MacRumors

Despite some questionable rumors of price hikes earlier this week, 9to5Mac reports that reliable tipster Mr. X has revealed that the new iPad 3 will carry the same prices as the iPad 2 and also come in the same storage configurations at 16GB/32GB/64GB.

We’ve gotten word that iPad pricing is going to be the same across the board as the current iPad 2 models which should be no big surprise given Apple’s history – they rarely raise prices. Even better, some countries with currencies doing better than the US dollar should expect to see marginal drops in prices.

The source had previously revealed part numbers that had appeared in Apple's retail inventory. The source now seems to be suggesting that those part numbers carry the same prices and configurations as the current iPad 2.

MC705LL/A – J1 GOOD A-USA
MC706LL/A – J1 BETTER A-USA
MC707LL/A – J1 BEST A-USA

MD328LL/A – J1 GOOD B- USA
MD329LL/A – J1 BETTER B-USA
MD330LL/A – J1 BEST-B-USA

MD366LL/A – J2A GOOD A-USA
MD367LL/A – J2A BETTER A-USA
MD368LL/A – J2A BEST A-USA

MD369LL/A – J2A GOOD B-USA
MD370LL/A – J2A BETTER B-USA
MD371LL/A – J2A BEST B-USA

J1 is believed to be a Wi-Fi version of the iPad 3, while J2 is believed to be one with Cellular connectivity.

Some had been hoping for a boost in storage capacities to account for the long rumored Retina Display that is expected to be found on the iPad 3. Retina-sized graphics and video will take considerably more storage than those designed for the standard iPad.

Apple is holding a media event on March 7th to presumably announce the new iPad.

Read It Later developer Steve Streza has provided MacStories with a few photos showing that exterior work is underway on preparing the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for Apple's iPad 3 media event next Wednesday. The company typically covers the theater's exterior glass wall with panels creating a large banner image, and this event appears to be no exception.

The banners are typically tied into the graphics found on the event invitations, but it is not yet evident what the final image for this event will be once crews have completed their work.

Update: The banner is almost complete, with the large white apple logo in the middle of what appears to be a vibrant splash of paint.

Apple has come under increasing scrutiny for its offshoring of product manufacturing in recent years, with a number of observers believing that Apple should be trying to bring more jobs to the United States. But as noted by AllThingsD, Apple has now taken a more public position on its domestic impact by posting a new page on its site highlighting over 500,000 U.S. jobs it claims to be directly or indirectly responsible for.

Apple breaks the 514,000 jobs down into two categories: 304,000 jobs directly tied to Apple and its business partners and another 210,000 jobs that are part of the "iOS app economy". The first category includes 47,000 Apple employees and another estimated 257,000 employees at companies such as Samsung, Corning, FedEx, and UPS who are part of Apple's supply chain and other businesses. Rather than a direct count of employees at other companies, that latter figure is calculated based on "employment multipliers" published the U.S. government and applied to Apple's domestic expenditures.

Apple further addresses its in-house efforts, noting that 47,000 of its 70,000 employees are located in the United States, with 7,800 U.S. jobs having been added in 2011. Over 27,000 of its U.S. employees are part of the company's network of 246 retail stores, with Apple reporting that the majority of these employees are full-time workers. On the support side, Apple employees 7,700 AppleCare Advisors in the United States, acknowledging that it could save 50% on call center costs by outsourcing to other countries such as India but that it opts to keep the jobs in the United States in order to maintain its highly-regarded customer service standards.

On the App Economy side, Apple notes that it has paid out over $4 billion to developers since the App Store was launched less than four years ago, creating an entirely new industry that has seen 210,000 new jobs added to the U.S. economy. With 248,000 registered iOS developers in the U.S. and over 5,000 iOS developer jobs listed on Indeed.com, Apple clearly believes that the industry will continue to see strong growth.

With iOS 5.1 apparently sitting in a holding pattern awaiting the launch of the iPad 3, it should be no surprise that work is well underway on iOS 6.0, the next major update which should appear to the public later this year if past history is any indication.

In support of the notion that work on iOS 6.0 is progressing, Ars Technica reports that browser user agent strings appearing as iPads running iOS 6.0 are indeed showing up in their server logs. While user agent strings are easily faked, Ars Technica filtered its logs to isolate only those entries coming from IPs assigned to Apple's corporate facilities and found a number of visits from devices reporting themselves as iPads running iOS 6.

[W]e began looking at iPad user agents coming from Apple's corporate IP block in Cupertino and discovered that Apple appears to be surfing the Web using iPads running what looks like iOS 6.0. The whole listing shows iPads running iOS 5, iOS 5.0.1 (the current public release), iOS 5.1 (the upcoming release currently available to developers), and iOS 6. The iPads that appear to be running iOS 6 are also using a slightly newer build of WebKit—the older OSes all show WebKit 534.46, while the ones claiming to be iOS 6 show WebKit build 535.8.

The report also cites a separate observation of a 2048x1536 screen resolution showing up in Google Analytics. The entries are not specifically linked to the iPad, but there are few other reasonable displays on the market that would be likely to yield such a resolution.

The problem with speculation about these resolution entries representing the iPad 3 is that the new device should still report 1024x768 as its resolution. With the higher pixel density intended to increase sharpness rather than screen real estate, web content would appear far too small on the device if it reported itself at its true 2048x1536 resolution. This situation can be seen with Retina-capable iPhone 4/4S and iPod touch models, which report their resolutions as 480x320 instead of their actual 960x640 resolutions.

Business Insider points to a report [Google translation] from French newspaper Le Figaro noting that Virgin will be vacating its landmark retail store on Champs-Élysées in Paris and that Apple is one of the primary candidates rumored to be interested in taking the spot.

The entire Virgin store checks in at roughly 75,000 square feet, with nearly 50,000 square feet of it dedicated to the sales floor. Apple's largest flagship retail stores at Regent Street and Covent Garden in London currently offer roughly 25,000 square feet of space, and while Apple could presumably opt to take only a portion of Virgin's space at the Paris location if it is indeed interested, the space certainly would give Apple an opportunity to build by far its largest retail store in a very prominent location.

It is also interesting to note a report from Hardmac claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook was in Paris earlier this week for unknown reasons. There is obviously no specific evidence tying his rumored presence to the Virgin store vacancy, but those hoping that Apple might pursue the project are welcome to speculate about whether he may have been in town to personally survey the site amid other company business.

While Apple has received a fair amount of attention for its planned solar farm at its massive data center in Maiden, North Carolina, the company publicly disclosed less than two weeks ago that it will also be installing the largest non-utility fuel cell farm in the United States to help power the facility.

GigaOm has assessed Apple's options for the 5-megawatt facility, determining that Bloom Energy appears to be Apple's partner in the project. Bloom, which is based in Sunnyvale, California near Apple's headquarters, is also said to already have "a few" of its fuel cells in operation on Apple's campus.

Bloom offers boxes capable of supplying 100 kW, which could translate into 50 Bloom Boxes being installed at Apple’s data center. Bloom has been in negotiations for similarly large-sized deals in the past, such as its negotiations in Delaware to build a 30 MW fuel cell farm (300 Bloom Boxes), and it has already installed 12 Bloom Boxes at Adobe’s campus in San Jose, Calif.

Apple is also touting the fact that its fuel cells will be run on biogas, and Bloom has substantial experience selling biogas-based fuel cells. Both Adobe and eBay are running their Bloom fuel cells on biogas. Bloom has also been the go-to fuel cell maker for Internet, telecom and computing giants’ experiments with fuel cells.

The report notes that Apple's options for fuel cell partners are relatively few, with UTC Power's larger fuel cell boxes not cleanly adding up to Apple's stated 5-megawatt capacity for the facility and FuelCell Energy specifically denying that it is working with Apple.

Apple is clearly interested in pursuing alternative energy sources for its facilities, and data centers are popular laboratories for such projects given their energy requirements and their typically rural locations that make it cheaper to dedicate land to energy production. The company already touts that its facilities in Austin, Sacramento, Munich, and Cork are powered by 100% renewable energy sources as part of a broad effort to reduce minimize its environmental impact across its facilities and throughout its products' life cycles.

The New York Post reports that Apple is pressing ahead with plans to launch its own streaming television service by the end of the year, despite continued resistance from content providers.

For months, Apple’s point man, Eddie Cue, has been leading talks with content providers, which have largely balked at the tech giant’s efforts to exert control over all aspects of the video service, including pricing, sources said.

Apple’s negotiating stance can be summed up as “we decide the price, we decide what content,” according to one source familiar with the talks.

“They want everything for nothing,” said another media executive, echoing similar tense negotiations Apple has had in the past with magazine publishers and music companies.

The report claims that Apple is interested in offering entire channels as apps that could be used on a number of the company's devices, including the Apple TV set-top box and presumably a potential Apple-branded television set. The report's sources are, however, unclear on whether Apple is seeking to bundle multiple app channels together to form its own equivalent of cable television packages or if it wants to offer them individually to subscribers.

Sources also indicate that Apple has tried with no success to convince cable companies to adopt Apple hardware for their own set-top boxes, with Apple providing sleek hardware and software to deliver content to existing cable subscribers across the United States.

“They want to create the interface, and they wanted to work with the cable guys to manage bandwidth across the TV and broadband pipeline,” said one source familiar with the talks.

Instead, cable executives pretty much shut the door, preferring to keep Apple at a safe distance from the lucrative $150 billion pay-TV business.

The report indicates that Apple is actually pursing content deals as its primary target in the television market, with the much-rumored Apple television set being a secondary consideration for the time being. Despite resistance from content providers and cable companies, Apple is said to still be pressing forward with a number of entities including Verizon and AT&T in an effort to land at least a foothold in the television content market.

Apple was reportedly negotiating with content providers back in 2009 about developing a "best of television" package that could be distributed through the iTunes Store, but those talks failed to yield any deals and Apple reportedly abandoned its efforts for some time. But with talk of an Apple television set ramping up and the company reportedly having developed its own "new technology" for delivering video content, it seems that Apple is trying once again to find a way to make its own contributions on the content side so as to be able to control as much of the user experience on television as possible.

The Inquirer reports that Intel's Sandy Bridge E server chips, also known as the Xeon E5 series, are set to debut week. According to the report, the chips have been in the distribution channel for several weeks now, meaning that manufacturers utilizing the chips, as Apple would be expected to do in an updated Mac Pro, will be able to hit the ground running.

Boston confirmed to The INQUIRER that Xeon E5 chips have been in the channel for a few weeks now and confirmed to us that it won't be a paper launch. We have also been shown Xeon E5 systems from other large vendors that give credence to the notion that Intel's Xeon E5 will arrive, for real, next week.

Benchmarks are evidently still under embargo until next week, but the Xeon E5 chips will undoubtedly be a vast improvement over the chips found in the current Mac Pro, which hasn't been updated since mid-2010. Other companies such as Dell have already begun announcing new products based on the Xeon E5, meaning that Apple could be ready with Mac Pro updates in the relatively near future.

Apple is likely to take advantage of the E5-2600 series 6-core and 8-core chips for its dual-processor Mac Pro configurations, while focusing on the E5-1600 series quad-core and 6-core chips for its lower-end single-processor models.

Aside from the new processors, other pieces crucial for a blockbuster Mac Pro upgrade are also falling into place, although there have been few specific Mac Pro rumors in recent months. One recent report did claim, however, that Apple is planning to switch to NVIDIA graphics in the updated Mac Pro, moving away from current graphics partner AMD.

An update to the Mac Pro is of course also contingent upon Apple deciding that it is worth keeping the line alive. The company late last year was reportedly "questioning" the future of the Mac Pro line, examining whether it should continue offering the professional-level workstation as sales have declined amid a continued shift toward notebook machines and specs that had gone stale while waiting for Intel to release updated processors.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Apple's forthcoming Highland Village retail store will be opening on Friday, March 16. According to the report's source, the store was originally scheduled to open in January, but delays in the construction schedule pushed the opening back to Saturday, March 17. But just weeks ago the opening was bumped up by a day to March 16, sparking speculation that the company is seeking to have the store open for an iPad 3 launch on that day.

The store, located in the Highland Village Shopping center at Westheimer and Drexel , was originally supposed to open in January, according to the source, but was delayed. March 17 was originally set as the new opening date, but the source said it was moved to the 16th a few weeks ago.

Apple retail store grand openings for the public typically take place on Saturdays, although they are occasionally held on different days of the week when special circumstances dictate.

An iPad 3 launch on March 16 would line up nicely with Apple's media event scheduled for next Wednesday, March 7, putting the launch nine days after the event. The exact same timing occurred last year with the iPad 2 being introduced on March 2 and debuting at 5:00 PM local time on March 11. Pre-orders were not available for the iPad 2, leaving those looking to get their hands on the device as soon as possible to line up for the limited launch stock.

The Highland Village store is among the first of Apple's retail stores to be based on a prototype design from the company's Upper West Side store in Manhattan. Similar designs are in the works in Santa Monica and Palo Alto. Utilizing an all-glass roof and entrances at front and back, the Highland Village store will be the first of the Houston area's seven Apple retail stores to be located outside of a shopping mall.

AT&T is retooling its throttling policy with regards to users with unlimited data plans, originally implemented last year. Instead of throttling customers on a case-by-case basis, users are going to be slowed after a fixed amount of data usage each month.

3G/HSPA+ users with unlimited data plans will be slowed after 3GB of data usage, while 4G/LTE users will be slowed after 5GB each month. AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom gave MacRumors this statement:

With mobile data usage continuing to skyrocket and the availability of spectrum scarce, AT&T, like other wireless companies, manages its network in the most fair way possible so that we can provide the best possible mobile broadband experience for all our customers.

How we’re managing the network only affects a small minority of the heaviest smartphone data users still on unlimited plans. Put another way, this does not impact more than 95 percent of our smartphone customers.

Even with reduced data speeds, these customers will still be able to email and surf the web, and continue to use an unlimited amount of data each month.

The reason reduced speeds only apply to unlimited smartphone customers is because their data usage is significantly higher than those on tiered plans. For example, in January, the top 5 percent of our unlimited data plan customers used an average of over 50 percent more data than the top 5 percent of customers on tiered plans.

Because spectrum is limited and data usage continues to soar, we manage our network this way to be as fair as possible and so we can provide the best possible mobile broadband experience to everyone.
We encourage all of our customers to use Wi-Fi whenever possible – especially when watching video, which is the most data-intensive activity.

AT&T has set up a special website focused on the changes. An extremely heavy user in California recently took AT&T to small claims court over the throttling of his "unlimited" data plan and won a $850 judgement.

Some users had reported getting throttled after as little as 1.5 or 2GB of monthly usage, so the bump to 3GB is a significant increase for them. It also offers the same amount of full-speed data usage, for the same price, as the current metered offering. Both the old "unlimited" data plan and the current 3GB data plan cost $30/month.

Other users have recently reported seeing more usable data speeds after being throttled, allowing them to email and surf the web at a more reasonable speed than was originally being provided.

Last week, a photo of what was claimed to be the front glass and digitizer assembly for the iPad 3 appeared on Chinese microblogging site Sina Weibo. While the part appears nearly identical to the version found on the iPad 2, differences in the ribbon cable attached to the component indicate that is indeed a different part.

Repair Labs has now gotten its hands on on what appears to be the same part in both black and white, suggesting that Apple will indeed offer at least some models of the iPad 3 in both colors. There had been some suggestion from leaked part numbers that at least one model of the iPad 3 may come only in one color, but additional part numbers later surfaced to indicate that both colors will indeed be available on all models.

As with the previous photo of the claimed iPad 3 front glass and digitizer, the new photo clearly shows home buttons on both parts. Presuming that the parts are legitimate, the photos should hopefully reduce the wild speculation that Apple's media event invitations revealed an iPad 3 lacking a home button.

Apple's media event is scheduled for next Wednesday, March 7 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. The company is expected to introduce the iPad 3, as well as an upgraded Apple TV set-top box and perhaps enhancements to its content offerings in support of the iPad 3's ultra-high resolution display and expected 1080p capabilities of the new Apple TV box.

DigiTimes reports that Apple's suppliers for the new 2048x1536 display expected to appear in the iPad 3 have been slow in ramping up their production of the component, with low supplies potentially hindering Apple's ability to move into high gear on device assembly until the second quarter of the year.

Apple may not unable to ramp up the supply of its next-generation iPads (iPad 3), which are expected to be launched at a company event on March 7, due to insufficient supply of high resolution displays, according to industry sources in the supply chain.

Although Apple has chosen Sharp to replace Chimei Innolux (CMI) as one of its three suppliers for the high resolution (QXGA) panels – in addition to LG Display and Samsung Electronics, the whole supply chain has failed to substantially ramp up the supply of QXGA panels, the sources revealed.

Early shortages have become par for the course for Apple's iOS device launches, with shipping estimates for new orders generally extending out weeks for up to several months after the products' debuts. Shipping estimates for the iPad 2 quickly ballooned to 4-5 weeks just as the device launched, taking over four months to become free available for immediate shipping.

Late yesterday, we posted a remarkable photo of the glass staircase inside Apple's new Amsterdam retail store that is set to open to the public on Saturday. Press previews of the new store took place this morning, and a number of sources have now posted photo sets of the interior of the store.

One More Thing has an extensive gallery [Google translation] showing off the rather ornate interior details Apple has utilized in the historic building.

Meanwhile, iPhoneclub.nl has some additional shots [Google translation], including one of the massive Genius Bar that Apple reportedly says is the longest in its chain of retail stores. The Genius Bar had been reported to offer 20 seats for customers, but the photo certainly appears to show significantly more stools than that.

The new store, Apple's first in the Netherlands, opens to the public at 10:00 AM on Saturday. With Apple having updated its Apple Store app for iOS devices yesterday to add support for the Netherlands, customers at the Amsterdam store will be able to utilize the company's EasyPay self-checkout option from the very first day.