With the exception of Apple chief executive Steve Jobs and newly appointed General Counsel Daniel Cooperman, each member of Apple's executive team was forced this week to address restricted stock units that had recently vested and were set to expire, regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show.
Senior Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering �Bertrand Serlet, and Senior Vice President of Applications Sina Tamaddon each converted 250,000 restricted stock units to shares.
In order to meet their tax obligations on those shares, each exec decided to net-share settle, or surrender, 113,659 shares at $139.53 a piece to cover those costs. They each retained the remaining 136,341 shares.
Apple's Senior Vice President iPod Division Tony Fadell made a similar move on 100,000 restricted share units, converting them to stock, then disposing of 45,750 at $139.53 to pay his taxes. He retained the remaining 54,250 shares.
Meanwhile, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer and Senior Vice President Industrial Design Jonathan Ive saw 250,000 and 200,000 restricted stock units vest, respectively, which they then converted to shares. Both execs used a portion of those shares to pay the tax man, but then sold the remaining shares in keeping with prearranged stock-trading plans.
Oppenheimer disposed of 136,341 shares on the open market at prices between $138.74 and $139.79 for a net gain of approximately $19 million, while Ive sold 109,216 shares at prices between $138 and $140 for a profit of $15.2 million.
Finally, Apple Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook converted 300,000 vested stock units to shares and then sold all of them on the open market in following a prearranged stock-trading plan, at prices between $133.79 and $140.76 per share.
Cook's net profit totaled nearly $41 million before taxes.
The Mac maker on Thursday informed its vast developer community of the availability of Mac OS X 10.5.3 Build 9D10, a pre-release copy of the software update featuring a focus list spanning some two dozen core components.
Among those components in need of evaluation, people familiar with the matter tell AppleInsider, are AddressBook, AppleScript, Audio, Back To My Mac, Dashboard, the Dock, DVD Player, Finder, Graphics, iCal, Mail, Portable Home Directories, Printing, Rosetta, Spaces, Spotlight, Time Machine, and VoiceOver.
In a set of developer notes reported to have accommodated the update, Apple is also said to have listed 75 code corrections that have already been baked into this first external build, including two aimed at critical memory leaks within CoreAnimation and iCal.
Other fixes target Dashboard, iCal alarms and syncing, Installer App, Spotlight indexing, PDFs within the Preview App, Mail alarms, Spaces, Stacks and the Dock.
Mac OS X 10.5.3 is presumed for a release sometime in April or May.
Available today as a free update, Aperture 2.1 includes the Apple-developed plug-in, Dodge & Burn, which adds brush-based tools for dodge (lighten), burn (darken), contrast, saturation, sharpen and blur.
Over the coming months, third party software developers will deliver image editing plug-ins for localized editing, filters and effects, noise analysis and reduction, fisheye lens correction and more, according to Apple.
�The image quality in Aperture 2 has won over the most demanding photographers,� said Rob Schoeben, Apple�s vice president of Applications Product Marketing. �Now, thanks to our open plug-in architecture, users can access an entire industry�s worth of imaging expertise without ever leaving Aperture.�
By clicking on one or more images within Aperture 2.1, users can choose from a menu of installed plug-ins and apply specialized imaging operations to either TIFF or RAW images. Apple is also working closely with key developers to bring the most requested plug-ins to Aperture such as:
* Nik Software�s Viveza plug-in, powered by U Point technology, which provides a powerful, precise and easy way for photographers to selectively control and adjust color and light in their digital images
* PictureCode�s Noise Ninja plug-in that delivers advanced high ISO noise analysis and reduction
* Digital Film Tools� Power Stroke plug-in that features a simple, stroke-based interface to quickly mask and intuitively perform targeted adjustments
* The Tiffen Company's Dfx plug-in that provides an expansive suite of creative filters and effects
* dvGarage�s dpMatte plug-in, which is a high performance chroma key tool for creating seamless composites, and the HDRtoner plug-in that enables the selection of multiple photos to create a single high dynamic range (HDR) image and
* Image Trends� plug-ins that include Fisheye-Hemi to quickly and effortlessly correct fisheye lens distortion, ShineOff which automatically removes shine from faces and PearlyWhites that automatically whitens and brightens teeth.
Aperture 2.1 is available immediately as a free software update to current Aperture 2.0 users. Full system requirements and more information on Aperture can be found at here. Information and availability for third party imaging plug-ins can be found here, here and at the Aperture community site AperturePluggedIn.
"Modern three-dimensional (3D) display technologies are increasingly popular and practical not only in computer graphics, but in other diverse environments and technologies as well," Apple said in the 25-page filing. "Growing examples include medical diagnostics, flight simulation, air traffic control, battlefield simulation, weather diagnostics, entertainment, advertising, education, animation, virtual reality, robotics, biomechanical studies, scientific visualization, and so forth."
While common forms of such displays require shuttered or passively polarized eyewear, those approaches have not met with widespread acceptance because observers generally do not like to wear equipment over their eyes, the company said. Such approaches are also said to be impractical, and essentially unworkable, for projecting a 3D image to one or more casual passersby, to a group of collaborators, or to an entire audience such as when individuated projections are desired.
As a result, Apple proposes a three-dimensional display system having a projection screen with a predetermined angularly-responsive reflective surface function. Three-dimensional images would be respectively modulated in coordination with the predetermined angularly-responsive reflective surface function to define a programmable mirror with a programmable deflection angle.
This form of technology would cater to the continuing need for such practical autostereoscopic 3D displays that can also accommodate multiple viewers independently and simultaneously, the company said. Unlike 3D glasses or googles, it would provide simultaneous viewing in which each viewer could be presented with a uniquely customized autostereoscopic 3D image that could be entirely different from that being viewed simultaneously by any of the other viewers present, all within the same viewing environment, and all with complete freedom of movement.
According to the filing, this form of display could include a 3D/stereoscopic rendering engine that renders 3D images and may be implemented in firmware, software, or hardware. The 3D/stereoscopic rendering engine could also be part of a graphics card, code running on a graphics chip's graphics processor unit, a dedicated application specific integrated circuit, specific code running on the host CPU, and so forth.
"The 3D images that are rendered by the 3D/stereoscopic rendering engine are sent to a 3D/stereoscopic display through a suitable interconnect, such as an interconnect based upon the digital video interface (DVI) standard," Apple said. "The interconnect may be either wireless (e.g., using an 802.11x Wi-Fi standard, ultra wideband (UWB), or other suitable protocol), or wired (e.g., transmitted either in analog form, or digitally such as by transition minimized differential signaling (TMDS) or low voltage differential signaling (LVDS))."
A display interface and image splitter inside the 3D/stereoscopic display would divide the 3D images from the 3D/stereoscopic rendering engine into two 3D sub-images, namely a left sub-image and a right sub-image. The left and right sub-images would be modulated (including being turned on and off) in respective image modulators to enable and control optical projection by a projector of the left and right sub-images respectively into the observer's left and right eyes
"The observer's brain then combines the two projected optical sub-images into a 3D image to provide a 3D viewing experience for the observer," the filing explains. "The deflection into the observer's respective left and right eyes is accomplished using a projection screen. The projection screen, in combination with image data properly modulated [...] forms a mirror device that is a programmable mirror with a programmable deflection angle."
Broadly speaking, Apple said, this combination constitutes the projection screen as a programmable mirror that is a spatial filter, because the combination operates to cause light to reflect from the projection screen to the observer's particular left and right eyes as a function of the spatial locations of those respective eyes, and otherwise does not reflect light -- as if the light were filtered out.
A digital signal processor (DSP) in combination with a 3D imager would also determine the correct location of an observer with respect to the projection screen. Characteristics about the observer, such as the observer's head position, head tilt, and eye separation distance with respect to the projection screen would also be determined by the DSP and the imager.
"The 3D imager may be any suitable scanner or other known device for locating and determining the positions and characteristics of each observer," the company went on to say. "Such characteristics may include, for example, the heights of the observers, head orientations (rotation and tilt), arm and hand positions, and so forth."
In some embodiments, the 3D imager may be configured as an integral part of the projector, which could be configured to directly illuminate the observer as well as the projection screen. An appropriately located light sensor would then be positioned to pick up the illumination light that is reflected from the observer, determining his or her position relative to the display.
Apple added that the 3D imager and the light sensor could also provide a means for observer input: "For example, the volume in front of the projection screen in which the observer is positioned may be constituted by the 3D display system as a virtual display volume that is echoed as a 3D display on the projection screen. The virtual display volume can then be used for observer input. In one embodiment, the observer can then actuate, for example, a 3D representation of a button to activate certain features on a virtual active desktop. Such an active desktop would be represented virtually in the virtual display volume and, by virtue of the 3D projection on the projection screen, would appear to the observer as a 3D image in the virtual display volume in the immediate presence and proximity of the observer. Other human interface behaviors are similarly possible, as will be understood by persons of ordinary skill in the art in view of the present disclosure."
In concluding its filing, originally submitted back in September of 2006, the Cupertino-based company asserts that such display technology is "straight-forward, cost-effective, uncomplicated, highly versatile and effective, can be surprisingly and unobviously implemented by adapting known technologies, and are thus fully compatible with conventional manufacturing processes and technologies."
During a 90 second segment of his weekly Podcast show "Diggnation" this past Friday, Rose told viewers that Apple may be restricting third parties from authoring applications that run in both the foreground and background partly because it doesn't want a competitor to its own mobile iChat application that will do just that.
More specifically, he claims that a 3G version of the iPhone hardware due in a few months will employ two digital cameras situated back-to-back -- one on the front side of the unit behind the transparent touch-screen, and a second one on the back of the handset as it exists today.
Combined with the mobile iChat application, the front-mounted cam will pave the way for live video conferencing over AT&T's high-speed 3G wireless network with computer-based iChat users, as well as other second-generation iPhone owners, according to Rose.
In the week's leading up to last year's iPhone introduction, the Digg founder cited sources in saying Apple would introduce the handset with a slide-out keyboard, two separate battery compartments, and make it available for both CDMA and GSM networks -- all of which turned out to be false.
Despite those misses, Rose has made some accurate predictions in the past, most notably his last minute reports of an iPod nano ahead of the player's inaugural release in 2005.
Add to that the firm's expertise in its proprietary Exchange email protocols and business email systems, and it's almost a certainty that Microsoft will be among those bearing fresh wares for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch a bit later this year, Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Specialized Devices and Applications Group, told the business publication.
"We do have experience with that environment, and that gives us confidence to be able to do something,� he said. �The key question is, what is the value that we need to bring?"
Gibbons' team of Mac developers, which actually resides in Mountain View, Calif., just a few miles from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, is reportedly weighing its most viable options for an initial native iPhone application, which appears as if it will fall within the Office family of productivity applications.
"It's really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone," he said. "To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we're actually in the process of trying to understand that now."
In addition, Mike McCue of Microsoft's recently acquired TellMe voice recognition unit told Fortune that his team is also excited about iPhone development assuming the SDK will allow third party software to tap into voice recording and location-based features.
"If the SDK supports these things," he said, "we�re absolutely going to get a version out there as soon as we can, get TellMe out there on the iPhone."