Jake Smith

Apple has just announced to developers this evening that they will be deleting iTunes Match libraries of those who are currently beta testing. The deletion will be taking place Thursday, October 27th (tomorrow), after a prior deletion took place a couple of weeks ago. Apple advises you to turn off iTunes Match on all of your computers and iOS devices, though music on your computer shouldn’t be affected. This move by Apple is to begin prepping the Match platform for public use.

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Charlotte Observer is reporting that Apple has begun work building a 174 acre solar farm to power their new Maiden, North Carolina data center. The data center, located in Catawba County, was revealed by Steve Jobs during the iOS 5 keynote at WWDC this year, and will be partly responsible for powering iCloud. It was revealed earlier this year that Apple was purchasing land around the data center. Now we know why.

Permits issued by Catawba County show that the Cupertino, Calif., company has been approved to reshape the slope of some of the 171 acres of vacant land it owns on Startown Road, opposite the data center, in preparation of building a solar farm.

The solar farm will spread across 171 acres outside of the data center, which originally cost Apple $1 billion to build.

The plans are called “Project Dolphin Solar Farm A Expanded.” Project Dolphin was the code name given Apple’s plans to build a $1-billion data center in Maiden.

There are no specific details on who exactly will be building the solar farm. For Apple, and many other companies, it has become important to build data centers with clean energy. Google is one of the companies that does this very well, and it looks like Apple is headed that way too.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mOzcZUA7AQ]

Bloomberg is reporting that the rumored Apple HDTV is being led by iTunes creator Jeff Robbin (introducing iTunes 9, above). Jeff Robbin led Apple to create both the original iPod and iTunes — so obviously he’s the man for the job.

Apple Inc. is turning to the software engineer who built iTunes to help lead its development of a television set, according to three people with knowledge of the project. Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public.

Bloomberg also quotes Piper’s Munster who believes that the HDTV is in prototype, due out late next year or 2013. He also postulates that the Apple TV will have Siri and iCloud functionality. Siri would act as the controller (think Kinect) and iCloud would help deliver user’s content.

In Steve Jobs’ biography, Jobs told Isaacson “that he cracked the code for building an HDTV.” Robbin is an interesting character. Bloomberg explains:

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Camera+’s founder Lisa Bettany has posted (via Gizmodo) photos showing the huge improvement the iPhone’s camera has seen over the years. While we didn’t realize it at the time, the original iPhone looks very blurry (especially in macro). Now the iPhone 4S has point-and-shoot quality with awesome lighting. Another after the break:

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Update: Full statement from Sprint below.

The Next Web is reporting that an internal email has been going around that both Sprint and Apple are working on a fix to the slow data speeds that are plaguing Sprint iPhone 4S owners. Sprint customers with an iPhone 4S have been experiencing slow data speeds since the iPhone 4S landed on the Sprint network October 14th. Ironically, many customers switched to Sprint for the fast unlimited data plan.

One possible temporary solution, as Don Southard points out, is a free AirRave 3G Airvana offered by Sprint to help with data speeds on the device.

Sprint (and Apple) also had a slip up today by offering the iPhone 4S off-contract for only $199 (supposed to be $650). A forum user explained earlier:

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Apple has just released an update to the 2nd generation Apple TV — version 4.4.2 (9A336a). We’re not sure if the update features anything besides bug fixes, but we’re downloading to see. Let us know what you’re getting in the comments below. Apple’s last update to the Apple TV, version 4.4.1, was pulled at first but then reintroduced. The update brought bug fixes, and we suspect that 4.4.2 does the same.

Update: We’ve been hearing reports that this update is causing a reset of the Apple TV, but works with a second try. Be careful!

Check out the MacBook Pro software update after the break:

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jqSK8Qv4ZY]

CBS has posted the full 60 Minutes program of the interview with Walter Isaacson, the author of ‘Steve Jobs’ — which is due out tomorrow (already available on iBookstore). Part 2 below, family life, competition and more.

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Before Steve Jobs’ biography drops Monday, many news outlets have already gotten their hands on excerpts from the book. Huffington Post has posted tonight some excerpts from the biography regarding Steve Jobs’ harsh comments on Bill Gates. Steve said:

“He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

Bill said regarding Steve:

“He really never knew much about technology, but he had an amazing instinct for what works.”

Steve said:

“Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

When it comes to Steve Jobs’ biological father, who we profiled a few months ago, Steve also harshly said..

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Copyright © 2011 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

Apple has just posted the picture above from Apple’s event this afternoon. Apple’s CEO is on stage speaking about Steve Job’s impact on the world.

Here’s hoping they post the video (but understand if not).
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Apple just announced some pretty interesting numbers in their Q4 earnings call. Below you’ll find them broken down:

1. $28.7 billion in Q4 revenue
2. $6.62 billion in Q4 net profit
3. $7.05 per diluted share
4. 17.1 million iPhones sold in Q4
5. 11.12 million iPads sold in Q4
6. 6.6 million iPod sales sold in Q4
7. 18 billion App Store downloads
8. 180 million iBookstore downloads
9. 6 million Lion downloads, since its release this summer
10. 4.89 million Macs sold in Q4


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During their earnings call happening right now, Apple has just announced that 180 million e-books have been downloaded from the iBookstore. That’s a big number!

Update: Judging by the comments, this update is bricking more than a few readers’ machines!

Update Pulled, expect another shortly

Apple has just released an update to the Apple TV this evening, updating the new 4.4 to version 4.4.1. We don’t know if there is any new features besides bug fixes as of yet, but we’ll be on the look out. If you find anything let us know; tips@9to5mac.com.

This is the first update to the new version of the Apple TV, version 4.4. Version 4.4 brought many updates including Trailers, Photo Stream, NHL, and WSJ Live. Check it out in action after the break:

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US department store, Sears, announced today that they are rolling out iPads and iPod touches to 450 retail stores nationwide. The rollout is to better the relationship between the customer and sales associate to improve the shopping experience. Sears will train their employees to utilize these devices to order products online for customers, access product information and videos, and show customers how to utilize enhanced purchasing tools to buy products they desire.

Sears isn’t the first company to rollout Apple products across their fleet. Lowe’s did something similar by bringing 42,000 iPhones to their stores to process sales. Old Navy, Home Depot, and of course Apple also use iOS devices to enhance the sales experience.

In the press release, Sears also said they’re working to upgrade their technology infrastructure so that customers can use their mobile devices to compare products (Wi-Fi). Sears will also use the iPads and iPod touches to train employees. Cheers, to a better shopping experience!

Update: the report appears to be incorrect.  We have updated information from a reliable source.

MacRumors points us to Apple’s how to buy page, where it has been updated saying that the iPhone 4S is now only available in retail stores by reservation only. The page says an iPhone 4S can be reserved after 9:00 PM each day, and will be available for pickup the following day.

An Apple representative told MacRumors that supplies are beginning to disappear, and are pushing customers to the reserve page to ensure they get a device rather than leaving the store empty handed.

It seems highly unlikely that Apple would push away a customer who would come in to buy a device. Perhaps they’ll be selling the remaining stock to those who walk-in. Customers can also order the iPhone 4S online.

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Shawn Blanc (via The Next Web) calculated this morning that Apple is selling 16 iPhone 4Ss a second, or roughly 1,000 a minute. Blanc’s figuring comes after Apple announced this morning that there were 4 million iPhone 4Ss sold its opening three-day weekend. Figures are also expected to expand as the iPhone 4S is introduced in 22 more countries on the 24th.

Reaching this milestone, Apple is on tract to pass Microsoft’s Kinect as the fastest selling consumer device of all time. Microsoft sold 8 million Kinects in the first 60 days, a number Apple could theoretically pass in the first two weeks.

The success of the iPhone 4S is most likely helped by a few factors:

1. The availability on three U.S. carriers: AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint. AT&T and Sprint both announced opening day sales records on Friday. The iPhone 4 was only on AT&T in the US its opening day.
2. iPhone 4 was released in 5 countries. iPhone 4S was also available in Canada and Australia in addition.
3. iPhone 4 saw serious product shortages while it appears that Apple made plenty of iPhone 4Ss (OK, maybe not)
4. There was a longer than normal wait time between the iPhone 4 and 4S (15 months)
5. iPhone 4S is amazing.

We’re sure to hear more in Apple’s FYQ4 earnings call tomorrow afternoon.

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As the iPhone 4S launched worldwide today, Apple’s stock just closed at $422 a share — an all-time high for the company. Pretty amazing for a phone “that only has a better camera”, right?

Apple has just confirmed via press release that they will be holding their Q4 (fiscal) earnings call for October 18th (found on investor page last month). The call will be held at 5 PM EST, and we’ll be covering it as it happens.

Apple will also be streaming the call over the web. There’s sure to be a lot of iPhone 4S and iOS 5 talk. Stay tuned!

The iPhone 4S has sold out completely across AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint reports Businessweek. While you can still get your order in, delivery in AT&T’s case has been pushed back 3 -4 weeks. Shipping should be similar for Verizon and Sprint too, but they aren’t providing a time frame on their website.

Apple announced it had sold 1 million iPhone 4Ss across 100 world carriers in 24 hours in contrast with 600,000 across the five launch countries in 2010 with the iPhone 4.

Tomorrow the iPhone 4S goes on sale, and stores should have an extra stock of the iPhone 4S for those who haven’t pre-ordered yet. To get your hands on those, you’ll probably have to hop in line pretty early. 
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As many of you know, Apple’s servers took a hard hit yesterday as everyone began upgrading to iOS 5, downloading OS X 10.7.2, and the various other updates to apps yesterday.  Some users were unable to actually activate iOS 5 for some time. This morning, however, everything seems to be in the clear in terms of upgrading to iOS 5, and won’t leave your device unusable, so it is all clear to download.

Was all of this really all Apple’s fault? Perhaps some ISPs are also to blame. As you can imagine, a sizable amount of people were downloading 400MB+ files, something that would cause a sizable spike in usage. Check out the graph from one ISP below.

There are a few reports out there that there are still issues with iCloud email not connecting to Apple’s servers. Let us know what you’re seeing in the comments. Apple’s Support page is telling us that some users are currently seeing Mail and Notes issues. Check it out after the break:

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Claiming Samsung copied the iPad’s design, Apple has successfully achieved their mission in getting an Australian judge to block Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 from being sold in Australia, reports Sydney Morning Herald. Apple says that Samsung is infringing on two patents, and the judge ruled until changes are made the Galaxy Tab 10.1 can’t be sold from this point on.

Apple and Samsung have current litigation continuing over in Europe and the United States. Apple has already successfully blocked the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany and hopes to do so elsewhere.

Samsung won’t start addressing the core patent issue (screen patent) with the Galaxy Tab 10.1 quite yet. They want to prepare a proper defense against Apple. Interestingly, Samsung has setup a temporary store across from a Sydney Apple Store selling Samsung Galaxy S IIs for $2, to detract from the upcoming iPhone 4S launch Friday. The fight continues…

Cross-posted from 9to5google.com.

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