The Facebook features, which also include new Facebook fields for Contacts app entries, were originally spotted by iOS developer @jackoplane in the latest beta. Here’s hoping they actually ship in the software eventually, for the sake of both Apple’s users and Facebook itself . Both stand to gain from the social network’s integration in Apple’s mobile OS.

Users would definitely welcome a means to more easily share content, including photos and links, with their Facebook network, which has a much broader user base than Twitter. As for Facebook, there’s a chance to grow even larger thanks to direct, persistent access on the most popular mobile devices in the world.

Twitter integration has been a boon not only for the social network, where CEO Dick Costolo says it has helped propel growth to new heights, but also to services that depend on Twitter to enable content sharing. Music discovery service Discovr, for instance, saw sharing via Twitter increase substantially following iOS 5′s launch, while its Facebook shares remained relatively constant. Basically, taking away the need to login reduced friction and enabled more shares via Twitter’s service. Single sign-on for Facebook would likely have a similar effect.

I’d also love to see Apple offer a unified inbox, complete with access to Facebook messages, as an option in an upcoming iOS update. Since that’s not something we’ve seen yet with Twitter DMs (RIM actually wins on this one with its upcoming Playbook OS 2.0 update), I’m not expecting it anytime soon. But Facebook integration similar to what we’ve seen with Twitter could at least open the door to that possibility down the road.

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Based on the app race, Ron Paul would win the nomination

The Ron Paul App (free) has biographical details, voting records, books and links to websites about Ron Paul. It even has a Words with Friends portal so you can find other supporters to play with. Other apps for Ron Paul fans include Ron Paul Mobile ($0.99) and Ron Paul Words of Wisdom ($0.99).

Rick Perry also seems to have an official iOS app (free) that looks to be just a fundraising tool. Upon install, I was presented with a login screen and had to go the main website and sign up before I could make it past the screen. Even after I signed up, I still couldn’t log in, though, so it’s not really a very strong competitor. Amazingly, no other Republican candidate seems to have an official app.

If you want a quick overview of the primary race

Pocket Polls (free) covers all the candidates, giving their positions on a dozen of different issues such as abortion, gun control, and immigration. If you want a thumbnail sketch of each candidate, this is the app for you.

If social media presence is important to you

If you’re into social media, the 2012GOP ($1.99) app is your go-to app for deciding who to vote for. This app takes all the candidates’ Twitter accounts and lets you examine not just their tweets, but how often they’re retweeted and the tag clouds of what they’ve said. Ron Paul has double the mentions of Mitt Romney, but Newt Gingrich has them beat hands down in terms of followers, and Buddy Roemer has the most retweets.

If you want your iPhone to quickly decide for you

Candidates (free) will ask you your opinion on 16 different issues and allow you to weigh the importance of each. At the end of the quiz, it will rank candidates (including President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, as well as Republican primary candidates) based on how their positions match up with your answers, and you can click on each candidate link for more information.

If you’d rather make a more informed decision

Proud Republican ($1.99) aggregates news from 15 different national sources such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and The New York Post so you can read what others are saying about candidates and the election. The app even integrates conservative talk radio sources, too, so you can hear live what’s being said about the race on-air.

If you just want to keep track of the race

Maybe you live in one of the states that doesn’t usually have an impact on the national primaries, or you want to see how your candidate is doing post-election, then USA Election 2012 is ($0.99) the app for you. While not directly Republican-focused, since that party has the primary-season spotlight right now, that’s what the app is currently directing its attention. Once the Republic candidate is settled, it should provide a more balanced perspective.

Read a variety of polls to see who’s ahead, find out how fundraising is going (according to the app, Mitt Romney is winning this one) and read news about the economy and general election stories. This may not help you decide who to vote for, but it will help you keep track of who’s winning and give you an idea of why.

Which criteria you use to decide who to vote for — either on your home screen or in the ballot box — is up to you. If you live in Iowa though, be sure to download the Iowa GOP app (free) which gives you detailed information about the caucuses and how to get involved.

Disclosure: No actual endorsement is being made of specific candidates or parties, and no apps were provided free for this overview.

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The iPhone 4S’s lead in terms of buzz is measured by the number of times it gets mentioned on blogs, message boards and groups, Twitter, Facebook and posts at online news sites. Nielsen used a list of the top 20 recently acquired smartphones from the third quarter of 2011, and a few popular ones released late, including the Google Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Nexus and iPhone 4S. The iPhone 4S grabbed 40 percent of all mentions in terms of devices on the list.

The 4S wasn’t the only iPhone mentioned in the list, however. The iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS also nabbed a lot of attention in online published items, resulting in Apple’s phones making up almost two-thirds of all mentions of smartphones in the six-month period covered by the NM Incite study. Combined Android phones, including the Galaxy Nexus and Droid Bionic were responsible for a quarter of the buzz, while BlackBerry devices came in third with a combined 10 percent.

This study shows that Apple’s iOS smartphones still command an impressive percentage of media and consumer mindshare when it comes to connected mobile devices, despite Android-based handsets pulling far ahead in terms of worldwide market share according to recent counts.

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The watchdog site compiled info from 27 million statements made on Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites during the year to measure consumer sentiment regarding Apple. Keywords like “great,” “best,” “good” and “love” were used to determine positive statements, and typical comments that made up the 170,000 positive mentions noted in August included things like “Apple will be fine thanks to his leadership” and “Apple all the way.”

In contrast, negative sentiments about the company (there were around 64,000 such statements in August as measured by ConsumerAffairs.com) focused mostly on “technical and pricing issues,” including problems with software updates and concerns about the Mac malware that had been more of a problem earlier in the summer.

Consumer confidence is arguably the most important thing Apple needs to retain as it transitions to a new CEO and decreased involvement for Jobs. Even if some analysts and investors see Jobs’ passing of the torch as potentially problematic down the road, most without a personal axe to grind will likely see reason as long as Apple keeps selling, growing and beating expectations. If customers see the brand in a positive light, there’s every reason to believe that’s exactly what will happen.

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New owners of the latest Air and Mac mini will find fixes for issues related to flickering screens, booting problems when the power cord is attached, and slow running SD cards. Specifically, Apple says the update will:

• Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari
• Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out
• Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections
• Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion
• Resolve an issue where MacBook Air may boot up when MagSafe Adapter is attached
• Resolve an issue causing intermittent display flickering on MacBook Air
• Resolve an issue that causes the SD card slot in Mac mini to run at reduced speed with SD and SDHC media

If you have Lion, but not on one either the Mac mini or the Air, you’ll get a separate update that only pertains to the first four issues listed above.

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The recognition tech was presumably acquired through Apple’s 2010 purchase of Polar Rose, a company that specialized in face detection algorithms. 9t05Mac found iOS 5 APIs that use the tech, which means they should provide an easy way for developers to implement facial recognition for various purposes in their own apps, quickly and easily.

The unearthed APIs are described as “highly sophisticated,” and can determine where a user’s mouth, and left and right eyes are located, as well as process images taken by the iPhone for face detection. Aside from providing Apple an easy way to introduce Faces (which recognizes specific people in iPhoto) to both its own Photos app and any third-party apps that access that library, it should also open the door for much more advanced facial recognition applications.

You could create apps that track a user’s eye movement and dynamically change content accordingly, for instance. App developers might even be able to use data gathered from facial recognition APIs to identify so-called “hotspots,” providing insight about where a user is looking most within an app and arranging content accordingly. In time, an iPhone app might even be able to assess the emotional state of the user, based on whether they’re frowning or smiling, and address the user in a manner appropriate to their mood. It might also be able to tell how engaged users are with mobile ads and content, which might be useful for iAd customers, among others.

Apple could also use the tech to implement something many have been asking for on iOS device in a unique way: user account switching. Currently, iOS devices don’t have user accounts the way a Mac does. On the iPad especially, which is a shared device for many, it makes sense to offer multiple accounts that offer different levels of access to different sets of content. Facial recognition could intelligently and automatically switch iOS user profiles, setting restrictions if a child picks up a device, and changing the app load-out and home screen arrangement for different family members.

But before all that, which is admittedly something still likely quite a way off in terms of the development of iOS, we should see implementations that improve Apple’s existing video products. So features like FaceTime, for instance, could get the ability to judge which person deserves focus during a group video chat (which is also likely in the works). A similar system has been described as one of the possible motivations behind Google’s recent acquisition of facial recognition company PittPatt, for use with Google+ Hangouts.

Whatever else it leads to, facial recognition should provide developers with the opportunity to create some impressive new apps, so long as they keep in mind what Facebook learned the hard way: People don’t like it when you implement recognition without asking nicely first.

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1. Setup Facebook and Flickr albums in iPhoto

This is actually a tip for your Mac, but it makes it much easier to share photos to Facebook and Flickr if you set up Events in iPhoto ’11 that you can dump content to in bulk. Using uploading apps on the iPhone itself usually works best if you’re only doing one photo at a time, and if you’re on vacation, that can get annoying very fast. Connecting your social accounts in iPhoto will make it much easier to create organized albums on Facebook and Flicker with only a couple of clicks.

To set up your services, just go to iPhoto’s Preferences and click on Accounts:

2. Add bookmarklets to mobile Safari for social sharing

Soon you’ll be able to tweet right from within Safari using the native iOS share button, but for now, tweeting links while browsing on a mobile device can be a frustrating procedure if you’re using a standard copy/paste method. Instead, you can use bookmarklets (which are basically bookmarks that perform a function) in mobile Safari to share on Twitter, or on Facebook and Tumblr, too. Check out those, and many other useful bookmarklets, complete with full instructions, over at Digital Inspiration.

3. Get all the primary apps

The iPhone is well-represented when it comes to social network apps. The Facebook app just got a small update to fix bugs and improve performance, and the Tumblr app was updated earlier this week, and now has a completely redesigned interface that’s perfect for mobile sharing. Twitter on the iPhone is a solid client, but there are many third-party options available, too, like the uniquely designed Tweetbot. There’s also a Flickr app , and of course Instagram, which is quickly becoming the default network for sharing pictures on an iPhone. You’d be surprised at how much more likely you are to use these services just by having their native apps on your device.

4. See content recommendations from Facebook in Safari

Want so see some content reading and viewing selections from your Facebook friends without ever leaving your browser? The Recommend browser extension (really a bookmarklet like those described above) by Bob Hitching will let you call up a window that shows you what people in your network on Facebook are recommending most. It can be a little hit or miss, but it does surface some interesting content.

5. Use cross-service sharing apps

You can use Dropico, a service that provides one-stop shopping for photo sharing across networks like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Twitter and Tumblr, to cut down considerably on the time it takes to participate in multiple networks, and even apply effects prior to sharing. Likewise, Gowalla can check-in to multiple location-based networks, including Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla itself, all through one app.

iOS 5 will really up the game for iPhone social sharing, and it looks like Google+ might help as well, although initial reaction appears to be split, likely because of Google’s spotty track record with social services (remember Wave?). But if you want your device to be a better tool for engaging with others, there’s no reason to wait when so many choice tools are available right now.

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For all the talk of social media services like Twitter and Facebook replacing RSS, I still find it to be the best way to get news quickly and efficiently, and it seems like Mac developers agree. A quick look at the Mac App Store shows quite a few RSS reader options, but here’s a look at three of the best: Reeder, NetNewsWire Lite, and Pulp.

Reeder ($9.99)

Reeder started its life as an iPhone app, got an iPad upgrade, and now finally has come to the Mac. This evolution helps explain why it looks and works like a Lion app already: It has fade-in scrollbars, multitouch gestures, and there’s even an option for monochrome sidebar icons, just like those found in the new Lion Finder.

Reeder only syncs with Google Reader, so you’ll have to set up a Google account if you want to use it. However, Reeder’s integration with Google’s web app is stellar. The keyboard shortcuts are exactly the same, and you can manage your Google subscriptions within Reeder by deleting feeds, adding new ones, or making folders. Sharing, starring, and noting articles can also be done in Reeder.

Reeder can share articles with numerous third-party services, including Twitter, Instapaper, ReadItLater, Readability, Pinboard, Delicious, and Zootool. Services can be individually disabled as desired, and you can add shortcuts for each in the toolbar.

Reeder offers a bevy of other customization options as well. You can change its appearance by choosing from two presets: one that looks like Reeder for iPhone, and another that uses standard OS X colors. These presets can be customized with a unique slider system, allowing fine-grain control over the UI. Keyboard shortcuts, multitouch gestures, and third-party services can also be customized to your heart’s content.

Reeder is a good app for power users and general users alike. It offers a lot of options, so power users can get their fix, but the interface is simple enough that new users should figure it out quickly. Since Reeder is also available for iOS, it’s a good choice for users with multiple Apple devices, since the Google Reader sync ensures your feeds and read items will be synced across platforms.

NetNewsWire Lite (Free)

Unlike newcomers Reeder and Pulp, NetNewsWire has been around since 2002, when OS X was still learning how to walk. Don’t assume that the app feels out-of-touch because it’s older, though. The latest release is a complete rewrite, and according to Brent Simmons, the developer, it’s the “best code I’ve ever done, by far.”

NetNewsWire has a more traditional interface than Reeder or Pulp, but it’s no more difficult to use, and it still looks great. It doesn’t sync with Google Reader, so all feeds are managed locally. The lack of Google sync could be a dealbreaker for some, but you can import and export your subscriptions in OPML, something Reeder can’t do.

Article Styles let you change the way articles look.

Another thing NNW has that Reeder lacks is Article Styles, which are six pre-defined CSS style-sheets that change how an article is displayed. You can customize these style-sheets, but it involves messing around in the app’s Resources folder, so it’s not exactly easy.

NNW has many limitations. It can only share articles with Twitter, Instapaper, and MarsEdit (a blogging app). It isn’t very customizable beyond moving buttons around and hiding the toolbar. It’s also 64-bit only, so it won’t run on older Macs with Core Duo processors. But if you just need a cheap, no-frills RSS reader, NetNewsWire Lite is your app. The little it does, it does well, and for free. It’s also worth pointing out that NNW is in a transition period, having been acquired by Black Pixel, and a more full-featured version should come out eventually.

Pulp ($9.99)

Pulp is relatively unknown compared to the other two apps mentioned, but it was recently featured in the Mac App Store. Rather than competing on features, Pulp’s big strength is its interface, which mimics a newspaper. It’s organized by pages and columns; each page can have multiple columns, and each column can have multiple RSS feeds.

Pulp is very easy to use, and offers a good alternative to using folders to sort content. However, the newspaper-like organization is less practical for users with lots of RSS feeds. I’ve had upwards of 4,000 unread articles in a single refresh, and the thought of trying to sort through that many with this interface is daunting.

Another unique UI element of Pulp is the Shelf, a wood-themed drawer that you can drag articles into for later reading. It isn’t going to replace Instapaper for power users, but for the average user, it works. Speaking of Instapaper, Pulp has it as an integrated service sharing option, as well as Facebook, Twitter, ReadItLater, and Readability. That’s not as many options as Reeder provides, but it should be enough to keep most users happy.

Like NetNewsWire, Pulp doesn’t sync with Google Reader, but it does have its own syncing implementation called Pulp Sync. Setup was painless, and worked as advertised on multiple Macs, even preserving my custom column configuration.

Pulp's article view wastes a lot of space.

The one thing I have to complain about in Pulp is how articles are displayed. There’s a huge chunk of wasted space devoted to displaying a reflection of the app’s main screen below the article. Clicking on the reflection brings you back to the main screen, but a simple back button would have sufficed. I’m not sure why the developer thought this was a good idea, and it’s disconcerting that it’s still there, since the app has already seen multiple updates.

Which RSS reader do you like the best? Is there one that isn’t on this list that’s better than these options? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Apple was rumored to have been working closely with Facebook in the past and was close to integrating Facebook into its Ping music service. Apple and Facebook have since moved apart. Understandably so — Facebook is said to building its own mobile phone environment and will become competitive with Apple in the near future. Twitter is now emerging as an independent choice for mobile platform companies like Apple and Google. Apple’s endorsement is a big win for Twitter.

I wonder if the deal between Apple and Twitter was brokered by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture fund which started an iFund to boost the Apple iPhone/iPad app ecosystem. KPCB is also a minority investor in Twitter.

Here is what Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter wrote on the company blog:

Twitter has always been the best way to instantly share whatever is happening around you, and everything you’re interested in, anywhere you are. And today we’re working with Apple to make sharing on Twitter even easier: Twitter is built right into iOS 5, coming soon to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices worldwide.

This means that you’ll be able to sign in to your Twitter account once and then tweet with a single tap from Twitter-enabled apps, including Apple’s apps—Camera, Photos, Safari, Contacts, YouTube, and Maps. And developers of all of your favorite apps can easily take advantage of the single sign-on capability, letting you tweet directly from their apps too.

Building Twitter into iOS 5 truly creates the easiest way to share everything that’s happening in your world. Take a picture, tap “Tweet”. Tweeting has never been simpler.

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Robert Scoble, blogger and tech evangelist, tweeted Friday that “Apple is building Twitter in deeply into iOS5″ and that we’d see what he was talking about next week at the WWDC 2011 keynote on Monday. Scoble seems incredibly confident about his source, who he cites as “someone who built the Twitter integration into iOS5.”

Next week will be a huge week for those of us who have lived on Twitter for last few years. Apple is building Twitter in deeply into iOS5.—
Robert Scoble (@Scobleizer) June 03, 2011

Scoble claims to have known about Twitter integration in iOS “for months now,” and though he responded to multiple requests for details with only the repeated statement that we’ll learn more on Monday, he does claim that it will go “a lot deeper than just photos,” referring to a recent rumor about system-wide photo-posting capabilities in iOS 5. It also won’t be just the addition of simple “send to Twitter buttons” for links and other content, he said in another tweet.

As with any unconfirmed rumors, take this one with a grain of salt. It’s also worth considering that reports circulated back in April that Apple had planned Facebook integration in iOS 4, but pulled it at the last second, so the company does seem to be thinking about how to bake social media into the OS. Social is also a weak point for Apple, which has yet to pull off any networking features of its own (Ping, for example). It’s a weak spot for Google , too, and shoring up that strength with an outside partner might be a good strategy if Apple wants to beat Google on that front.

Note also that on Tuesday, John Gruber, who has a great track record when it comes to predicting Apple products and features, said in response to a TechCrunch story describing iOS 5 Twitter photo sharing that it was “[s]o close to the bigger story, but yet so far. Imagine what else the system could provide if your Twitter account was a system-level service.” Imagine indeed. What do you think Twitter integration would or wouldn’t bring to the platform?

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Unlike Google, Apple hasn’t expressed much interest in competing in the social media arena with the likes of Facebook and Twitter. It has stuck its toe in the water with services like the Ping social music network built into iTunes, and the Game Center achievement tracker and leaderboard that ships with iOS, but these efforts have largely been met with lukewarm response from both the media and users.

Not to mention that Ping and Game Center represent very specific approaches to social media that share little in common with the likes of Twitter. Namely, both are designed to fuel sales, and do little else besides. In other words, Ping and Game Center are marketing efforts first, and social tools second. Twitter, on the other hand, is a social network in search of a successful and sustainable business model. Apple isn’t interested in creating something first, and then finding a way to make it profitable later. Consider that Jobs took the idea of the mouse from the Xerox PARC research collective and remade it based on the concept of turning it into something that would sell and make money.

With that in mind, isn’t it then conceivable that Apple could take the idea of Twitter or real-time messaging and make it a profitable asset? Possibly, but probably not. Dash describes a team within Apple building a messaging service complete with “first-rate native clients on every important platform.” Apple, unfortunately, has never been interested in any platform other than its own. Even when it does branch out, as with iTunes, the ultimate goal is to drive sales of its own iOS or iPod devices. Plus, as most Windows users will tell you, the iTunes experience on that platform is far from “first-rate.”

In fact, the very virtues that make Twitter a valuable asset to users are traits which Apple has shown a reluctance to embrace: Twitter is web-based, which Ping (and even probably the iTunes store) should be but isn’t; Twitter, while not necessarily “open,” is still a lot more open than Apple tends to be, and Dash’s request for a lightweight API for developers to build web apps wouldn’t fly with Apple’s walled garden approach.

In the end, it adds to a paradox, in that if Apple were to make Twitter, it would probably look a lot like Ping (i.e., inextricably tied to Apple product and baldly promotional in nature), which means it would lose a lot of its value to users, which means it wouldn’t be Twitter. And ultimately, Apple knows where its core strengths lie, and which is in providing the tools that others depend upon to build networks, and not in building them itself.

Can Apple make a Twitter? It is technically capable of doing so, yes. But the company’s institutional culture make the chances of it ever doing so very slim indeed.

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While Microsoft’s “Welcome to the Social” advertisements were often derided, it’s ironic that Microsoft, and not Apple, has a better history with social media interactions. Here are the three areas Apple tried to make a play with social media, and instead fell just “a bit outside.”

Sharing Music

I thought the Zune’s idea of “squirting” music, while poorly named, was a brilliant idea. How often have you been out with someone, talked about music and had the inevitable, “So, have you hear the new song by so-and-so? No? OMG, you gotta hear it” moment? The idea of beaming songs between iDevices is something I’d love for Apple to introduce. if Microsoft can make this happen, why can’t Apple? Sharing playlists via iTunes could be the mix tapes of the 2010s, and not in the way that’s currently allowed via Ping, where you basically just provide a list of things to buy for your friends.

Game Center

Microsoft’s Xbox division has nailed interaction between gamers. When I look at my friends on the Xbox Live Dashboard I can see what games they’ve played, how many achievements they’ve earned, and basically how far through games they’ve progressed. If they’re online, I can use the dashboard to start a game with them.

Game Center is a mess; it doesn’t really behave in the way I’d expect. For starters, it doesn’t seem to auto-detect what Game Center-capable games I have installed; I need to run games at least once to get it to register. If I open my friends list, it will tell me what games I have in common with a friend, but not allow me to compare high scores, achievements and the like. I can open up a game from my Games tab, but all I can compare is leaderboard information. Also, it’s not Apple’s fault, but a lot of games aren’t compatible with Game Center. It would be a lot easier to start a Words With Friends game with people already on my Game Center friends list.

It’s too bad Game Center falls as short as it does. Apple hinted when it first introduced the feature would be the center of the iOS game experience, but that’s not the case. Maybe iOS 5 will bring some improvements, but as it stands right now, it’s pretty much useless.

Ping… Ponged?

At least with Game Center’s early demos, it looked like Apple had its head on straight. When Apple talked up Ping, even the famed Reality Distortion Field failed to Distort.

The first problem with Ping is that it’s way too broad with music categories. Sure I like rock. but I’m more of a heavy metal guy, which isn’t an option. The second, and real, problem with Ping is that it’s one of the few things Apple does that really, transparently, is all about the money.

Even as a money-grab, it’s not very effective. Jim Dalrymple at The Loop has musical tastes similar to mine. When I follow him on Ping, all I see are the people he’s followed and his last purchases. What I’d really like to see, though, are all the songs in the Heavy Metal genre he’s ranked five stars, or metal songs he’s played recently. I’d be much more likely to actually buy those.

Ping also seems a natural choice for Genius integration. Why not use my Ping connections as an additional means of filtering results? In theory at least, it could provide much more interesting and personally relevant results.

Going Social

It’s a little weird that while Apple pays close attention to the overall user experience of their devices and OS, when it comes to any sort of social interaction, the company has been a gigantic failure; just look at how long proper Flickr and Facebook sharing took to come to iPhoto. The best explanation I can come up with is that Steve Jobs just doesn’t get social media, so all the social media aspects of Apple’s business aren’t subject to his scrutiny, leaving unfinished and poorly planned services allowed to ship. Now that Phil Schiller is a Twitter user and Jobs is taking some time off from steering the ship, maybe we’ll start to see Apple getting over its social media ineptitude.

The New York Times reported yesterday that entertainment super giant Disney is planning to reboot its entire chain of global retail stores as part of a major new strategy and vision inspired and guided by Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

In the current economic climate, most retailers are looking for ways to cut down on spending and holding-back on investment and growth initiatives. But according to the New York Times’ Brooks Barnes, Disney is taking a leaf out of Apple’s book and using the economy’s downtime to reinvent its own retail stores.

Disney is… getting more aggressive and putting into motion an expensive and ambitious floor-to-ceiling reboot of its 340 stores in the United States and Europe — as well as opening new ones.

This mirrors Apple’s own aggressive efforts in the last 18 months to refurbish existing stores and open whole new outlets. It’s a strategy that’s paying off. In August, Bloomberg reported that Apple’s retail stores were performing consistently well, despite the economic downturn.

Apple… increased revenue at its stores by 2.5 percent in the first six months of the year to $3 billion as the rest of the retail industry suffered. During the same period, sales at all U.S. retailers fell 9.2 percent compared with the first half of 2008, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

So the investment and growth strategy is working well for Apple, and clearly Disney is hoping that some of Steve’s retail magic might rub off on it.

Fingerprints

Steve Jobs joined Disney’s board of directors as the majority shareholder in 2006, and, according to Barnes, “…[his] fingerprints can be seen on Disney strategy, in the same way that he influenced the look and feel of Apple’s own immensely popular retail chain.” And while Jobs didn’t personally develop Disney’s new retail strategy, he pushed the company to go for much more than a standard refurbishment. Andy Mooney, Chairman of Disney Consumer Products, is quoted saying, “Dream bigger — that was Steve’s message,” Certainly sounds like Steve, doesn’t it?

And the dream is big. Emphasis has moved away from regarding the Disney stores as merely merchandise outlets to something far more grand. “The world does not need another place to sell Disney merchandise — this only works if it’s an experience,” said Jim Fielding, President of Disney Stores Worldwide. “When consumers are ready to spend again, we will be ready.”

The new stores will include theaters for children to watch their favourite Disney features, karaoke contests and even live satellite chat with Disney stars around the world. Smart displays with embedded sensors and audio/video components will create personalised experiences for shoppers. “Walk by a ‘magic mirror’ while holding a Princess tiara,” writes Barnes, “and Cinderella might appear and say something to you.”

In addition to the theater (in itself reminiscent of Apple Store’s own in-store lecture and learning space), the new Disney stores will allow customers to interact with the high-tech fixtures and fittings via their iPhones. Employees will brandish hand-held payment devices, just as they do in Apple Stores.

Steve Jobs shared detailed documents on Apple’s expertise in retail store development and management, while Disney Executives paid visits to Apple stores. According to Barnes, there was even a ‘pilot’ store to iron-out the wrinkles. Steve Jobs insisted Disney create a prototype store, which it dubbed “Imagination Park.”

The company followed his advice, working for the last year on a full-scale, fully stocked store inside an unmarked warehouse in Glendale, California. The prototype was crucial to shaping an overall philosophy, Mr. Fielding said, noting that he discovered the shops needed more “Pixar-esque winks and nods.” To that end, one sales area is now labeled “WWTD: What Would Tinker Bell Do?”

The new stores will be unveiled in May 2010 in Southern California, Long Island and Madrid. Disney is also planning to create a new flagship store in Times Square, New York.

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Yesterday may have been when Apple hosted its quarterly earnings conference call, but the company’s financial performance was somewhat overshadowed by the tragic death of a worker at an iPhone manufacturing facility. The factory, run by supplier Foxconn, is located in the Chinese city of Shenzen. Apple has previously come under fire for the labor practices of its Asian suppliers, most recently Wintek, which makes displays for the computing company.

The worker, 25-year-old Sun Danyong, was responsible for the final packing of a sample shipment of 16 iPhones. When one of said iPhones went missing, suspicion fell on Sun, and Foxconn management launched an investigation into the matter. Reports also indicate that a security officer, Gu Qinming, physically struck him during a confrontation regarding the theft. Sun denies the allegations.

While it isn’t clear whether or not Sun was actually found to be responsible following the investigation, he fell to his death from a 12th story window on July 16, an apparent suicide.

Foxconn spokesman James Lee admitted that the company’s management bore some responsibility for the incident, saying, “[H]is suicide, for whatever reason, in a way reflects a management defect on the part of Foxconn…especially over the troubles faced by our young employees.”

Apple also commented on the matter. Jill Tan, a spokeswoman for Apple based out of Hong Kong, stuck to the company’s principles and standards in a brief statement made to the Associated Foreign Press: “We are saddened by the tragic loss of this young employee, and we are awaiting results of the investigations into his death. We require our suppliers to treat all workers with dignity and respect.”

Sun’s death occurred only two days after a Bloomberg article went to press detailing the risks Chinese factories and their apparent disregard for labor law pose to Apple’s international reputation.

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The stars must be in alignment, because I only just finished watching “2 Fast, 2 Furious” this past weekend (yes, boredom can make you do terrible things) and now it’s been revealed that the follow-up, “Fast & Furious,” will boast some innovative new features when it hits Blu-ray July 28. Universal has just announced that the Special Edition Blu-ray release of the Vin Diesel/Paul Walker car film will ship with an iPhone app that interacts with the disc media.

It’s an intriguing use of both an iPhone application and BDLive capabilities, which, on compatible Blu-ray players, allow the disc media to connect with a viewer’s Wi-Fi network in order to download content, connect directly with other users, and so on. So far, I’ve yet to use the BDLive features on any of the Blu-ray movies I own, since they seem largely to be silly bells and whistles included just for the sake of increasing the value proposition of the disc-based media.

While I’m not actually much of a “Fast & Furious” franchise fan, despite (or because of) my weekend viewing, I do want to get my hands on a copy of this new special edition to see just how the iPhone integration is executed. So far, all that’s clear from Universal’s release on the subject is that the iPhone app will be able to control a special feature that allows viewers to view and interact with different cars from the movie in a virtual garage. The app will be released free via the App Store for Special Edition owners to download.

I’m hoping they don’t stop there, since it would probably be a simple next step to include playback controls in the very same app. Even without that, though, this could represent a turning point for special features and movie tie-in apps alike, both of which right now seem like weak promotional tools that are generally a waste of time for viewers and developers alike.

Poking about at a virtual car may not seem like a revolutionary new way of interacting with media, but it is a surprisingly well thought-out special feature, given the context: “Fast & Furious” fans are often car enthusiasts, and will care about what’s under the hood of the vehicles that make an appearance in the film. And controlling virtual models of automobiles on screen via a touchscreen device isn’t gimmicky, it’s just the most intuitive way for that sort of thing to work.

This time around, I might not actually go out and buy the movie, because, seriously, it’s “Fast & Furious”. But release a “Star Wars” (original trilogy) Blu-ray Special Edition with the exact same features for starships, speeders, and ground assault vehicles, and money will be no object.

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My 3GS has given me (relatively) little cause for complaint since I got it, though there was the one little replacement issue for what I thought were Wi-Fi problems. Turned out to be a persistent issue that hopefully will be resolved with a firmware update, but it’s more superficial than anything else. What I haven’t experienced, and what some people are reporting, are overheating issues with their handsets.

A few users are reporting serious heat build-ups in their phones, with temperatures high enough to even prevent putting the phone to one’s face, according to PC World reviewer, Melissa J. Perenson. The problem doesn’t appear to be widespread, which could be due to it being a hardware defect in only a select few phones, or it could even be due to usage patterns. Perenson was basically doing as much as possible to incur heat, by playing games and browsing on Wi-Fi while the device was plugged in.

The PC World report comes on the heels of photos posted at French blog Nowhere Else which claim to show significant discoloration on the rear surface of a white 16GB iPhone 3GS. Apple Support Discussions also exist with users claiming to have overheating issues. Over at QuickPWN, they’re pointing the finger at iPhone OS 3.0, not the 3GS hardware specifically. Just to be clear, no one is reporting actual hardware failure as a result of heat, just temperatures so high that they make using the phone uncomfortable or almost painful.

Even if usage is to blame, as most people’s experiences seem to suggest, that’s no excuse for the devices to overheat. Apple is pushing the gaming abilities of the 3GS, after all, so it has to expect device owners to be using the iPhone for gaming for extended periods of time. And Wi-Fi web browsing is hardly undue wear and tear.

Like I said, I’ve yet to experience any heat issues, and I use my 3GS with my recently purchased Mophie Juice Pack Air to really push the battery life to the max. It does get rather warm when I flick the charging switch, but the front surface remains plenty cool enough to hold against my face without discomfort. Admittedly, I’ve yet to do any marathon gaming sessions, which was pretty standard practice on my 3G, but I plan on doing some later today, so I’ll get a chance to see if that incurs any temperature spikes.

Some are already talking wide recalls, but I wouldn’t be so sure. Apple will definitely try to resolve any outstanding quirks the 3GS may have via a software update before resorting to a much more expensive product recall. And the percentage of users reporting this problem is still small, though vocal, but that could just be because most people don’t use their iPhone for prolonged, intensive tasks, or while charging.

Let us know if you’re having heat problems below, and what seems to be causing your issues.

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