Apple today seeded build 12D58 of OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.3 to developers, marking the eighth beta iteration of the newest version of Mountain Lion. 10.8.3 was first seeded to developers in November.

Build 12D58 comes a week after build 12D54, and like the previous build, contains no known issues or features. Build 12D54 brought significant changes to WiFi, and asked developers to focus on testing AirPlay, AirPort, Game Center, Graphics Drivers, and Safari.

9to5Mac notes that the new build again contains significant changes to WiFi, but additional changes are unknown. Registered developers can download the update on Apple’s Developer Page.

AT&T has released its holiday quarter earnings data, reporting that it sold a record 10.2 million smartphones -- 8.6 million of those (84%) being iPhones. AT&T reported earlier this month that the quarter was its best ever for iPhone sales. 16% of the iPhones were on accounts new to the company.

During the same holiday quarter, Verizon activated 6.2 million iPhones, some two-thirds of its total smartphone sale. AT&T's previous best quarter was 2011's fourth quarter, when it activated a total of 9.4 million smartphones and 7.6 million iPhones -- an 80% share for the Apple device.

On Twitter, Apple watcher Sammy the Walrus calculated that 74% of smartphones sold by AT&T and Verizon were iPhones, giving the device an "iPod-like share".

Update: AT&T has reached out to us to note that the 8.6 million iPhone number is activations, while the 10.2 million smartphone sales number is sales. This means the iPhone probably doesn't make up exactly 84% of smartphone sales, but it should be in the right ballpark. The activations number includes hand-me-down iPhones and the like.

Following yesterday's news that the independent film JOBS starring Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs will open in theaters on April 19, ETonline.com has released the first video clip from the film. The brief clip shows Kutcher as Jobs speaking with Josh Gad in the role of Steve Wozniak.

In the clip, Jobs (played by Ashton Kutcher) is raving about the operating system that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (played by Josh Gad) created. While Jobs is certain that this will become a ubiquitous product for mass consumption, Wozniak needs convincing.

"Nobody wants to buy a computer," says Wozniak.

"How does somebody know what they want if they've never even seen it?" Jobs replies.

In related news, management appears to have made a change to the styling of the film's title, as there had been a fair amount of confusion and criticism over the original "jOBS" styling, an homage to the "i" naming scheme for Apple's products.

But it appears that in recent weeks various official presences for the film such as a revamped teaser site, Twitter account, and Facebook page have adopted a new all-caps styling for JOBS, with the "J" appearing slightly larger than the other capitalized letters in the film's new promotional logo.

JOBS premieres tomorrow at the Sundance Film Festival ahead of the public release on April 19.

Following yesterday's record-breaking earnings numbers for the first fiscal quarter of 2013 that still fell short of analyst expectations, Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent out an email to employees (via 9to5Mac) congratulating them on the performance and announcing an employees-only town hall meeting scheduled for today.

Team,

We’ve just reported another record setting quarter, thanks to everyone’s incredible hard work and focus. We sold over 75 million iOS devices in the holiday quarter alone, which is a testament to the strength of Apple’s innovation. Please join me for an employee communications meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m. Pacific time in the auditorium of De Anza 3. We’ve created a space on AppleWeb where you can submit your questions in advance, and we’ll do our best to answer as many of them as we can during the meeting. The meeting will be broadcast live throughout Cupertino and at many other Apple locations. Please check AppleWeb for details.

Tim

Apple has held similar meetings in the past, with discussion at last year's meeting reportedly focusing on the company's philanthropy and also including an announcement of a new hardware discount program for company employees.

The iPhone app needed to unlock much of the functionality of the Pebble e-paper smart watch is now available for download from the iTunes Store - just in time for the first deliveries of the devices.



Pebble had previously suggested that the iPhone app might not be available in time for early deliveries of the watch, which set new records for a Kickstarter project in raising over $10 million in funding.

Pebble provides a range of ways to interact with the iPhone in your pocket via Bluetooth link, including caller ID, SMS and iMessage alerts, calendar reminders, email, Facebook and Twitter messages.

While talk of flatline growth dominated media responses to Apple's financial results yesterday, the massive growth of Apple's cloud-based services appeared to go largely unnoticed.


In 2012, reports iPodNN, the number of iCloud users grew from 85 million to over 250 million. iTunes subscribers have topped 500 million, generating a record $2.1 billion profit for the quarter.

iMessage has also proven to be a hugely popular service, with users sending over two billion messages a day from over 500 million devices, with the total iMessage count now having surpassed 450 billion. Apple CEO Tim Cook addressed the focus on online and web services during yesterday's conference call:

In terms of other services, we feel fantastic about how we're doing. In Notification Center, we've now sent over 4 trillion notifications, and this is mind-blowing. As Peter mentioned in his opening comment, for iMessage we've now sent over 450 billion and are currently sending those over 2 billion per day. With Game Center, we've got over 200 million registered users. We have 800,000 apps on the App Store with over 40 billion downloads. And so I feel really, really great about it. There is obviously more stuff we can do and you can bet we're thinking about all of it.

Cook has repeatedly referred to iCloud as a "strategy for the next decade" for Apple. He has also characterized the increasing reliance and trust consumers place on cloud-based storage and services as "truly profound" and "a fundamental shift" in the way content is accessed.

Today at the Hollywood Radio and Television Panel, Disney CEO and Apple board of directors member Bob Iger discussed his relationship with Steve Jobs, according to The Wrap.

Jobs became Disney's largest shareholder after he sold Pixar to Disney for $7.4 billion, which also set the stage for Disney's acquisitions of Marvel and Lucasfilm later on. Iger recalled that the deal almost never happened because of Jobs' disagreements with previous Disney CEO Michael Eisner. When Iger took over, one of the first things he did was call Jobs.

"I don't even remember it being totally premeditated," Iger said. "I just decided to call my parents and my grown daughters in New York and a couple of good friends and Steve."

He asked Jobs if their relationship could be salvaged, but Jobs responded that he felt that Iger was just more of the same, although he agreed to talk anyway. The rest is history as Pixar was sold to Disney and Iger and Jobs' relationship, and by extension Disney and Apple's relationship, improved.

Iger said Jobs was "relentlessly" honest and that he would call Jobs on Saturday nights to find out if the latest Disney movies "sucked." Iger went on to say that Jobs' directness was infectious and that he told Jobs how much Disney needed Pixar to improve its animation offerings. He later learned, after reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, that Jobs had been impressed by Iger's honesty.

Jobs has had a major impact in the world of animation as well as Disney and Pixar's fortunes. In November, Pixar named its main building after Jobs.

The Ashton Kutcher-led jOBS film will be opening in theaters on April 19, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The biopic, directed by Joshua Michael Stern and written by Matthew Whitely, chronicles Jobs' ascension from college dropout to one of the most revered entrepreneurs of the 20th century. Part of the film was shot in the historic garage where Jobs first set up shop at his family's home in Palo Alto, Calif.
jOBS also stars Dermot Mulroney, Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons and Matthew Modine.

The film debuts at the Sundance Film Festival this Friday, January 25. Stars Kutcher and Josh Gad, who play Jobs and Steve Wozniak respectively, will be at Macworld/iWorld next week to kick off the event with a talk about playing the two Steves.

During today's quarterly results conference for the first fiscal quarter of 2013, Peter Oppenheimer mentioned that the company focused on establishing a new operating segment of Greater China, including Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan

"We have established a new operating segment for China, given the contribution of that region to our business," said Oppenheimer.

The company has adjusted how it reports revenue for separate geographic regions because of the significant sales of both hardware and software in China during the last couple of years. China was responsible for $6.8 billion of Apple's revenue during the last quarter. Overall revenue in China is up 67%.


While Apple experienced strong iPhone growth overall, selling 47 million iPhones compared to 37 million in the year-ago quarter, it saw the most significant growth in China, which is up more than 100% year over year. Despite a late launch of the iPad, it was also noted to be successful in the country.

In terms of the geographic distribution, we saw our highest growth in China. It was into the triple digits, which was higher than the market there. We're extremely pleased.

It is clear that China is our second largest region. And there is a lot of potential there.

Apple opened four new stores in the Greater China area during 2012, and when asked about China during the question and answer section, Cook reiterated plans to continue to expand on the 11 stores that it has in the country, saying that Apple had "many more" stores to open.

Tim Cook spent a portion of January in China, meeting with both government officials and representatives from China Mobile, the country's largest mobile carrier. During the visit, Cook was interviewed by Sina Technology, where he emphasized Apple's efforts to raise its profile in the country.

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