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Over the past couple of months, several
photos of
displays claimed to be
for the iPad 3 have surfaced from various
sources. Such parts leaks are typical with the device's expected
debut early next month. While reports have claimed that these
displays are high-resolution "Retina" displays, there has been no
definite confirmation of these claims so far.
MacRumors has
now been able to obtain one of these iPad 3 displays and examine it
under a microscope in an effort to determine whether it is indeed
an ultra-high resolution Retina display. Physically, the purported
iPad 3 display is the same size as the current iPad 1 and iPad 2
display at 9.7" in diagonal, and looks quite similar to the naked
eye. However, when comparing the iPad 3 display to one from an iPad
2 under a microscope, the difference in resolutions becomes readily
apparent, with the iPad 3 display's pixels appearing to be
one-quarter the size of those on the iPad 2.

Since we only had a
raw iPad 3 display with no method to power it, taking high quality
photos of the pixels was difficult. Still, even with the relatively
poor lighting, you can easily make out the pixels on each display
(made up of red, green and blue elements). We highlighted a cluster
of 4 pixels (2x2) from the iPad 2 to compare it to the same area on
the iPad 3. On the iPad 3, the same cluster was occupied by 16
pixels (4x4) -- exactly twice the resolution in each direction.
Extrapolating out, the iPad 3 screen should carry a full resolution
of 2048x1536, exactly twice the linear resolution of the iPad 1 and
iPad 2 which is 1024x768. Such a screen should be able to display
much sharper images as compared to the previous generation iPads.
Apple is expected to
introduce the iPad 3 with a media event on March
7, and the device is rumored to be carrying this high-resolution
display, a new A6 system-on-a-chip, and LTE support for models with
cellular data capabilities.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
•
Apple Removes X11 in OS X Mountain Lion, Shifts
Support to Open Source XQuartz •
March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for
$3.99 •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 2:32 pm
Apple has posted a new feature on its site promoting a
countdown to 25 billion downloads for the App Store.
As of today, nearly 25 billion apps have been downloaded
worldwide. Which is almost as amazing as the apps themselves. So
we want to say thanks. Download the 25 billionth app, and you
could win a US$10,000 App Store Gift Card. Just visit the App
Store and download your best app yet.
Users can enter the promotion either by
purchasing/downloading an app from the App Store or by filling out
an
entry form. The contest winner will be the
individual who either downloads the 25 billionth app as determined
by Apple or who submits the alternate entry form immediately after
the 24,999,999,999th app download, whichever comes first.

Apple has
run similar promotions in the past, with a nearly identical one for
ten billion App Store downloads taking place
just over a year ago and another one for
ten billion iTunes Music Store downloads coming
in February 2010. Earlier promotions occurred at the one billion
song and app marks and at the 100 million song milestone.
Recent
Mac and iOS Blog Stories •
Apple Removes X11 in OS X Mountain Lion, Shifts
Support to Open Source XQuartz •
March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for
$3.99 •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 10:04 am
Reuters reports that Apple's
manufacturing partner Foxconn has announced new wage increases for
entry-level workers at its facilities in China, boosting pay
anywhere from 16-25 percent. The increase, which comes as Foxconn
is again under increasing global pressure stemming from reports on
working conditions and worker rights issues at the company, is the
company's third wage hike since 2010.
In a statement on Friday, Taiwan-based Foxconn said the pay of a
junior level worker in Shenzhen, southern China, had risen to
1,800 yuan ($290) per month and could be further raised above
2,200 yuan if the worker passed a technical examination. It said
that pay three years ago was 900 yuan a month.
Foxconn says that its wages are already far above
minimum wage standards set by the government and that it will
continue to focus on training and education for its employees. The
company also provides room and board for its employees, although
some have criticized the living conditions centered around cramped
dormitory-style housing with various reports citing anywhere from
eight up to fifteen or more beds per room.

Foxconn made a significant
boost to worker salaries in mid-2010 following significant scrutiny
over worker suicides at the company's facilities. Initial reports
had claimed that Apple was
directly subsidizing those wage hikes, but
Foxconn later
denied those reports.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog
Stories •
Apple Removes X11 in OS X Mountain Lion, Shifts
Support to Open Source XQuartz •
March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for
$3.99 •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 9:53 am
With yesterday's announcements from Apple regarding its forthcoming
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion operating system, a number of media outlets
had been provided with advance briefings and early copies of the
software for the purposes of having reviews prepared and ready to
go. When Apple published its press release and went live with OS X
Mountain Lion information at 8:30 AM Eastern yesterday, the embargo
was lifted and all of the pre-briefed publications immediately
posted their stories on the topic. But one publication with a long
track record of receiving favored access from Apple was missing
from that group:
The New York Times. An
article from the Times' David Pogue was
published about five hours after Apple's announcement, and it did
not appear to include any specific details suggesting that he had
received advance notice of the release.

As
reported by The Washington Post, Apple
apparently shunned
The New York Times over the newspaper's
"iEconomy" series of articles that has focused in large part on
working conditions in Foxconn's manufacturing plants in China.
Says a source at the Times: “They are playing access
journalism...I’ve heard it from people inside Apple: They said,
look, you guys are going to get less access based on the iEconomy
series.” The on-the-record word from the New York Times differs
only slightly from the not-for-attribution word: “We’re never
happy with our access to Apple. We never have been. Apple is a
difficult company to report on,” says Damon Darlin, the paper’s
tech editor.
A decision by Apple to cut off access for a
publication presenting the company in a less-than-favorable light
should certainly be no surprise to longtime Apple watchers, and the
technique is not an unusual one in business as companies constantly
seek to ensure the most positive coverage possible. But as
The
Washington Post notes, the
Times may be more than happy
to lose some access to Apple in exchange for its ability to publish
high-profile investigative reports such as its iEconomy series.
Update: David Pogue did
report on Twitter yesterday that he had been
"running Mac OS X Mountain Lion for a week", so it is unclear
exactly why his report was not ready to go when the embargo lifted
and why his article did not offer any mention of a pre-briefing
session as a number of the articles from other publications did.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories •
March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for
$3.99 •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents •
Apple Seeds Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion to
Developers

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 8:14 am
The Wall Street Journal reports that
Google and several other advertising agencies have been discovered
to be circumventing privacy protections in Apple's Safari browser
for iOS devices in order to track users through ads on numerous
popular websites. Google implemented the technique in order to
embed +1 buttons on its ads, tricking users' systems into allowing
cookies by using an invisible form submission to make Google's
third-party cookies, which are blocked by Safari, appear as
first-party cookies that are allowed.
To get around Safari's default blocking, Google exploited a
loophole in the browser's privacy settings. While Safari does
block most tracking, it makes an exception for websites with
which a person interacts in some way—for instance, by filling out
a form. So Google added coding to some of its ads that made
Safari think that a person was submitting an invisible form to
Google. Safari would then let Google install a cookie on the
phone or computer. The cookie that Google installed on the
computer was temporary; it expired in 12 to 24 hours. But it
could sometimes result in extensive tracking of Safari users.
This is because of a technical quirk in Safari that allows
companies to easily add more cookies to a user's computer once
the company has installed at least one cookie.

Google halted
the practice once it was contacted by
The Wall Street
Journal about it, but has tried to downplay the impact of the
issue.
In a statement, Google said: "The Journal mischaracterizes what
happened and why. We used known Safari functionality to provide
features that signed-in Google users had enabled. It's important
to stress that these advertising cookies do not collect personal
information."
In a companion
blog post,
The Wall Street Journal notes
that the loophole that had permitted Google to bypass Safari's
privacy protections has been closed in WebKit, the open source
engine behind Safari, with the change having been made by two
Google engineers. Consequently, Apple could and appears to be
preparing to bring that fix to the public version of Safari.
An Apple spokesman said: “We are aware that some third parties
are circumventing Safari’s privacy features and we are working to
put a stop to it.” An update to the software that underlies
Safari has closed the loophole that allows cookies to be set
after the automatic submission of invisible forms. Future public
versions of Safari could incorporate that update. The people who
handled the proposed change, according to software documents: two
engineers at Google.
The issue was discovered by Stanford graduate student
Jonathan Mayer, who has also published an
extensive blog post offering additional technical
details on how Google and other advertising companies circumvented
Safari's default cookie settings.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog
Stories •
March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for
$3.99 •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents •
Apple Seeds Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion to
Developers

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 7:42 am

There has been plenty of
evidence that Apple is planning for ultra high resolution Mac
displays. In July 2011,
we first detailed the existence of a new "HiDPI"
mode in OS X Lion. This HiDPI mode was put in place in anticipation
of the day that Macs would have double-resolution (4x the number of
pixels) "Retina" Displays. As on the iPhone, Apple's plan was to
make it easier on developers to jump to exactly 2x the linear
resolution. For example, a 1440x900 pixel screen would go straight
to 2880x1800 pixels. This would allow applications to automatically
scale up by a factor of two without necessarily having to include
high resolution artwork. Apple already made such a transition when
going from the iPhone 3GS's screen (320x480) to the iPhone 4's
Retina Display (640x960). In iOS, Developers can include high
resolution versions of their artwork
designated by the "@2x" suffix. From the
developer documentation:
The inclusion of the @2x modifier for the high-resolution image
is new and lets the system know that the image is the
high-resolution variant of the standard image.

A look at some of the
resources from Apple's new
Messages app shows several graphics that come in
multi-part TIFFs that include regular and double resolution
versions. In fact, if you look at the information embedded within
the images, you can see the resources were at one point named in
the same "@2x" convention. So, it seems Apple's Messages App is
already building in support for Retina displays on the Mac. Rumors
have
even suggested that we might see our first
Retina Display Macs in 2012. One early report claimed Apple was
working on a 2880x1800 MacBook Pro for the middle of this year.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories •
March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for
$3.99 •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents •
Apple Seeds Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion to
Developers

Date Published: Feb 17, 2012 - 4:14 am
Apple surprised everyone this morning with a
developer preview of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
The new release brings a number of iOS-like features to the Mac, as
detailed in this video: -
Messages - new version of iChat
with iMessage support -
Reminders - create lists and tasks,
synced via iCloud -
Notes - create notes, synced via iCloud
-
Notification Center - on screen pop-up notifications -
Share Sheets - share buttons to email, tweet, message,
etc... -
Game Center - social gaming center for Mac -
AirPlay Mirroring - broadcast your Mac's screen to your
Apple TV Apple also released a public beta of
the Messages App for OS X Lion users and is
available today. Apple did give some of the media early previews of
Mountain Lion, which we suspect may have been the
unusual media event that had been predicted. OS
X Mountain Lion is available to registered developers today, and
will be go on sale in late summer 2012. Roundup of our earlier
coverage: -
OS X Mountain Lion's Documents in the Cloud
Simplifies File Access Across Devices -
Apple Officially Drops 'Mac' Name from OS X Mountain
Lion -
Software Update to Move Inside Mac App Store in OS X
Mountain Lion -
OS X Mountain Lion Limits Apps to Mac App Store,
Signed Apps by Default -
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics -
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive We've also opened an
OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion forum for questions and
discussions about Apple's new operating system.
Recent Mac and
iOS Blog Stories •
Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold
Macs in Almost 30 Years •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents •
Apple Seeds Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion to
Developers •
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 3:40 pm
With developers needing to prepare for Apple's new
Gatekeeper feature in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion,
Apple has revealed that the functionality is already baked into OS
X 10.7.3 but hidden by default. Apple has instructed developers
that they can enable Gatekeeper on OS X 10.7.3 from the command
line in order to test the functionality.
Mac OS X users will soon have the option of turning on
Gatekeeper, a new Mac OS X security feature. When a user does
this, the system provides an additional measure of safety: it
blocks that user from opening newly-downloaded applications that
are not Developer ID–signed. In this scenario, the same user is
easily able to launch downloaded applications that are Developer
ID–signed. By default, Gatekeeper is not enabled in Mac OS X
v10.7.3. For testing purposes, you can turn it on by using the
new Mac OS X system policy control command-line tool, spctl(8).
Running the command "sudo spctl --enable" in Terminal
will enable Gatekeeper on OS X 10.7.3, and the system can be turned
off by replacing "enable" with "disable". With the system enabled,
developers can then test how their applications will behave on
systems using Gatekeeper.
Warning for non-signed application download with Gatekeeper
activated on OS X 10.7.3
Regular users obviously would have little use for
activating Gatekeeper on their Lion systems at the present time, as
developers have not yet had a chance to begin distributing updated
versions of their applications integrating the new Developer-ID
functionality. But its inclusion in OS X 10.7.3 is an interesting
tidbit that will help developers test their applications with the
new program and explains why the
new Xcode 4.3 that supports Developer-ID
requires OS X 10.7.3. In another sign of Apple's desire to quickly
implement Gatekeeper,
Panic's Cabel Sasser notes that Apple contacted
select developers last week to invite them to learn more about the
feature.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories •
OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008
Macs with Integrated Graphics •
Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over
"Swipe to Unlock" Patents •
Apple Seeds Safari 5.2 for OS X Lion to
Developers •
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive •
Apple Releases Xcode 4.3, Now Offered as App Instead
of Installer

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 1:05 pm
One of the major new features in OS X Mountain Lion is greater
integration with iCloud, with one of the additions being new
Documents in the Cloud functionality. As
noted by John Gruber, the feature expands
significantly on the existing feature that allows limited syncing
and transfer of iWork documents across their iOS devices and Macs.
iCloud document storage, and the biggest change to Open and Save
dialog boxes in the 28-year history of the Mac. Mac App Store
apps effectively have two modes for opening/saving documents:
iCloud or the traditional local hierarchical file system. The
traditional way is mostly unchanged from Lion (and, really, from
all previous versions of Mac OS X). The iCloud way is visually
distinctive: it looks like the iPad springboard — linen
background, iOS-style one-level-only
drag-one-on-top-of-another-to-create-one “folders”. It’s not a
replacement of traditional Mac file management and organization.
It’s a radically simplified alternative.
iCloud Documents in Pages (Source: Pocket-lint)
Apple is of course already extending this functionality
beyond iWork in OS X Mountain Lion, with the iCloud file storage
showing up in other apps such as TextEdit. Apple
is also releasing APIs to allow third-party apps to take advantage
of the feature.
iCloud Document within a folder in TextEdit
The functionality is naturally being compared to that of
Dropbox, which allows users to save files directly to their Dropbox
accounts for access anywhere, but Apple's new iCloud solution
offers the advantage of displaying only those files intended for
use with the app being used, helping to filter the list of
documents and offering iOS-like folder organization of files.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories •
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive •
Apple Releases Xcode 4.3, Now Offered as App Instead
of Installer •
Page 2: NVIDIA Presentation Slide Seems to Show a
MacBook Air / Pro Hybrid •
'Clear' To Do App Launches on the App Store •
Apple Switching Back to NVIDIA Graphics for Upcoming
Mac Pro Update?

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 11:32 am
With the launch of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in the middle of last year,
Apple was clearly trending towards dropping the 'Mac' From 'Mac OS
X', which has been the name of the Macintosh operating system for
more than 10 years. Though it still used the 'Mac OS X' naming
scheme
in press releases, Apple called the new system
'OS X Lion' on both the
main product webpage and the Mac App Store product
page [
Direct Link].

As The Verge
points out, Apple has completed the transition
to 'OS X' across both the Mountain Lion
product
pages, and the press release
announcing the developer preview.
We confirmed the official name change with Apple, who told us
that the preferred full name is "OS X Mountain Lion".
The Macintosh (as Tim Cook prefers to call it) brand
is still alive and well, though Apple seems to be focusing that
term on hardware, instead of software. Lion was the beginning of a
unification of sorts between the Mac OS and iOS. It was, as Steve
Jobs put it, what would happen if a MacBook Air and an iPad "hooked
up". iOS is based on Mac OS X and, at a fundamental level, there
are more similarities than differences between the two operating
systems. Dropping 'Mac' completely from the name of the OS
solidifies the subtle, but important, distinction between hardware
and software. OS X Mountain Lion is expected to be released later
this year.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories •
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive •
Apple Releases Xcode 4.3, Now Offered as App Instead
of Installer •
Page 2: NVIDIA Presentation Slide Seems to Show a
MacBook Air / Pro Hybrid •
'Clear' To Do App Launches on the App Store •
Apple Switching Back to NVIDIA Graphics for Upcoming
Mac Pro Update?

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 10:50 am
Apple's Software Update has long been the primary method for users
updating their systems, with the tool accessible through the Apple
icon in the menu bar offering automatic weekly checks for new
software updates from Apple. But as
shown by iClarified, Apple is doing away with
the standalone Software Update tool in OS X Mountain Lion and
integrating it directly into the Mac App Store.
Pocket-lint has more on Apple's decision:
Currently Apple's Software Update system in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow
Leopard, and Mac OS X 10.7 Lion force users to use a dedicated
update procedure that constantly checks to see if updates are
available. Apple now feels, it seems, that this way of doing
things might be slightly confusing to users coming from an iPhone
or iPad who are used to seeing updates for apps appear in the App
Store rather than buried elsewhere. Explaining to Pocket-lint in
a behind-closed-doors briefing for the new developer preview of
Mac OS X Mountain Lion, Apple has told us that the new method
will offer updates to the OS and Apple applications in a similar
way to how it does on iOS via the App Store, but in this case via
the Mac App Store.
The report notes that the move appears to require that
users sign up for an Apple ID if they have not done so already in
order to access the updates, and also encourages them to keep the
Mac App Store within easy access in their Docks so that they will
notice badges informing them of available updates.
Recent Mac
and iOS Blog Stories •
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive •
Apple Releases Xcode 4.3, Now Offered as App Instead
of Installer •
Page 2: NVIDIA Presentation Slide Seems to Show a
MacBook Air / Pro Hybrid •
'Clear' To Do App Launches on the App Store •
Apple Switching Back to NVIDIA Graphics for Upcoming
Mac Pro Update?

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 10:11 am
One of the significant new features in OS X Mountain Lion is
Gatekeeper, a new security system to help keep
users from installing nefarious applications on their machines. The
new system relies not only on Mac App Store distribution as means
of vetting apps, but also on a new "identified developer" program
under which developers distributing their applications outside of
the Mac App Store can register with Apple and receive a
personalized certificate they can use to sign their applications.
Apple can then use that system to track developers and disable
their certificates if malicious activity is detected.

As
Macworld
notes in its
review of Gatekeeper, OS X Mountain Lion's default
setting will be to only allow initial launching of apps either
downloaded from the Mac App Store or which are digitally signed
under Apple's identified developer program. Users will be able to
access Gatekeeper's settings in the Security & Privacy section
of System Preferences, where they will also be able to choose from
an even stricter setting that will allow for installation of Mac
App Store apps only or a looser setting that will allow all
applications to be installed and launched.
Located in the General tab of the Security & Privacy
preference pane is a setting called “Allow applications
downloaded from,” with three options: Anywhere: This
choice uses the same set of rules as every previous version of
Mac OS X. If an app isn’t known malware and you approve it, it
opens. Mac App Store: When this choice is selected, any
apps not downloaded from the Mac App Store will be rejected when
you try to launch them. Mac App Store and identified
developers: This is the new default setting in Mountain Lion.
In addition to Mac App Store apps, it also allows any third-party
apps that have been signed by an identified developer to run.
For users on the default setting, they can bypass the
initial Gatekeeper check the first time they launch an unsigned
third-party app by right clicking on the app itself and choosing
the "Open" command. Once the application has been opened one time,
Gatekeeper no longer has any control over it. As for apps that are
signed by an identified developer,
Macworld notes that OS X
Mountain Lion will perform a daily check with Apple's servers for
blacklisted developer signatures, and if an app from a blacklisted
developer is installed on the user's system it will not open.
Importantly, Apple's identified developer program does not involve
any sort of vetting on Apple's part, as certificates are
automatically issued upon request and can be freely used by the
developers. But what the program does do is provide a way for Apple
to link specific developers to specific apps and use Gatekeeper to
revoke application functionality should a developer be discovered
to be distributing malware.
Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
•
OS X Mountain Lion to Be True Mac App Store
Exclusive •
Apple Releases Xcode 4.3, Now Offered as App Instead
of Installer •
Page 2: NVIDIA Presentation Slide Seems to Show a
MacBook Air / Pro Hybrid •
'Clear' To Do App Launches on the App Store •
Apple Switching Back to NVIDIA Graphics for Upcoming
Mac Pro Update?

Date Published: Feb 16, 2012 - 9:33 am