MacRumors

Earlier today, we noted that the iTunes Music Store had gone live in Russia and Turkey, but now that changes have propagated throughout iTunes and we've had time to collect reports, it now appears that Apple is selling music through the iTunes Store in 56 new countries. The additions nearly double the number of countries in which the iTunes Music Store operates.

The new countries include:

- Europe: Belarus, Moldova, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine

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

- Asia Pacific: Fiji, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

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

Beyond music, four of the new countries have also seen Apple roll out access to movies: India, Indonesia, Russia, and Turkey.

Update 9:08 PM: Apple has published a press release confirming that it has launched the iTunes Store in 56 new countries.

Along with an announcement that the Ashton Kutcher-led jOBS [sic] will premiere this winter at the Sundance Film Festival, the festival has also released the first official image of Kutcher as Steve Jobs.

From Vanity Fair magazine:

Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival, which, just moments ago, announced that jOBS—weird capitalization choice theirs, not ours—would premiere at this year’s festival, the photo shows the Two and a Half Men lead in a cubicle. Outfitted in a button-down shirt, jeans, and a goatee—Kutcher’s Jobs, who leans against a desk in front of a poster bearing the IBM slogan THINK—bears an eerie resemblance to a vintage photo of an actual Steve Jobs floating around on the Internet. That vintage photo also features Steve Jobs’s Jobs in a button-down shirt, jeans, and a goatee, leaning against a desk in front of a poster bearing the IBM slogan THINK.

It was announced earlier this year that Kutcher would play the iconic CEO in an independent film that is separate from the Sony project that will be based on Walter Isaacson's autobiography. That film is being written by West Wing and Newsroom scribe Aaron Sorkin.

Sundance's description of the film:

jOBS / U.S.A. (Director: Joshua Michael Stern, Screenwriter: Matt Whiteley) — The true story of one of the greatest entrepreneurs in American history, jOBS chronicles the defining 30 years of Steve Jobs’ life. jOBS is a candid, inspiring and personal portrait of the one who saw things differently. Cast: Ashton Kutcher, Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, Matthew Modine. CLOSING NIGHT FILM

The 2013 Sundance Film Festival will take place in Park City, Utah from January 17th through the 27th.

Apple is hiring "dozens" of laid off Texas Instruments engineers to beef up its chip-making R&D operations in Israel, according to a report by The Next Web.

According to sources close to the situation, Apple has been hiring "dozens" of engineers from Texas Instruments after the company begun cutting around 250 jobs from its Ra’anana development center as it looks to lay off around 1,700 employees (about 5 percent of its total workforce) globally.

Many of the engineers working at the development center were focused on the development of TI’s OMAP and radio (including WiFi and Bluetooth) chips, which are used a number of new smartphone and tablet devices.

It's possible that the engineers will work with the crew from Anobit that Apple purchased a year ago, perhaps at Apple's new research and development center in Haifa.

The Next Web notes that the new hires will likely be in the Technologies group that Senior Vice President Bob Mansfield is now in charge of after last month's executive reshuffling at the company.

In line with reports of an Apple media event in Moscow tomorrow where the company has been rumored to be officially introducing the iTunes Music Store for Russia, it now appears that the store has started to go live in both Russia and Turkey.

With the iPhone 5 set to launch in both countries on December 14, Apple also looks to be interested in expanding its hardware and content sales in the countries in a variety of ways. Apple is already hiring for future retail stores in Turkey, and the company has reportedly been looking to begin direct sales in Russia, bypassing distributors and potentially looking at opening its own retail stores in the country in the future.

Last week, a rumor surfaced claiming that Apple had "decimated" its pro audio group, calling into question the future of Logic and other audio-focused software from the company. The rumor was, however, quickly dismissed by Jim Dalrymple and his impeccable sources at Apple, with Dalrymple noting that there was "no truth" to the rumor that Apple had slashed its pro audio team.

MacRumors reader Nicholas wanted to hear confirmation straight from Apple and emailed CEO Tim Cook to ask about the future of Logic. His email was passed along to Apple's music product marketing chief, Xander Soren, who provided a distinct rebuttal to the original rumor.

Nicholas, thanks for your email. As the lead for our music creation apps, I always want to hear what our users are thinking. I want to assure you the team is still in place and hard at work on the next version of Logic Pro.

-xander

The last major update of Logic came in mid-2009 with Logic Pro 9, although the company has made several improvements including adding 64-bit compatibility since that time. Following September 2011 rumors of Apple finishing up work on Logic X, the company did move Logic Pro 9 and MainStage 2 to the Mac App Store but otherwise did not make enhancements to the software.

Update: Russ Hughes of Pro Tools Expert contacted us to make clear that his original report said nothing about Apple's development work on Logic and addressed only the specialist team that assists professional users with using the software tools.

The EMEA [Europe, Middle East, and Africa] team responsible for nurturing and supporting the pro studios, post facilities and TV has gone from 12-2 in a matter of months, so we don't think the use of the term 'decimated' (even though a quote from our source) was off the scale. However as Apple has confirmed in their note to you, the pro coders are still [there], both in the USA and Germany - the team is around 60 strong.

Our question remains (which is not answered by the Apple statement) - are they willing to either deny or confirm that the team has been reduced from 12-2 in EMEA and if (as we know is the case) it is the truth, what does that say about Apple's commitment to pro users?

Apple today released the third beta of iOS 6.1 to developers. The release has a build number of 10B5117b, versus 10B5105c for the second beta of iOS 6.1 that was released on November 12.

As with previous betas, Apple mentions a number of changes from iOS 6.0.1, including several related to how developers can integrate Apple's new mapping service in their apps, as well as an improvement to how boarding passes are handled in Passbook, and a few minor changes to Safari.

Apple also released a beta of the Apple TV software, as well as Xcode 4.6 Developer Preview 3. Registered developers can download the betas via Apple's Developer page or via Software Update on iOS devices with a previous iOS 6.1 Beta already installed.

CNET reports that Intel is hard at work on reducing the power consumption of its Ivy Bridge chips, opening the door to use of the chips in mainstream tablets and reducing battery needs on small notebooks such as the MacBook Air.

Intel will cut power consumption "significantly" for future versions of the chip, an industry source familiar with the chipmaker's plans told CNET.

Intel's most power efficient Ivy Bridge chips today -- used widely in Windows ultrabooks and Apple's MacBook Air -- are rated at 17 watts.

A future version of Ivy Bridge would be rated well below this, the source said.

Intel has already previewed its next-generation Haswell chips that will push power consumption to as low as 10 watts initially, but it seems that Intel is moving to reduce power needs for its chips even before Haswell hits the market.

With future Ivy Bridge and Haswell chips becoming feasible for tablets with their reduced power consumption, there have been rumors that Apple could consider Intel chips for at least the iPad, although Apple seems dedicated to its own ARM-based chip designs for its mobile devices. But with Apple said to be looking to shift away from Samsung for production of its A-series chips, the company is said to be looking at TSMC and Intel as future chip foundry options.

In a research note issued last week, RBC analyst Doug Freedman claimed that Apple is already in talks with Intel on a deal that could see Intel producing A-series chips for the iPhone while Apple shifts to Intel's x86 platform for the iPad.

As part of a lengthy press release sharing details on its separation into two independent publicly traded companies, News Corporation announced that it will be shutting down its digital newspaper The Daily on December 15. The Daily launched in early 2011 at a media event hosted by Rupert Murdoch and Apple's Eddy Cue, with the iPad-focused newspaper positioned as a groundbreaking new publishing paradigm priced at just $0.99 per week.

But rumors of The Daily's potential cancelation began surfacing earlier this year as the publication continued to draw revenues well below that needed to sustain the initiative, and even a 30% cut in staff was not enough to save it.

[E]ffective immediately, Jesse Angelo, the founding Editor-in-Chief of The Daily and long-time Executive Editor of The New York Post, will assume the role of Publisher of The New York Post. As part of a digital restructuring initiative, the company will cease standalone publication of The Daily iPad app on December 15, 2012, though the brand will live on in other channels. Technology and other assets from The Daily, including some staff, will be folded into The Post.

Mr. Murdoch said: "From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily."

Aside from its attempts to make its mark as a new newspaper publishing model, The Daily also led the way for Apple's In App Subscription effort, allowing users to simply and easily sign up for recurring content subscriptions directly within apps and billed to their iTunes Store accounts.

Indicating that it is on track to meet its goal of launching the iPhone 5 in at least 100 countries by the end of 2012, Apple today announced that it will be bringing the device to more than 50 new countries this month on top of the 47 countries where it is already sold.

Apple today announced iPhone 5 will be available in South Korea on Friday, December 7, with more than 50 additional countries being added in December, including Brazil, Russia and Taiwan. iPhone 5 is the thinnest and lightest iPhone ever, completely redesigned to feature a stunning new 4-inch Retina display; an Apple-designed A6 chip for blazing fast performance; and ultrafast wireless—all while delivering even better battery life.

The full list of December launches includes:

- December 7: South Korea

- December 14: Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Ecuador, Grenada, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Macedonia, Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela

- December 21: Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Tunisia, Uganda and Vietnam

iFixit has released a comprehensive teardown of Apple’s new 21.5" iMac.

The new iMac with its ultra slim bezel proved to be a disappointment to the iFixit team because both the glass and the LCD are glued to the iMac frame with strong adhesive, which negatively impacts repairability.

The late 2012 iMac 21.5" – code-named EMC 2544 – is an exercise in disappointment for us. We were quite worried when we saw that super-thin bezel during Apple’s keynote, and unfortunately we were correct: the glass and LCD are now glued to the iMac’s frame with incredibly strong adhesive. Gone are the lovely magnets that held the glass in place in iMacs of yesteryear.

While the RAM, hard drive, and CPU can be replaced, the entire logic board must be removed to do so, which led the iFixit team to give the 21" iMac a repairability score of 3 out of 10, down from 7 out of 10 for last year’s model.

Here are the highlights of the teardown:

- Nothing about the internals of the new Mac resemble last year’s model.
- Apple has swapped out the 3.5“ desktop hard drive for a 2.5” HGST laptop hard drive, freeing up valuable space.
- The hard drive has a rubbery housing at its edges, which is a new design meant to dampen the vibrations from the hard drive in the closely packed quarters of the iMac.
- There are no longer multiple small fans. Instead, Apple is using a single centralized fan.
- Apple’s new iMac has two microphones to improve sound quality when using FaceTime.
- The AirPort card uses a Broadcom BCM4331 single-chip WLAN solution and three Wi-Fi antennas.

iFixit’s teardown also included a detailed listing of all of the chips on the logic board.

Despite the repairability concerns, early reviews for the design of the new iMac were largely positive.

Apple’s new iMacs went on sale on Friday, Nov. 30. The 21.5“ model starts at $1299 and $1499. The 27” iMac starts at $1799 and $1999. The 21.5“ model can currently be purchased in the Apple Store, but the 27” models have yet to ship.

Apple captured the number two slot in all U.S. mobile phone makers, both smartphone and non-smartphone, for the first time, according to a new report by research firm comScore.

Samsung maintained their lead with 26.3% in overall mobile phone userbase, with Apple coming in second at 17.8% and LG .2 points behind in the number three slot with 17.6%. Apple gained 1.5% in the three month period starting in August 2012 and ending in October 2012, which includes the first full month of iPhone 5 availability. LG, Motorola and HTC all saw their share shrink by .8, .2 and .4% respectively. Back in April, Apple leapfrogged Motorola to become the No. 3 mobile phone maker.

comScore's data tracks installed base rather than sales figures, so it reflects well on real-world usage rather than immediate market trends. Recently, Kantar Worldpanel released data based on sales figures that Apple had overtaken Android in marketshare with the help of iPhone 5 sales.

Apple, not known for its partnerships with third-parties, is again recognizing December 1st as World AIDS Day at Apple Retail Stores and on its website. Apple did something similar last year.

Some stores, including several locations in New York City, have also colored their Apple logos red for the occasion. A MacRumors reader sent in this image from the Upper West Side outlet and noted that retail store staffers appear to have replaced the cases on all the products in the store with PRODUCT (RED) versions.

Apple sells a number of PRODUCT (RED) items where a percentage of the profits are donated to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. There are (RED) versions of the iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod touch, the iPad and iPad mini Smart Covers, the iPad Smart Case, and the iPhone 4S Bumper.

The numbers don’t lie: Every day more than 900 babies are born with HIV. By 2015 that number can be nearly zero. (RED) works with companies like Apple to fight for an AIDS-free generation by 2015 by creating (PRODUCT) RED merchandise. A percentage of gross profits from the sale of those products goes to the Global Fund to help fund AIDS programs in Africa. Since its introduction, (PRODUCT) RED has generated more than $190 million — more than $50 million from Apple alone — for the Global Fund. Now you can make an impact, too, by purchasing a (PRODUCT) RED iPod shuffle, iPod nano, iPod touch, iPad Smart Cover, iPad Smart Case, or iPhone Bumper.

In addition to the retail store changes, Apple is placing a prominent link on the bottom of its homepage to (RED)'s World AIDS Day page.

Thanks Mark!

Tim Cook will be the center of a feature on NBC's Rock Center news show next week, the first major interview the CEO has given. Steve Jobs was famously camera shy, preferring to let Apple's products speak for themselves.

In this brief preview, Williams notes that Tim Cook was able to walk around Grand Central Station unrecognized until he got to the Apple Store there.

The full show will air on NBC next Thursday, December 6th.

With Apple's new iMac going on sale today, the first reviews of the new machine are starting to arrive. The reviews come alongside some early teardown photos and benchmarks offering an early glimpse at Apple's redesigned flagship desktop.

CNET has a thorough review of the 27-inch model, which won't be shipping to customers for several more weeks, noting that while the design is the major change to the machine, iterative improvements on already impressive performance-related specs keep the iMac in solid position.

You might be alarmed by the fact that the design is the most interesting thing about the new iMac. A thin bezel is nice to look at, but it doesn't improve processing speed, workflow, or overall utility. Fortunately for Apple, it evolved that design from a computer with a strong technical foundation. It is the updates to that foundation, and a few points of polish along the way, that keep this iMac on elite footing.

CNET's review machine, a souped-up $2599 model with 3.4 GHz Core i7 processor, 1 TB Fusion Drive, and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX graphics, performed quite well in benchmark tests and features Apple's new display lamination process that greatly reduces reflectivity. The new iMac compares relatively favorably to Dell's XPS One 27 in many respects, with the Dell's touch capabilities and Blu-ray drive perhaps being significant factors in its favor for some users.

The Verge has also reviewed both sizes of the new iMac and was similarly impressed by the new display process being used by Apple.

The IPS panels are the same as in last year’s iMacs, but they’re better integrated now — Apple says that by laminating the display to the glass it reduced reflections up to 70 percent, and indeed the glare problems that beset so many displays are much less present here, though there's still some reflection and glare. The improved manufacturing also makes whatever’s on the screen feel closer to you, almost like things are jumping out of the panel. The display's glossy bezel, which houses its HD FaceTime camera, is actually the most reflective part of the whole machine now.

I have to say, I was really surprised to see how much better the screen could be without a single change to the actual technology — but hey, I guess plastic surgery can work wonders. Both screens have fantastic color reproduction, are remarkably (like, blindingly) bright, and have near-180-degree viewing angles.

Overall, The Verge gives both iMac models scores of 9.0, noting that it is "still the best all-in-one device out there" but suggesting that the door is open for Windows 8 machines integrating advanced features like touchscreens and media center software to compete strongly with the iMac.