Apple’s ’12 Days of Gifts’ App Kicks Off with Justin Timberlake iTunes Festival EP [iOS Blog]

Apple has officially started giving away free downloads on its “12 Days of Gifts” app for iOS devices, starting with an exclusive EP from Justin Timberlake made up of four live performances from the 2013 iTunes Festival. Before the official start of the giveaway, the app delivered a bonus song and video from New Zealand singer Lorde.

Apple’s “12 Days of Gifts” giveaways will run daily from December 26 through January 6 and will offer users samples of a variety of content, including songs, apps, books, movies from across Apple’s digital stores.

12 Days of Gifts is a universal app available for free in the App Store. [Direct Link]

Thanks, Luc!

Japanese Apple Stores Again Selling Annual ‘Lucky Bags’ on January 2

During the new year in Japan, retailers often offer a Fukubukuro, or “mystery bag,“ which is a grab bag filled with a random assortment of products sold at a steep discount.

Apple has participated in this tradition for quite some time, and will once again be offering its “Lucky Bag” in several different Apple Retail Stores across Japan on January 2.

Lucky Bags, which Apple will sell this year for 36,000 yen, or $345, usually contain items like iPods, headphones, and t-shirts. A few fortunate folks, however, have received big-ticket items in past years, like iPads or MacBook Airs, which have made Lucky Bags ultra popular in Japan.

Apple’s grab bags are sold as is, and returns are not accepted unless a product is defective. Still, the bags have been quick sellers on previous occasions, with many people lining up the night before to get their hands on a bag.

As with past years, Apple’s Lucky Bag promotion is limited to Japanese customers, though other countries, like China, may see the same traditional Apple Store sales during the new year.

Apple Fined by Taiwanese Regulators Over iPhone Price Fixing [iOS Blog]

Apple has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars ($670,000) by the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission after the company was found to be unlawfully influencing the price of the iPhone on the country’s cell phone carriers, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Under article 18 of Taiwan’s Fair Trade Act, an enterprise is not allowed to decide the prices of their goods after handing them over to a third party for resale. The company reportedly asked Taiwan’s three major service providers to adjust iPhone rates, including Chunghwa Telecom, Far Eastone Telecommunication, and Taiwan Mobile.

“Through the email correspondence between Apple and these three telecom companies we discovered the companies submit their pricing plans to Apple to be approved or confirmed before the products hit the market,” it said in a statement.

Apple may choose to appeal the Taiwanese government’s decision, however it may face a fine of 50 million New Taiwan dollars ($1,700,000) if it does not comply with the initial ruling. Furthermore, the ruling itself applies to iPhones only, with the government having no current plans to investigate Apple’s price interference with iPads in the region. Apple’s office in Taiwan has also not issued a statement on ruling.

First Mac Pros Begin Arriving Ahead of Christmas

Yesterday, Apple began shipping its Mac Pros to waiting customers, with many shipments carrying an estimated delivery date of December 30. As it turns out, Mac Pros are shipping early and are already making it into the hands of customers, with one MacRumors forum user receiving his Mac Pro today.

The 6-core stock Mac Pro was ordered on the West Coast with Next Day Shipping and had a listed delivery date of December 26, but it was delivered early, just ahead of tomorrow’s Christmas holiday.

With Mac Pros already reaching customers just a few days after orders initially began, Apple has successfully met its promised December release date for the professional desktop computer.

It appears that all Mac Pros shipped thus far have been the stock configurations, as customized Mac Pros ordered on the computer’s release date carried a non-specific “January” shipping estimate.

According to Apple, demand for the new Mac Pro has been “great” and the company expects that “it will take time before supply catches up with demand.” Mac Pros ordered today, both stock and custom, have an estimated ship date of February.

Apple’s Mac Pro starts at $2,999 for the low-end model, but can be customized with a wide variety of upgrades including additional memory, flash storage, enhanced graphics, and an improved CPU.

A fully loaded 12-core Mac Pro with 64GB of RAM, dual AMD FirePro D700 GPUs and 1TB of PCI-e based flash storage retails for $9599 in the United States.

(Thanks, Tom!)

Tim Cook to Reportedly Visit Turkey in February for Opening of Istanbul Apple Store [Mac Blog]

Tim Cook will reportedly travel to Turkey next year for the opening of Apple’s first store in the country on February 4, reports emlakkulisi.com [Google Translate]. The store is located in the city of Istanbul at the new multi-use Zorlu Center and has undergone construction over the past few years, and was reported to open in the beginning of 2014.

According to report, Cook will also meet with Turkish President Abdullah Gül during his visit, with talks most likely centering around the $4.5 billion iPad education initiative that was discussed between Apple executives and the country’s president earlier this year. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also visited Apple in May as a part of the ongoing negotiations. In total, the program would reportedly provide 10.6 million tablets to Turkish schoolchildren.

Apple has been making a significant push into the Turkish market for quite some time, with having listed initial job postings for stores in the country last November. The company also launched the iTunes Store for music and movies in Turkey last year.

Apple bought Catch and Broadmap in 2013, beefs up its note-taking, cartographical chops

Apple’s bought plenty of companies this year, and while the number they bought is known, all the names are not. Today comes secondary confirmation of two more firms acquired by Tim Cook, as 9to5Mac and AllThingsD cite unnamed sources that BroadMap and Catch were taken into the Cupertino fold earlier this year. Apple, for its part has issued its standard non-confirmation confirmation of the story, stating that it “buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.” Both acquisitions make sense, however, given that the technologies they bring dovetail nicely with existing Apple products. The headliner here is the acquisition of Catch, builder of a note-taking productivity platform not unlike Evernote. Catch has similar capabilities, with cloud syncing, image capture, voice recording and text notes all baked in, plus checklist creation, reminders, and collaboration features, too. Having such features in Notes for iOS and OSX would be pretty nice, no?

As for Apple’s other recently revealed acquisition, BroadMap? Its specialty is in dealing with massive amounts of mapping data and geographic information systems. Those strengths seem a natural fit given the still-fairly-daunting hill for Apple to climb before its cartography app catches up with Google’s behemoth.

Filed under: Software, Apple

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Source: 9to5Mac, AllThingsD