Iris offers 2–2.5x the performance power as the i7–3840QM chip with HD Graphics 4000 in the current high-end Retina MacBook Pro, but the new Retina MacBook Pros could see even greater performance boosts.

Earlier this week, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested that the updated MacBook Pros will launch in mid-September. It is unclear if Apple will refresh both the Retina MacBook Pros and the standard MacBook Pros, but many believe that Apple is planning to phase out the non-Retina varieties.

It appears that Apple is slowly bringing its Developer Center online after more than a week of outage. Several developers have notified MacRumors that they are now able to enter the site and reports on Twitter confirm that the Developer Center is once again accessible. Earlier this week, Apple outlined a plan for restoring functionality to the site.

According to the new status page, several systems are up and running, including Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, Software Downloads, Safari Dev Center, iOS Dev Center, and Mac Dev Center. Other areas of the site, including the technical support sections and the forums, are still offline at this time.

Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles Now Available

We appreciate your patience as we work to bring our developer services back online. Certificates, Identifiers & Profiles, software downloads, and other developer services are now available. If you would like to know the availability of a particular system, visit our status page.

If your program membership expired or is set to expire during this downtime, it will be extended and your app will remain on the App Store. If you have any other concerns about your account, please contact us.

Thank you for bearing with us while we bring these important systems back online. We will continue to update you on our progress.

Apple's Developer Center first went offline last Thursday, and on Sunday, Apple revealed that it had been taken down as a precaution after a security breach. It is unclear who was responsible for the hacking, but a security researcher has suggested that he might be to blame for the outage.

Apple has been "working around the clock" on a complete overhaul of its developer systems since the Developer Center was taken down and has noted that developer memberships and apps set to expire during the outage will be given an extension to account for the significant downtime.

While the developer portal looks largely the same, it is likely that sweeping internal changes have been implemented. After news of the security breach, Apple said that it was completely overhauling its developer system, updating server software, and rebuilding its entire database.

In addition to its main office in Cupertino, Apple maintains a number of satellite offices in different cities in the United States. One such office is located in Boston, and according to industry sources that spoke to Xconomy (via 9to5Mac) Apple’s Boston team specializes in speech technology and may be working on Siri improvements.

Based on their online job profiles, we can say that members of the Apple speech team here are working on Siri, the company's voice-activated virtual assistant. Details beyond that are hard to come by, however, even for others in the field.

"They won't tell us what they're doing," says Jim Glass, who heads MIT's Spoken Language Systems Group. “We can only guess.”

Apple's Boston team is said to be made up of employees that formerly worked at VoiceSignal Technologies, a speech software company that was purchased in 2007 by Apple partner Nuance.

Multiple members of the team worked at Nuance before moving onto Apple, including Gunnar Evermann, Larry Gillick, and Don McAllaster. Gillick, a former vice president of research at Nuance, lists his job as "Chief Speech Scientist, Siri at Apple," while McAllaster calls himself a "Senior Research Scientist" at the company.

While it is unclear just what the Boston Siri team is working on, Xconomy speculates that Apple could potentially be working on a Siri solution that moves away from Nuance, the technology that currently powers the personal assistant.

It would not be out of the question for Apple to aim for improved Siri software using its own in-house technology. The company has made moves to be more autonomous over the past few years, most recently switching to in-house mapping with iOS 6 rather than continuing to rely on Google Maps. Both former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and current Apple CEO Tim Cook have emphasized the importance of owning technology. "In the business we're in, own the technology," said Cook in an interview. "Steve was laser focused on that and that's ingrained in us."

Though it is possible that Apple is working on its own in-house voice recognition solution, the team could also be seeking to improve the integration of Nuance's technology into Siri. Apple could also be working on new developer APIs to better integrate Siri with existing iOS apps.

Apple has been working hard to improve Siri since the software's debut in 2011. With iOS 6, Siri gained the ability to provide sports scores, make reservations, launch apps, and locate movie listings. In iOS 7, Siri will see further improvements, including speed enhancements, better pronunciation, and new voices.

A picture posted on the Chinese microblogging site Weibo appears to show the rear of an assembled low-cost iPhone, complete with the required legal notices from the FCC and other agencies. The image was noticed by Dutch Apple site iPhone5Skopen.com [Google Translate].

The unit shown appears to be almost identical to the rear shell that was leaked a few days ago, though this is one of the first leaks to include legal notices on the back.

As expected, the phone appears to include a rear camera with single flash -- leaks of the new iPhone 5S have suggested a dual-flash system -- as well as similar Lightning and headphone jack locations to the existing iPhone 5.

Because of the angle of the photo, is it impossible to tell if it is an assembled phone or just the rear plate. However, it looks very similar to other reported leaks. At a minimum, there is a good chance that these parts offer a good representation of what Apple's lower-cost iPhone will look like.

KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who has a solid track record, predicted earlier this week that the low-cost iPhone would ship in early September.

Thanks Arjan!

MacRumors attended a promotional screening of "JOBS" in San Francisco last night, where Ashton Kutcher and director Joshua Michael Stern held a question and answer session that covered a variety of topics on the production of the movie. Kutcher, for the most part, expanded on the ways that he slipped into the role of Jobs, and pontificated on what loyalty might have meant to the former CEO.

While Kutcher has made a number of appearances to promote the movie, speaking multiple times about his preparation for the role of Steve Jobs, he shared a few new details last night.

Kutcher explained the physical demands of the role, which included the mastering of the Steve Jobs walk over the course of the three months that he prepared for the part. Kutcher attributed Jobs’ walk to his penchant for bare feet, which contributed to his odd lope. He suggested Jobs probably stubbed his toes fairly often, causing the unique gait where he picked up his feet while walking.

Kutcher also noted that he went as far as studying the same books and artists that Jobs once did in order to get into the right mind frame and learn his aesthetic taste. Throughout the interview, it was clear that Kutcher had a great respect for Jobs, and he mentioned that he deeply regretted forgoing a chance to meet Jobs just months before he passed away. “I loved a man I never knew,” he said.

When an audience member asked Kutcher how he thought that Jobs would define loyalty, Kutcher initially declined to answer, but went on to discuss Jobs’ relationship with some of the earliest Apple employees, including Daniel Kottke, who was not awarded Apple stock.

“I think Steve was extraordinarily loyal to people he felt were loyal to him. And I don’t think that he had a historical relationship in his life that he felt that - that he trusted other people’s loyalty so I think he was sparing with his.”

Director Joshua Michael Stern also shared his thoughts on the question, explaining that someone had told him that Jobs was not a sentimental person. According to Stern, sentimentality draws from the past and Jobs didn’t live in the past–he was always looking towards the future.

“So I think that he would define loyalty in a very different way. He’d probably get defensive if you’d ask because his loyalty had probably been questioned so often in his life. But I think that he was loyal to his vision and he was loyal to the one thing he wanted to bring to the world … I think he was loyal to what he was trying to achieve. If you were loyal to that too then he loved you and if you didn’t then you didn’t understand him.”

The JOBS movie, starring Ashton Kutcher and Josh Gad, is set to hit theaters next month on August 16.