MacRumors

As noted by AppleInsider, MacBook Air supplies are beginning to dry up as Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference approaches.

Currently, the 13.3-inch 256GB 1.8Ghz MacBook Air is out of stock at Amazon.com, with a listed one to two month waiting period. While the low end 13.3-inch MacBook Air is in stock, the 11.6-inch MacBook Air is in short supply. Amazon lists an inventory of just ten 1.7Ghz 128GB 11.6-inch MacBook Airs and just one lower end 64GB 11.6-inch MacBook Air available through a third party.

Several other authorized Apple resellers, such as MacConnection, MacMall, and B&H, are also seeing dwindling MacBook Air inventory, with the higher end versions of 13.3-inch MacBook Air being the hardest to find.

Low inventory supplies at third-party Apple retailers are often one of the initial signs of an upcoming product refresh. According to KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple will be introducing new MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lines based on Intel's Haswell processors at WWDC, which takes place next month from June 10 to June 14.

Last week, we noted that Apple was still struggling to convince the major music labels to sign on to its planned streaming service, informally dubbed "iRadio", with Sony and Warner reportedly holding out even after market leader Universal had agreed to Apple's revised terms.

In a new article highlighting how Google was able to announce its own music service ahead of Apple, The Verge notes that Apple's desire to provide a hybrid listener experience has meant more work at the negotiating table.

For starters, Google chose to offer a standard subscription music service very similar to those built by Spotify and Rdio, and that meant the terms had largely been established, according to multiple sources close to the talks. Apple, on the other hand, is pioneering a hybrid web and radio service — one that resembles Pandora but melds it with some on-demand features, the sources said. The licensing agreement had to be created from scratch.

According to the report's sources, number four music publisher BMG is also holding out against Apple's proposed terms, and while there still appears to be significant momentum behind iRadio and a desire by many parties to get a deal done as quickly as possible, it is now looking as though Apple may not be able to launch the service at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Word of Apple's plans for a Pandora-like service surfaced last September, with subsequent reports indicating that Apple was targeting the first quarter of this year for a launch. As negotiations continued to prove difficult, Apple shifted its focus to a summer launch, but it now appears unclear whether the company will be able to meet even that revised goal.

Following a report from earlier this month indicating that the U.S. Department of Defense was preparing to approve Apple devices running iOS 6 for use on military networks, Bloomberg now reports that the department has officially issued the authorization, opening the door for greater use of Apple's products.

The Defense Department said in a statement today that it has approved the use of Cupertino, California-based Apple’s products running a version of the iOS 6 mobile platform.

The decision eventually may spur a three-way fight for a market long dominated by Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry. The Pentagon on May 2 approved Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung’s devices, as well as BlackBerry 10 smartphones and BlackBerry PlayBook tablets.

The report notes that out of more than 600,000 mobile devices used by the Defense Department, only about 41,000 of those are Apple products, with most of those not connected directly to the military's networks. With the new approvals, Apple and Samsung are expected to eat into BlackBerry's roughly 75% share of mobile devices within the agency.

As noted in the report earlier this month, the Department of Defense's approval of iOS 6 devices for sensitive applications is expected to have impact beyond the military, with other businesses requiring strict security standards becoming more likely to embrace Apple's products.

Pentagon approval for iOS 6 devices comes just as The Street reports that the U.S. Air Force is expecting to save more than $50 million over ten years following last year's decision to replace thousands of pages of flight manuals with iPads.

"By removing all that paper, [Air Mobility Command] will capture about $750,000 in fuel savings [annually] just based off the decreased weight," said [electronic flight bag program manager Major Brian] Moritz.

Removing the need to print and distribute thousands of flight manuals, however, equates to an even greater cost saving. "It comes out to just over $5 million a year," noted Moritz. "With fuel savings, it comes out to $5.7 million annually in pure cost. When you look at $5.7 million a year, over 10 years, that's well over $50 million."

The Air Force is not the only group switching to iPads to replace traditional flight bags used by pilots, as a number of commercial airlines have also begun transitioning to the technology in order to reduce weight and therefore fuel costs, as well as lighten loads for the pilots themselves.

Update: Apple has provided a comment on the Pentagon approval to AllThingsD:

“With iPhone and iPad being tested or deployed in almost every Fortune 500 company, Apple continues to scale across enterprise with nearly 30,000 companies globally developing and distributing iOS apps for corporate use by their employees,” Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told AllThingsD. “The FIPS 140-2 certification and STIG approval demonstrate our ongoing commitment to deliver a secure platform to our enterprise and government customers around the world who deploy iOS devices on their networks.”

(Photo: James Rogers/The Street)

Corning yesterday announced (via Engadget) the launch of its latest glass substrate for LCD and OLED displays, Lotus XT Glass. While Corning is famous for its Gorilla Glass used by Apple and other device manufacturers to provide durable covers for their displays, substrate glass like Lotus Glass is used within the displays themselves to support the transistors and other components necessary for the displays to function.

The Corning Lotus Glass platform enables organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays and liquid crystal displays (LCD) that use either low-temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) or oxide thin-film transistor (TFT) backplanes. The result is an energy-efficient, immersive display device that features high resolution, fast response times, and bright picture quality.

Lotus XT Glass, an improved version of the original Lotus Glass announced in late 2011, offers improved thermal characteristics and stability to help increase efficiency and yield during display production. Lotus XT Glass is available in a variety of thicknesses ranging from 0.4 to 0.7 mm to support various applications.

In an introductory video, Corning vice president John Bayne outlines how Lotus XT Glass will enable better displays with improved yields:

Our customers, the panel makers, are basically making thin-film transistors and aligning those transistors with liquid crystal material and a color filter piece of glass. Everything has to line up just right to work.

The distance features move during processing is called total pitch. And if you measure that from sheet to sheet, it's called total pitch variation. If panel makers can minimize total pitch variation, they can realize higher manufacturing yields and lower costs. In addition, they can design devices that have higher aperture ratios which are brighter and use less power.

It will still take some time for display manufacturers to adopt Lotus Glass XT for use in their processes and for those panels to make their way into finished products, but with Lotus Glass XT offering up to 75% better performance in total pitch variation than the original version, it seems likely that manufacturers will move quickly to adopt the product.

The CW has struck a deal that will bring the network's content to the Apple TV, reports Deadline. At the company's annual Upfront Presentation in New York today, CW president Mark Pedowitz announced that the CW's TV Now applications, which are currently available on Xbox 360 and Windows 8, will be coming to the Apple TV as well.

"This year we're reaching more viewers on more platforms," said Pedowitz, speaking of the deal. "We are reaching our audience everywhere they are, and we want you to be with us everywhere we go," he went on to say to advertisers at the event.

The CW told MacRumors that the app will function similarly to the company's Xbox and mobile apps and confirmed that it will indeed be an app located on the Apple TV's home screen.

It's a dedicated CW app that will work like our Xbox and mobile and tablet apps - no cable authentication required, full episodes of our shows available next day after air, ad-supported.

The CW's TV Now app for the Xbox offers free full streaming episodes of network shows like The Vampire Diaries with limited advertising. The app also includes additional content like previews and cast extras. Currently, Apple sells CW content through its iTunes store.

While the Apple TV offers apps and digital content from sites like Netflix and Hulu, it does not include apps from television networks. The partnership between the CW and Apple will mark the first network television app available via the Apple TV.

It is unclear if the CW's app is part of a larger initiative by Apple to bring additional apps to the Apple TV. The CW is a joint venture between Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS, one of the biggest U.S. broadcast networks.

According to the CW, the app is set to launch in the coming weeks, though no exact release date was given.

In his interview with Politico earlier today, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared some additional details about the new Mac model that will be manufactured in the United States when it is announced later this year.

Cook said that not only will the machine be assembled in the U.S., many of the components will be sourced from suppliers in the country as well.

And Cook is also promoting a $100 million investment in domestic manufacturing, where the company will begin producing a new version of a current Mac product later this year.

"We're going very deep in this project," Cook said, noting that not only will the final product be manufactured in the U.S., but so will many of its components. Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky are among the states he mentioned as having parts and assembly located.

Cook announced in an interview with Brian Williams last year that an existing Mac line would be manufactured exclusively in the U.S. beginning in 2013.

Speculation had pointed to the Mac Pro, which is due for a significant update, though DigiTimes claimed it was Mac Mini production that would come back from overseas.

Apple CEO Tim Cook, in a break from his predecessor, is giving a number of interviews to Washington press outlets ahead of his appearance in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation next week.

Washington newspaper Politico spoke to Cook about Apple's offshore cash pile -- which the company has thus far refused to repatriate to the United States because of the significant tax burden that would result -- and Apple's political activities.

"We don't have a large presence in Washington, as you probably know, but we care deeply about public policy and believe creative policy can be a huge catalyst for a better society and a stronger economy," Cook said in the interview.

He also defended his company's conduct. “I can tell you unequivocally Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas. We don't do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe. And so I'd like to be really clear on that,” Cook said.

Cook has agreed to appear in front of the subcommittee on Tuesday morning personally, instead of sending a more junior executive to testify in front of the committee. His predecessor as CEO, Steve Jobs, agreed to very few interviews and tended to stay out of politics entirely.

Apple recently borrowed $17 billion in a bond offering, in part to return cash to shareholders without bringing some of its $100 billion overseas cash pile to the United States. If it were to repatriate that cash to the U.S., it would need to pay a more than $13 billion tax bill.

Update: In an interview with The Washington Post, Cook says he plans to present specific proposals at the Senate hearing to overhaul the U.S. corporate tax system.

"If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the U.S., you need to pay 35 percent of that cash. And that is a very high number," Cook said in an interview Thursday. "We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable."

Cook also pointed out that if state and federal taxes are combined, Apple pays roughly $1 million per hour in taxes, possibly making Apple the largest corporate taxpayer in the country.

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.

New Mac spyware was discovered earlier this week on a computer at the Oslo Freedom Forum, an annual human rights conference. Located by computer security researcher Jacob Appelbaum, the malware, which has been deemed OSX/KitM.A, is currently being investigated by anti-virus company F-Secure, reports CNET.

The malware is a backdoor application called "macs.app," which launches automatically upon login and captures screenshots that it then sends to a MacApp folder in the user's home directory. Two command-and-control servers, located at securitytable.org and docsforum.info, are associated with the malware, but one does not function and the other gives a "public access forbidden" message.

Interestingly, the malware is signed with an Apple Developer ID, which is designed to prevent the installation of malware. Apps that are unsigned are blocked by default by Apple's Gatekeeper security option.

This bit of malware is somewhat unique in that it is signed with what appears to be a valid Apple Developer ID associated with the name Rajender Kumar. Though not an uncommon name, this may be a reference to the late Bollywood actor of a similar name. Regardless, the use of the ID appears to be an attempt to bypass Apple's Gatekeeper execution prevention technology.

Currently, F-Secure is investigating where the malware originated, and though it does not appear to be widespread, it can be mitigated by removing the macs.app program from the log-in menu. Apple often addresses malware threats quickly, and has the ability to revoke the developer ID to further limit the spread of the software.

Apple has released an update to its iTunes music and media application, bringing it to version 11.0.3.

The update updates the compact MiniPlayer, adding album artwork and a progress bar, as well as better support for multi-disc albums and large iTunes libraries.

This version of iTunes comes with several new features and improvements, including:

- New MiniPlayer. MiniPlayer now includes a beautiful new view that showcases your album artwork. In addition, a progress bar is now built right into MiniPlayer.

- Improved Songs View. You can now enjoy your album artwork while in Songs view.

- Multi-Disc Albums. Albums with multiple discs now appear as a single album.

This update also provides performance improvements when searching and sorting large iTunes libraries.

The update weighs in at 187.50MB on the Mac, and is available through the Mac App Store, Software Update, and direct from Apple's Software Download Page.

The last update to iTunes was released back in February.

BGR shares several new relatively high-resolution photos of parts claimed to be from the iPhone 5S. These parts have been leaking to repair firms over the past several months, and a number of photos have already been seen, but the new photos do represent the highest-quality look at these parts so far.

Unfortunately, the photos reveal little about Apple's plans for the iPhone 5S, as they are minor parts generally seeing relatively small changes compared to their corresponding iPhone 5 parts.

The parts include the loud-speaker bracket, ear speaker bracket, vibrating motor assembly, Wi-Fi flex cable ribbon and SIM card tray from Apple’s upcoming seventh-generation iPhone.

Part leaks claimed to be from the iPhone 5S began in January with photos of a speaker enclosure, and have continued with additional photos of the home button and volume/mute button flex cables, front camera flex cable, and nano-SIM card trays. The source of the previous SIM tray leak claimed that the trays were identical to those seen in the iPhone 5, while BGR's report today claims that they are thinner.

Most recently, just last week an antenna-related add-on piece for the iPhone 5S logic board surfaced, although the implications of minor changes observed in the part compared to the iPhone 5 remain unknown.

Following up on its April report breaking down mobile phone shipments by manufacturer for the first quarter of 2013, research firm IDC today issued a new report looking at shipments from an operating system perspective. The report unsurprisingly shows that Android and iOS continue to dominate the smartphone market with over 92% of shipments during the quarter, with Android's broad availability driving it to represent 75% of all shipments.

Apple iOS marked its largest ever first quarter volume on the strength of its iPhone shipment volumes, yet the operating system posted a year-over-year decline in market share and lower year-over-year shipment growth than the overall market. Although demand remains strong worldwide, the iOS experience has remained largely the same since the first iPhone debuted in 2007. That appears ready to change as online rumors and speculation predict a massive overhaul of the user interface when iOS 7 debuts.

The gains by Android and iOS over the last several years have come at the expense of every other operating system, but IDC's numbers reveal that Windows Phone is beginning to see signs of life with shipments more than doubling year over year, although its share of the market remains low at 3.2%.

Still, Windows Phone was the only minor competitor to gain share over the previous year, with BlackBerry continuing its slide in falling to 2.9%, although IDC suggests the launch of BB10 may bolster BlackBerry's numbers going forward. Linux and Symbian also saw significant share losses as their former supporters have shifted focus to Android and Windows Phone.

Apple's San Francisco flagship retail store has been a particularly high-profile location for the company since it opened nine years ago, but the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Apple has submitted plans to move the store to a new location three blocks away. The new location at Stockton and Post streets will be directly adjacent to Union Square, the focal point of San Francisco's high-end shopping district.

Supervisor David Chiu said he hoped the new silver box-shaped computer store and customer service center would “turbo-charge” the Union Square area, which has long been home to many of the city’s high-end retailers.

The new outlet will occupy the space at Stockton and Post streets formerly occupied by Levi’s and be about 45 percent larger than the existing space, though it will include all the same features.

Apple says that the new location will increase its staff from the current 350 to 400 at the new location, but no timeline for construction and the move has been announced.

The current flagship store at 1 Stockton Street is located directly adjacent to an entrance for a subway station serving both San Francisco's Muni Metro and the broader BART rail system. The new location is several blocks from the main Market Street transit corridor, but remains well served by transit and city officials hope that the new location will help draw more customers into the Union Square shopping district. San Francisco is also in the early stages of work on a new Central Subway line that will include a station directly at Union Square.

Update: AllThingsD has several larger images and a statement from Apple about the new store.

“We’re thrilled to be working with the city of San Francisco on a new Apple retail store at Union Square,” Apple said in a statement to AllThingsD. “Our store on Stockton Street has welcomed over 13 million customers since it opened nine years ago, and we look forward to serving them in an amazing new location when this project is complete.”

Apple today announced the winner of its "50 Billion App Countdown" promotion that saw the company pass that milestone on Wednesday afternoon.

Word game Say the Same Thing from the band OK Go was the milestone download, with Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio making the winning download. Ashmore will will receive an iTunes Gift Card worth US$10,000. For the first time, Apple also gave the fifty downloaders after the big winner US$500 iTunes Gift Cards.

“Apple would like to thank our incredible customers and developers for topping 50 billion apps downloaded,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The App Store completely transformed how people use their mobile devices and created a thriving app ecosystem that has paid out over nine billion dollars to developers. We’re absolutely floored to cross this milestone in less than five years.”

Apple ran similar promotions for ten billion and twenty-five billion downloads, in January 2011 and March 2012 respectively.

The App Store took just under five years to hit the fifty billion download mark, though the rate of downloads has been accelerating and is now at more than 20 billion app downloads per year.