MacRumors

Oracle today announced the release of several new Java software packages, including the new Java SE 7 Update 6 that brings full support for Java SE 7 to OS X for the first time. The release follows launch of Java development kits for OS X back in April.

- With this release, Oracle is providing full availability of Java SE 7 Update 6 on Mac OS X, including the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and the Java Development Kit (JDK), as well as the JavaFX 2.2 rich client platform and JavaFX Scene Builder.

- Consumers will soon be able to download the JRE for Mac OS X from Java.com, just as they do for all other operating systems, and Oracle will provide auto-updates for Mac OS X at the same time as for Windows platforms.

Apple announced in October 2010 that it was discontinuing its support for Java, with Steve Jobs noting that having Apple responsible for updates generally resulted in Java for OS X being one version behind Java for other platforms. Jobs noted that that "may not be the best way to do it", and his belief was proven true earlier this year after the Flashback malware was able to infect 600,000 Macs by taking advantage of a Java vulnerability that had already been patched in most versions of Java but not yet addressed by Apple.

Apple has continued to maintain Java SE 6 while contributing resources to the OpenJDK project to help Oracle and other developers build and maintain Java SE 7 and future versions. Notably, Apple's latest update to Java SE 6 came in sync with Oracle's updates for other platforms, indicating that Apple is working closely with Oracle to make sure Mac users are protected with up-to-date versions of Java on their systems.

Back in March 2008, an Apple patent application was published showing concepts for digital video recorder (DVR) and other television-related interfaces. While the focus of the patent application was actually on menu overlays appearing on top of video content, it did generate a fair amount of interest as evidence that Apple was at least thinking about how it could make television software more intuitive. The document dated back to a provisional patent application filed by Apple on September 11, 2006, the day before Apple first introduced its "iTV" set-top box that launched a few months later as the original Apple TV.

With Apple's rumored plans for a television set continuing to gain momentum, Patently Apple notes that a reappearance of the patent as it has finally been granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will once again spark interest in Apple's television plans.

Beyond a number of figures showing Apple's concepts for television menus, the patent also contains reference to the use of an iPod-like device as a remote control for the television content.

The idea of an Apple television set has been circulating for a number of years, with Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster being one of the strongest proponents of such a device. The rumors gained considerable steam late last year with the publication of Steve Jobs' authorized biography, in which he was quoted as saying he had "finally cracked" how to create a truly easy-to-use television built around the "simplest user interface you could imagine". That revelation was quickly followed with a report from The New York Times claiming that Apple was looking to launch a Siri-powered television set by late 2012 or early 2013. Additional rumors have trickled out since that time, although they have slowed considerably in recent months as attention has focused on the iPhone.

A newly-published Apple patent (via AppleInsider) reveals Apple's interest in so-called "in-cell" touchscreen technologies that have been rumored to be appearing in the next-generation iPhone. Adoption of in-cell technology, which integrates the touch sensors directly into the display rather than using a separate layer, is said to be one of the primary advances Apple is using to reduce the thickness of the iPhone to just 7.6 mm from the current 9.3 mm thickness.

The patent, which was originally filed for in June 2007 before the original iPhone even went on sale and is based on a provisional patent application dating all the way back to June 2006, highlights Apple's goals of reducing device size, complexity, and manufacturing costs just as it was attempting to revolutionize the mobile phone industry. The abstract begins:

Disclosed herein are liquid-crystal display (LCD) touch screens that integrate the touch sensing elements with the display circuitry. The integration may take a variety of forms. Touch sensing elements can be completely implemented within the LCD stackup but outside the not between the color filter plate and the array plate. Alternatively, some touch sensing elements can be between the color filter and array plates with other touch sensing elements not between the plates.

Apple's extensive patent with 85 claims and 107 different figures covers a host of concepts for how touch sensors could be integrated into LCD panels, including both the overall ideas as well as manufacturing processes that could be used to build the displays.

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Jobs family home in Palo Alto, California was burglarized last month, with over $60,000 worth of "computers and personal items" taken from the home. A suspect has been arrested and charged in the case.

More than $60,000 worth of "computers and personal items" were allegedly stolen, but Flattery declined to say whether they belonged to Jobs, who died last year at the age of 56, or another family member. [...]

Details about the burglary at Jobs' residence were scarce Monday. The crime was listed in the weekend report log released to the media, but police referred all questions about it to the district attorney's office. Lt. Zach Perron said that was because charges had been filed.

According to Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Tom Flattery, the crime appears to have been a random one, with the suspect apparently not knowing that it was the home of Steve Jobs and his family.

The Jobs home has been undergoing renovation and it is unclear whether the family is currently living in the house while the work is being performed, but the under-renovation status of the home may have served to entice the perpetrator of the crime.

Update: The Daily has more on the incident, including a copy of the complete 32-page police report.

Wearing work gloves, McFarlin set down lawn furniture cushions outside the perimeter of the home in order to safely toss his take including: two iMacs, three iPads, one Apple TV, a Sodastream soda maker and various Tiffany jewels before fleeing away in his car.

McFarlin also found a wallet containing “Steve Jobs’ California Driver’s License, credit cards and personal items” and $1.

When authorities, armed with a warrant, raided McFarlin’s Alameda apartment they discovered gaggles of Apple gear, a soda maker, spare key and Mercedes car keys.

Just a month before Apple is expected to introduce a redesigned iPhone, the company has launched a new (PRODUCT) RED bumper for the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4. Priced at $29 in the United States, the new red bumper joins the other six colors that have been available since the launch of the iPhone 4 in June 2010: black, white, blue, pink, orange, and green. The new red bumper's imminent launch was reported by 9to5Mac.

The new bumper is currently shipping in 4-6 business days from Apple's online store.

Apple has participated in the (PRODUCT) RED campaign against AIDS for a number of years, first introducing a red iPod nano in late 2006. The company has continued to offer several different (PRODUCT) RED items since that time, currently supporting the project with red iPod nano models, red iPad Smart Covers and Smart Cases, and now the red iPhone bumper. At an Apple town hall meeting for employees back in February, Tim Cook noted that sales of (PRODUCT) RED Apple products have generated over $50 million for the charity.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've been receiving reports that Apple has been laying off a number of recently-hired staff members at its retail stores. Most of the reports have been coming from Apple retail employees in the United Kingdom, but several of these reports claim that similar actions are taking place at stores around the world. We've also been receiving reports of long-term cutbacks in hours for part-time staff in the United States and Canada.

Apple has come under some criticism for its treatment of retail store employees given the massive amounts of revenue the company's stores bring in, relying on its employees' devotion to the company and a strong fan base to help retain staff and attract new employees. The company has recently instituted salary increases and other improved benefits in an effort to improve its relationship with its workers and public perception, but these latest reports suggest that the company is still facing some challenges in morale and other areas as it seeks to balance its staffing levels.

According to one report, all employees at a certain store in the United Kingdom with less than six months of service have been laid off, including a group that had been hired only one month ago and had just completed their training program. New hiring has also been halted, and internal company transfers between stores have been placed on hold.

Another report similarly indicates that a number of newly-hired employees have just been laid off, while several longer-term employees who had recently been promoted never received their pay increases and are now being demoted back to their previous positions.

A third report comes from one of those who was laid off at an Apple Store in the United Kingdom, a source who notes that three separate training groups have all been laid off in their entirety within the past week, all of whom were still within their probationary periods as new employees.

In the United States and Canada, we're hearing that part-time staff have been seeing significantly reduced hours for the past several months, with some staff reportedly having their hours cut back to zero. And while Apple reportedly promised part-time staff that their hours would rebound with the back-to-school rush, that has apparently not taken place and employees are continuing to stand by with very few hours on their schedules. Another report indicates that Apple has reduced scheduled hours at one retail store by several hundred hours per week as of early August and limited employee vacations, apparently to help keep full-time staff on site and reduce reliance on part-time employees.

Apple's retail store staffing levels do tend to fluctuate as the company seeks to meet demand and work around busy periods such as new device launches and holiday shopping periods. With the next-generation iPhone apparently set to launch approximately one month from now and the holiday shopping season ramping up relatively soon afterward, Apple may soon be able to find more hours for its part-time staff members, but it appears that a number of recent full-time hires are already looking for new jobs.

iMore, which was the first source to claim that Apple will be holding its media event to introduce the next-generation iPhone on September 12, now reports that pre-orders for the device will begin on that same date ahead of the already-rumored first wave of launches on September 21.

Apple's first launch wave typically includes the United States and perhaps a half dozen other countries, and iMore notes that the second wave of launches that will bring the device to additional countries is scheduled for the first week of October.

We've since learned that iPhone 5 pre-orders are currently planned to begin that same day, at least in the U.S. Release is still planned for 9 days later, on September 21, 2012. We've also learned that the second wave of iPhone launches, the ones in international markets, will begin in the first week of October, likely October 5.

The report notes that this sequence of events will be similar but not identical to last year's, which saw the iPhone 4S introduced on October 4 and pre-orders begin three days later on October 7. The iPhone launched in the United States and six other countries on October 14, with the second wave bringing the device to over 20 additional countries two weeks later.

Apple has licensed its design patents to Microsoft -- the same patents at issue in the Samsung case -- according to Boris Teksler, director of Patent Licensing & Strategy at Apple. The development was revealed today in the Apple v. Samsung trial according to Dan Levine, a legal reporter for Reuters who is covering the trial from the courtroom.

Apple patent licensing director Teksler: Apple has licensed its design patents to Msft, but they have an "anticloning" agreement.

Ian Sherr, legal reporter for Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal, adds additional information on the statement, saying that the design patents are covered under Apple and Microsoft's patent cross-licensing agreement. Apple could be making this point to show that Samsung should have licensed the patents as well.

In June, Microsoft introduced its 'Surface' tablet to compete with the iPad and Android tablets. Though there are significant physical similarities to the iPad, the Metro user interface is significantly different from iOS. The "anticloning" agreement between Microsoft and Apple may be satisfied by the Surface's very dissimilar operating system.

A Reuters article by Levine sheds some additional light on the agreement:

Apple's decision to license its design patents to Microsoft was consistent with its corporate strategy, Teksler said, because the agreement prohibited Microsoft from manufacturing copies.

"There was no right with respect to these design patents to build clones of any type," Teksler said.

The agreement is especially notable given the history of lawsuits between Microsoft and Apple, including the "look-and-feel" trial that Apple largely lost.

The Samsung trial has given Apple-watchers an unprecedented look behind the curtain at the incredibly secretive company, including detailed numbers of U.S. iPhone and iPad sales as well as a look into Apple's marketing strategy and the fact that Eddy Cue had worked to convince Steve Jobs of the need for a 7-inch iPad.

BGR reports that AT&T is apparently targeting an iPhone launch in the third or fourth week of September, shifting to an "all-hands-on-deck policy" through mid-October to help handle the surge of customers that inevitably accompanies new iPhone launches.

According to a trusted AT&T (T) source, the carrier is currently planning to launch Apple’s (AAPL) next-generation iPhone during the third or fourth week of September, with an all-hands-on-deck policy in place for employees that will extend through to the middle of October.

AT&T has reportedly even gone as far as to reschedule a training event originally planned for the first week of October so that it's employees can remain available to help with the iPhone launch.

Numerous sources have all but confirmed that Apple will be introducing the next-generation iPhone on Wednesday, September 12, with iMore adding that the first round of launches will take place on Friday, September 21.

BGR has reported on carrier vacation blackouts and staffing ramp-ups a number of times in the past, but has a mixed track record with such reports. Back in late July 2011, the site reported that AT&T was planning for an early-to-mid September iPhone launch. As that timeframe passed with no announcement from Apple, the site reported that AT&T was setting vacation blackouts for the first two weeks of October. The iPhone 4S debuted on AT&T on October 14, at the end of that window.

Technology Review takes a look at the evolution of security on the iPhone, noting how Apple has been able to gain acceptance in government and enterprise by overcoming its initially lax stance on device security to roll out industry-leading encryption options that can defeat essentially all attempts at accessing properly protected devices.

At the heart of Apple's security architecture is the Advanced Encryption Standard algorithm (AES), a data-scrambling system published in 1998 and adopted as a U.S. government standard in 2001. After more than a decade of exhaustive analysis, AES is widely regarded as unbreakable. The algorithm is so strong that no computer imaginable for the foreseeable future—even a quantum computer—would be able to crack a truly random 256-bit AES key. The National Security Agency has approved AES-256 for storing top-secret data.

As Apple highlights in a recent white paper (PDF) on iOS security, this hardware security involves the incorporation of a unique AES-256 key fused into each iOS device and which can not be directly read.

Access to the device's software can be restricted with a PIN passcode, and while the default passcode option for iOS is a four-digit number, users can opt to use significantly longer and more complex passcodes. And with brute-force attacks required to break iOS passcodes needing to be run on the device itself at a speed of 80 milliseconds per attempt, a device with an eight-digit passcode could take up to 15 years to compromise.

"There are a lot of issues when it comes to extracting data from iOS devices," says Amber Schroader, CEO of Paraben, a supplier of forensic software, hardware, and services for cell phones. "We have had many civil cases we have not been able to process ... for discovery because of encryption blocking us."

Most of the information included in this report is not particularly new, and Apple's white paper goes into more detail on the company's efforts to address security on iOS devices, but the report offers an overview of the layers of security Apple has built into its products.

French site Nowhereelse.fr points to two new photos originally posted to Chinese forum Weiphone. The photos appear to be the front and back of the next generation iPhone logic board which houses the processor and other support chips for the device. The board is distinct from both the Apple's iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 logic boards.

Nowhereelse notes that the screw holes of the logic board lines up exactly with those of the previously leaked shells The site even created this animated GIF which shows how the holes line up. The image appears to be mirrored, presumably for clarity.

We've seen a larger number of part leaks for the next generation iPhone, but this is not a new phenomenon. Last year, we saw many parts for what would become the iPhone 4S, including its logic board revealing an A5 processor. This leak is somewhat less revealing as much of the shielding remains in place.

The increased number of part leaks likely corresponds to the belief that Apple is already ramping up production of the next generation iPhone. Apple is expected to launch the new iPhone on September 12th.

Update: The same forum poster posted early photos of the iPhone 4S logic boards last year.

Google has released a statement saying that it is aware that some iOS users are having difficulties connecting to Gmail and that they are working on a fix, according to All Things D.

Users have reported receiving an error -- "mail service imap.gmail.com is not responding" -- when trying to fetch new mail on the iPhone or iPad.

We're aware of a problem where Apple Mail IMAP users are unable to sync with their Gmail account and are seeing a username and password error. We have found that a vast majority of users are exceeding IMAP bandwidth limits and are continuing to investigate.

Google has posted about the issue and some possible temporary fixes in its Gmail Known Issues help forum under 'POP, IMAP and Sync', but the company does not yet have an ETA on a final resolution.

Following on the heels of our report from Wednesday about Apple's preparations for developer seeds of OS X 10.8.1, Apple has now released the first build of the Mountain Lion update to developers, according to 9to5Mac.

The release has a build number of 12B13 and Apple reports no known issues, but asks developers to focus on a wide variety of areas for their testing. The delta update -- where only items that have changed are downloaded -- weighs in at 36.4MB.

According to 9to5Mac, developers have been asked to test Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange in Mail, PAC proxies in Safari, SMB, USB, and Wi-Fi and audio when connected to the Apple Thunderbolt display.

The OS X 10.8.1 seed is available for download via the OS X Developer portal at developer.apple.com.

Industrial designer Don Lehman takes a look at the iPhone casing leaks that have surfaced so far, analyzing in great detail how Apple appears to have refined its iPhone with a new unibody design that should make the device stronger, lighter, and thinner than previous models.

In looking at the probable antenna design of the next-generation iPhone, Lehman notes how the antenna design evolved between the GSM iPhone 4 and the CDMA iPhone 4, the latter of which then carried over to the iPhone 4S. Following the "Antennagate" controversy with the original iPhone 4, Apple redesigned the antenna system in order to push the antennas to the top and bottom portions of the stainless steel band wrapping around the device, leaving the portions along the two long sides as structural and decorative pieces.

Lehman believes that Apple is using a similar principle for the next-generation iPhone, but has made the move to a "unibody" design in which the long side pieces and the large central section of the rear shell are machined from a single piece. The texture seen on the inside of the shell in leaked photos are in fact the tool marking showing how Apple machined the part out of a single block of metal.

The leaked design has three pieces of metal instead of four. It still has two U-shaped pieces at the top and bottom, but this time the two flat sides become one single piece of metal that also comprises the back of the device. That single piece of metal is the unibody backplate.

The same properties that unibody designs give to Apple’s laptops apply to this design as well: stronger, lighter, and thinner. You can see from this picture the tool path of the CNC machine that made the unibody backplate of this design. The tool path sort of looks like the lines that are made when a farmer plows a field. This started out as a single block of metal and the CNC carved that metal out until you have what you see here.

Lehman notes that even the bosses where screws for other components will attach are machined out of the single rear shell piece, increasing strength while reducing thickness and weight.

While Apple would certainly prefer to build the entire rear shell out of a single piece of metal, the realities of signal transmission mean that the company needs to use more transparent materials in locations where the antennas are. With the iPhone needing to send and receive Wi-Fi, cellular, GPS, Bluetooth, and perhaps NFC signals, Apple has pushed those hardware functions to the top and bottom of the device where they are the least shielded by other device components and the user's hand. Accommodating those functions has led Apple to adopt its new strategy of using a high-quality, thin metal shell wherever possible on the back of the device to increase strength and decrease size and weight while using glass or plastic windows for the antennas.

Lehman wraps up his post by addressing several other design aspects of the next-generation iPhone shell, including an examination of Apple's tinting of the metal on the black version of the device and placement of the rear camera with respect to the device design, as well as giving an overview of some of the other changes Apple has made for the forthcoming device.