Published: 12:30 PM EST (09:30 AM PST)

A pair of Apple’s largest authorized resellers this week are offering a handful of incentives on sales of new Macs that translate to the most aggressive instant savings on MacBook Pros and Mac minis seen so far this year and prior, including a 2.2GHz 17-inch MacBook Pro for $1815 and 2.3GHz Mac mini for $529.

MacBook Pro

In particular, MacMall has initiated steep price cuts on Apple’s entire line of February 2011 MacBook Pros, which yield the lowest prices ever seen on such models when combined with the 3% instant discount coupons on all MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs available exclusively to AppleInsider readers.

At the same time, a simultaneous offer that runs through this Friday (Feb 24th) sweetens the pot by throwing in free FedEx 2-Day shipping on all Macs, meaning orders placed today for in-stock items will be in customers’ hands by week’s end. There are no rebates or additional requirements tied to the deals, so all savings are instantaneously reflected at checkout.

The deals include a 2.7GHz dual 13″ MacBook Pro for $1,159.19 ($339.81 savings), a 2.0GHz quad 15″ MacBook Pro for $1,503.49 ($295.51 savings), a 2.2GHz quad 15″ MacBook Pro for $1,645.03 ($553.97 savings), and a 2.2GHz quad 17″ MacBook Pro for $1,814.38 ($684.62 savings).

It’s worth noting that these February 2011 MacBook Pros, while heavily discounted, offer only marginal performance tweaks compared to the refreshed MacBook Pros Apple quietly brought to market late last year, which in most cases sport only a 200MHz performance bump to their primary Intel CPU and similar enhancement in the clock speed of their discrete AMD Radeon HD 6700-series graphics processors.

The differences between the models, which are likely to be immaterial to most buyers, can seen and compared on Apple’s MacBook Pro Tech Specs support pages.

 
MacMall is offering FREE 2-Day Shipping on all Mac orders through Friday the 24th

2.4GHz dual 13″ MacBook Pro
$1,199.00
$1,128.99
$1,095.12*
$1,138.94
$1,129.00
$1,138.99
$1,199.00
$1,099.00
$103.88
2.7GHz dual 13″ MacBook Pro (Feb-2011)

$1,499.00
$1,359.99
$1,159.19*
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
$1,399.00
$339.81
2.8GHz dual 13″ MacBook Pro
$1,499.00
$1,424.99
$1,382.19*
$1,424.94
$1,419.00
$1,424.99
$1,449.00
$1,399.00
$116.81
2.0GHz quad 15″ MacBook Pro (Feb-2011)

$1,799.00
n/a
$1,503.49*
n/a
n/a
sold out
n/a
$1,699.00
$295.51
2.2GHz quad 15″ MacBook Pro
$1,799.00
$1,709.93
$1,658.63*
$1,709.94
$1,698.00
$1,709.99
$1,709.88
$1,699.00
$140.37
2.2GHz quad 15″ MacBook Pro (Feb-2011)

$2,199.00
n/a
$1,645.03*
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
$1,999.00
$553.97
2.4GHz quad 15″ MacBook Pro
$2,199.00
$2,044.87
$1,983.61*
$2,045.00
$2,024.00
$2,059.99
$2,058.88
$1,999.00
$215.39
2.2GHz quad 17″ MacBook Pro (Feb-2011)

$2,499.00
n/a
$1,814.38*
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
$2,299.00
$684.62
2.4GHz quad 17″ MacBook Pro
$2,499.00
$2,281.12
$2,274.61*
$2,348.99
$2,280.00
$2,359.99
$2,499.00
$2,299.00
$224.39

* + or • : Net prices after rebates and AppleInsider’s exclsuive 3% discount. The 3% discount coupon is automatically embedded in the links above. It will show up as “Instant Discount(s)” during checkout, only affter you’ve added the Mac to your shopping cart. Full details via AppleInsider’s complete Mac Price Guide.

Meanwhile, MacMall continues to offer AppleInsider readers the lowest prices anywhere on the current, late 2011 MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs via the same instant savings, 3% discount coupons, and complimentary 2-Day FedEx shipping arrangements. Final pricing and discounts on all such models can be seen in the price guides above, where the links to each product embed all necessary coupon codes.

Mac mini

For its part, MacConnection on Wednesday is also holding a 24-hour sale on the current 2.3GHz Core i5 Mac mini, knocking nearly $70 off the model until midnight, which is similarly the lowest price ($529.95) ever seen on that particular model.

 
MacMall is offering FREE 2-Day Shipping on all Mac orders through Friday the 24th

2.30GHz Core i5 Mac mini
$599.00
$568.95
$568.95
$529.95
$568.95
$568.95
$579.88
$579.00
$69.05
2.50GHz Core i5 Mac mini
$799.00
$762.95
$762.95
$759.99
$762.95
$769.99
$769.88
$779.00
$39.01
2.00GHz Core i7 Mac mini Server
$999.00
$955.00
$955.00
$955.00
$955.00
n/a
$955.88
$979.00
$49.00

* + or • : Net prices after rebates and AppleInsider’s exclsuive 3% discount. The 3% discount coupon is automatically embedded in the links above. It will show up as “Instant Discount(s)” during checkout, only affter you’ve added the Mac to your shopping cart. Full details via AppleInsider’s complete Mac Price Guide.

Savings on the remainder of Apple’s hardware offerings are always available through AppleInsider’s full-fledged price guides.

MacMall and MacConnection are both Apple Authorized Resellers and official AppleInsider sponsors, meaning a small portion of the proceeds from sales of Macs mentioned in this article may in some cases help support the publication financially.

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Published: 03:52 PM EST (12:52 PM PST)

System updates are now sensibly converged with a refreshed App Store in this summer’s release of OS X Mountain Lion, centralizing software updates and adding automatic app installs for all your iCloud-registered Macs.

Apple released the Mac App Store one year ago, rushing to add an iOS-like software store to the Mac desktop with such haste that it just couldn’t wait until the release of OS X Lion, bundling it instead with OS X 10.6.6. Apple subsequently used the Mac App Store as the primary way to distribute Lion itself last July.

Just like releases of iTunes before it, the Mac App Store experimented with novel placement of standard window controls, adding Safari-like navigation buttons next to the horizontally centered Close/Minimize/Zoom window controls, and similarly plopping non-standard toolbar icons in what has been reserved for the window’s title bar for the last 30 years.

This overt bending of the company’s own Human Interface Design Guidelines appeared intended to associate the Mac App Store with its iOS counterpart, particularly with its iPad-like mode icons across the top.

There were a few odd other edges that were harder to explain, however, the first being that the Mac App Store didn’t support full screen functionality (perhaps due to its need to support the older OS X Snow Leopard) and the second being its lack of integration with System Updates, the historical path for obtaining system updates, printer drivers, and other apps bundled with OS X.

One stop updates shop

The Mac App Store is now the only place users will need to visit to keep all their software up to date, at least for all their software obtained through Apple and its App Store publishers. Both “Software Update” and “App Store” items under the Apple menu of OS X Mountain Lion now direct users to the Mac App Store.

“Checking for new software,” shown below, will present any machine specific updates for OS X and its bundled software, as well as any pending updates for App Store titles (the later requiring you to be logged into your App Store account; system updates don’t require an account to obtain).

The Updates pane presents both OS X updates as well as App Store updates, and offers a simple user interface for selectively updating which items you want to install. In the prerelease build, some of the description of the updates may be hard to read, but we’d expect Apple to address this before it becomes available this summer.

Normalized window appearance

Once finished, the App Store reports that everything that can be installed already is. The revised Mac App Store in Mountain Lion also normalizes its window presentation a bit, placing the navigation buttons under the standard placement of top left corner window controls just like Safari, as well as adding a Full Screen button to the top right corner, restoring the normal window title bar area, all apart for the centered placement of buttons, something that with the other changes doesn’t seem so odd anymore. The iOS-style toolbar buttons are not configurable, but they don’t really need to be.

Apps in the Cloud, but where’s Dashboard Widgets?

The other notable change in the Mac App Store is a new option to automatically download software you buy on another computer, the “Apps in the Cloud” feature Apple debuted for mobile devices in iOS 5. This allows you to shop for apps on one machine and have the same titles automatically download on the rest of your machines registered with the same iCloud account (for free of course).

Mountain Lion’s revised Mac App Store does a great job of cleaning up and normalizing the upkeep of desktop software, but there’s a notable omission: Dashboard Widgets. Currently, the Mountain Lion Dashboard directs you to Apple’s Dashboard web page to browse for and obtain new widgets, but it sure would make a lot more sense just to add Widgets to the App Store, perhaps even offering a market so that developers had more motivation to create valuable widgets Mac users might want to buy.

Apple could also add other elements for sale (free or paid) within the Mac App Store, including optional Fonts, Speech Voices, QuickTime components, Quartz Compositions or Safari Extensions (which currently languish in a Dashboard-style web downloads web app). With the update plumbing of the App Store already present, it makes sense for Apple to use it for everything, although app specific items (like Safari’s Extensions) might make more sense to integrate as In-App purchases (even if they’re free).

In the future, it might also make sense for Apple to merge other purchases from iTunes into the Mac App Store as well, undoing the link between playing and managing media in iTunes and the Store for buying music, videos, TV shows and movies, as well as for downloading Podcasts and iTunes U content. This would mirror the breakdown in iOS between the store (called iTunes) and the Music and Videos apps used for playback.

It would also be great to see Apple add the iBookstore, but as with Safari Extensions, it might make more sense to do this as an In-App market within a future iBooks 2.0 Mac app, if that ever arrives as an alternative to the iPad for reading and using textbooks and other dynamic iBook 2.0 titles.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdbf828/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Cinside0Ios0Ix0I10A80Imountain0Ilion0Iapple0Ioverhauls0Isoftware0Iupdates0Iapp0Istore0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 05:00 PM EST (02:00 PM PST)

Apple’s newest partner in China is expected to sell 3-5 million iPhones this year, boosting Apple’s momentum during the summer while the release of OS X Mountain Lion will reinforce the iPhone’s halo effect over Mac sales, writes analyst Ben Reitzes of Barclays Capital.

In a note obtained by AppleInsider Reitzes wrote that China Telecom’s announced deal to carry the iPhone 4S alongside China Unicom, starting March 9, will help “support iPhone momentum, especially over the summer quarters of the year.”

The note highlighted that China “represents one of the largest growth opportunities for Apple right now and that the country could even be bigger than the US within a few short years.” China already accounts for 12 percent of Apple’s revenue, $12.5 billion in fiscal 2011.

Citing colleague Anand Ramachandran, who covers China Telecom, Reitzes wrote, “we believe that Apple could sell at least 3 million iPhones through China Telecom for the remainder of CY12 (with a best case scenario of nearly 5 million).”

Mountain Lion increases iPhone halo, thwarts Ultrabook threat

The next release of OS X, this summer’s Mountain Lion, “brings even more new features to Macintosh computers that are inspired by the iPad and iPhone,” Reitzes wrote, noting “we see this similarity as a good thing, serving to reinforce the ‘halo effect’ on Macs from the rest of Apple’s success.”

The note said the update also seems “perfectly suited for a new line of MacBook Airs that we expect to drive a new product cycle for Macs” in the second half of 2012.

“We believe that Apple intends to thwart any potential threat from Ultrabooks with this product line,” the note stated, “and we expect more aggressive pricing and industry leading designs.”

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdbea7e/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Cchina0Itelecom0Iexpected0Ito0Isell0I30I50Imillion0Iiphones0Imountain0Ilion0Ito0Ireinforce0Iiphone0Ihalo0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 05:02 PM EST (02:02 PM PST)

So-called patent troll Brandywine Communications Technologies filed a complaint on Tuesday against Apple’s iPhone and iPad, claiming that the devices infringe on certain ‘multimedia voicemail’ patents.

It was reported on Wednesday that the holding company is suing Apple in a Florida district court over two patents, No. 6,236,717 and No. 5,719,922, which both outline a system for simultaneous voice and data voicemails, according to GigaOM.

Being leveraged is intellectual property originally issued to former modem maker Paradyne in 1998, and a continuation of application in 2001, which describes a system that allows users to access stored voice and data messages at the same time.

From continuation patent No. 6,236,717, granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2001:

A simultaneous voice and data modem coordinates the storage of voice messages and data messages on an audio answering machine and a personal computer, respectively. This allows the called party to subsequently retrieve, via the simultaneous voice and data modem, both a voice message and an associated data message, i.e., a multimedia message, where the called party listens to the voice message while viewing the data message. The called party can retrieve the multimedia message either locally or from a remote location.

Florida-based Paradyne Corporation was bought out by broadband solution company Zhone in 2006, though it is unclear how Brandywine got hold of the firm’s answering machine property.

Exactly how Brandywine intends to assert the patent against the iPhone and iPad is also unknown, however it will most likely involve Apple’s Visual Voicemail feature that was introduced with the Cupertino, Calif., company’s first handset in 2007. The iPad doesn’t currently support visual voicemail, and it is possible that the suit may be aimed at other iOS features as well.

Wednesday’s news marks the second time Apple has been sued over the now-ubiquitous feature, as a Texas suit in 2007 claimed that the service, which allows users to select individual messages through an on-screen interface, was previously patented.

In that case, Klausner Technologies successfully defended the IP rights as it had done with other telecom giants that used the system including AOL Time Warner and Vonage, and forced Apple to settle out of court. The sum of the settlement was not made public, though it was reported that both Apple and then sole iPhone provider ATT licensed the technology.

Interestingly, Apple itself was issued a similar patent in 2011, though the scope of that IP was limited to how the service’s user interface handles message playback.

Brandywine itself was recently slapped with a lawsuit from Verizon over wireless spectrum technology, with the nation’s number one carrier describing the Delaware company as “a patent holding company that is in the business of enforcing patent rights through the filing of various lawsuits.”

No official announcement has been made by either Apple or Brandywine regarding case specifics.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdbfaf9/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Capple0Isued0Iby0Ipatent0Iholding0Icompany0Iover0Imultimedia0Ivoicemail0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 05:58 PM EST (02:58 PM PST)

Dashboard gets a Launchpad-style widget organization feature in this summer’s release of OS X Mountain Lion, offering a standardized user interface that will be more familiar to iOS users.

Dashboard, first introduced in OS X 10.4 Tiger, originally presented widgets in a drop down layer that appeared to float above the desktop. Additional widgets could be selected from a Dock-like perforated steel plate interface that appeared from the bottom of the screen.

While a wild divergence from standard window behaviors, Tiger’s Dashboard layer kept widgets (essentially self contained, simple web applets built using JavaScript, CSS and HTML) isolated in their own environment so they wouldn’t consume resources when idle, yet could still be quickly accessed and dismissed similar to Desk Accessories on the original Macintosh in the 1980s.

In OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple introduced Spaces, a virtual desktop feature for managing multiple screens each containing its own environment of active apps and their windows.

In last year’s OS X 10.7 Lion, Apple made Dashboard into a Space by default. Instead of depicting Dashboard as a special mode that whisks in above the desktop as a visual overlay, the widget layer is simply a panel that slides in from the left (evoking the left-most strip of audio playback and screen orientation lock controls accessible from the iOS multitasking bar).

Combined with Mission Control and Full Screen Apps, this intended to make Dashboard easier to conceptually work with, and easy to invoke with a four fingered swipe to the right. However, Dashboard retained its oddball widget picker, something that initially seemed to be visually related to the iOS Home page and Mac Dock, but which behaved unlike either.

In OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Dashboard get iOS-like widget management parallel to OS X 10.7 Lion’s Launchpad manager for Mac apps. Rather than a single “plus” icon for bringing up a widget picker strip, Mountain Lion presents the Dashboard Space with a plus and minus icon.

Clicking on the Plus icon brings up the Launchpad-like Dashboard widget screen. Just like Launchpad (or the iOS Home screen), you can now drag icons on top of each other to create organizing Folders. Rather than dealing with a “widget manager,” you can directly search for widgets from a field at the top of the widget page.

Dragging World Clock onto the Calendar icon automatically creates a “Productivity” Folder, which works and looks just like Launchpad and iOS.

There’s still the option, in the Mission Control panel of System Preferences, to not “show Dashboard as a space.” When you select this option, Dashboard appears as a translucent overlay as it did in Tiger.

Dashboard can be invoked by a keyboard shortcut or by launching it from its Dock icon or via Spotlight. The only thing really missing from Dashboard is a featured connection to the App Store; to get more widgets, Apple simply links to its Dashboard website.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to see Apple add Dashboard widgets support to a coming version of iOS, adding both a store to sell widgets to both iOS and Mac users and iCloud support to sync your widgets installations between all your devices.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdbf286/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Cinside0Ios0Ix0I10A80Imountain0Ilion0Idashboard0Igets0Iios0Istyle0Iwidget0Iorganization0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 06:18 PM EST (03:18 PM PST)

Apple’s trouble with factory assets in China has quickly become a conflagration, and two former Wintek employees stoked the flames on Wednesday when they offered their support of an online petition that will be delivered to Apple Stores across the nation.

In a translated statement, Guo Rui-Qiang and Jia Jing-Chuan are looking to raise the number of signatures on watchdog SumOfUs’ petition to 100,000 by Thursday, which is by no coincidence the date of Apple’s annual shareholders meeting, reports CNet.

“We believe it’d by symbolicly (sic) powerful if 100,000 people signed the petition before SumOfUs delivers it to Tim Cook,” Guo and Jia wrote.

The pair’s unified voice lends further gravity to the petition, as both were among the Wintek employees who experienced health issues after being exposed to n-hexane in 2009.

A fast-drying chemical agent, the now-banned n-hexane was used to clean iPhone screens in place of alcohol to speed up the manufacturing process at Wintek. Previous reports claim that at least 62 workers were hospitalized after being exposed to the toxic substance in 2009.

According to Wintek, those who suffered ailments related to n-hexane were given medical treatment, though the fiasco was the cause of a violent strike which was later settled with bonuses and a ban of the offending chemical.

Wintek was one of the first cases that brought working conditions at Apple’s Chinese partner factories to the mainstream media.

SumOfUs looks to deliver 90,000-100,000 names on a Chinese labor rights petition to Apple Stores on Thursday. Source: SumOfUs

“We have been pressuring Apple, and its new CEO Tim Cook, for years to compensate those of us who were injured working for them, and demanding reform of working conditions at their Chinese factories so that their workers don’t suffer like we do,” Guo and Jia said. “Now we need your help as customers or potential customers of Apple.”

Earlier in February, SumOfUs delivered petitions from Change.org to select Apple Stores in order to raise awareness of the working conditions in the Chinese factories Apple uses to build its products.

SumOfUs and Change.org said that a recent supplier audit was initiated in response to their efforts, however those claims came well after a January report that noted Tim Cook had announced plans to partner with the Fair Labor Association to conduct the check.

The world’s most valuable tech company has been under extreme scrutiny as of late over its use of Chinese labor, and Wednesday’s announcement follows an investigation of a Foxconn factory from ABC’s Nightline which showed that iPhone’s are basically made by hand.

Apple has vowed to keep suppliers in check, and has released through its website monthly supplier reports, the company’s code of conduct and a list of suppliers and manufacturers.

SumOfUs intends to deliver the petition in printed form on to numerous Apple Stores on Thursday in a “distributed” effort that involves “hundreds” of the organization’s members.

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Published: 07:38 PM EST (04:38 PM PST)

In a surprising announcement, the Air Force Special Operations Command said on Wednesday that it had canceled an order for 2,861 iPad 2 tablets that were slated to be used as electronic flight bags.

Government technology website Nextgov.com reports that the announcement comes two days after the publication queried AFSOC over its inclusion of Russian-developed secure document viewer GoodReader in the outfit’s planned iPad 2 flight software suite.

There is no evidence that the software was the cause of the decision to not move forward with the electronic flight bag initiative, however other military officials have chosen not to use Russian software for fear that sensitive data would be compromised.

For example, the Army’s smartphone project director, Michael McCarthy, noted that he would not put end users at risk by implementing software developed, maintained and updated in Russia.

AFSOC spokeswoman Capt. Kristen Duncan, said that the command “continues to explore options to develop the electronic flight bag program. We continue to look at each component of the [electronic flight bag] program to ensure we do the right thing for our airmen, don’t introduce unnecessary risk into operations and provide the best tools available to conduct the mission.”

In a move to replace bulky paper-based flight bags, airlines have been slowly moving toward tablet-based solutions that could save millions of dollars per year in fuel costs. The iPad was approved as an electronic flight bag in 2011, and a handful of carriers have already started to implement the device on the flightdeck.

A basic flight software package needs a document reader that can display navigation charts and flight manuals, with military outlets requiring the addition of encryption as the iPad has not been federally certified to store and transmit information.

GoodReader has proved to be a viable solution as it provides both ease of use and strong data encryption methods.

The software is currently being used in the electronic flight bags of Alaska Airlines pilots, and Delta is expected to use the program when it goes paperless later this year.

In an email exchange with Nextgov, GoodReader’s developer Yuri Selukoff took offense to the notion that his software would a security issue.

“Someone’s still living in 1970, aren’t they?” Selukoff said. When asked about possible malicious code that could affect mission-critical data, he replied, “what is this offensive and insulting assumption based on? Are there any actual facts or complaints that such thing has ever happened?”

Selukoff pointed out that he is not affiliated with any government body and added that he would be open to any security test if asked.

It remains to be seen if AFSOC’s cancellation will affect a decision from the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command to order up to 18,000 iPad 2 tablets.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdc6caf/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Cus0Iair0Iforce0Ispecial0Ioperations0Icommand0Iabruptly0Icancels0Iipad0I20Iorder0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 08:30 PM EST (05:30 PM PST)

The California Attorney General announced on Wednesday that it had reached an agreement with six companies, including Apple, Amazon and Google, to mandate individual privacy policies for apps that collect personal information that will allow users to read policies before downloading an app.

In total, the six companies represent the “majority of the mobile apps market,” California’s Office of the Attorney General said in a statement. Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft and Research in Motion have all signed the agreement.

According to the statement, the companies have adopted “privacy principles” that will bring them in compliance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act, a law that requires “mobile apps that collect personal information to have a privacy policy.”

“This agreement strengthens the privacy protections of California consumers and of millions of people around the globe who use mobile apps,” Attorney General Harris said. “By ensuring that mobile apps have privacy policies, we create more transparency and give mobile users more informed control over who accesses their personal information and how it is used.”

Harris gathered together the six companies last August to bring up the issue of mobile app privacy policies.

“California has a unique commitment to protecting the privacy of our residents. Our constitution directly guarantees a right to privacy, and we will defend it,” Harris added. “Forging this common statement of mobile privacy principles shows the power of collaboration — among government, industry and consumers — to create solutions to problems no one group can tackle alone.”

As a result of the new agreement, app buyers will be able to look over privacy policies before purchasing the product. Developers who do not comply with their privacy policies could be prosecuted under California law.

Apple and the other companies have also agreed to educate developers about the new policies. They will also work to offer users tools to report non-compliant apps.

With the rapid rise of the app-driven ecosystem, lawmakers and regulators have stepped in to ensure proper privacy protection. Last summer, the U.S. Senate introduced a bill that would require Apple, Google and application developers to obtain express consent from users before collecting or sharing location information. The proposed legislation came in response to concerns that iOS and Android were improperly collecting user location information.

Apple is currently counting up to its 25 billionth app download and is offering a $10,000 App Store Gift Card to an eligible user who pushes the company past the milestone.

The number of applications in the App Store is approaching 600,000. Apple has paid out over $4 billion to App Store developers. One recent study attributed 466,000 new jobs to the creation of the “App Economy” that Apple sparked with the launch of the App Store in 2008.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdc9e7d/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Capple0Isigns0Ion0Ito0Imobile0Iapp0Iprivacy0Ipolicy0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 09:01 PM EST (06:01 PM PST)

Apple’s annual shareholder meeting will be held tomorrow at the company’s Cupertino California campus, and activists are gearing up to use the event as a springboard for their “high impact communications programs,” including a continuation of issues related to working conditions among Apple’s Chinese suppliers that Apple addressed at last year’s meeting.

A history of attracting activism

Previous Apple shareholder meetings have been dominated by protest campaigns, such as the environment-themed conflict waged by Greenpeace and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in 2006, both of which were organized by “toxics campaigner” Iza Kruszewska.

At that year’s meeting, Steve Jobs suggested that Greenpeace hire staff with engineering backgrounds who could understand the issues involved, and insisted that Apple does more to push environmentally sound, innovative manufacturing techniques than other PC makers, blasting the criteria behind Greenpeace’s highly publicized ‘Greener Guide to Electronics,’ which ranked a random assortment of manufacturers according to goal commitments listed on their websites.

In 2007, the Teamsters and AFL-CIO unions challenged the company’s executive compensation reporting and tried to garner media attention around a shareholder proposal that would have ineffectually pleaded that the company not backdate stock options again, had the symbolic gesture not failed to pass.

In 2009, several shareholders in attendance expressed dissatisfaction with Apple for granting shareholders only a very short few minutes to comment and query executives, particularly after giving so much airtime to special interests pushing political agendas that have regularly been rejected by the majority of the company’s shareholders.

Cook talks China

Last year, Apple’s shareholder meeting seemed to escape from its usual onslaught of activism, although the issue of Apple’s environmental policies and its supplier responsibility issues in China were raised by Tim Cook himself, who stated “we have the highest standards,” adding that Apple is the most transparent in its auditing and reporting than any other company, reporting actual problems and taking real action.

Cook also noted that Apple had forced reimbursements of $300 million from its suppliers to workers and has involved governments to get involved and understand the issues. “We are doing the heavy lifting,” Cook said. “I am really proud of the changes we have forced in,” noting that Apple’s actions “will help more than Apple,” because the company is pushing to change how business is done.

Spitfire outrage gearing up for shareholder meeting showdown

This year, Cook is likely to be pressed further on the issues, with at least one petition group planning to bring pages of printed out names of online petitioners. Multiple groups collecting petitions related to Apple’s suppliers have sought to bring petitions to Apple’s corporate headquarters, and then to Apple retail stores after their “deliveries” failed to gain the necessary attention. Retail employees have since stopped accepting the boxes of printed names, leading to efforts to bring the printouts to Apple’s shareholder meeting instead.

The original petition, started at the end of January by Mark Shields, pleaded with Mac fans to demand that Apple “release a worker protection strategy for new product releases,” claiming that repetitive stress injuries and suicides “typically spike because of the incredible pressure to meet quotas timed to releases.”

Shields didn’t disclose in the petition, nor in his subsequent media interviews, that he is actually a director at the Washington DC based Spitfire Strategies, “a consulting firm offering advice on strategic communications and campaign planning for a wide range of non-profits and foundations,” as IFOAppleStores recently reported.

Spitfire describes itself on its website as being “dedicated to helping nonprofits and foundations create and implement high impact communications programs to achieve their social change goals.” In its report, IFOAppleStores stated Shields “said he posted the petition ‘as a private citizen,’ and that it had ‘nothing whatsoever to do with my professional life at Spitfire.’”

Shields’ Change.org petition and the SumofUs.org group operating its own petition (involved with printing out names to deliver to Apple) are both coordinating their initiatives through the same public relations firm, an effort that has given them significant media attention and notoriety in being able to sustain media attention.

Petitions drives ignore facts in Apple’s public reports

Both groups took credit for Apple’s announcement that it would be working with the Fair Labor Association to independently audit its suppliers’ factories, despite the petitions getting started after Apple announced its plans.

Of the two groups’ petitions, Shields’ Change.org drive focuses on suicide and injuries it relates to Apple’s scheduling, despite Shield’s admission that he has no facts to back up the claim that there is any connection between deaths or injuries and Apple’s quotas or other supplier requirements.

Shields’ petition asks for a action plan on worker suicides, while ignoring Apple’s publicly available, annual Supplier Responsibility reports, which document in detail what the company is doing and has done.

This year, Apple says it “surveyed more than 1000 workers about their quality of life, sources of stress, psychological health, and other work-related factors,” noting that “the team designed the questionnaire, delivered and collected it, and tabulated the results without Foxconns involvement.” Apple also reported that it:

Interviewed workers face to face, met separately with their managers, and evaluated working and living conditions firsthand.
Reviewed the facts of each suicide and the known circumstances behind them.
Evaluated Foxconns management of the crisis, assessing the effectiveness of counseling services and emergency response systems.

The report also details other actions Apple took in partnership with Foxconn, including the implementation of an “employee assistance program (EAP) that focuses on maintaining employee mental health and expanding social support networks. In addition, they have begun the process of expanding operations to other parts of China, enabling workers to be closer to their home provinces.”

Belated action demanded after the fact on n-hexane

The SumOfUs.org petition focuses instead on specific injuries (and four deaths) sustained by workers at a Wintek plant who in 2009 were instructed by the factory to clean iPhone screens using n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause nervous system failure. The company subsequently banned the use of the chemical and paid workers bonuses and made other financial compensations.

However, the SumOfUs.org petition falsely implied Apple directed the use of the toxic chemical to save itself money, and states that it continues to do so rather than using safer alternatives while being fully aware that it will hurt workers.

The SumOfUs petition described “a young girl” who “every day, during her 12+ hour shifts, six days a week, she repetitively swipes tens of thousands of them. She spends those hours inhaling n-hexane, a potent neurotoxin used to clean iPhone glass, because it dries a few seconds faster than a safe alternative. After just a few years on the line, she will be fired because the neurological damage from the n-hexane and the repetitive stress injuries to her wrists and hands make her unable to continue performing up to standard,” adding that “scenarios like this have been all too real in Apples Chinese supply chain.”

In realty, Apple disclosed the use of n-hexane at one site as a violation of its “worker endangerment” policies in its Supplier Accountability report, noting that “we required the facility to discontinue use of n-hexane, to fix the factorys ventilation systems, and to implement improvements to their management systems for Environmental Health and Safety.”

This was reported months prior to the petition, indicating that the petition was either simply ignorant of the facts Apple was making publicly available, or purposely misleading to incite sensational reaction.

SumOfUs.org describes the incident as occurring “in an Apple factory” and states, “If more people know about what we [workers hurt by n-hexane] went through, Apple will feel pressured to change so other workers dont have to suffer like we did,” while at the same time referencing Apple’s public reporting of the violation, which addressed that rather than needing to “feel pressured” to do something, Apple addressed the issue almost a year ago to prevent others from being similarly harmed by unsafe conditions at one of its suppliers’ facilities.

Greenpeace similarly made vast and often vague claims about Apple’s environmental policies that implied and suggested all sorts of abuses that were not true about the company, from using prison labor to dumping reclaimed waste on children in third world nations. At the same time, Greenpeace largely ignored the very real environmental lapses of Apple’s competitors because they did not result in media attention and were virtually worthless to use in fundraising.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdcb94a/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Ctim0Icook0Ito0Iaddress0Ichinese0Isuppliers0Iworker0Iissues0Iat0Iapple0Ishareholder0Imeeting0Itomorrow0I0Bhtml/story01.htm

Published: 09:12 PM EST (06:12 PM PST)

Former AMD employees revealed that Apple gave its “Llano” chip a “close look” for a new MacBook Air model last year, but ultimately decided not to go with the processor because too many of its parts were faulty, according to a new report.

AMD has been through several reinventions in recent years in a quest to find a niche to call its own. The company was an early competitor to chip giant Intel, but it has struggled to keep up pace with its rival as of late.

Brian Caulfield reports for Forbes that new “fusion” processors from AMD had a shot at upstaging Intel by making their way into Apple’s popular MacBook Air notebook for last year’s refresh. People familiar with the matter indicated that Apple had given the “Llano” processor, which combined the CPU and GPU into one part, serious consideration for use in its thin-and-light portable.

However, a former employee indicated that AMD was unable to get early working samples of the chip to Apple on time, though tipsters disagreed on exactly how close the company was to delivering the chip, with one claiming that AMD “had it.” According to the report, too many of the parts ended up being faulty and AMD lost the deal.

Sources also said AMD had proposed a low-power processor named “Brazos” for a revamp of the Apple TV box, but Apple declined to go with the option. “Brazos” went on to make inroads in the netbook industry and reportedly kept the company afloat.

“If Brazos had been killed, AMD wouldnt be in business,” one former employee said.

A separate report from late last year also claimed that Apple had considered the AMD “Llano” option “plan A” for its MacBook Air, but AMD was said to have “dropped the ball” at the last minute.

Apple released the Thunderbolt MacBook Air last July with Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors powering the notebooks. The machines became an instant success and reportedly jumped to 28 percent of the company’s notebook shipments just months after they were released.

Article source: http://appleinsider.com.feedsportal.com/c/33975/f/616168/s/1cdcb44c/l/0L0Sappleinsider0N0Carticles0C120C0A20C220Camd0Ifailed0Ito0Iprovide0Illano0Ichip0Ifor0Iapples0Imacbook0Iair0Ibecause0Iof0Ifaulty0Iparts0Bhtml/story01.htm