Jordan Ostreff

Apple vice president of retail Jerry McDougal, a key player in Apple's retail development over the past 12 years, has departed the company to spend more time with his family, reports IFOAppleStore.

McDougal was Ron Johnson's right hand man when he was still with the company and was considered a possible replacement for Johnson when he moved on to head JC Penney.

A key player in the birth of Apple’s retail chain and a potential candidate to lead the retail stores has left the company. Jerry McDougal, Vice-President of Retail, said goodbye to his colleagues last Friday, sources say. His departure was explained as not work-related, but rather so he could spend more time with his family. Apple notoriously requires an enormous commitment of time from its employees, especially at the headquarters level. That commitment increased even more for retail executives after last year’s departure of Ron Johnson.

McDougal was also considered as a possible replacement for John Browett after he was fired earlier this year.

IFOAppleStore notes that McDougal was responsible for Apple's retail marketing, product merchandising, store operations, loss prevention and customer loyalty programs.

Update: McDougal has been replaced by Jim Bean, Apple's VP of Finance, according to a report by AllThingsD. He will retain his VP title:

"Retail has an incredibly strong network of leaders at the store and regional level, and they will continue the excellent work they’ve done over the past decade to revolutionize retailing with unique, innovative services and a focus on the customer that is second to none," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling said. "Jim Bean is moving to Retail to help support our store teams. Jim has been at Apple for 15 years and is a great leader who understands our culture and focus on customer service."

Apple is once again being targeted for its AppleCare policies in Europe, this time by Belgian consumer group Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats.

The organization filed a complaint against Apple yesterday with the Commercial Court of Brussels (via TechCrunch), claiming that the Cupertino-based company has not followed local warranty laws and has withheld information from consumers.

While electronics in the United States typically come with a one year warranty, the same products have a mandated two year warranty in the European Union.

According to the organization, Apple has failed to adequately disclose the details of the law to consumers, instead choosing to push its AppleCare Protection Plan and AppleCare+ extended warranties.

Test-Aankoop/Test-Achats was originally one of 10 European organizations that teamed up to reprimand Apple for its AppleCare practices, but the consumer group decided to move on with an official suit because Apple has "remained deaf" to demands.

Apple faced a similar lawsuit in Italy, which was resolved just last month. Apple was forced to pay more than $1.4 million in fines, in addition to modifying its website and ceasing the sale of AppleCare in Italian Apple Stores.

The New York Post reports on Bob Tedeschi, a former columnist for the New York Times' Gadgetwise blog who was sent undercover in 2010 to develop an app. The story was eventually spiked, but Tedeschi kept the project going.

The app he created, Bobo Explores Light, received an Apple Design Award and a number of other accolades and praise. Tedeschi used a pseudonym to avoid any favorable treatment by Apple or anyone else because of his job at the Times, and after the app proved so successful, he was moved from Gadgetwise to a gardening column.

"I was floored by how well it did," Tedeschi told The Post. He said his contact at Apple was "speechless" when he broke the news he was behind “Bobo,” which copped a slew of Apple awards.

"Bobo," created with two executives at Game Collage, has hit No. 1 in 12 countries in both the education and book categories.

Costing $4.99, "Bobo," which launched Sept. 15, 2011, is currently the No. 72 top-grossing iPad app, according to AppData, and is the first children’s educational app to make the App Hall of Fame.

Bobo Explores Light for iPad is available for $4.99 on the App Store. [Direct Link]

Following up on his report from last month, Jeffries analyst Peter Misek has released a new research report indicating that Apple's iPhone 5S is still in line for a launch in June or July of this year, with production beginning to ramp up in March.

Our checks indicate that preliminary builds for the iPhone 5S will start in March for a launch in June/July. As word of the earlier production schedule starts to spread, we believe we could see a slight slowing of demand CQ1 in anticipation of the new product launch and Apple will likely start curtailing channel inventory.

Misek notes that he has been seeing signs of two iPhone 5S prototypes currently in testing, although one could be the cheaper iPhone that has been the subject of a number of rumors in recent weeks. On the topic of that cheaper iPhone, Misek says that the device "looks close to being greenlit or may already have been" and offers some "likely specs" in order to help bring Apple's costs down:

Similar to the iPad mini, we expect a concentrated low-cost iPhone rather than a "cheap" one. Likely specs: polycarbonite case with 4" non-Retina display and no LTE. We believe a new low-cost iPhone would increase Apple's share, decrease [gross margins], but have little impact on [earnings per share].

Misek also directly addresses the iPhone with a 4.8-inch display mentioned in his earlier report, now saying that he is seeing no further signs of the device. He suggests that the form factor is for the iPhone 6 further down the road, but we remain skeptical about the likelihood of Apple making yet another change to the iPhone's resolution even two generations removed from the iPhone 5.

Finally, Misek comments on recent reports that Apple has slashed component orders for the iPhone 5 nearly in half in the first quarter due to "weaker-than-expected demand". Like a number of analysts, Misek casts significant doubt on the reasons for the dire claims, suggesting that lowered component orders are largely driven by an assembly bottleneck that has resulted in oversupply of components and projected ramping down of production leading into the iPhone 5S.

The original reports from Nikkei and The Wall Street Journal for their claims that Apple was planning to build 65 million iPhones this quarter before slashing its orders, an unrealistically high number considering expectations for sales in the range of 50 million units in the holiday quarter that coincided with the device's launch in most markets. The Wall Street Journal quickly removed the specific 65-million figure from its report, but uncertainty about the sourcing and accuracy of the associated claims persists.

BrightWire reports on an article from Chinese web portal Tencent claiming that Apple CEO Tim Cook discussed during his visit to China last week the company's plans to establish a research and development center in Beijing. The report includes several other items of information pointing to Apple's continued efforts to strengthen its presence in the rapidly growing Chinese market.

- At a meeting with Beijing's acting mayor Wang Anshun on January 8, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company plans to set up an R&D center in Beijing, an unnamed insider source told Tencent Tech today.

- Cook also noted that Apple will move a certain amount of its servers for App Store and iTunes to China in order to improve the downloading speed for users in China.

The report also cites "IT insiders" claiming that Apple is likely to set up its Chinese data center in either Zhangjiakou to the northwest of Beijing or in Inner Mongolia.


Apple's Sanlitun retail store in Beijing
Tim Cook shared some of his thoughts on the Chinese market during his visit to the country, noting that Apple has plans to build more than 25 retail stores in the Greater China region and that it is working hard to speed up the regulatory approval process for its products so that they can launch closer to the first wave of debuts.

Apple has been looking to open research and development centers outside of the United States, seeking to draw upon international expertise for some of its technological advances. The company has already moved forward on a center in Israel, and there had previously been claims that Apple was exploring the possibility of a research center in Russia, although those talks do not appear to have yielded any commitments.

Last July, Ars Technica took a look at the state of the Thunderbolt standard developed by Apple and Intel, noting that adoption remained slow amid high pricing some eighteen months after the standard's introduction. The report did, however, suggest that pricing could begin to improve in 2013 as the next generation of Thunderbolt chips hit the market.

Ars Technica has now published a follow-up report looking at how things have changed over the past six months, pointing to a number of improvements such as slightly lower pricing on Thunderbolt cables from Apple, the introduction of the first wave of optical cables supporting the standard, and the launch of new docking stations and other peripherals taking advantage of Thunderbolt.

The report indicates that the biggest holdup to wider adoption of Thunderbolt appears to be Intel's licensing and certification process, with the company dedicating only limited resources to helping third-party vendors bring their Thunderbolt products to market.

Several vendors we have spoke to over the past year have claimed that Intel was holding up the process, cherry picking which vendors it worked with.

Though Intel had effectively denied this characterization in the past, the company explained the situation a bit differently when we spoke at CES last week. Jason Ziller, Director of Thunderbolt Marketing & Planning at Intel, told Ars that Intel has "worked closely" with vendors it felt could "offer the best products" and could meet its stringent "certification requirements." The subtext seemed to be that Intel had limited resources to support and certify new products, and so it gave priority to devices that were perhaps more novel than those proposed by other makers.

Ziller indicated that Intel would be broadening its efforts this year, suggesting that more Thunderbolt products may be able to make their way into consumers' hands. Combining those efforts with continued cost drops and the first moves into Windows machines, Apple and Intel are undoubtedly hoping that 2013 will finally see Thunderbolt turn the corner.

Facebook is set to hold a press event later today, and it appears the whole thing’s going to be a massive kick in the teeth for Google. Not only is the social network expected to unveil its own smartphone, possibly powered by its own platform, but it’s also expected to hit Google where it really hurts — in search. Rumor has it the company will unveil its own search engine, which will rollout to users “very soon.”

Sources for Pocket-lint claim that Facebook is planning to launch a major new search feature that’s set to “shake everything up.” Although it’s unclear exactly how the search engine will work, it’s believed it will be integrated into the company’s hugely popular social network in the very near future.

Sources who don’t wish to be named have confirmed to Pocket-lint that the big announcement at the company’s event will focus on the new search feature with an expected roll-out shortly afterwards. Although the information is light on detail, the source is trusted and has given us legitimate information before.

Facebook already offers basic search features, but they all center around the company’s own services. You can search the web from Facebook.com, but all of its results are currently powered by Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. The feature Facebook is expected to announce later today will presumably replace Bing, and place a bigger focus on search.

While Google may be the world’s most popular search engine, if any company has the potential to put a big dent in its numbers, it’s Facebook. The social network currently boasts more than 1 billion active users, and if they can all search for the things they’re looking for from their Facebook timelines, there will be no need for them to leave the page to visit Google.

Facebook’s press event will get underway at 10 a.m. PST today.

Source: Pocket-lint

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Will the iPhone 3GS plastic back make a comeback?

Rumors of a cheaper, budget iPhone have been picking up steam in recent weeks. After the infamous Digitimes reported that Apple was gearing up to launch a low-cost iPhone later this year, mainstream publications like The Wall Street Journal chimed in with their own confirmations. Apple is “weighing retail prices of $99 to $149″ for the unannounced device, according to Bloomberg.

Now Digitimes is saying that Apple could use plastic instead of metal or glass to cut costs for this new “entry-level” iPhone.

Apple “may adopt plastic for its chassis instead of reinforced glass or unibody metal as in the company’s standard iPhone models, to save cost, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.” Interestingly, Digitimes also claims that the iPhone chassis supplier will be based in the United States. Apple already manufactures parts of the iPhone stateside, including glass in Kentucky and processor chips in Texas.

Recent iPhone models have had glass exteriors, while the iPhone 5 sports a metallic chassis. It looks like Apple could possibly go with a hybrid approach for this upcoming model. “Other rumors are circulating that the entry-level iPhone will adopt a chassis mixed with plastic and metal, with the internal metal parts being able to be seen from outside through special design,” according to Digitimes, a Taiwanese site that, despite its mixed track record, has accurately predicted Apple’s plans in the past.

Components for the cheaper iPhone are currently going through validation in the supply chain for the second half of 2013, if Digitimes’s sources are to be believed. Everything from the report jives with what the Journal and other publications have also said.

To complicate things, Apple’s Phil Schiller was recently quoted as saying that Apple didn’t have plans to make a cheaper iPhone. The interview was conducted by a Chinese paper, and confusion over the wording caused several American outlets to retract the story.

Source: Digitimes

Image: Flickr

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Digitimes provides more details about the rumored cheaper iPhone that has been circulating. According to their supply chain sources, this new entry-level iPhone is said to adopt plastic for its chassis rather than the glass and aluminum that has been used on their current models.

iPhone 3GS (2009) had a plastic enclosure.
They also cite other circulating rumors that suggest that the cheaper iPhone will alternatively offer a "chassis mixed with plastic and metal, with the internal metal parts being able to be seen from outside through special design".

The publication also reports that the components for the low-cost iPhone are going through validation and the final product may come to market in the second half of 2013.

Digitimes reignited the long-running rumors of a low-cost iPhone last week. The report was quickly followed by a Wall Street Journal and Reuters report claiming the same, and offering a target price of $99-$149. Subsequent comments by Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller seemed to suggest that Apple was dismissive of that possibility, but that article was later retracted by the original publication.