MacRumors

While Apple offered a sneak peek at its dramatically redesigned Mac Pro at its Worldwide Developers Conference, the new machine is not scheduled to launch until "later this year" and the company has yet to reveal detailed specs and pricing information.

But if a new Geekbench result is authentic, it appears that the new machine is already starting to show up in public benchmarking databases. Rather than showing up as a "MacPro6,1" as would be expected for Apple's next-generation Mac Pro, the new machine is dubbed "AAPLJ90,1", perhaps a reference to a J90 code name following Apple's usual format.

Also supporting the authenticity of the entry is the listing of a custom build of OS X Mavericks, 13A2054, running on the machine. The listed motherboard ID is also one which was discovered in OS X Mavericks as corresponding to the new Mac Pro.

The machine in question is running a single 12-core processor from the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E family, specifically the Xeon E5-2697 v2 running at 2.7 GHz. It is also equipped with 64 GB of RAM.

A comparison of this new Mac Pro entry with Apple's current high-end 12-core Mac Pro running a pair of 3.06 GHz Westmere processors reveals improved performance on Geekbench benchmarks by most measures, ranging from slight improvements for certain tasks to substantial improvements for others.

We chatted with John Poole of Primate Labs, who highlighted the substantial improvements in many single-core measures and in memory performance, suggesting that lower multi-core scores later in the Integer Performance testing run could be indicative of thermal issues.

Poole notes that with a public launch of the new Mac Pro likely still many months away, it is entirely possible that Apple is still ironing out both software and hardware issues on the new Mac Pro and that the company's work could lead to even more substantial performance gains once those issues are addressed.

Update: Poole has now shared some of his thoughts on the Mac Pro result in a blog post.

...Apple's claim of "up to 2x faster" floating point performance may be optimistic. The new "Ivy Bridge" Xeon processor in the new Mac Pro has instructions that can process twice the amount of data as the "Westmere" Xeon processors in the current Mac Pro. The problem is that only certain kinds of software can take advantage of these instructions.

Apple has launched an iPhone repair pilot program for Apple Certified Service Providers in Canada that will allow certain certified centers to offer iPhone repairs after store technicians have completed Apple-required iOS Certification.

According to a tipster, the third party service sites will be able to offer repairs for the battery, camera, speaker, and more, after the program launches in the next few weeks. In addition to passing an iOS Qualification exam, Service Provider technicians have also been required to attend several training sessions to learn how to disassemble the iPhone.

While the program is currently limited to Canada, it seems reasonable to suspect that it may roll out to other countries in the future should the test run prove successful.

Documents given out to technicians suggest that Apple is aiming to provide a quality alternate repair option for its customers in Canada, while cutting down on unauthorized Apple repairs.

Program Overview – Goals
1. Provide APR with authorization to provide iPhone repair service to walk in customers as alternate channel
2. Provide same service level for iPhone as our Apple Retail Stores
3. Reduce proliferation of unauthorized repair centres and third party parts

Apple has furnished its Apple Certified Service Providers with a detailed set of rules and requirements that must be met, including troubleshooting all cases and providing same day service with a maximum of six hours in turn around time for devices with a warranty.

Out of warranty requests follow similar rules, with a 12-hour deadline for potential repairs. While the documentation estimates that the majority of repairs will be replacements, it requires each repair location to hit a Same Unit Repair rate of 10% or higher.

In early June, Apple began offering in-house iPhone 5 display replacements in an effort to cut down on repair costs. The company is also planning to offer additional same device repairs later this year, which could save more than $1 billion per year.

Apple's move to allow Apple Certified Service Providers to offer iPhone repairs is likely part of the same initiative, designed to cut down on overall repair costs while providing greater convenience to customers who might otherwise seek out unauthorized repairs. Even in the United States, few Certified Repair centers are able to offer iPhone service at this time, which could change as Apple continues to expand its repair options.

Update: According to a tipster, Apple's Canadian test run is an expansion of a beta test that began in the United States last year. Approximately 20 Apple Authorized Service Providers are able to execute iPhone repairs and offer unit swaps in the U.S.

DisplaySearch analyst Richard Shim is going back on statements he made back in May, when he said the next model of the iPad mini -- expected this fall -- would come equipped with a Retina display and an updated processor. In an added twist, before he made that statement, Shim said the Retina iPad mini would not ship before 2014.

Now, Shim writes that Apple will refresh its iPad mini line later this year, but the Retina display will not make an appearance before 2014.

Apple is expected to refresh its iPad mini in the second half of the year. The new iPad mini will continue to use a 7.9-inch display with a 1024×768 resolution, but it will use the iOS 7 operating system and an A6 processor, in a slimmer design than the current generation. Another iPad mini is also planned for production but not until early 2014. That device is expected to feature a QXGA (2048×1536) resolution display and the iOS 7 operating system.

It's unclear which DisplaySearch report is correct, though it's widely expected that Apple will ship a Retina-display equipped iPad mini at some point.

More notably, Shim does expect the iPad mini update this fall to bring a thinner case, regardless of whether it has a Retina display or not. Apple CEO Tim Cook did warn analysts and other Apple watchers to take rumors from the Apple supply chain with a grain of salt.

Apple is expected to introduce new versions of the iPhone, iPad mini and iPad this fall.

Though Microsoft has been making a strong push to disrupt Apple's foothold in the education market by offering K–12 schools its Surface tablets at the low price of $199, its pricing incentives didn't have an effect on the Los Angeles Unified School District, reports AllThingsD.

On Tuesday night, the school board voted to spend $30 million on Apple iPads, which will see the company equipping every student in 47 of the district's schools with a tablet.

The deal, which was approved in a 6–0 vote by the district's school board, will see Apple supplying about 35,000 iPads to 47 LAUSD schools at a cost of about $678 per device. That's higher than retail, but I'm told the devices are to be preloaded with an assortment of educational software prior to distribution — an additional expense. They also come with a three-year warranty.

According to the LA Times, the district did test runs with multiple devices and the iPad "received the highest scoring by the students and the teachers." Winning a contract with the Los Angeles Unified School District is a major boon for Apple, as the district is the second largest school system in the United States and could influence other districts to follow in its footsteps.

Apple has long had a heavy focus on the educational market, which ramped up with the introduction of the iPad in 2010. Apple offers discounts across its product lineup for students and earlier this year, it was reported that the company had sold more than 8 million iPads to educational institutions around the world.

In February, Apple also met with the Turkish President to further discuss another huge educational deal that would see the country purchasing more than $4.5 billion worth of Apple products.

Update: Apple has issued a press release about the deal with the LA Unified School District.

"Education is in Apple's DNA and we're thrilled to work with Los Angeles Unified public schools on this major initiative as they plan to roll out iPads to every student across 47 campuses this fall," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Schools around the world have embraced the engaging and interactive quality of iPad with nearly 10 million iPads already in schools today."

Boris Teksler, Apple's former director of Patent Licensing & Strategy, has left the company for a high-level position with French technology firm Technicolor.

Teksler has been head of Apple's patent licensing department through nearly constant licensing negotiations and patent lawsuits with numerous technology companies, including a broad licensing deal with Microsoft that included an 'anti cloning' agreement. He was with Apple for four years, after spending 16 years at HP.

Technicolor, a worldwide technology leader in the media and entertainment sector, announces that it has appointed Boris Teksler as President of its Technology Group which includes Intellectual Property & Licensing and the company’s world class Research & Innovation activities. He joins Technicolor’s Executive Committee and his appointment reinforces Technicolor’s commitment to create and deliver exciting new experiences for consumers in theaters, homes, and on-the-go, and pursue the exploitation of its IP assets.

The departure was first noticed by AppleInsider.

When tethering an iPhone or an iPad, iOS users have the option of using an automatically generated password for their personal hotspots, which Apple implemented to provide all users with a secure password option.

According to researchers at Germany's University of Erlangen (via ZDNeT), the way that the keys are generated – with a combination of a short English word along with random numbers – is predictable to the point where the researchers are able to crack the hotspot password in less than a minute.

In their paper, the three researchers detail the process that they used to figure out the weak spots in the hotspot's protection. Apple's word list uses approximately 52,500 entries, so initially, cracking the hotspot took almost 50 minutes. After finding a WiFi connection, the researchers used an AMD Radeon HD 6990 GPU to run through word and number combinations.

"This list consists of around 52,500 entries, and was originated from an open-source Scrabble crossword game. Using this unofficial Scrabble word list within offline dictionary attacks, we already had a 100 percent success rate of cracking any arbitrary iOS hotspot default password," the researchers wrote.

The team discovered that only a small set of Apple's larger word list was being used, so with GPU cluster of four AMD Radeon HD 7970s, they narrowed their iOS-generated hotspot password cracking time down to just 50 seconds. In the paper, the team goes on to criticize Apple's password generation standards, suggesting that system generated passwords be composed of random letters and numbers.

"In the context of mobile hotspots, there is no need to create easily memorizable passwords. After a device has been paired once by typing out the displayed hotspot password, the entered credentials are usually cached within the associating device, and are reused within subsequent connections," the paper states.

"System-generated passwords should be reasonably long, and should use a reasonably large character set. Consequently, hotspot passwords should be composed of completely random sequences of letters, numbers, and special characters."

As noted by ZDNet though Apple's password generation system is flawed, it is a more robust solution than what is used by other companies like Microsoft. For example, the Windows 8 phone utilizes default passwords that consist of eight digit numbers.

To avoid a weak iPhone hotspot password, users can still choose to use passwords of their own creation, which should contain a sequence of random numbers and letters for enhanced security.

Apple today announced a software update for its Apple TV set-top box adding new channels including WatchESPN and HBO GO. The update also brings live streaming of the UK's Sky News, as well as anime site Crunchyroll and music concert and documentary streaming service Qello.

“HBO GO and WatchESPN are some of the most popular iOS apps and are sure to be huge hits on Apple TV,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “We continue to offer Apple TV users great new programming options, combined with access to all of the incredible content they can purchase from the iTunes Store.”

WatchESPN and HBO GO require that customers be subscribed to appropriate cable TV services, while Sky News offers free live streams and numerous video clips to users in the US, UK, and Ireland.

Crunchyroll offers a free 7-day trial to its Anime service, with subscriptions priced at $6.99/month. A more extensive All-Access membership is available for $11.99/month. Qello offers a free 7-day trial to its service, with subscriptions priced at $4.99/month for unlimited access to its library of concerts and music documentaries.

It was reported over a year ago that Apple was in talks to bring WatchESPN to the Apple TV, while claims of HBO GO talks surfaced earlier this year.

The update arrives as Apple TV software version 5.3 and is available now for the second- and third-generation Apple TV.

As part of its press release, Apple also disclosed new statistics on iTunes Store video usage, noting that users have purchased over a billion TV episodes and 380 million movies, with current rates of over 800,000 TV episodes and over 350,000 movies per day.

Following yesterday's photos of a case said to be based on the expected design for Apple's lower-cost iPhone, AppleInsider now shares design drawings from a case maker showing expectations for the exact dimensions and profiles of the both the lower-cost iPhone and the iPhone 5S.

Unsurprisingly, the dimensions of the iPhone 5S are nearly identical to those of the iPhone 5, with case makers also apparently expecting the same layout and size of the physical features.

The lower-cost iPhone, which is rumored to be adopting a plastic shell that will requires a slightly larger body than the iPhone 5/5S, is expected to be approximately 0.6 mm taller, 0.6 mm wider, and 0.8 mm thicker than the current design. The drawings also show rounded rear edges that have been rumored since a January report from iLounge. That report also offered similar claims of the relative dimensions for the device compared to the iPhone 5.

The new design drawings also appear to show the exact same set of physical features as described by iLounge, including pill-shaped side buttons rather than the round ones seen on the iPhone 5, as well as a bottom edge reminiscent of the iPod touch with four holes for the speaker rather than the larger grille seen on the iPhone 5. The lower-cost iPhone would also include a pair of screw holes, one on each side of the Lightning connector, and a single microphone hole located very close to the device's headphone jack.

Case makers have on a number of occasions offered accurate pictures of upcoming Apple product designs, although they have also been incorrect at times, most notably with the 2011 tapered iPhone design.

Both the iPhone 5S and the lower-cost iPhone are expected to debut later this year, with September being the most popular rumored timeframe.

Apple has yet to release iOS 7 for the iPad, which has led to speculation about what the operating system will look like on a larger screen.

Over the weekend, photos from the iOS 7 simulator in Xcode 5 surfaced, demonstrating how several stock iOS apps might look on Apple's tablet, and now a tipster has directed us to Russia-based YouTube user Rozetked, who has released a video of what he claims is iOS 7 "alpha" running on an iPad.

Rozetked does not explain where the software came from nor how it was installed on the tablet, so there is no proof that the video depicts a bona fide version of iOS 7 running on the iPad rather than an elaborately crafted rendering.

Though the video's legitimacy is questionable, it does offer a clearer picture of what iOS 7 might look like when installed on an iPad. Both the Notification Center and the Control Center appear in appropriate portions to the screen size and the Control Center lacks the Flashlight setting that was found in the simulated screenshots, instead offering iPad-specific options that include just AirDrop and AirPlay.

In comparison, the iPhone Control Center offers a Flashlight along with quick access to the Clock, the Calculator, and the Camera.

In addition to displaying the Notification Center and the Control Center options on the iPad, the video also offers a look at several apps, including Music and Videos. Both folder functionality and 2x app mode are demonstrated as well, and several stock app icons are identical to the iPhone versions.

It is unclear when Apple plans to release iOS 7 on the iPad for developers, having chosen to instead focus its attention on the iPhone version of the operating system for the time being.

(Thanks, Gary!)