Marketplace goes into a Foxconn factory, a judge lets Apple tag into the Lodsys case, and I hope you have some 5.25-inch floppy disk to put into this Mac prototype. The remainders for Thursday, April 12, 2012 are inside out.
VIDEO: Watch an iPad get made from the Foxconn factory floor (Marketplace)
Marketplace’s Rob Schmitz, the man who uncovered Mike Daisey’s fraud, takes a walk through a Foxconn factory to see an iPad being made. Sadly, it looks like the best game the factory workers get to play on the iPad is “flashing color bar screen test.”
Apple is allowed (at long last) to intervene in Lodsys lawsuit against app developers (FOSS Patents)
It’s been awhile since we’ve had an update on the Lodsys front, but it appears that Judge Rodney Gilstrap (his real name) has finally approved Apple’s motion to intervene in the case, meaning that Apple can now argue that its license to Lodsys’s patent portfolio covers app developers.
Apple introduces VIP discounts for iBooks publishers (TUAW)
At least some iBooks publishers—and possibly all—appear to now be getting discounts on Mac hardware via Apple’s online store. So far, the same discounts don’t appear to be available to App Store developers, which clearly means that Apple agrees with your mom and that you should spend less time playing video games and more time reading.
Prototype Macintosh 128K / Apple Mac, With 5.25” Twiggy Disk Drive (eBay)
Got $100,000 to burn? One anonymous vendor is selling off a rare prototype of the original Macintosh, which features an internal 5.25-inch floppy drive.
Product News:
Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 2 (14.2.0) – The latest update to Microsoft’s office suite fixes a number of critical issues, including improved Document Connection support for SkyDrive documents throughout, full-screen support in Lion for PowerPoint, improved sending of PDFs as faxes in Word, and improved performance in Outlook for Mac, among many others. Free.