Apple

Foxconn, the company that manufactures Apple's iPhone and iPods, has agreed to compensate the family of a Chinese worker who apparently committed suicide over a missing prototype.

A Foxconn official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Tuesday the company will give Sun Danyong's parents a one-time payment of 360,000 yuan ($52,600), according to an Associated Press report. The company also agreed to pay an additional 30,000 yuan ($4,385) for each year either of the parents is alive, the AP said.

That figure is higher than that reported Monday by The New York Times, … Read more

Apple and the major record labels are teaming up to create bundles of interactive features to accompany music downloads, according to the Financial Times.

The project, code-named "Cocktail," has Apple collaborating with EMI, Sony Music, Warner Music, and Universal Music Group with an eye toward a September launch date, the U.K. newspaper said on its FT.com site early Monday, sourcing the information to unnamed people familiar with the situation. Apple is known for making iPod- and iTunes-related announcements at September events.

Under the purported plan, people going to Apple's iTunes store to download music would … Read more

The Apple tablet has been rumored for years, but bits of information leaking here and there over the last few months indicate it could be for real. A new report from AppleInsider now says the device is on track to be introduced early next year.

The report on Friday said that the last few important hurdles in bringing the tablet to fruition have been cleared. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year, AppleInsider says CEO Steve Jobs has personally been overseeing the project, and is on schedule for a launch sometime between January and March 2010. AppleInsider says … Read more

The encryption functionality of the iPhone 3GS is so easy to crack that it is essentially "broken" as far as protecting sensitive personal data like credit card and social security numbers, according to a forensics expert and iPhone developer.

"I don't think any of us [developers] have ever seen encryption implemented so poorly before, which is why it's hard to describe why it's such a big threat to security," Jonathan Zdziarski told Wired.

With physical access to a 3GS iPhone and some free software data can be extracted within two minutes and an … Read more

Google on Thursday released a version of its Latitude mobile application for the iPhone. But Apple, curiously, has decreed that it be a Web-based app and not a native iPhone app, which has raised some eyebrows.

In announcing Latitude for iPhone, a Google blog post noted that the application works much the same way as on other platforms like Android, Symbian, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile. It allows you to show your location on a map so that friends may find you.

The big exception for the iPhone version is that you have to use the service in the Safari Web … Read more

It's been widely rumored that the next version of the iPod Touch and iPod Nano to be released by Apple will have cameras inside. Now, a series of photos from Chinese iPod case manufacturers suggest that it's more than just speculation.

The Cult of Mac blog has obtained a stack of photos of what it describes as "the worst-kept secret in China." The images show multiple case designs for an iPod Touch and an iPod Nano with notches out of the material, which suggest a camera, much like the way cases for the iPhone accommodate that … Read more

Apple has a history of appealing to creative professionals and has reiterated its interest in these core customers with the release of two major suites.

On Thursday, Apple updated its high-end video production suite, Final Cut Studio, and its audio suite, Logic Studio.

Apple began bundling its professional apps together several years ago, differentiating them into audio and video suites. Doing so allows customers to work on several applications, while staying in one environment.

"We try to make things work together up and down the range of products," Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, told … Read more

More good news for Apple this week: if consumers are going to buy an expensive computer, they're choosing the Mac maker.

That's according to the June tally of the PC market from The NPD Group. According to NPD, 91 percent of all computers sold at retail for more than $1,000 were Macs. That marked a slight increase from the 88 percent in May. But Apple officially owns that market, and it appears the price cuts across its MacBook Pro lineup introduced in early June helped. On Tuesday, Apple announced that it sold 13 percent more Macs during April, May, and June of this year than the same period a year ago, despite the recession and price-conscious consumers.

Of course, all the computers Apple sells--with the exception of the $999 white plastic MacBook and the Mac Mini desktop--are more than $1,000, so they should own that market. NPD's numbers do not include specialty gaming PCs that enthusiasts usually customize and buy online, which can be well over $1,000. But, as NPD analyst Stephen Baker points out, two-thirds of all computers are sold at retail, so the numbers paint a comfortably accurate picture of what's going on in the PC market.

Windows PCs on average sell for much cheaper now because of the increased focus on price point aided by the Netbook phenomenon. The average selling price for a Windows PC at retail in the U.S. was $515, and for Macs it was $1,400.

That would seem to justify Apple COO Tim Cook's comments on his company's earnings call earlier this week, where he pretty much said Apple would never make a Netbook because the company doesn't think it can make a quality notebook for $400 or $500. ("We're going to focus on what we've always done. The Mac has outgrown market in 18 of the last 19 quarters. I think that says that we do have the right approach.")

Or do they? … Read more

PASADENA, Calif.--It's not realistic to believe AT&T will have an exclusive on the iPhone forever, CEO Randall Stephenson said Thursday.

"There will be a day when you are not exclusive with the iPhone," Stephenson said, speaking at Fortune's Brainstorm: Tech conference here. However, he declined to get into details on the company's negotiations with Apple.

The issue of whether--and more likely when--AT&T loses the exclusive on the iPhone has become a major issue for the company and its investors.

"On balance, I think it works really, really well--maybe as … Read more