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Apple Loop: The Week In Review

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Keeping you in the loop on some of the doings around Apple this past week.

• ‘One More Thing’ a No-Show at WWDC.While Apple CEO Tim Cook was the emcee at the Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, he didn’t really spend much time on stage, turning over the podium to other executives during a two-hour fest that was long on new product news but short on any surprises. As long-rumored, Apple announced updates to its MacBook Air and MacBook Pro desktops; shared more details about the next version of its OS X operating system for the Mac — Mountain Lion (out next month); and said it will release a new version of its mobile iOS in the fall. The timing of the release of iOS 6 for the iPhone and iPad is expected to coincide with the introduction of a new version of Apple’s smartphone. Analysts still expect the iPhone 5 around October.

• Hello, Mac Pro — in 2013. It wasn’t the news that Apple is going to do a redesign and update to its high-end Mac Pro that was so surprising — it was how the company announced it. There wasn’t a press release or notice on its website about it, or any mention at WWDC. Instead, Apple CEO Tim Cook, in an email to a customer named Franz that started popping up in the rumor sites, said Apple would update its high-end desktop next year. An unnamed Apple exec also told New York Times columnist David Pogue to expect a new Mac Pro desktop in 2013 (though there was some confusion about whether the iMac would be updated next year too). Apple eventually said the Cook email was genuine, thereby confirming the 2013 release date. Seems like an awful lot of drama when a simple statement at WWDC – “The Mac Pro is still important to us, and we plan on having something new next year” — would have sufficed.

• Apple to Google Maps: Get Lost. All that talk about the Apple-Google rivalry heating up turned out to be spot on when Apple announced its own new Maps service to replace Google Maps in iOS. "In iOS 6, we have built an entire new mapping solution from the ground up, and it is beautiful," Scott Forstall, Apple's senior vice president of iOS Software, said at WWDC. Now an Apple Maps service isn’t really a big surprise. After all, Apple bought three mapping companies since 2009: Placebase, Poly9 and C3 Technologies. To handle local search, Apple has “ingested” more than 100 million business listings, which have been integrated with Yelp reviews, said Forstall. Apple’s Maps will also include turn-by-turn navigation, a 3-D viewing mode called Flyover that renders aerial views in realtime, and a traffic service that lets users see traffic incidents located along their route. Apple will pull traffic data from a variety of sources, including anonymous crowd-sourced data pulled from iOS users.

• The judge changes his mind. Remember how Judge Richard A. Posner in Chicago last week tentatively dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement lawsuit (here if you want to read it) against Google’s Motorola Mobility unit, four days before it was scheduled to go to trial on June 11. Posner said he might decide to change his mind. He did. He granted Apple’s request for an injunction hearing on June 20. In case you haven’t been following along, Apple accused Motorola Mobility (which was acquired by Google last month for $12.5 billion) of infringing four of its patents, which are being used in Motorola’s Droid mobile phones and Xoom tablet. Motorola counter-sued Apple, accusing it of some infringing too.

• Apple-1, Jobs’ Letter Fetch High Auction Prices. A working model of Apple’s first computer — the Apple-1 — was sold at auction for $374,500, double what Sotheby’s estimated, according to a report from the BBC. There were only about 200 Apple-1s made (the motherboards were built by hand by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak) and they were originally sold for $666.66. A handwritten letter written by a 19-year-old Steve Jobs in 1974 while he was working at Atari fetched $27,500 at the auction in New York. Jobs, who co-founded Apple with Wozniak in 1976, shared his thoughts about how to improve Atari’s World Cup game in what Sotheby’s dubbed the “Atari memo.” The 4-page, handwritten “notes are stamped with Mr Jobs' Los Altos home address and a Buddhist mantra - "gate gate paragate parasangate bodhi svahdl". It translates as: "Going, going, going on beyond, always going on beyond, always becoming Buddha."

• Kutcher has left the building. Filming of the Steve Jobs’ biobic jOBS wrapped up shooting at Steve Jobs’ home in Los Altos this week, but not before the locals got a chance to see a scruffy Ashton Kutcher decked out as Apple’s co-founder. There are loads of pictures from the shooting floating around the Web. Slashfilm assembled a bunch of them here.

• New emojis embrace diversity. The upcoming version of Appe’s mobile operating systems, iOS 6, includes new emojis — the emoticons used in texting and email — that for the first time represent gay and lesbian couples, Gizmodo found. “The icons are placed next to the previous relationship-related emojis showing a heterosexual couple holding hands and a heterosexual couple with a son. One shows two men holding hands. The other shows two women in the same position.”

• In China, iPad trademark dispute lingers on. After losing lost a ruling that denies it ownership of the iPad trademark in China, Apple appealed. But instead of getting an answer, a Chinese court said it will delay making a decision on the appeal so that Apple can continuing talking the whole thing over with Proview Technology. Long story short: Apple said it bought the rights to the iPad trademark in China in 2009 from a division of Proview. Another division of Proview (Shenzhen) said it actually owned the rights and they hadn’t been sold. The court sided with Proview (Shenzhen). Meanwhile, Apple continues its quest to capture more sales in China, its fastest growing market. The company this week said that Baidu will be the default search service for China’s iPhone users. Baidu said that Apple will get a cut of revenue ad revenue out of the deal.