Edible Apple

Forget about the liveblogs, you can check out Apple’s iPad Mini event today live via video either via Apple TV or via Apple’s own website.

MacRumors reports:

Earlier today, a new “Apple Events” channel appeared on the Apple TV revealing that the company will be offering live video streaming of today’s media event. At the time, it was unclear whether Apple would also be offering a stream through its website, but the company has now updated its site to promote a live stream available online.

BGR reports:

One of our reliable Apple sources has let us know Apple has begun testing iOS 6.0.1 with different carrier partners in the U.S. and we have a general list of what the first iOS 6 update will entail. iOS 6.0.1 should fix the horizontal lines bug on the screen when the keyboard or app folder is open, and it will also fix a problem with the camera’s flash not going off.

In addition, the new software will improve Wi-Fi support, fix cellular data not working in some cases, add a consolidated cellular data switch for iTunes Match, fix a bug that allowed access to Passbook pass details from the lock screen, and also finally fix the bug that caused Exchange meetings to be unexpectedly cancelled for the entire calendar invite group.

With over $100 billion in the bank, Apple is one of the most profitable entities on the planet. And lest you think that the money is just whittling away in a savings account, think again.

Though it’s not well known, Apple owns the largest hedge fund in the world. Located at 730 Sandhill Road in Reno, Nevada, Bareburn Capital helps manage Apple’s assets.

ZeroHedge reports:

Braeburn is a subsidiary of another far more famous company, which since 2006 has had one simple task: manage the cash of the parent company.

At Braeburn’s inception, the cash pile was modest, yet absolutely massive in unlevered terms, at just over $10 billion. Fast forward 6 years, and the massive cash pile has now grown to be epically gargantuan. Of course, the parent company in question is none other than Apple, whose publicly reported cash horde at June 30, 2012 was a whopping $117,221,000,000. This is the AUM of Braeburn.

The report goes on to note that there really isn’t much else known about Bareburn. It is interesting though that portfolio manager Ted Mulvaney had previously worked at Apple from 2005 through 2007 as a Project Manager.

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NextGov reports:

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency plans to end its eight-year relationship with the BlackBerry in favor of iPhones, according to solicitation documents posted Friday. The move could prove a major blow to ailing BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.

ICE plans to purchase iPhones for more than 17,000 employees, according to the notice, which states that RIM’s technology “can no longer meet the mobile technology needs of the agency.”

The defection by a law enforcement agency is a particularly harsh blow for RIM, which has led the mobile market in security even as it has trailed Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating system in functionality.

Apple is going after profits and neglecting the opportunity to garner significant marketshare.

9to5Mac reports:

Apple’s entry price for its upcoming smaller iPad is between the base model of the new, fifth-generation iPod touch ($299) and the currently shipping WiFi-only 16GB iPad 2 ($399). According to our sources, the base model of the smaller iPad will likely be priced at a minimum of $329 in the United States.

Two higher capacities of the smaller iPad will be available in the WiFi-only configuration. These will likely be priced at $100 premiums over each other at a minimum of $429 and $529.

US District Court Judge Lucy Koh has ordered that a lot of the evidence relied upon by both Apple and Samsung during their trial this past Summer be made public. And going against Apple’s own wishes, that includes sensitive financial data pertaining to product sales, margins, and profits.

Apple of course makes that information known in a broad sense, but for the first time we’ll soon have access to said information on a product by product basis.

Explaining her decision, Koh said that “Apple has not established that public availability of its product-specific unit sales, revenue, profit, profit margin and cost data would actually provide its competitors with an advantage.”

The Guardian however notes that “Apple still has another chance to keep the information under wraps. It will not be unsealed until the US Court of Appeal also examines whether the data should be made public.”

Koh also pointed out that Apple is seeking to have it both ways in the sense that they’re wilding around financial data to seek damages from Samsung – and remember they want about half a billion more than the $1.05 billion they were awarded this past Summer – but at the same time they want to keep that financial data secret.

Koh noted in her ruling:

Apple’s motion seeks to permanently enjoin the sale of 26 Samsung products that have already been on the market for varying lengths of time, and seeks an enhancement of $535 million on top of the $1.05 billion in damages awarded by the jury. Such remedies would have a profound effect on the smartphone industry, consumers, and the public. As the extensive media coverage indicates, this is a truly extraordinary case of exceptional interest to the public. Apple’s reasons would have to be very compelling indeed to overcome the unsually robust public interest in access.

For some time analysts and Apple observers have speculated as to the profit margins Apple enjoys on some of its most popular products. And we may soon have that handed over to us by Apple themselves soon enough.

The entire Maps “fiasco”, in my opinion, was overblown. The sky didn’t fall, the iPhone didn’t explode, and people didn’t return Apple’s 6th gen smartphone en masse. Quite the contrary, folks were snatching them up faster than Apple could make them.

Of all the millions of words that have undoubtedly been written about Apple’s Maps application, this following FAQ from Kontra really hits the nail on the head.

Q: Then why did Apple kick Google Maps off the iOS platform? Wouldn’t Apple have been better off offering Google Maps even while it was building its own map app? Shouldn’t Apple have waited?

A: Waited for what? For Google to strengthen its chokehold on a key iOS service? Apple has recognized the significance of mobile mapping and acquired several mapping companies, IP assets and talent in the last few years. Mapping is indeed one of the hardest of mobile services, involving physical terrestrial and aerial surveying, data acquisition, correction, tile making and layer upon layer of contextual info married to underlying data, all optimized to serve often under trying network conditions. Unfortunately, like dialect recognition or speech synthesis (think Siri), mapping is one of those technologies that can’t be fully incubated in a lab for a few years and unleashed on several hundred million users in more than a 100 countries in a “mature” state. Thousands of reports from individuals around the world, for example, have helped Google correct countless mapping failures over the last half decade. Without this public exposure and help in the field, a mobile mapping solution like Apple’s stands no chance.

There’s a whole lot more in the full FAQ which you should definitely read in its entirety over here.

The bottom line is, again, that Mapping is hard. Eventually Apple was going to part ways with Google and no matter when that time would come, growing pains were inevitable.

In August of 2011, Apple hired famed JailBreakMe developer Comex -aka Nicholas Allegra – as an intern. If you recall, JailBreakMe was a tool that enabled users to easily get through Apple’s iOS security measures and install any app of their choosing onto their device. At the time, JailBreakMe was described thusly:

JailbreakMe is the easiest way to free your device. Experience iOS as it could be, fully customizable, themeable, and with every tweak you could possibly imagine.

Safe and completely reversible (just restore in iTunes), jailbreaking gives you control over the device you own. It only takes a minute or two, and as always, it’s completely free.

Apple, after a while, decided that it was high time to stop playing a never ending game of cat and mouse with Allegra and bring him over to their side to help them make future iterations of iOS more jailbreak-proof.

Now, about 14 months later, Allegra is no longer an Apple employee per a tweet where he said, “So… no point in delaying. As of last week, after about a year, I’m no longer associated with Apple.”

Forbes followed up with him and it appears that the departure was the result of Allegra not responding to an Apple email regarding extending the term of his internship.

When I followed up with Allegra in a phone call, he explained that the email he forgot to answer was an offer to continue his employment at Apple as a remote intern. At Apple, apparently, offer letters are taken rather seriously, and Allegra soon learned that his had been rescinded. “I wasn’t too happy about it, but it didn’t seem like I was able to fix it,” he says. “So that’s what it is.”

Allegra added that his departure from Apple was more complicated than just a forgotten email, and that “it wasn’t a bad ending,” but declined to say more. He also wouldn’t say what he worked on during his two internships at Apple–one in the fall of last year and one over the past summer–but he said he enjoyed his time in Cupertino.

So as is typically the case, there seems to be more to the story. Alas, Allegra says that he will now concertate his attention on schoolwork as he is currently a Brown student.

A slew of reports are relaying that the anticipated iPad Mini will go on sale on Friday, November 2.

TechCrunch reports:

Apple’s iPad mini is almost certainly set to be announced next week at an event in San Jose Tuesday, and we’re now hearing that it will ship a week and a half after that unveiling. November 2 is the ship date we’ve heard today from a source close to Apple’s supply chain, echoing an earlier report by Geeky Gadgets that that’s the day the iPad mini will go on sale.

Geeky Gadgets cited a prominent U.K. retailer as the source of its information. For the iPhone 5, the September 21 retail availability date was telegraphed ahead of time thanks to leaked information from carrier partners, and retailers have been a source of Apple-related product leaks in the past. Our own source has also previously proven reliable with unreleased Apple info.

Get your pocketbooks out, folks, because the upcoming 13-inch MacBook Pro with a Retina Display ain’t coming cheap. 9to5Mac reports that the base model will cost approximately $1,699 while models with higher specs will add about $200 to $300 more to the pricetag.

“The base model Retina MacBook Pro retails for $2,199 in the United States, so the 13-inch varieties would create a more inexpensive option for those who also prefer a smaller device,” the report adds.

That’s a lot of money to be sure, but folks who have used the Retina Display have overwhelmingly agreed that it’s hard to go back after using one.

Apple is getting ready to open up what Senior VP of retail John Browett is calling Apple’s nicest retail store in all of China.

Apple is gearing up to open its third store in Beijing on the famous Wangfujing shopping street. Taking the title as the largest store in Asia, the three-story location demonstrates Apple’s heavy investment to court the Chinese market…

Browett went so far as to say that, in his opinion, the new location is the best store Apple has built in Asia so far. That would presumably take the unofficial title from the IFC Hong Kong store, which was Apple’s most expensive store to date when it opened last year. It also surpasses a Shanghai store that was formerly the largest in China.

The Wangfujing store brings the total number of Apple Stores in China to six, while the company operates roughly 390 locations worldwide. China is getting another store relatively soon, as Browett confirmed on Thursday the upcoming opening of a location in Shenzhen.

via The Next Web

MacStories reports:

I’ll get to the point right away. Tweetbot is, in my opinion, the best Twitter client for Mac. From my perspective, no other app gets closer to the amount of polish and functionality that Tapbots poured into their latest creation, making it the most powerful, fast, and elegant Twitter app I’ve seen on OS X to date. In hindsight, it’s also a superior product than Twitter for Mac, which, as you may recall, used to be my go-to client. Three months ago I reviewed an app that Iknew was going to be great.