MacRumors

Earlier this month, we noted that the iTunes Music Store had gone live in 56 new countries, nearly doubling the number of countries with access to the store. At the time, Apple noted in its press release that movies were also being launched in Russia, Turkey, India and Indonesia with "select additional countries" also scheduled to offer the film content.

Beginning earlier today, a number of MacRumors readers began reporting that movies had gone live in their countries, and AppleInsider has compiled a list of 42 new countries where movies are now available.

- Europe: Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine

- Africa, the Middle East and India: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Botswana, Cape Verde, Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Swaziland, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, Zimbabwe

- Asia Pacific: Micronesia, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan

- Latin America and the Caribbean: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago

The new additions mean that just ten of the 56 countries that added music content earlier this month have yet to begin offering movies. Those countries include: Barbados, Bermuda, Burkina Faso, Fiji, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Uzbekistan.

Following their shipment earlier this week, the first orders of Apple's redesigned 27-inch iMac have now begun arriving at their destinations, with several MacRumors readers reporting that they have receiving their shipments today ahead of their projected December 13 delivery dates.

Apple announced the redesigned iMac at its media event on October 23, but noted that the 21.5-inch model would not begin shipping until November with the 27-inch models following in December. Apple began taking orders for both sizes on November 30, with the 27-inch models seeing 2-3 week shipping estimates at that time.

Availability remains tight as Apple reportedly works to achieve acceptable yields of the new display assembly, which laminates the display directly to the cover glass. With the larger 27-inch displays proving more difficult to assemble than their smaller siblings, supplies of the 27-inch iMac models are particularly tight.

Continuing the flurry of Apple television rumors in recent days following CEO Tim Cook's brief comments on the topic as part of an interview on Rock Center last week, The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple is indeed testing designs for future television set products. The report adds little to existing rumors, but does indicate that work is continuing and keeps the topic fresh in the public's mind.

Officials at some of Apple's suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has been working on testing a few designs for a large-screen high-resolution TV.

Two people said Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., which assembles the iPhone and iPad, has been collaborating with Japan's Sharp Corp. on the design of the new television.

"It isn't a formal project yet. It is still in the early stage of testing," said one of the people.

The report notes that Apple has been testing television set prototypes for a number of years and that the company tests many different prototype products that never come to market, making clear that a launch is not imminent and that Apple could ultimately scrap its plans.

AllThingsD is reporting that contrary to earlier reports that Apple and Microsoft were arguing over a 30% cut of storage upgrade sales through Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage utility, instead the companies are negotiating over revenue Microsoft would bring in as part of its Office 365 subscription service.

Office has long been a cash cow for Microsoft and extending the platform to iOS will undoubtedly fatten it further. It will also bring significant benefits to Apple’s mobile platform, ones for which Microsoft feels it is owed a discount on that 30 percent cut that Apple would otherwise command on Office 365 subscriptions sold to iOS users through it. The apps are just part of a subscription that includes desktop access.

So the company has been pushing Apple to adjust the 70/30 revenue split in its developer license agreement. Predictably, Apple has refused to comply. It’s not yet clear what sort of concession Microsoft is seeking, but whatever it is, Apple’s evidently not willing to consider it. Indeed, I’m told it’s taken a “the rules are the rules” stance, which would suggest it’s not at all willing to negotiate a different split. Apple’s position: If a customer comes through its gateway, it feels it is deserved the commission outlined in 11.12 of its developer license.

Apple, for its part, says that App Store rules are fair and are applied equally to all developers, big and small.

Office for iOS has been rumored several times over the past year, but now seems closer to fruition than ever -- if Apple and Microsoft can come to some agreement. Yesterday, Microsoft leaked references to 'Office Mobile for iPhone', 'Excel for iPad', and 'PowerPoint for iPad'.

Last week, Tim Cook shared that television was an area of "intense interest" for Apple, stoking the rumor mill once again that the company will come out with a TV at some point. Today, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty shared results from a proprietary survey of 1,568 U.S. heads of household from September. Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt shares some of the results of the survey.

11% of respondents said they would be "extremely interested" in buying an Apple-branded TV set, which translates into 13 million units in the U.S. alone. 36% said they would be "somewhat interested," which could translate into another 43 million units.

The 47% who were either "extremely" or "somewhat" interested is more than twice the 23% who said they were interested in buying an iPhone and the 21% who were interested in an iPad before either of those products were released.
Respondents who owned at least one Apple device were nearly four times more interested in buying an iTV that those who did not.

46% of respondents were willing to pay over $1,000 for an iTV and 10% were willing to pay over $2,000. On average, respondents were willing to pony up $1,060, a 20% premium over the the average $884 they paid for their current TV set.

Further, Huberty lays out three strategies for Apple to fix television. The company could become a "full-blown virtual cable service provider"; partner with existing pay-TV carriers and replace their set-top box with its own; or Apple could "bundle the TV set with its existing Apple TV" box.

Of course, there have been years of speculation about a potential Apple TV. Following the release of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, in which Jobs said he had "cracked" television, rumors have taken on a more fervent tone.

The Next Web reports that Apple and Microsoft are currently engaged in a dispute over Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage app that was launched in the App Store a year ago. According to the report, the dispute is related to Microsoft's move to roll out the ability for users to purchase paid storage upgrades on their iOS devices without going through Apple's in-app subscription mechanism that provides Apple with a 30% share of revenues. As a result, Apple has refused to approve any updates to the SkyDrive app.

Microsoft, TNW has learned, has a new version of the application ready to go, including a key bug fix that would rectify a crashing bug, but cannot get it through.

Microsoft does not appear keen to pay Apple the 30% cut, as it lasts in perpetuity, regardless of whether a user continues to use an iOS device or not, as the billing is through their Apple account.

The report claims that Microsoft has offered to remove the subscription options from the SkyDrive app, but Apple has still declined to allow updates to the app. It is unclear why Apple would have refused such an offer, as many similar apps such as Dropbox operate under this model.

The Next Web goes on to note that the dispute between Apple and Microsoft is also affecting third-party developers who have integrated SkyDrive into their applications, as the login pages for SkyDrive displayed by these apps contain a "sign up" link that runs afoul of Apple's guidelines.

In short, applications that wish to integrate with SkyDrive cannot, until Microsoft bows to Apple’s demands, and retools SkyDrive to allow for it to be integrated with the technology firm’s payment system by which the firm would garner a fee for the length of the account. A user could go into their Apple account, cancel their subscription, and then re-purchase it outside of the Apple ecosystem, but as that would save them no money, few, if any, will.

It is unclear just how and when the dispute between the two companies may be settled, but for the time being both SkyDrive app users and both developers and users of third-party apps relying on SkyDrive are finding themselves increasingly affected by the standoff.

Update 11:04 AM: Engadget reports that Microsoft has issued a statement acknowledging a "delay in approval" for its SkyDrive app.

Similar to the experiences of some other companies, we are experiencing a delay in approval of our updated SkyDrive for iOS. We are in contact with Apple regarding the matter and hope to come to a resolution. We will provide additional information as it becomes available.

Following up on its announcement regarding Retina display support for Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6, Adobe today announced additional major upgrades to its Creative Cloud subscription service. The upgrades, which are currently exclusive to Creative Cloud subscribers, are headlined by a number of upgrades to Adobe's flagship Photoshop application.

- Immediate support for HiDPI (Retina) displays for Apple MacBook Pro. This feature was also made available to perpetual license customers as a free update.
- Smart Object support for Blur Gallery and Liquify.
- The ability to quickly export CSS code for text and objects, and import color swatches to easily design incredible websites.
- New workflow timesavers including Crop tool refinements.
- 3D enhancements including improved live (OpenGL) previews of shadow effects and additional control over illumination using 32-bit color picker to create glow effects.
- Conditional Actions that automatically select the appropriate Action based on user-defined rules, giving users enhanced image processing speed.

Creative Cloud has also been enhanced with a new version designed to support teams of users, updates to the Adobe Muse web design tools, a new Creative Cloud Connection desktop syncing app, and new training tools.

Finally, Adobe is promoting a demo of its Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition at its Create Now event today. The software helps designers create digital publications for the iPad using many of the same tools used by major publishers to bring their content to the App Store.

Adobe's Create Now event begins at 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern and will be streamed live on the Creative Cloud Facebook page.

A day after police in Victoria, Australia issued a warning to motorists advising them not to rely on Apple Maps for directions to the town of Mildura due to a location error that led several drivers to become stranded in remote Murray-Sunset National Park, The Guardian reports that Apple has fixed the error.

The error placed the town of Mildura some 45 miles away from its actual location and led to numerous motorists being stranded. The Victoria police responded by describing using the app to navigate as "potentially life-threatening."

While the label on Apple's maps has not yet been updated to show the correct location of Mildura, searches for and directions to the town now show the proper location.

Interestingly, The Register reports that the error was not entirely Apple's fault, as the incorrect location was included in the official Australian Gazetteer.

In this case, the Australian Gazetteer – the authoritative list of 300,000-plus placenames, complete with coordinates – includes two Milduras. One is the “real” town, the other is an entry for “Mildura Rural City”, coordinates -34.79724 141.76108. It’s this second entry that points to the middle of the Murray-Sunset National Park, just near a spot called Rocket Lake.

The report notes that this second point that Apple was mistakenly associating with searches for Mildura is in fact simply the geographic center of the area included within the Mildura Rural City local government area and thus does not correspond to the actual city of Mildura.

In his recent TV interview with Brian Williams, Tim Cook said that Apple "screwed up" with Maps and was now "putting the entire weight of the company behind correcting it." The company does, however, still have a significant amount of work ahead of it as it tries to catch up with Google's years-long head start.

In line with rumors and speculation from late last month, Adobe today released updates to both Photoshop CS6 and Illustrator CS6 bringing support for Retina displays as found on Apple's redesigned MacBook Pro models.

With this update, customers can see more detail in images, text, and in the Illustrator user interface when working on high-resolution displays, including the new Retina display available on MacBook Pro. The HiDPI feature in Illustrator is currently only available on Mac OS. It is expected to be available in the future on additional operating systems.

The updates are available for both Creative Cloud subscribers and owners with standalone licenses.

Adobe had announced in late August that it would be bringing Retina display support to a number of its titles over the following months, with Photoshop and Illustrator being two of the highest-profile applications receiving the upgrade. At the time, Adobe noted that the upgrade process for Photoshop alone required the replacement of 2500 icons and cursors, as well as other engineering work to optimize the experience for Retina displays.

Adobe's Create Now conference kicks off tomorrow morning, and the company may have more to announce about its software offerings at that time.