MacRumors

Just before Christmas, shipping estimates for Apple's 12-core Mac Pro model increased to 1-3 weeks, and while that specific model does tend to occasionally see some extra lead time, the shipping delays were later noticed to have extended to nearly any customized Mac Pro order. Even as simple a customization as increasing the RAM on an "In Stock" standard Mac Pro configuration increases its shipping estimate to 1-3 weeks.

Increases in shipping estimates in Apple's online store can sometimes be indicative of an upcoming product refresh as the company draws down supplies ahead of launching the updated models. The Mac Pro is most certainly due for an update, and there are several indications that components may be coming together for a significant upgrade to the line.

Most importantly, Intel's Sandy Bridge E Xeon processors are due for launch during the first quarter of this year after having been delayed from a late 2011 debut. Rumors have suggested, however, that continued issues with the chipset portion of the "Romley" platform utilizing the Sandy Bridge E Xeon processors may see a release being held back until the beginning of March, still several months from now.

On the graphics front, evidence of support for AMD's "Tahiti" line of graphics cards has been showing up in developer builds of OS X 10.7.3, and just a week and half ago AMD officially unveiled the first Tahiti graphics card for a January launch.

But while the pieces seem to be coming together at the right time for a substantial Mac Pro upgrade, a bigger question is whether the line will even continue to survive long enough to see another update. A late October report claimed that Apple is "questioning" the future of the Mac Pro given declining sales as customers have continued a trend of shifting toward portable computers, and we've heard similar rumblings that even pinpointed a discontinuation date in January.

Consequently, it is difficult to speculate on whether increased shipping estimates for custom configurations might be due to Apple tightening supplies ahead of a refresh or if the company could be drawing down production entirely ahead of a discontinuation of the line.

Tech in Asia reports on the Japanese tradition of "lucky bags" in which retailers celebrate the new year by offering customers grab bags filled with unknown items at a substantial discount from their retail prices. In exchange for the substantial discounts, customers must simply accept whatever products are in the bags.

Apple offers some of the most highly sought-after lucky bags, with customers paying hundreds of dollars for bags hoping to receive their favorite big-ticket items. This year's lucky bags from Apple were sold for 33,000 yen, or the equivalent of about $430.

I always considered myself a pretty big Apple fan, but this event seems to bring out the most hard-core fanboys. Back in 2010 I tried to queue for a lucky bag, arriving at the store at 5am only to find that overnight campers had filled all the spots. This year the bag cost 33000 yen (about $430), and most customers are hoping that there will be a big ticket item inside like an iPad 2 or a Macbook Air.

Japanese blog Mac Otakara posts a gallery of photos showing the contents of several lucky bags, with the biggest prize being an 11-inch MacBook Air bundled with a sleeve for the computer, a Magic Mouse, and a pair of headphones. Other lucky bags shown in the gallery offered either a 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad 2 or an 8 GB iPod touch as the main item.

As noted by German sites Flo's Weblog [Google translation] and iFun.de [Google translation], a curious new iOS application that seems to be from Apple has appeared in the App Store. The new app, known as GameStore [App Store], debuted on December 31st and seems to be a test app of some sort, offering several racing-themed in-app purchases but without any actual functionality.

The app is priced at $0.99, with the three in-app purchases currently available through the app priced between $0.99 and $2.99. Additional in-app purchases shown in the single screenshot shown on the App Store page for GameStore show items as high as $26.99, but these other items are not currently visible in the app itself.

In-app purchases made through the app do go through and users' accounts are charged for them, but with no actual game supporting the content available, they have no functionality.

When the app's listing is viewed in the App Store from an iOS device, the posting date is listed as June 9, 2009, which was during Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference just ahead of the public launch of iPhone OS 3.0 and the debut of in-app purchasing. Consequently, GameStore may simply be an internal testing app for the feature that was somehow accidentally published to the public App Store over the weekend.

Update: GameStore has now been removed from the App Store.

Update 2: TUAW's Erica Sadun took a closer look at the app from a developer's perspective, concluding that the app was likely sample code for an in-app purchasing developer test that somehow mistakenly got approved by Apple.

What developers do is upload a working skeleton application to iTunes Connect. You do this with the full understanding that you'll be replacing or, for tutorials, rejecting your binary at some point in the future. Once uploaded, you can test your IAPs, and make sure all your purchasing processes work. Looks like the app was submitted in order to provide a live testbed and may have gotten approved inadvertently.

After consulting with the TUAW team, our take on this is "likely sample code accidentally deployed to App Store" by Apple and then quickly pulled once people took notice. TUAW reached out directly to the developer we suspect was behind the app upload before it got pulled.

Over the past few days, iOS developers Steven Troughton-Smith and TheMudKip have managed to hack the 2nd generation Apple TV to run iOS apps at full resolution. The feat was accomplished using a custom Springboard (Home Screen) written by TheMudKip on a jailbroken Apple TV. Troughton-Smith has since been making progress running iPhone and iPad apps at full resolution.

Many existing apps seem to run well on the Apple TV, which is known to be an iOS device using an A4 processor. When this generation of the Apple TV was released, we noted that Apple may have had plans to incorporate native applications all along. In fact, Jobs said that an Apple TV App Store could launch when the time is right.

This video shows the Apple TV in action, running apps under the custom springboard:

The hack isn't available publicly yet, and remains more of a proof of concept at this time. It's feasible that such a hack could be released to the public at some point to encourage Apple TV specific apps that might be designed to work with the remote interface in mind.

Readers should note that the original iPhone jailbreaks enabled native iOS apps well ahead of Apple's official App Store launch. Lights Off was the first native iOS game, released for jailbroken iPhones in August 2007. The official App Store wouldn't launch for another 10 months.

BBC reports that Apple's Senior Vice President of Industrial Design, Jonathan Ive, has been awarded a knighthood in the United Kingdom.

Mr Ive, who can now style himself Sir Jonathan, has been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).

Ive began work at Apple in 1992, but found himself frustated during the early years before Jobs' return. Ive is seen as responsible for many of the iconic designs coming out of Apple over the past decade. Jobs described Ive as his "spiritual partner" and had given him complete operational freedom at Apple.

Mercury News quotes a statement from Ive, reacting to the news.

"I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making,'' Ive, 44, said in a statement. "To be recognized with this honour is absolutely thrilling and I am both humbled and sincerely grateful. I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design. I feel enormously fortunate that I continue to be able to design and make products with a truly remarkable group of people here at Apple."

We received a tip that the following image had been posted to a Korean forum (registration required). Unfortunately, little other information was offered, but it was claimed to be an image of the upcoming iPad 3 Display panel.

We believe the top image represents the current iPad 2 screen, while the bottom image is the supposed iPad 3 display. Both are 9.7" in diagonal, but the bottom screen has a different configuration for the attached cabling.

For reference, iFixit provided us with this photo of what the current iPad 2 display looks like disassembled.

As you can see there are 3 brown ribbon cables leading from the screen itself to the circuit board. The small brown cable to the far left is the power cable, while the other two wide cables are for display data. This configuration matches with the top display in the leaked photo (though the power cable is missing).

The claimed iPad 3 photo shows 3 wide ribbon cables that might be used for data. The iPad 3 is expected to carry a high resolution screen of 2048x1536 which is four times the number of pixels of the current iPad 2, so the need for additional data bandwidth would be understandable.

No other details are available, though the increasing number of parts leaking on the web suggests that Apple is getting closer to production. Just last night, Apple was said to be using a new type of display (IGZO) to achieve higher resolutions and require lower power in the iPad 3. The iPad 3 is expected to be launched during the first half of 2012.

The Associated Press was recently given access to Stanford's Silicon Valley Archives which houses the largest collection of history on Apple. The collection of historical documents and videos was originally maintained by Apple with plans to make a company museum. Shortly after Steve Jobs' return in 1997, Apple contacted Stanford University and offered to donate the entirety of the collection to the school's Silicon Valley Archives.

The collection, the largest assembly of Apple historical materials, can help historians, entrepreneurs and policymakers understand how a startup launched in a Silicon Valley garage became a global technology giant.

The collection takes up more than 600 feet of shelf space, but is not open to the public.

Amongst the archives:

- Thousands of photos by photographer Douglas Menuez, who documented Jobs' years at NeXT Computer, which he founded in 1985 after he was pushed out of Apple.
- A company video spoofing the 1984 movie "Ghost Busters," with Jobs and other executives playing "Blue Busters," a reference to rival IBM.
- Handwritten financial records showing early sales of Apple II, one of the first mass-market computers.
- An April 1976 agreement for a $5,000 loan to Apple Computer and its three co-founders: Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, who pulled out of the company less than two weeks after its founding.
- A 1976 letter written by a printer who had just met Jobs and Wozniak and warns his colleagues about the young entrepreneurs: "This joker (Jobs) is going to be calling you ... They are two guys, they build kits, operate out of a garage."

There's no indication when or if Stanford plans to make the documents available for public viewing.

The legal battle between Samsung and Apple has going on around the world with Apple claiming that Samsung had "slavishly" copied the iPad design. Apple and Samsung have traded lawsuits in a number of countries trying to get each other's products banned from sale.

Outside of the lawsuits, Samsung has been aggressive with their recent set of U.S. TV ads openly mocking iPhone users.

Their newest Korean ad, however, seems to take cues from Apple's own advertising style, focusing on a more emotional connection with the viewer.

The ad depicts a father and daughter playing with a Galaxy Tab in a sequence of shots reminiscent of Apple's own iPad ads. The voice over says (rough translation):

You try to have fun with me, you try to win against me, you ask me millions of questions, you sit on my lap, you want to stay beside me all the time, strangely, when I stay with you time passes very quickly. This is a precious time.

The ad was posted to YouTube on December 14th. For reference, Apple's own ads have long followed a similar style, focusing on experience than specs: We'll Always, Love, and Learn. While Apple doesn't have an exclusive claim to this style of ad, it just shows how Samsung is trying to position their products comparably to Apple.

The song in the background of the ad is Blue Sky by Rabbit!

The latest Digitimes report claims that Apple will be utilizing IGZO (indium gallium zinc oxide) flat panels instead of IPS (in-plane switching panels) in its "next-generation mobile display products" such as the iPad 3.

Starting with the new iPads, Apple will utilize IGZO panels from Sharp in order to upgrade the display resolution of the new tablets to full HD level, the sources indicated.

Given Digitimes' misstep just yesterday about Apple's plans for Macworld, it might be hard to take their new report at face value.

However, this is not the first time that we've heard that Apple will be pursuing this new technology for the iPad 3. A research note from Jefferies analyst Peter Misek back in November made very similar claims:

Also, we believe that Apple and Sharp together have a modified IGZO (indium, gallium, zinc) technology to achieve 330 dpi, which is sufficient for an HD display while not using IPS nor having to include dual-bar LED backlighting. In our view, this should lead to several design advantages, namely the device can be thinner, battery life should be longer, and the overall experience for users should be meaningfully improved.

Sharp announced plans in April to commercialize these new IGZO panels for mass production later this year. The advantages of the new technology that should allow for lower power consumption and higher resolution displays. DisplayBlog recaps the advantages of this new technology:

The benefits of IGZO are plenty: lower cost of manufacturing, up to 30x higher electron mobility than a-Si (amorphous silicon), increased aperture ratio for improved light transmittance, higher resolution in terms of ppi, etc. IGZO would allow for significant cost reductions compared to LTPS (Low Temperature Poly-Silicon) based high resolution LCDs like the rumored 9.7-inch 2048×1536 IPS LCD for the iPad 3.

It sounds as if this new technology will allow Apple to avoid adding a second light bar system to the more traditional IPS display that is presently used in the iPad. It may also allow Apple to avoid making the iPad 3 thicker than the current iPad, and should consume less power.

comScore released their latest numbers for the relative market shares of the mobile market. Apple continues to inch upward with 11.2% of total U.S. Mobile Subscribers.

This percent share is up from 9.8% in August and 10.2% in September. Apple's growth was greater than its competitors during this time which covers the introduction of the iPhone 4S. Apple has historically trended well with steady gains in this measure over time. These numbers are for both smartphone and non-smartphone subscribers in the U.S.

Amongst Smartphone platforms, Google's Android continues to lead at 46.9% over Apple's 28.7% but both platforms grew in the past few months as compared to both Microsoft and RIM.

Microsoft, RIM and Symbian saw continued declines in Smartphone marketshare over the past quarter. The difference in change between Apple and Android's growth is even smaller (1.3 points vs 2.1 points) when comparing the November numbers to September numbers. The iPhone 4S's launch in October should have been covered in these figures.

comScore's data tracks installed user base rather than new handset sales, making it more reflective of real-world usage but slower to respond to shifting market trends than some other studies.

LoopInsight's Jim Dalrymple weighs in on the questionable rumor that Apple would introduce the iPad 3 at the 2012 Macworld|iWorld conference in January. Dalrymple says plainly:

I checked with a number of my sources today and an iPad 3 is not planned for release at Macworld. In case you’re wondering, an iPad 3 won’t be released at CES either.

He also goes on to say that Apple won't be releasing a new TV during each of those shows either. Dalrymple's information has been shown to be reliable in the past.

As we noted in the earlier article, Apple officially withdrew from Macworld in 2008, citing the diminishing importance of trade shows in their business. Digitimes' claim that Apple would again play a part in the show was met with pretty universal skepticism.

Japanese blog Mac Otakara has purchased some of the early iPad 3 parts that have been circulating at online retailers. These parts come from TVC-Mall which also stocked early iPhone 4S parts in the months before its launch. (via Electronista)

The parts are slightly different than the iPad 2 versions of the same parts, but are otherwise unrevealing.

We track parts supplies of upcoming Apple products as it is typically a sign that Apple has begun or is close to manufacturing their new devices. Parts leaks in the past have accurately predicted features of new devices, though these particular internal parts aren't particularly revealing. Cases and device enclosures are typically the most interesting of the early supplier leaks.

Apple is expected to launch the iPad 3 in early 2012. Reports have suggested a launch anywhere from January to April, with more recent reports suggesting an earlier launch. The iPad 3 will likely carry a high resolution "Retina" display as one of its distinguishing features.

Back when the iPad was still just a rumor, the Wall Street Journal reported that one of the features that Apple had been working on with their upcoming tablet was the ability to recognize users by face.

One person familiar with the matter said Apple has put significant resources into designing and programming the device so that it is intuitive to share. This person said Apple has experimented with the ability to leave virtual sticky notes on the device and for the gadget to automatically recognize individuals via a built-in camera. It is unclear whether these features will be included at launch.

The effort was part of Apple's efforts to make their new tablet a multi-user device. Facial recognition, however, never made it into the iPad, but a newly published patent application gives us insight into this feature that didn't make it into the shipping product.

AppleInsider notes that the new patent application offers a way for multiple users to share a device:

The filing provides a simple way for multiple users to share a single device, like an iPad. Each user could customize their personal profile with unique wallpaper, applications and settings, and that profile would be immediately accessed once the iPad recognizes a user's face.

The face detection system reportedly could be a low-power system that is always active, allowing face detection to be the primary method to unlock your iOS device. Apple's patent was filed in June, 2010, soon after the first iPad was introduced.

Face recognition as a security measure, however, has some possible flaws. Google's Android recently introduced a Face Unlock feature as well, but reports have suggested it can be fooled by a photograph of the user.

Each year, iOS developers scramble to position themselves well ahead of the iTunes Connect shutdown/freeze in order to benefit from any boost in sales from the holidays. NYTimes wrote of the phenomenon this year, as explained by iOS developer Bryan Duke:

“It’s typical to see a jump on any major holiday, but Christmas is the biggest one,” Mr. Duke said. “I’m certainly hoping for a nice big Christmas bump this year.”

This boost is what drives many of the massive holiday sales as developers jockey for position before the iTunes Top 200 charts freeze for the holidays. Major companies such as Gameloft and EA get in on the action to flood the charts with their apps.

Camera+ developers TapTapTap shared their iOS app sales numbers with us again this year which shows the effect in dramatic fashion:

TapTapTap's Camera+ [App Store] application had been floating around the ranks 4-8 and settled at position #8 in the Top 200 list during the holiday freeze. Their average sales had been around 18,000 sales in the days prior to the holidays, but shot up to a peak of 73,808 sales on Christmas day. The graph above also includes sale figures for Faces and Voices 2, though the vast majority of sales were for Camera+. At a $0.99 sales price that means $51,665 in revenue for the company on the Christmas day alone after Apple's 30% cut.

The increase in sales is reflective of more iOS device activations and the gifting of iTunes Gift cards for the holidays. As shown in the graph, this sales boost does sustain for some time after the holidays.