MacRumors

As followup to the ongoing backdating story at Apple, Reuters reports that former Apple CFO Fred Anderson has settled with the SEC regarding the backdating issues surrounding Apple.

The settlement includes a $150,000 fine and repayment of option gains of about $3.5 million. This settlement avoids any admission of wrongdoing from the former CFO.

Meanwhile, it appears that the SEC will pursue legal action against former general counsel Nancy Heinen.

Heinen, who will be accused of manipulating one of her own option awards as well as a grant to Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, plans to contest the charges, the Journal reported.

The most recent reports have cleared Steve Jobs of any charges regarding the matter.

Update: The SEC has officially announced the above proceedings, and adds that it will not pursue any legal action against Apple itself.

The Commission also announced today that it would not bring any enforcement action against Apple based in part on its swift, extensive, and extraordinary cooperation in the Commission's investigation. Apple's cooperation consisted of, among other things, prompt self-reporting, an independent internal investigation, the sharing of the results of that investigation with the government, and the implementation of new controls designed to prevent the recurrence of fraudulent conduct.

Following an inadvertant peek last week. Apple has released iQuiz trivia game (iTunes Link) for the 5th generation iPods on the Apple iTunes Store:

Get your trivia fix with iQuiz, the fast-paced entertainment trivia game designed in a portable format. Put your pop culture knowledge to the test with questions about music, movies and TV shows."

Macworld reports that AT&T (formerly Cingular) plans on marketing Apple's upcoming iPhone to business users.

Cingular, which was acquired by AT&T, recently decided that the iPhone will appeal to business users and the operator is now working hard to ensure that its backend enterprise billing and support systems will accommodate the device when it ships, said a source familiar with the companys plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The news comes in the wake of comments by a Microsoft executive that the iPhone would "irrelevant to business users" due to a lack of 3rd party support:

"[The iPhone is] a closed device that you cannot install applications on, and there's no support for Office documents. If you're an enterprise and want to roll out a line of business applications, it's just not an option. Even using it as a heavy messaging device will be a challenge," the executive added.

Analysts appear to agree and feel that it would be a mistake for AT&T to market it specifically to business users who may depend on these 3rd party applications as well as ongoing concerns about battery life and the non-removable battery.

Apple stated early on that they will be limiting 3rd party development on the Apple iPhone. While additional applications may become available, they will be in a "controlled environment".

Businessweek reports on Intel's upcoming mobile initiative, with a report confirming that the Intel "Santa Rosa" platform will be launching next month (May).

The Intel executive also noted that Intel's Santa Rosa platform will start shipping in notebooks from next month. The mobile platform will comprise an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, the mobile Intel 965 Express chipset family, 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity and optional Intel Turbo memory that has been touted to improve application performance.

The Santa Rosa platform was previously detailed in February. It is essentially a mobile platform from Intel which incorporates the Core 2 Duo, 800Mhz front speed bus, improved graphics chipset and Intel's Robson flash-based caching technology.

This technology could correspond with reports of an Apple flash-based laptop have been ongoing for months. The most recent expectations have predicted them coming from Apple in "second half of 2007".

Our Buyer's Guide points to MacBook and MacBook Pros approaching the end of their product cycles, based on historical update timeframes.

Times Online reports that Amazon has approached all the major music studios about selling unprotected MP3s online.

According to the article, Amazon is aiming to launch this new music store next month in order to challenge Apple's own iTunes store. Apple and EMI made headlines earlier this month by announcing that they would be selling EMI's music catalog on iTunes without any form of digital rights management (DRM).

Not all other studio's appear to have adopted this model and Times Online expects only "EMI and independent labels" to join Amazon's initial launch.

The use of DRM in digital sales has been due to industry concerns about unrestricted piracy of music files. The use of DRM, however, also has limited interoperability between music stores and music players. At present, Apple's iTunes protected songs can be played only on Apple's iPod or Apple TV. Meanwhile, protected content from other online music stores (Napster, for example) cannot be played on the Apple iPod. The launch of unprotected music sales would eliminate these artificial limitations.

Appleinsider points to a Leopard Developer page which details Leopard's upcoming Instant Message framework which allows developers to take advantage of Leopard's new "iChat Theater" functionality.

iChat theater was first described when Apple first released details of Leopard last year:

Why wait for a darkened room and a projector to present vacation photos or Keynote slides? With Leopard, you can do it all remotely, from the comfort of iChat. Use new iChat Theater to present photos from iPhoto, slides from Keynote, or content from any iChat-enabled application with any iChat or AIM buddy. And do it in style full-screen, accompanied by a video feed of you playing host. iChats virtual presentation room makes a big impact.

The Instant Message framework opens this functionality to any Leopard application. According to the preview document "your application can present a slide show, a video feed, or even 3D graphics, complete with sound, to one or more conference participants".

More details about Leopard are expected at WWDC 2007 which takes place between June 11-15, 2007.

Apple will be webcasting a discussion of their Q2 2007 Financial Results on Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

Please note that comments made during this call may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. For more information on the factors that could influence results, please refer to Apples SEC filings.

The conference call begins at 2pm PT/5pm ET.

Mercury News reports that based on their investigation, there is little evidence to support criminal charges against Steve Jobs for the stock-option backdating investigation that first made headlines in June 2006.

Despite Apple's disclosure that Jobs approved widespread backdating at Apple, there is no evidence he directed the backdating of his own grant or covered it up afterward, based on a review of regulatory filings and interviews with lawyers intimately familiar with the grant who asked not to be identified.

Mercury News provides an excellent summary of the history of the backdating irregularities at Apple. The main issue surrounds an initial meeting on August 29, 2001 where the board had discussed granting Steve Jobs 7.5 million shares, but negotiations continued, delaying the finalization of the stock options. The grant was finalized in December, but the options were backdated to October 2001 with falsified meeting minutes related to the options grant.

The article points out that backdating, itself, is not necessarily illegal, though who was responsible for the falsification of documents remains a point of contention.

Macworld reports on a winning "hack" claimed by Shane Macaulay and Dino Dai Zovi for the Hack a Mac contest at CanSecWest this week.

The conference and contest took place between April 18-20th in Vancouver, British Columbia:

CanSecWest organizers will set up the MacBooks with their own access point and all security updates installed, but without additional security software or settings. Attendees will be able to connect to the machines via the access point through Ethernet or Wi-Fi, according to the CanSecWest Web site.

As originally planned, the rules for the hack a mac contest were relaxed on Friday after nobody had won the contest on the previous days. In the relaxed set of rules, a URL was provided that exposed Safari to a "specially-constructed Web page" which allowed the hacker to gain shell access to the MacBook.

The URL opened a blank page but exposed a vulnerability in input handling in Safari, Comeau said. An attacker could use the vulnerability in a number of ways, but Di Zovie used it to open a back door that gave him access to anything on the computer, Comeau said.

According to Matasano, Apple's most recent Security update does not address this specific issue with Safari.

Apple is in a strong negotiating position to seek further concessions from record companies when it comes time to re-negotiate iTunes Store contracts, according to Reuters.

Last year, record companies tried unsuccessfully to introduce tiered pricing of individual tracks into iTunes. Instead, an extension was signed with no real perceivable difference in terms.

This year, Reuters reports that Apple is in an even stronger position after having signed up EMI to offer "premium" tracks without DRM for an additional fee.

"EMI struck a deal that puts all of us at a disadvantage," said a music executive who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said EMI had agreed to let Apple sell its music without anti-piracy protection to please shareholders concerned that the record company was behind in the digital music race.

Despite this, the record companies will most likely still try to gain concessions such as a higher wholesale price or the addition of a subscription model.

"The record companies like the idea of the recurring revenue," said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire. "The challenge will be to convince Apple that it's worth the extra costs involved in setting it up."

Appleinsider claims that Target stores will begin carrying Apple's new Apple TV at retail locations by the end of the month.

Target will reportedly mimic Apple Stores with a full demonstration unit connected to a widescreen HDTV. No further details on the size of the launch are available, but Target already offers the Apple TV for sale on their online store.

The news comes in the wake of earlier reports that Best Buy had gained a brief "exclusive" on Apple TV sales for the first few weeks. According to anecdotal reports, sales of Apple TVs at Best Buys have been slow.

The Apple TV has seen a lot of interest in the technical community with efforts to hack and expand the device. Whether or not Apple TV will enjoy a large consumer adoption remains to be seen.

Apple has released Security Update 2007-004 for Mac OS X today.

Security Update 2007-004 is recommended for all users and improves the security of the following components:

AFP Client, AirPort, CarbonCore, diskdev_cmds, fetchmail, ftpd, gnutar, Help Viewer, HID Family, Installer, Kerberos, Libinfo, Login Window, network_cmds, SMB, System Configuration, URLMount, Video Conference, WebDAV

Arstechnica's blog provides some confirmation of earlier reports that Apple's iPhone is going through last-minute quality control and development issues.

An earlier report claimed Apple had run into several issues with the iPhone's software as well as some concerns about Battery life.

Ars claims that according to their source that Apple has "50 OS engineers working around the clock in Taipei to make sure that this shipped on time." They also claim that the last minute issues remain "software Q/A and OS-related issues" rather than battery life concerns.

As a result, their source believes that only a "trickle" of iPhones will make there way into shipping by the end of June, with difficulties with keeping up with early demand.

AppleInsider has posted a gallery of photos from Apple's NAB booth.

The photo set includes pictures of a huge glass-encapsulated Apple server farm comprising of 3/4 Petabytes of storage space, 3 miles of fiber optic cable, 4 M2 Gb networks, 90 Xserves and 40 Xserve RAIDs.

Overall, Apple's booth at NAB stands out from most others due to its sheer simplicity. The layout features the firm's traditional large theater area in the center, set to seat about two hundred attendees at any one given time. All seats were filled for most presentations throughout the day.

Clicking our image previews will take you to AppleInsider's full-resolution gallery containing additional pictures.

Various sites are reporting on a patent application released today (number 20070085854) entitled "System and method for computing a desktop picture." The abstract reads:

Disclosed are a system and method for computing a desktop picture. Instead of loading a file that contains the desktop image from memory, the present invention provides for a system and method for opening and retaining a procedural recipe and a small set of instructions that can be executed to compute a desktop picture. The desktop picture can be computed very quickly using a GPU (graphics processing unit), and can be made to move on demand. When a part of the desktop image is needed to composite, that part is computed using a fragment program on the GPU using the procedural recipe and a specially written fragment program into a temporary VRAM buffer. After it is computed and composited, the buffer containing the result of the fragment program may be discarded.

In summary, Apple seems to be leveraging the programmability of today's modern GPUs to be able to create computed desktop pictures that can be constantly updated to changing situations on the user's desktop.

Apple suggests that situations such as logging in or out, waking from sleep, or coming out from a screen-saver are currently too jarring, and the invention hopes to make this experience more seamless. Also mentioned is a tool that would allow designers to edit and specify the user experience.

Apple also seems to be conscious about system resources, mentioning several times about opportunities to free resources for use by other applications.

Patent applications can provide interesting insight into what concepts or technologies Apple is working on in their labs, however readers are reminded that only a subset of these applications will make it into final shipping products.

MacDailyNews republishes numbers from a preliminary report by Gartner on 1st quarter 2007 PC marketshare results. The numbers reveal an 8.9% worldwide increase in PC shipments, and a 2.6% U.S. increase in PC shipments compared to the same period last year.

HP now commands the highest international marketshare (chart) with 17.6% of shipments worldwide while Dell remains #1 in the U.S. (chart) despite a 15.5% drop in shipments from the year-ago quarter.

Apple, however, has seen a 30% increase in shipments for the 1Q07 period compared to 1Q06 period and held a 5% U.S. marketshare for PC shipments in the 1st quarter of 2007. This marketshare number represents the percentage of Macs out of all PCs shipped in the U.S for Q107. Apple's marketshare numbers over the past few quarters have been fluctuating between 4.7-6.1% depending on the source of the data, but year-to-year marketshare growth provides a useful measure and indicates that Apple's sales growth outpaced the PC industry as a whole.

Last year's Q106, however, may have been artificially low for Apple as that was still in the midst of the Intel transition. Apple has also blamed a slow Intel-transition of professional applications such as Adobe's Creative Suite for slow Mac Pro sales. Now with Creative Suite 3 shipping, we would hope to see further growth in Apple's Mac sales, if this indeed has been a limiting factor.

Reuters reports that an AT&T executive confirmed that the iPhone will be arriving "at the end of June".

"Our expectations are good. Our testing has been good," said AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson. "The iPhone is on target to launch in June."

This is consistent with Apple's previous statements regarding the iPhone's progress. Apple announced that iPhone was on target on April 12th:

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned

This is despite recent claims that the iPhone was running into issues.