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Apple and some of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have been under heavy fire ever since info on the National Security Administration’s PRISM program leaked to the public last month.

In response to the public’s outcry that tech companies are working with the NSA to pilfer personal info on targets of interest, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and others have formed a broad alliance with civil liberties groups that will tomorrow demand for increased transparency regarding the U.S. government’s spy programs on citizens.

All Things D reports that the alliance will publish a letter Thursday, demanding President Obama and Congress allow tech companies to provide reports on information requests related to national security.

Apple’s CEO wants to sell more iPhones, but only in his stores. The iPhone is Apple’s cash cow with its high profit margins, and it creates a “halo effect” that causes customers to buy other Apple products.

Less than 20% of iPhones are currently sold in Apple Stores, and Cook won’t stand for it. Despite the fact that 80% of customers buy their iPhones elsewhere, 50% bring them into the Apple Store to get serviced. If Cook wants the sales/repairs ratio to improve, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

As a response to T-Mobile’s new Jump plan that allows customers to upgrade their smartphone once a year for free, AT&T announced Next two days ago, which offers similar perks as Jump but at a much higher cost.

T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere has already launched an AT&T Next bashing campaign to go along with the anti-AT&T rant filled keynote he delivered on July 10th. According to an email exchange with CNET, Legere views AT&T Next as just “a poor copycat” of Jump that’s designed to ripoff consumers more than ever:

If Apple wants to have the iPhone 5S in our hands by September or October, they need to already be making them. And according to a new report, they are… and we have some details on the exact specs, as well as some pictures of the iPhone 5S in manufacturing.

Apple has had an exclusive contract to use the next-gen Liquidmetal alloy for almost three years now. Theoretically, Liquidmetal could allow Apple to realize thinner, lighter, more resilient devices… but the Liquidmetal fabrication process is hard to work with, which is why, so far, we’ve only seen one actual Liquidmetal Apple product: the SIM removal tool that ships with every iPhone!

But it looks like Apple might have finally cracked the problem. And they are eyeing Liquid Metal for use in the iWatch.

Here’s a dumb rumor. According to a new report out of the East, the iPhone 5S is being delayed because Apple, at the last minute, decided to phase out the current 4-inch display for a 4.3-inch one.

Apple has today announced Logic Pro X, the most advanced version of Logic Pro to date, which boasts a new interface, new creative tools for musicians, and an expanded collection of instruments and effects. Logic Pro X also introduces new features like Drummer and Flex Pitch, and Logic Remote, which lets you play and control Logic Pro X from your iPad.

Apple may be forced to reduce its iPhone 5S orders for the fourth quarter of 2013 due to supply constraints affecting the handset’s rumored fingerprint sensor and LCD driver chips. Both components were expected to enter production in late June or early July, but that’s now been pushed back into late July, according to industry sources.

Apple has been trying to get a TV streaming service off the ground for quite some time. Instead of requiring your expensive cable subscription, Apple’s approach would likely be internet-only and rely on individual deals with the networks.

In order to entice the networks, Apple has proposed an interesting business model for advertising. According to a new report, Apple wants to compensate networks by paying them for ads that viewers have skipped.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek has today claimed that Apple’s iPhone 5S will enter mass production this month ahead of its release in late September or early October. Misek also claims that Apple has already begun producing its low-cost iPhone, which he believes will cost $300-$400 without a carrier subsidy.

Samsung Electronics has reached a deal with Apple to supply A9 processors for the iPhone 7 from 2015, The Korea Economic Daily reports. Samsung has been producing Apple’s mobile processors since the iPhone first launched in 2007, but recent rumors have claimed the Cupertino company has been looking to take its business elsewhere.

We’re expecting Apple to refresh almost all of its iOS devices this fall — including the incredibly popular iPad mini. But a new rumor claims we won’t see it equipped with a Retina display until 2014, when it’ll also get a new design with an “almost bezel-free look.”

Apple is “aggressively” hiring new talent to make the rumored ‘iWatch’ a reality, according to a report today from the Financial Times. The last specific claim we heard regarding the iWatch was when Bloomberg said Apple wanted to launch the product this year after placing a team of around 100 product designers on the project. Engineering issues have caused Apple to seek outside help, and now the Financial Times believes that we won’t see the iWatch until late 2014.

Amazon is beating Apple in the eBooks racket by using Apple’s own pricing strategy for music.

But Apple can still clobber Amazon by out-Appling not the iTunes pricing strategy, but the Apple marketing strategy: Create a vastly better user experience for both content creators and content consumers! Oh, and focus on audio.

Here’s how.

The iPad mini is, for my money, the perfect iPad as far as form factor is concerned. But man, that 1024 x 768 display just looks like garbage once you’ve gone Retina. So while I have (and love) my iPad mini as an e-reader, I won’t get rid of my Retina iPad until the iPad mini can match it, pixel for pixel.

I doubt I’m alone in this, which is why everyone’s eagerly waiting for the iPad mini 2. Apple obviously wants to put a Retina display in the next-generation tablet, but the question remains: is the technology (and the production yields) there yet to make it a reality? Not in 2013, according to a new report.

Best Buy is currently giving away gift cards worth a minimum of $200 to those who trade-in a second- or third-generation iPad for a new model. The offer will get you a brand new fourth-generation iPad with Retina display for as little as $299.99.

Chair Entertainment has confirmed that Infinity Blade: Dungeons, the third installment in the Infinity Blade franchise for iOS, has officially been canned.

Fans have been looking forward to the title since it was announced last March during an Apple iPad event, but its future has looked uncertain since the studio that was developing the game, Impossible Games, was closed back in February.

Deus Ex: The Fall came out yesterday, and the much-anticipated cyberpunk game was immediately met with lukewarm to mostly negative reviews for being a very bland game indeed. But that’s not the least of Deus Ex: The Fall’s problems. If you have a jailbroken device, the developers won’t let you play it at all… even if you’ve purchased it legally!

We’ve been hearing for years now about Apple’s never-quite-realized intentions to ship devices featuring Sharp IGZO displays. Now a new report says they’re coming to the 2014 MacBook line.

Auction giant eBay conducted an informal little experiment for the App Store’s fifth anniversary yesterday, to see whether people could survive O.K. without apps. Yeah, you’ve already guessed the answer.

iPhone cases overwhelm me. There are cases made from wood, metal, plastic, recyclable material, leather, and fabric. I’ve tried nearly every kind you can imagine, but I have yet to find one that I’m happy to wake up to every morning—many probably feel that way about their lovers.

In my quest to find a good looking, functional, minimal iPhone case, I came across an aluminum case for the iPhone 5 by Freeform3, a Craftwerk company. What started as a Kickstarter project has turned into the best iPhone bumper I’ve ever used.

With iOS 7, Jony Ive designed an icon grid that was meant to give developers some guidance on how to proportion their icons so they would look “harmonious” on the new iOS 7 homescreen.

As you can see above, though, Jony Ive has been using a similar mental grid to design Apple’s physical products for a long time. As Reddit user Kepano notes, however, Ive has probably not used this grid as a precise guide to design in the past.

“In my opinion as an industrial designer this image suggests that there are some intuitive similarities between all of Ive’s designs but that the iOS7 icon grid is probably the first time he’s defined those proportions so strictly. The fact that certain shapes match so closely (e.g. the width of the donut shape on the iPod) is probably not a coincidence but a matter of taste. What the image doesn’t show is that these products have radically different dimensions which is why the corner radii are very different from one another.”

Source: Reddit

Apple has asked the International Trade Commission to postpone an import ban on the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 while a court considers its appeal. The ban is set to go into affect on August 5 — just under four weeks away — but Apple has argued that it will “sweep away an entire segment of Apple’s product offerings” and harm iPhone carrier partners.

Following a lengthy trial, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote has today ruled that Apple conspired to raise the price of e-books. Another trial for damages will follow at a later date, Reuters reports.

Apple released the third beta of iOS 7 to developers this morning, and even though it doesn’t come with any big new features, the new update has plenty of small fixes and encouraging UI refinements.

Here are six GIFS of the biggest UI tweaks Apple made in the new beta: