MacRumors

UBS Investment Research analyst Benjamin Reitzes claims that according to his "proprietary checks", Apple is working on an ultra-portable PC to be delivered by Macworld San Francisco 2007.

According to Reitzes, the ultra-portables would use NAND flash memory only in order to speed boot times.

This is not the first time flash-only portables have been discussed as a possibility for Apple. In January, Digitimes claimed that Apple would be taking advnatage of Intel "Robson cache technology" which does exactly this. Flash memory is used instead of the hard disk for computer startup and launching of frequent applications. The benefits would be faster boot time and improved battery life.

In a related report Apple was said to be stocking up on NAND Flash memory earlier this month. This accumulation was presumed to be iPod-related, but could also be used towards these rumored ultra-portables.

During Hon Hai's annual meeting, Chairman Terry Gou made a startling, albeit brief revelation about Apple's iPod plans.

Apple is about to unveil the next generation of iPod, the best-selling music player in the U.S., using a "none-touch" concept, Gou said without elaborating. --ChinaPost.com.tw

Hon Hai manufacturers Apple's iPods among other things. It is unclear what exactly "about to unveil" means, as the rest of the ChinaPost article discusses financial issues up to 5 years out. Also unclear is what exactly Gou meant by a "none-touch" concept, and whether his "next generation iPod" comments were in reference to a 6G iPod (a supposed incremental upgrade of the 5G) or to the rumored 'true' video iPod, or to another iPod model (Nano, Shuffle).

Hon Hai has recently received negative press regarding its iPod factory conditions, and it too soon to know how Apple's investigation into the matter will affect Hon Hai's contract to produce Apple's hardware.

Update: A recent Apple patent describing an audio interface for the iPod could be related to the "none-touch" concept. Patent described at Macsimum.

Over the past week, a firestorm has brewed over a report in Britain's Mail on Sunday which claimed extremely harsh working conditions at iPod factories. The original story is not available online, but Arstechnica has posted a good summary of the article.

In brief, two factories were visited by Mail on Sunday reporters. The first factory was found to be forcing its staff to work 15 hour days for $50 USD per month. The second facility benefited from being in closer proximity to Shanghai, and workdays were shortened to 12 hours/day and workers were paid almost $100 USD per month. Security guards were paid up to $150 USD per month, although much of that had to be paid back to the company for housing and food. In addition to long hours, work days were said to often be accompanied by military-style drills.

Today, Apple officially responded to the allegations with a statement (reported at Playlist/MacCentral):

"We are currently investigating the allegations regarding working conditions in the iPod manufacturing plant in China," said Apple in a statement provided to Macworld. "We do not tolerate any violations of our supplier code of conduct."

Raw Data: Apple Supplier Code of Conduct (pdf)

TGDaily reports that Intel has announced a press conference on June 26th, presumably to officially launch its Xeon 5100 processor, aka "Woodcrest." The Xeon 5100 will be available in 6 versions according to the site, ranging from 1.6 to 3.0 GHz using 1066 and 1333 MHz Front Side Busses. All models will sport 4 MB of L2 cache.

An unverified MacRumors source had previously reported that their XServe shipment had been put on hold due to a back order of parts, and according to Apple the parts would not arrive until June 26th. This would seem to indicate that Apple plans on announcing its Intel-based XServe on or around June 26th. Of note, ThinkSecret has previously reported that the XServe was not due for release until July.

Exact specifications of the rumored Intel-based XServes are still unknown.

Macenstein is reporting that a hacker with access to a Core 2 Duo "Merom" CPU clocked at 2.16 GHz has successfully upgraded his Mac Mini. According to the hacker's benchmarks, the upgraded Mini beat out a Dual 2.5 GHz G5 in an iTunes encoding test by 15%. Note that these benchmarks could not be confirmed by MacRumors, but are placed on Page 1 for interest's sake.

Both the Mac Mini and the iMac have socketed CPU's, which make them suitable for swapping with Intel's imminent Core 2 Duo chips, which are conveniently socket-compatible with Intel's current Core Duo chips. The MacBook and MacBook Pro however have their CPUs soldered to the motherboard, making upgradeability impractical.

According to AppleInsider and corroborated by a MacRumors source, Apple's upcoming 10.4.7 update to its Mac OS will include, among other things, an updated iSync utility.

According to AppleInsider and our source, Build 8J2126 for Intel Macs includes iSync 2.3 (current is 2.2) and includes support for "many additional phones" including Motorola's RAZR v3x.

There are some indications that AppleInsider's source and MacRumors' source are one-and-the-same, but that in of itself does not rule out the legitimacy of the rumor.

Apple today quietly released new ads featuring the Mac and PC duo that have been the staple of Apple's "Get A Mac" campaign. Multiple users report having seen the ads, with themes including the following:

- Macs do "fun stuff"
- Macs work "out of the box"
- Macs are "PCs too"

The ads have not been posted to Apple's Get A Mac site. At one point they could be reliably found at ESPN's Soccernet site, however the ad appears to have been replaced.

Update 2: Apple has updated its Get A Mac site to reflect the new ads. The new ads are formally named as follows (with links to Apple's site):
- Work vs. Home
- Out of the Box
- Touche

According to Macworld, Intel's researchers have created tri-gate transistors that better insulate circuits, which could enable either a 45% increase in speed or a 35% reduction in power used when compared to today's processors. This will help Intel to extend Moore's law, which states that that number of transistors on a chip would double about every two years, or in layman's terms, chip processing power will approximately double every two years.

Chip manufacturers have had difficulty extending Moore's law as chip geometry shrinks below 90 nanometers and frequencys escalate to beyond 2 Ghz. In both cases, chips begin to leak more electricity and run less efficiently. One solution is to build multi-core chips, which the industry as a whole has already adopted.

However, different chip manufacturers are playing with other methods of further increasing chip efficiency below 90 nm. IBM is placing research money into carbon nanotubes, and has made some impressive breakthroughs.

For its part, Intel is placing its bets on tri-gate transistors.

"Compared to carbon nanotubes, it is far easier to build," [Mike Mayberry, director of components research and VP of Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group] said. "The problem with carbon nanotubes is that no one knows how to put them in a particular spot except by moving them one at a time. Even our smallest chips have millions of transistors, so that is an insurmountable challenge. [...] [Tri-gate transistors] will be an option for chips somewhere beyond 45 nm -- in the 32 or 22 nm mode -- so that gives us confidence we can continue scaling Moore's Law into the next decade," said Mayberry.

Macworld states that Intel could begin using the technology by 2010.

AppleInsider is confirming that Apple's upcoming Mac Pro will indeed be quad-core in at least one model. However, with quad-core on a single chip (Kentsfield) not due until Q1 2007, Apple will have to employ two dual-core chips like today's Quad.

The use of multiple processors in the Mac Pro would require Intel's Woodcrest chip. Early rumors had indicated that Conroe was on tap for the Mac Pro, but Conroe can not be used in dual-processor configurations.

Recent pre-release benchmarks of Woodcrest can be found here. Still unknown about the Mac Pro is exactly what Apple has in store for the enclosure. AppleInsider does note that recent motherboard prototypes from Intel largely mimic the size of today's PowerMac motherboards, which could indicate that an immediate departure from the current form factor is not in the cards.

MacOSXRumors claims to have additional information on Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard revision.

According to their sources, they claim that Leopard will incorporate collaborative tools to allow users to work on documents over the internet:

The main idea is that it will be possible to declare a document as available for collaborative use over a network or Internet. Users who want to work on this document will be able to connect and work simultaneously on it. Modifications made by each user will be updated in real time for all connected users.

Support for such collaborative features are expected to be built into a framework for developers, and Apple is expected to integrate these features into future versions of iWork and iCal. A release target for Leopard is said to be January 2007.

The reliability of this information is uncertain. Previous claims of integrated virtualization into Leopard have not yet been substantiated.

Very little solid information about Apple's next version of Mac OS X has been revealed. What is known at this point is that Apple plans on demoing Leopard at WWDC 2006 in August. Apple has also publicly stated that Leopard will incorporate the final version of Boot Camp which is currently in Beta.

Apple and CBS announced that they are now offering prime time shows from CBS on the iTunes Music Store.

The new shows include Numb3rs, Survivor and CSI (Miami and NY) and are offered for $1.99 per episode.

The new CBS offerings include episodes from the just-completed 2005/2006 season, and earlier for some series, as well as the upcoming season which starts in September. New episodes in the fall will be available on iTunes the day after they appear on the network.

While CBS previously provided NCAA tournament episodes to iTunes in March, this represents the first of CBS's drama series on iTunes. CBS previously offered Survivor episodes from their own website for $1.99/episode.

Time has selected Apple's MacBook as its "Gadget of the Week."

The MacBook is a powerful and affordable option, especially for people who are uncertain about their Windows future. The next version, Vista, might be a success, but with a MacBook you can hedge your bet. You get a computer that runs both Mac OS X and Windows XP today, and even appears to meet the minimum requirements for Vista once it gets here. Dell and HP should be very worried indeed.

Apple has been previously featured on Time's October 24th, 2005 front cover with Steve Jobs holding a 5G iPod. Other appearances have included the 4G iPod being another Gadget of the Week, and the G4 iMac being leaked on the advance January 14th, 2002 issue of Time.

In what can only be described as a stunning development, undergrad students have rated Apple's iPod as the most "in" thing (according to a Student Monitor study reported by the AP), eclipsing beer for only the second time in the study's 18 year history. 73% of the students surveyed rated the iPod as "in", while beer and social networking website Facebook.com garnered second place with 71%.

The last time beer was knocked from the top spot was 1997, when the Internet took top prize. The AP article is mirrored at CNN.

Norwegian consumer advocacy group The Consumer Council has announced that the Consumer Ombudsman (CO) in Norway (an independent Norwegian administrative body tasked with enforcing the Marketing Control Act and supervising consumer issues) has given its support to many of the complaints that were brought in the Consumer Council's January 25th complaint against Apple's Norwegian iTunes Music Store.

Highlights of the decision
-It is unreasonable that the consumer must give consent to an agreement regulated by English law.
-It is unreasonable for iTunes to disclaim all liability for possible damage the software may cause.
-It is unreasonable that rights to music already downloaded by the consumer may change after purchase.

The decision appears to not agree with the Consumer Council's attempt to force Apple to allow customers to circumvent Fairplay. The original complaint (pdf) listed the fact that consumers were prevented under the license agreement from circumventing Apple's Fairplay DRM.

The Consumer Council is now waiting for Apple's response before proceeding. While it is still voluntary for Apple to comply with the CO's decision, the CO can forward the case to the Market Council (the Norwegian court of law in the field). The CO and the Market Council have the authority to ban unlawful contract terms and conditions.

The iTunes Music Store has come under attack in recent months by France, who originally proposed to demand that Apple open up its music store to allow other competing media players to play music downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. The bill was later gutted in committee and no longer issued those specific requirements.

Background Information: Background Information on Norwegian Consumer Groups

Update: A local Norwegian news site reports that iTunes interoperability does seem to be at issue. In addition, corresponding groups in Sweden and Denmark appear to also be following suit.

Update 2: CO Statement (Raw Data)

Apple quietly released an updated version of the U2 iPod today, following the same black and red color scheme of the previous model. The new version has a 30GB storage capacity and has all the capabilities of the current standard 30GB iPod model. The back of the model has the signatures of the band members laser-etched into a black finish.

The U2 iPod is available for $329, and comes with an iTMS coupon valid for a 30 minute video of music videos and band interviews.

An in-depth report by AppleInsider is shedding more light onto the recent appearance of Apple's full line of Macs at select southern California Best Buy stores. Contrary to the initial report by ZDNet which was based off of statements by analyst Samir Bhavnani, the current program is only a seven-store pilot.

However, Best Buy has indicated that it is prepared to scale the Mac pilot program "rapidly" if it proves to be a hit, according to Steve Lidberg and David Niederman, two analysts with Pacific Crest Securities. They say a fortified relationship with the electronics retailer will present Apple with the opportunity to bulk up on its domestic retail presence.

Best Buy is North America's #1 consumer electronics retailer and sells home and car audio products, CD/DVDs, and home appliances (washers/dryers/microwaves/etc) in addition to computer-related products.