MacRumors

The Wall Street Journal publishes a profile (subscription required) of Apple's Board of Directors, focusing on the lack of independent executives on the board in the wake of Jerry York's death last week. The report notes that Apple CEO Steve Jobs holds a remarkable amount of sway over both the company operations in general and specifically the Board of Directors that is supposed to help guide the company, a situation that many investors have seen as undesirable.

Investors have long urged Apple's directors to be more independent of the company's powerful CEO, even as Apple has continued posting strong financial results. An independent board represents the interests of shareholders and can challenge the CEO when necessary, said David Nadler, a corporate governance expert and senior partner at consultants Oliver Wyman Group.

Mr. York's successor should be somebody "with sufficient stature and importance to take the CEO on," said Roderick Hills, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, who has led a dozen audit committees.

York joined Apple's Board of Directors in 1997 when Steve Jobs took on the "interim" CEO title after the ousting of Gil Amelio in a boardroom coup. Jobs blamed much of Apple's troubles on the existing board and demanded that the majority of them resign, allowing new directors such as York to come on board to help achieve Jobs' vision.

Today's report notes that Apple's directors have rarely challenged Jobs in boardroom meetings, even when many of them disagreed with his handling of his medical leave of absence for a liver transplant during the first half of 2009. York was reportedly "disgusted" that Jobs failed to reveal his medical issues in Apple's announcement that Jobs would not present at its final Macworld Expo keynote in January 2009, with York even contemplating stepping down from Apple's board over the incident.

Looking forward, it seems likely that Apple will seek to add at least one more member to its Board of Directors, as the current count of six members is now among the smallest of Fortune 500 companies following York's death and the resignation of Google CEO Eric Schmidt in August 2009. Apple, however, has made no public signs that it has begun the process of searching for new members for its Board.

Apple is continuing its rapid-fire seeding of Mac OS X 10.6.3 builds today, pushing out Build 10D573 to developers. The new build is only a single increment over the previous build issued last Thursday. World of Apple details the seed notes, which reveal that Apple has asked developers to continue focusing on GraphicsDrivers, Images & Photos, Mail, QuickTime, and Security Certificates for testing.

The seed notes also reveal one additional fix since the last build, involving an issue with recurring events in iCal when working with Exchange servers. The new build also continues to carry a single documented known issue involving the reoffering of the Safari 4.0.5 update issued earlier this month.

We have continued to expect an imminent release of Mac OS X 10.6.3, but Apple's release schedule remains unpredictable as it puts the finishing touches on the update. Late last week, an iMac user reported receiving a prerelease version of Mac OS X 10.6.3 via Software Update. That version was the previous Build 10D572, and it is unknown why the user's machine was able to access the download, although it does suggest that work on Mac OS X 10.6.3 is very close to completion.

AT&T today announced that next month it will begin a nationwide rollout of its 3G MicroCell service that allows users to route their cellular phone calls around the house onto their broadband Internet connection as a solution for spotty cellular coverage. Supporting both voice and data services, the 3G MicroCell device carries a price tag of $149.99, although AT&T is offering rebates to users signing up for monthly MicroCell service plans to augment their existing cellular plans or switching to the company's DSL or U-Verse broadband service.

AT&T today announced that AT&T 3G MicroCell plans to begin its national roll out beginning in mid April, with new markets activating in cities across the continental U.S. for the next several months. AT&T 3G MicroCell is an innovative solution that allows residential customers to route wireless phone calls and data connections (or sessions) across a home broadband connection. This solution is designed to benefit customers who live in homes that have coverage impediments that consistently interrupt wireless spectrum, such as dense wall and roof construction or unfavorable terrain.

Customers have the option of using minutes from their normal cellular phone plan or signing up for a $19.99/month companion plan that allows unlimited calling over the customer's MicroCell without utilizing their cellular minute allotment.

AT&T's 3G MicroCell began service in the Charlotte, North Carolina region last September and has expanded to other test markets in recent months as the company has geared up for full nationwide availability. AT&T, currently the sole iPhone carrier in the U.S., has received a significant amount of criticism over its network performance, particularly in high-density areas such as New York City and San Francisco. The company has, however, seen improved performance in recent months putting it on par or ahead of other carriers in many major markets.

Adobe Photoshop project manager John Nack yesterday pointed to a new demo video posted by a member of his team showing off an impressive new feature in Photoshop known as "content-aware fill". The feature utilizes complex mathematical algorithms to analyze digital images and assist users in filling in areas of complex scenes where undesired content has been removed.

The video shows a number of applications for the feature, from simple tweaks such as removing extraneous trash from an image of a park scene to far more complex tasks such as generating realistic looking desert landscapes and cloud formations.

While Adobe has been careful to specify only that the technology is set for inclusion in "a future version" of Photoshop, we have been told to expect it to make an appearance in the next version scheduled for introduction as part of Creative Suite 5 on April 12th.

App Advice reports that earlier this week it had an opportunity to view Apple's forthcoming iBookstore and saw that the vast majority of titles from The New York Times' best sellers list currently appear priced at the same $9.99 price point favored by Amazon's Kindle Store.

Anyway, at the moment, out of the 32 eBooks featured in the New York Time's Bestsellers section, 27, including the entire top 10 are priced at $9.99.

Of the remaining five titles from the best sellers list, the highest price listed is $12.99.

Apple's iBookstore pricing model, based on that used in its App Store, involves publishers setting sales prices with Apple taking a 30% cut of revenue. That model had been thought to be pushing most best seller eBook titles to a range of $12.99 to $14.99, above the $9.99 price point seen with Amazon's offerings. But a subsequent report suggested that the higher price range is merely a ceiling and that publishers will be permitted and even encouraged to offer lower price points such as those apparently being seen in the iBookstore.

The iBookstore is set to launch in the U.S. alongside the iPad on April 3rd.

Financial Times reports that Random House, the world's largest book publisher, has yet to sign on to Apple's iBookstore and may not do so before the iPad's April 3rd launch as it weighs fears that Apple's agency model for eBook pricing will result in a price war, eroding publisher profits.

Markus Dohle, Random House chief executive, did not exclude the possibility of reaching a deal before the iPad goes on sale on April 3, but said he was treading carefully, as Apple's pricing regime could erode established publishing practices.

Rather than allowing retailers to set their own pricing for books, Apple is building on its existing App Store model to allow publishers to set retail sales prices, with Apple taking a 30% cut of revenue. Apple has argued that the change will allow publishers to create more sustainable business models than the current system of relying on the willingness of distributors such as Amazon to sell content at little profit or even a loss, and a number of major publishers have accepted Apple's proposed tradeoff in view of their long-term viability. Random House, however, remains unconvinced and is still working with its authors and agents to assess the potential impact of a shift to Apple's agency model.

Developer Marco Arment yesterday announced that his popular Instapaper service for saving Web content for later reading will be coming to the iPad, hopefully in time for the device's launch on April 3rd. The service, which currently offers a pair of iPhone/iPod touch applications including the limited Instapaper Free and the more powerful Instapaper Pro ($4.99), downloads text-only versions of Web content and saves them to a user's free account for later reading on a variety of devices.

In his blog entry, Arment offers some preview screenshots and discusses his motivations for developing iPad-specific versions of Instapaper. (Instapaper Pro will be a universal application for both iPhone and iPad, requiring users to only purchase the application once.)

Once I nailed down a few definite iPad-friendly features, I realized that I could port all of them to the iPhone version of Instapaper Pro. And if I did that, all of my customers (and I) could use these great new features now.

So, rather than rewriting my entire interface for the iPad over the two months that we've had, I spent the first few weeks finishing and launching the 2.2 update to my iPhone app, a major undertaking that added a lot of great features, using techniques that would allow me to easily adapt all of the features to the iPad. And I spent the remaining time adapting my interfaces, rewriting or modifying where necessary, for this new platform.

Arment also discusses the quandary faced by the many iPhone developers who are looking to move their apps to the iPad but have not had access to an actual device for testing. Consequently, developers have to either trust the iPad simulator in the iPhone SDK 3.2 and Apple's reviewers in order to have their applications ready for the iPad launch or hold off until the device comes available and have customers make do with iPhone versions of their applications for several weeks or months until iPad versions can be created.

For Arment, seeing the pixel-doubled display of the iPhone version of Instapaper Pro in the iPad simulator was enough to convince him that he needed to have an iPad version of the app ready to go as soon as possible.

It sucked, and it was completely unusable by my standards. I don't think I'll want to run any pixel-doubled apps on my iPad in practice.

As far as I'm concerned, Instapaper isn't really available on the iPad until it's native. (This also influenced my decision to make it a universal iPhone/iPad app: I don't want anyone subjecting themselves to the iPhone edition in pixel-doubled mode.)

As a result of this decision, Arment is prepared to accept that a few minor issues may exist with the iPad version of Instapaper Pro and that he can fix them soon after the device launches. But that risk is outweighed in Arment's mind by the opportunity to have an iPad-specific Instapaper experience from day one.

Adobe today announced that it will hold a launch event for Creative Suite 5 (CS5) on Monday, April 12th at 8:00 AM Pacific Time. While the company has yet to release many specific details on CS5 or disclose what will be covered during the launch event, users are invited to register for a video broadcast to be covered by Adobe TV.

Adobe has shared relatively little about its plans for CS5, although it did reveal that Flash Professional CS5 will include tools to allow developers to build Flash-based applications and then export them in the standard .ipa format used for App Store applications. The technology was revealed last October along with a disclosure that several current App Store applications had been developed using a prerelease version of the software.

The upcoming CS5 release will mark the first major update to the company's flagship publishing applications since Creative Suite 4 was introduced in September 2008 and began shipping the following month.

The Loop reports on a new research note from Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster predicting that Apple will launch an Internet-connected television within the next 2-4 years.

"As connected TVs proliferate the integration of hardware, software and content will become a key selling point for TVs," wrote Munster. "We believe Apple is uniquely positioned to combine these elements at competitive prices ($2,000) for an Apple-branded TV."

Munster believes that Apple is developing a television subscription service, a plan that has reportedly been placed on hold amid resistance from TV networks and a push to lock in iPad content, in order to allow customers to replace their monthly cable subscriptions as one step toward offering connected TVs. Ultimately, Apple's television package could be priced at $50-$90 per month and would allow some users to do away with such peripheral costs as recording devices, video players, and dedicated gaming machines.

Munster has been an ardent advocate of the idea that Apple will eventually move into the television market, and apparently continues to believe in it despite recent comments from Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook claiming that the company has no interest in the market.

The flood of terse emails from Apple CEO Steve Jobs continues (via TUAW), this time responding from his iPad with a simple "Yep" to a question from a user about whether the iPhone's Mail functionality will gain a "universal mailbox" as found in Mail on Mac OS X.

Anyway, I just have one question for you: will iPhone ever have a universal mailbox just like Mail has on my Mac? It would be so much easier and efficient.

iPhone users with multiple email accounts on their devices currently must manually navigate between accounts to check for messages in each one, whereas Mail on Mac OS X presents a single Inbox with messages from all accounts displayed in a single window. Jobs' reply suggest that such Mac OS X-like Mail functionality is planned for the iPhone, although it is unknown when the change might be implemented.

Apple is widely expected to introduce new iPhone models, and presumably an updated "iPhone OS 4.0", sometime in the June or July timeframe if past releases can be trusted as an indication.

Also mentioned in TUAW's report are brief emails from Jobs arguing for iPhoto over Google's Picasa for photo management and noting that users will be able to move documents onto the iPad.

It's certainly no surprise, but Silicon Alley Insider has heard that Apple will be shipping iPads to prominent reviewers later this week in order to provide them ample lead time to prepare their featured reviews for the device's April 3rd launch in the United States.

We've heard from an industry source that Apple is either shipping iPads to reviewers this Thursday, or has already shipped them to be received this Thursday.

The report notes that it is unknown whether reviewers will receive Wi-Fi-only, Wi-Fi + 3G, or both types of iPads. U.S. customers will be able to obtain the Wi-Fi models beginning April 3rd but will have to wait until "late April" for 3G-capable models to become available.

The exact list of reviewers receiving early access to the iPad is of course unknown, but it is a safe bet that such personalities as The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg, The New York Times' David Pogue, and USA Today's Ed Baig will be among those with hands-on reviews ready for publication as soon as Apple opens the door.