MacRumors

BGR reports that AT&T is beginning preparations for an expected "early to mid-September" launch of the next-generation iPhone, in line with launch rumors and expectations and other reports of Apple beefing up its retail store staffing over a similar timeframe.

BGR has exclusively learned that AT&T has begun communicating launch plans internally for Apple’s next-generation iPhone 5 handset. We have been told that AT&T has begun informing employees across the company, and those who work in retail locations, to finish any sort of employee training as soon as possible. AT&T is asking managers to finish training in order to have employees available for the influx of foot traffic expected in September, a proven source has shared with us.

Apple has been preparing to increase staffing at its retail stores in the United States and United Kingdom, and rumors have suggested that Apple will use its traditional fall iPod media event to introduce the next-generation iPhone this year. That event has typically taken place in early September, although some reports have pushed that date up into late August this year ahead of a September launch for the device. Apple has announced that iOS 5 will debut this "fall", and that software launch will undoubtedly occur right around the release of the next-generation hardware.

The Wall Street Journal reports that it will be removing subscription links from its iPad application, deciding to satisfy Apple's new in-app purchasing and subscription rules by removing the purchase links rather than offering subscriptions through the app with Apple taking a 30% cut.

People who download the app and want to subscribe will have to either call customer service or visit WSJ.com.

"We remain concerned that Apple's own subscription [rules] would create a poor experience for our readers, who would not be able to directly manage their WSJ account or to easily access our content across multiple platforms," a Journal spokeswoman said.

The report also notes that Kobo, the eBook company that has risen to prominence through its affiliation with the now-bankrupt Borders, has pulled direct book sales from within its iOS application.

Mike Serbinis, Kobo's chief executive, said Apple told Kobo Saturday that it could no longer operate its digital bookstore from its Kobo apps and had to stop selling e-books directly through them. Kobo subsequently altered the apps so that they no longer sell digital titles.

Now Kobo customers who want to buy digital books via their Apple devices will have to visit www.kobo.com via Apple's Safari browser to make their purchases, a potentially more laborious process for customers used to buying e-books directly through a Kobo app. Customers will continue to be able to access and read Kobo-purchased books from their library on various Apple devices.

Google's Google Books app for iOS has also disappeared from the App Store, although Google has declined to comment on the reason for the app's removal.

Apple had set a deadline of June 30th for apps to comply with the new rules, but has reportedly been lenient about enforcement as it continues to work with high-profile developers on making their apps compliant. But with the Wall Street Journal, Kobo, and potentially Google's eBooks service all pulling direct content sales from within their apps, it certainly appears that not all of the holdouts are working toward addressing the issue by supporting in-app subscriptions and purchases.

Update: Google Books has returned to the App Store with the link to the company's bookstore removed, although the app's description mentions only "minor enhancements and bug fixes" among the changes included in the update.

With the release of Lion, users can now see some of the groundwork that Apple has laid down in OS X for ultra high resolution displays. We covered Apple's support of these new "HiDPI" modes while OS X Lion was still in beta.

For those who have downloaded Apple's Xcode for Lion, you can enable "HiDPI" mode in the Quartz Debug application found in the Developer directory. Once enabled, OS X's Displays control panel offers additional 1/4 (and lower) resolution sizes as shown here on a 30" Cinema Display with a native resolution of 2560x1600:

Unfortunately, there's not much to see yet. The 1280x800 HiDPI resolution shown here represents exactly 1/4 of the area of the native resolution of the 30" Cinema Display and simply offers you a zoomed in view on present day monitors.

The reasoning is that when displays do reach ultra high resolutions and dots per inch (DPI), simply drawing the OS X interface as-is would result in very small interface elements. Apple's solution is to scale all on-screen elements automatically by a factor of two (in each direction).

So, in the future, we might be using 2560x1600 (HiDPI) mode on a theoretical 30" 5120x3200 pixel display. All user interface elements would stay the same size as today's 30" Cinema Display, but when available, higher resolution textures would be used to render the graphics. This is the same way that it worked when Apple transitioned from the original iPhone resolution to the iPhone 4's retina display.

Arstechnica offers a good example screenshot showing this in effect. Fonts already render in the higher resolution while bitmapped graphics demonstrate a blocky effect as they have not yet been replaced with high resolution ("Retina") graphics.

The groundwork is there now, so when technology catches up, we could see double-DPI Retina displays in our future.

TechCrunch has posted an extensive gallery of screenshots from Facebook's long anticipated native iPad app. It turns out the latest update to Facebook's native iPhone application also included the code and resources for the iPad app.

@AeroEchelon noticed a simple tweak to the iPhone version could enable it and posted the first screenshots of the iPad app to Twitter.

TechCrunch's MG Siegler found the app to be quite good even in its non-public release form:

The app also makes great use of the pop-overs (overlay menus) found in other iPad apps. When you flip the iPad horizontally, the list of your online friends appears and you can chat with them as you do other things on Facebook. The photo-viewer aspect looks great — similar to the iPad’s own native Photos app. Places exists with a nice big map to show you all your friends around you. Etc.

Facebook is said to be launching this native app shortly. Facebook's own native iPhone app has been consistently in the top Free apps on Apple's App Store. The company has not yet released an iPad version of their app, though the demand has been clear as 3rd party Facebook apps such as MyPad have consistently ranked in the iPad bestsellers since the iPad's launch.

Flo's Weblog has posted instructions on how to modify the Facebook app so you can play with this early iPad release yourself.

As we noted last week, Apple has adopted new Bluetooth 4.0 chips in their latest MacBook Airs and Mac Minis. Bluetooth 4.0 notably includes the Bluetooth Low Energy specification which promises a low-power and low-latency implementation that opens the door to a number of new kinds of Bluetooth-powered devices.

The best example of what will be possible comes from Apple's popular Nike+ accessory which isn't actually a Bluetooth Low Energy device. The Nike+ accessory is a sensor that sends signals from your shoe to your iOS device to track your daily runs. The information is sent from the sensor wirelessly to your iOS device where it's stored for later syncing. Nike's implementation is a proprietary one, though it is similar to Bluetooth.

Bluetooth Low Energy standardizes this sort of functionality for a broad market of devices. Like Nike's shoe sensor, the new protocol promises the ability to power accessories for more than a year on a simple button cell battery without recharging.

Since the technology is so new, there haven't been many product announcements for accessories with the technology. Casio was one of the few who has revealed a Bluetooth low-energy watch that will interface with your mobile phone.

The device can receive notifications for incoming calls, SMS and email, and can also be used to locate your phone if its within range (~5 meters). Even with the incorporation of the Bluetooth technology, the watch will run for two years on its cell battery.

Other possible uses commonly listed for Bluetooth Low Energy include:

• Find Me - electronic leash applications
• Proximity - wireless locking and unlocking, out of range alerts
• Sports / Running - stats and vitals
• Health - heart rate monitor, blood pressure, glucose monitors

EETimes suggests one interesting indoor use for these sensors given their low cost and low maintenance requirements.

One key application could be indoor location (where there is no GPS signal) whereby sensors around a large public building (such as an airport or rail station) constantly broadcast information about their location. A Bluetooth low energy equipped cell phone passing within range could then display that information to its owner. Sensors could transmit other information such as flight times and gates, location of amenities, or special offers from nearby shops.

Apple joined the Bluetooth board of directors just last month and it's likely that Bluetooth 4.0 will soon extend into their other devices beyond the MacBook Air and Mac mini. The Bluetooth site claims that virtually all new smart phones will include Bluetooth 4.0 by the end of 2012.

Apple released a new iPad television advertisement tonight called "We'll Always" which shows off the iPad in many different uses.

We'll never stop sharing our memories. Or getting lost in a good book. We'll always cook dinner and cheer for our favorite team. We'll still go to meetings, make home movies, and learn new things. But how we do all this will never be the same.

As with previous iPad ads, Apple is focusing on the user experience by demonstrating various iPad apps.

Apple sneaks a plug for OS X Lion in the ad as well:

The apps shown in the ad include: Photos (built in), iBooks, The Photo Cookbook, MLB, Fuze HD, iMovie, Alphabet Fun

Apple seeded developers with OS X 10.7.2 alongside a new iCloud for Lion Beta 5. The 10.7.2 seed appears to only contain changes to support iCloud Beta 5 as Apple has not yet made any mention of 10.7.1. OS X Lion was just released last week, and we expect that 10.7.1 will be delivered shortly as an initial bug fix to customers.

Apple's iCloud service was announced at WWDC and will be launched this fall alongside iOS 5.

Apple appears to be increasing staffing in U.S. Retail Apple Stores too this fall. Previous reports had shown Apple Retail staff recruitment from August through October in the U.K.

We've now learned that at least some U.S. Apple Retail stores are also recruiting former employees to return as part time employees for Holidays, new Product Launches and Back to School time. A former employee received emails asking to return between August 15 and September 15th.

The simplest explanation for the increased staffing is to handle the back to school influx as U.S. students begin the fall semester. As with the U.K. retail staffing recruitment, however, the dates also correspond to Apple's expected iPhone 5 launch. Apple's widely expected to launch the iPhone 5 this Fall alongside iOS 5.

Apple will have an extensive voice recognition service in a future version of iOS called 'Assistant', according to a report on 9to5Mac.

It has been rumored that Apple was planning to include voice-related features from its acquisition of personal assistant company Siri, and a partnership with speech-to-text specialists Nuance. Apple, however, didn't mention any such features when it first demonstrated iOS 5 at WWDC in June.

This new "Assistant" feature in iOS 5 is claimed to take voice input along with other user-specific information, such as location and contacts, to provide a powerful service to the user:

We can imagine a user asking their iPhone “Assistant” to setup a movie with one of their friends. The user might say “setup movie with Mark” and based on Mark’s contact info and the user’s location data, will be able to offer tickets to a local theater and send Mark the information.

9to5Mac notes that development of the feature is ongoing and may not be finished in-time for iOS 5, but did find mention of 'Assistant' in buried in the iOS SDK.

"ASSISTANT_ENABLE_WARNING" = "Assistant uses your voice input and other information like your contact names, song names, and location to understand your requests. This data will be sent to Apple to process your request and to improve Apple products and services."

The feature sounds just like what Siri had been working on prior to its acquisition. Their iOS app Siri Assistant remains available on the App Store for download. Siri focused on a concept called "Virtual Personal Assistants" (VPAs) that would accomplish tasks for the user.

Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) represent the next generation interaction paradigm for the Internet. In today's paradigm, we follow links on search results. With a VPA, we interact by having a conversation. We tell the assistant what we want to do, and it applies multiple services and information sources to help accomplish our task. Like a real assistant, a VPA is personal; it uses information about an individual's preferences and interaction history to help solve specific tasks, and it gets better with experience.

Siri's implementation used Nuance's voice recognition engine to translate spoken requests to text which would then be processed. Apple has been rumored to be working closely with Nuance to provide the same transcription service to iOS users.

The Register reports on some of the new security improvements in OS X Lion, with researchers calling the changes a "major overhaul" that goes far beyond the minor security tweaks Apple made going from Mac OS X Leopard to Snow Leopard.

"It's a significant improvement, and the best way that I've described the level of security in Lion is that it's Windows 7, plus, plus," said Dino Dai Zovi, principal of security consultancy Trail of Bits and the coauthor of The Mac Hacker's Handbook. "I generally tell Mac users that if they care about security, they should upgrade to Lion sooner rather than later, and the same goes for Windows users, too."

In particular, the report points to such features as full support for address space layout randomization (ASLR), application sandboxing, and a revamped FileVault encryption system as being key to Lion's improved security.

"When they went from Leopard to Snow Leopard, as far as I'm concerned, there really wasn't any change," said Charlie Miller, principal research consultant at security firm Accuvant and the other coauthor of The Mac Hacker's Handbook. "They might have said there was more security and it was better, but at a low functionality level there really wasn't any difference. Now, they've made significant changes and it's going to be harder to exploit."

Miller isn't only interested in operating system and core application vulnerabilities, however, as evidenced by his recent discovery of a vulnerability in the chips that control the batteries in Apple's notebooks. That vulnerability could be exploited on a basic level to harm battery function or with additional effort to implant malware that could reinfect computers multiple times.

The batteries' chips are shipped with default passwords, such that anyone who discovers that password and learns to control the chips' firmware can potentially hijack them to do anything the hacker wants. That includes permanently ruining batteries at will, and may enable nastier tricks like implanting them with hidden malware that infects the computer no matter how many times software is reinstalled or even potentially causing the batteries to heat up, catch fire or explode. "These batteries just aren't designed with the idea that people will mess with them," Miller says. "What I'm showing is that it's possible to use them to do something really bad."

Miller plans to officially announce his discoveries at next month's Black Hat conference, and he will also be releasing a new "Caulkgun" tool to allow Mac notebook users to change their batteries' default passwords to randomized strings. That move would help keep hackers out of the batteries, but also prevent Apple from issuing its own upgrades and fixes for the battery firmware. Miller has also been in touch with Apple and Texas Instruments regarding the vulnerability.

InsanelyGreatMac posts the above video showing the new iOS 5 Beta 4 over the air (OTA) updating in action. As we noted the OTA update also saves bandwidth as it only sends changes rather than the entire OS image.

• @MuscleNerd reports that OTA update won't work on Jailbroken devices.

• We reported that iPhones must have 50% charge or be plugged into a power source to download the OTA update, but @johnheimkes reports this requirement is not enforced on the iPad which allowed the update to occur with only 12% charge.

• Settings app displays a badge when an over the air update is available.

• Apple has added a "Documents and Data" toggle for iCloud which allows you to turn on/off the ability for apps to save data and documents to the iCloud. There is also a way to chose whether these updates occur over 3G or only over Wi-Fi. This allows Apps to save their own data and user data to the iCloud so that it is available across devices, and backed up into the cloud.
• The OTA update downloads over Wi-Fi or 3G connections.

Apple has begun sending emails about a new hard drive recall, called the iMac 1TB Seagate Hard Drive Replacement Program:

Apple has determined that a very small number of Seagate 1TB hard drives used in 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMac systems, may fail under certain conditions. These systems were sold between May 2011 and July 2011.

Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) will replace affected hard drives free of charge.

Apple is contacting affected iMac owners who provided a valid email address during the product registration process to let them know about this program. If you have not been contacted, but think you have a 1TB Seagate hard drive, you can enter your serial number below to see if it's part of this program.

Apple encourages owners with affected computers to go to an Apple Retail Store, an Apple Authorized Service Provider or contact 800-APL-CARE.

The recall will continue for one year: "Apple will replace affected Seagate hard drives, free of charge, until July 23rd, 2012. Apple will continue to evaluate service data and will provide further extensions to this program as needed."

iOS 5 Beta 4 is the first software update to be downloadable using Apple's new over-the-air updating system. As noted by @iam_lost, "iOS 5 beta 4 over-the-air update is a mere 133 MB, compared to the chunky 824 MB .ipsw file."

The over-the-air software update only downloads code that has changed or been updated in the update, thus making for a much smaller download. In this case, 691 MB smaller.