Following yesterday’s story by the usually accurate Japanese blog Macotakara on Apple’s Japan arm rolling out iTunes in the Cloud for music, Japanese music journal AV Watch reported this morning that the California-based iPod maker has its sights set high on the 130 million people market. According to the report, customers in Japan are now finally able to purchase and download music on iOS devices through 3G cellular networks rather than just wireless hotspots, as before. The story also quoted Apple’s Senior iTunes Director for the Asia, Pacific, and Canada region Peter Lowe, who confirmed that iTunes Match would roll out to iTunes Japan in the second half of this year.

“We are keeping good relationship with Japanese music publishers,” said Lowe as he highlighted that iTunes Japan’s catalog now includes Sony Music’s Western artists, such as Beyonce, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, and Sade. Interestingly, Apple did not allow the music journal to publish Lowe’s mug shot. In case you were wondering, iTunes in the Cloud files as the first-ever music re-downloading service in Japan. The iTunes Store launched in Japan in 2005…

Another publication chimed in and said the Mastered for iTunes service for music publishers (iTunes link) and Complete My Album option in iTunes are now available to Japanese customers as well. Additionally, all music on the Japanese iTunes Music Store is now provided as DRM-free 256Kbps AAC iTunes Plus tracks—provided labels updated their content. Finally, customers can now purchase and download ringtones using desktop or mobile iTunes apps. Confirming the aforementioned updates, Apple published a new What’s New in iTunes page on its Japanese website. The company is not standing still in other markets, launching this morning an exclusive ringtone deal for 27 songs by The Beatles. The offer is available through iTunes in the United States and the United Kingdom only.

The two companies have been in a stand off for a long time.

In 2010, Steve Jobs said Facebook’s “onerous terms” prevented it from being integrated into iTunes social network Ping. We’re not sure if that was Steve Jobs bending the truth to his liking, or if Facebook was really asking for something outrageous.

Assuming there’s some shade of truth to what Jobs said and Facebook was asking for something Apple wouldn’t give, Facebook needs to drop it and accept Apple’s demands.

Why? Because Apple is doing really well without Facebook. It’s the most valuable company in the world. It’s producing historically great earnings. People are buying iPads and iPhones in droves.

What about Facebook? It’s doing really well, too! Hundreds of millions of people are using Facebook. It has insane profit margins, and it’s legitimate, big business.

So, we have two companies that doing just fine operating relatively independent of each other.

Why are we suggesting Facebook blink first, then?

Because Facebook’s core mission, according to Mark Zuckerberg’s letter to investors, is “to make the world more open and connected.” He also said, “At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.”

Apple’s core mission is to make insanely great products.

Apple doesn’t need Facebook to achieve its mission. Facebook, on the other hand, needs Apple to achieve its core mission.

As Apple’s integration of Twitter shows, it can be super easy to share things through iOS and OS X. If Facebook wants people sharing more, then it needs to be a part of Apple’s world.

So, Facebook, it’s time to go back to Apple. It’s time to say, “We’re ready to work with you, on your terms.”

Unless, Apple has truly outrageous terms. In which case, screw those guys. You’re doing pretty well as it is.

That’s why it’s not surprising, but still pleasant, to see Apple making an effort to onboard new developers with a beautiful and simple new introductory document called “Start Developing iOS Apps Today“.

The document isn’t a private developer resource so you can visit it for yourself regardless of whether you’re in the program or not. It has sections that guide someone looking to begin making apps from starting, through set-up, tutorials, fundamentals, developing and guiding them to further resources.

The program touches on all of the basics of development for iOS, including the programming languages used, the design of an application and selling the app on the app store. It’s very simple, with only a few lines of text on each page succinctly, but links to more extensive documents on each subject are included in every section.

This is obviously intended for those who have never even dabbled in developing for iOS, and isn’t a tutorial about how to start, but more of a general overview of what’s involved. As it stands, it definitely works well as a jumping-off point for people who are thinking ‘how do I even begin?’.

If you’ve been wishing you could get a simple overview of the process of developing apps for iOS, there probably isn’t a better way to be guided through the basic steps involved. You can see the guide on Apple’s site here.

Following widespread speculation that Apple will introduce a super-hi res display in the next-gen iPad, MacRumors has been able to confirm that the iPad 3 will indeed have a ‘Retina’ display with a 2048×1536 resolution. The site got ahold of one of the displays that has been floating around for the last several weeks.

MacRumors has now been able to obtain one of these iPad 3 displays and examine it under a microscope in an effort to determine whether it is indeed an ultra-high resolution Retina display. Physically, the purported iPad 3 display is the same size as the current iPad 1 and iPad 2 display at 9.7’ in diagonal, and looks quite similar to the naked eye.

However, when comparing the iPad 3 display to one from an iPad 2 under a microscope, the difference in resolutions becomes readily apparent, with the iPad 3 display’s pixels appearing to be one-quarter the size of those on the iPad 2.

4 pixels (2×2) from the iPad 2’s display were compared to the iPad 3’s display. 16 pixels (4×4) accounted for the exact same area, equalling double the resolution. Math is a beautiful thing.

The two current iPads tout a 1024×768 resolution, and the iPad 3’s screen will be exactly twice the linear resolution, according to MacRumors.

Expect the iPad 3 to be announced the first week of March. The device is rumored to have an A6 chip and LTE 4G networking.

Perhaps the most mainstream technology-company-related controversy within past few weeks has been in regards to Chinese supplier working conditions. In January, the New York Timespublished a lengthy and controversial report about the supposed conditions in these supplier factories. The report claimed to have sourced its information from former Apple executives, and it sheds Apple and its suppliers in a horrible light. As we exclusively revealed, Apple CEO Tim Cookresponded to the Times’ report by saying “we care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern.”

Apple and Cook went even further by opening up the Apple supply chain to a full review by the Fair Labor Association. Cook recently spoke about Apple’s supply chain safety efforts at the Goldman Sach’s conference earlier this week. Now, in a completely unprecendeted move, Applehas granted ABC Nightline full access to its Chinese supply chain. ABC’s Bill Weir traveled to Shenzhen China for the exclusive look inside Apple’s supply chain and ABC provides the following quote from Weir about his trip:

For years, Apple and Foxconn have been synonymous with monster profits and total secrecy so it was fascinating to wander the iphone and iPod production lines, meet the people who build them and see how they live. Our cameras were rolling when thousands of hopeful applicants rushed the Foxconn gates and I spoke with dozens of line workers and a top executive about everything from hours and pay to the controversies over suicides at the plant and the infamous “jumper nets” that line the factories in Shenzhen. After this trip, I’ll never see an Apple product the same way again.

ABC has decided to spread out their coverage on Good Morning America, World News with Diane Sawyer, ABCNews.com, ABC News Radio and ABC Newsone. The first look inside Apple’s factories will be shown on ABC Nightline on Tuesday, February 21 at 11:35 p.m. EST.

Take a look at the “10 Amazing Facts About Steve Jobs” share your thoughts with us in the comments section below:

Check out the full res version here

I always like hearing about the new features in iOS. The last few releases have blown me away. They are getting closer and closer to a perfect operating system. All they need to do is keeping looking at the jailbreak community for suggestions.

It has been only seven months since Apple released Mac OS X 10.6.7 Lion and today the companyannounced Mountain Lion—the next major update to its desktop operating system. As 9to5Macfirst learned in October, Mountain Lion brings even more popular iOS features to the Mac platform. The notion is shared by those Apple invited to a private briefing a few day ago: Mountain Lion is all about putting even more of iOS into the bowels of OS X. Meanwhile, iOS-ification of OS X continues with Twitter integration in Mountain Lion and new iOS-esque apps, such as Messages, Notification Center, AirPlay Mirroring, Notes, Reminder, Game Center, and deep iCloud integration.

With over a hundred million iCloud accounts now in use, Mountain Lion’s setup assistant will now ask you to set up an iCloud account for the Documents in the Cloud and Find My Mac features, as well as to sync contacts, email and chat messages and calendar entries. You can also access your iCloud storage in Finder and drag and drop documents for manual syncing between iOS apps that support Documents in the Cloud and their desktop counterparts.

AirPlay Mirroring is another welcome addition for those wishing to securely beam a 720p video stream of what is on your Mac to a HDTV through the Apple TV. Share Sheets, a new system-wide feature, is accessible from Apple’s and third-party apps for sharing links, photos, and videos. Like in iOS, Twitter integration means you give your Twitter credentials once and tweet directly from Safari, Quick Look, Photo Booth, Preview and supported third-party apps.

Mountain Lion Beta is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today whilst end-users can upgrade to Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store in late summer 2012. The company also pledged to update OS X once a year from now on. For more information, check out Apple’s new OS X Mountain Lion Sneak Peek page.

The biggest news is the Notification Center app. Apple left traces it was working on such a feature with the release of FaceTime for Mac, which can put up an incoming call alert even when the app is not running. Notifications in Mountain Lion will include alerts from Mail, Calendar, Messages, Reminders, system updates, and third-party apps, the company confirmed. Gatekeeper, another new feature, is designed as a system-wide malware protection seeking to give you “complete control over what apps are installed on your Mac.” Little is known about Gatekeeper, so we are still in the dark as to whether it will be an optional part of Mountain Lion or whether it will sport a decent app removal tool. According to the press release:

Gatekeeper is a revolutionary new security feature that gives you control over which apps can be downloaded and installed on your Mac. You can choose to install apps from any source, just as you do on a Mac today, or you can use the safer default setting to install apps from the Mac App Store, along with apps from developers that have a unique Developer ID from Apple. For maximum security, you can set Gatekeeper to only allow apps from the Mac App Store to be downloaded and installed.

Reminders and Notes work together with their iOS counterparts, letting you jot notes and track to-dos across your desktop and mobile devices. As for Game Center, Apple said the program will let you “find new games and challenge friends to play live multiplayer games, whether they’re on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch,” but the company would not specify on how Mac-only games will be supported. To facilitate development of Game Center-compatible games across both iOS devices and Macs, Apple is making the new Game Kit API available to Mac developers and they implemented GLKit—first introduced in iOS 5—to make it easier to create OpenGL apps for Mountain Lion.

Finally, Chinese users will love Mountain Lion for its “significant enhancements” to the Chinese input method, the new Baidu search option in Safari, support for email service providers QQ, 126 and 163 in Contacts, Mail and Calendar, video sharing support for local services Youku and Tudou through Share Sheets, and system-wide support for the popular Sina weibo micro-blogging platform.

Apple Releases OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview with Over 100 New Features

CUPERTINO, California—February 16, 2012—Apple today released a developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system, which brings popular apps and features from iPad to the Mac and accelerates the pace of OS X innovation. Mountain Lion introduces Messages, Notes, Reminders and Game Center to the Mac, as well as Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay Mirroring. Mountain Lion is the first OS X release built with iCloud in mind for easy setup and integration with apps. The developer preview of Mountain Lion also introduces Gatekeeper, a revolutionary security feature that helps keep you safe from malicious software by giving you complete control over what apps are installed on your Mac. The preview release of Mountain Lion is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. Mac users will be able to upgrade to Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store™ in late summer 2012.

“The Mac is on a roll, growing faster than the PC for 23 straight quarters, and with Mountain Lion things get even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The developer preview of Mountain Lion comes just seven months after the incredibly successful release of Lion and sets a rapid pace of development for the world’s most advanced personal computer operating system.”

The developer preview of Mountain Lion features the all new Messages app which replaces iChat and allows you to send unlimited messages, high-quality photos and videos directly from your Mac to another Mac or iOS device. Messages will continue to support AIM, Jabber, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk. Starting today Lion users can download a beta of Messages from www.apple.com, and the final version will be available with Mountain Lion. Reminders and Notes help you create and track your to-dos across all your devices. Game Center lets you personalize your Mac gaming experience, find new games and challenge friends to play live multiplayer games, whether they’re on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Mountain Lion presents notifications in an elegant new way, and Notification Center provides easy access to alerts from Mail, Calendar, Messages, Reminders, system updates and third party apps. System-wide Share Sheets make it easy to share links, photos and videos directly from Apple and third party apps. Twitter is integrated throughout Mountain Lion so you can sign on once and tweet directly from Safari, Quick Look, Photo Booth, Preview and third party apps. Mountain Lion also introduces AirPlay Mirroring, an easy way to wirelessly send a secure 720p video stream of what’s on your Mac to an HDTV using Apple TV.

More than 100 million users have iCloud accounts, and Mountain Lion makes it easier than ever to set up iCloud and access documents across your devices. Mountain Lion uses your Apple ID to automatically set up Contacts, Mail, Calendar, Messages, FaceTime and Find My Mac. The new iCloud Documents pushes any changes to all your devices so documents are always up to date, and a new API helps developers make document-based apps work with iCloud.

Gatekeeper is a revolutionary new security feature that gives you control over which apps can be downloaded and installed on your Mac. You can choose to install apps from any source, just as you do on a Mac today, or you can use the safer default setting to install apps from the Mac App Store, along with apps from developers that have a unique Developer ID from Apple. For maximum security, you can set Gatekeeper to only allow apps from the Mac App Store to be downloaded and installed.

Mountain Lion also has features specifically designed to support Chinese users, including significant enhancements to the Chinese input method and the option to select Baidu search in Safari. Mountain Lion makes it easy to set up Contacts, Mail and Calendar with top email service providers QQ, 126 and 163. Chinese users can also upload video via Share Sheets directly to leading video websites Youku and Tudou, and system-wide support for Sina weibo makes microblogging easy.

Hundreds of new APIs give developers access to new core technologies and enhanced features within OS X. The Game Kit APIs tap into the same services as Game Center on iOS, making it possible to create multiplayer games that work across Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. A new graphics infrastructure underpins OpenGL and OpenCL and implements GLKit, first introduced in iOS 5, to make it easier to create OpenGL apps. Using Core Animation in Cocoa apps is easier than ever, and new video APIs deliver modern 64-bit replacements for low-level QuickTime APIs. Enhanced Multi-Touch™ APIs give developers double-tap zoom support and access to the system-wide lookup gesture. Kernel ASLR improves security through enhanced mitigation against buffer overflow attacks.

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.

It sounds obvious, right? Well, it’s not. Especially when your company is in a state of change.

When Apple started working on the iPhone, it put all of its smartest people on the project. It allowed the people running the iPhone division to poach talented engineers from the Mac group. The Mac OS was delayed because it was suddenly short handed.

Keep everything secret

At Apple, secrecy isn’t simply about not telling the media when you’re working on something. It’s about not telling your fellow coworkers what you’re working on.

Secrecy has a few benefits: It prevents the newest product in the pipeline from stealing the thunder of what’s currently on the market. It also helps employees to stay head-down and focused on their own work instead of worrying about what other people are doing.

Obsess over the details

Lashinsky reports that Apple has a room dedicated to working on designing and building new boxes for Apple’s products. It wants people to be thrilled with an iPhone from the minute it’s in a consumer’s hands. It’s this attention to detail that separates Apple from its rivals. All startups should get the small things right.

Screw focus groups, make what you want

Apple built the first Apple computer because, “we we really wanted one,” said Steve Jobs in early 80s. The same was true of the iPhone and the iPad in the early 2000s. Apple execs hated using crappy smartphones and wanted to do better. Apple makes products it wants to use that it thinks it can do better than the rest.

Stay focused!

In response that last point, just because you think you can do something better, doesn’t always mean you should do it. Think about Google. It thinks it can do everything better than everyone else. It ends up doing some things very well, but most things are done in a so-so way.

One of Apple’s great strengths is that you can basically lay out everything it does on one table. It’s a table that’s getting bigger and bigger, but it’s still just one table.

Don’t do focus groups, but do pay attention to your users

Another key point from Lashinsky: Apple might not do focus groups, but it does pay very close attention to what you’re doing with your gadgets. From there, Apple makes decisions about what to pursue next. For instance, yesterday Tim Cook said the people that use Apple TV really love it, and he added that Apple was trying to figure out how to make it go “main market,” because people like using it.

Only a few people should worry about the profit and loss statement

Apple’s CFO is the only person that “owns” the P&L, and that’s CFO Peter Oppenheimer, says Lashinsky. The other person who kept an eye on P&L was Steve Jobs. Presumably, it’s Tim Cook now.

In a normal company, controlling the P&L of your division is a big deal. You’re king of your own domain if you do that. At Apple, Jobs stripped it away from other managers and VPs so they could just focus on doing what they do best: build great products. They don’t worry about expenses.

Hold individuals accountable

D.R.I. — Directly Responsible Individual, is a key phrase at Apple. What it means is that for every product, or feature, there is someone that can be held responsible for its success or failure. Apple doesn’t have committees, and in the book Steve Jobs is quoted as saying, “At Apple you can find out exactly who is responsible.” There is no room for excuses. If you’re leading a team, you better do your job.

Hire the best people you can

Former Apple employee Mike Janes, quotes Steve Jobs: “A players hire A players, and B players hire C players. We want only A players here.”

Limit your executives’ extra-curriculars

Apple doesn’t let its employees stray from Apple. Tim Cook was the only executive who sat on the board of another company. (Nike.) When Andy Miller, who used to run the iAds group asked Jobs if he could be on the board of another company, Jobs said, ” What? You’re barely cutting it here and you want to go spend your time helping someone else’s company? I don’t even let Forstall out of the office.” (He’s talking about Scott Forstall, the guy in charge of iOS software.

Keeping people in-house, keeps them focused. It can also lead to “insularity” says Lashinsky. So, it’s a delicate balance.

Keep teams small

Apple tries to keep the teams working on big products under 100. Since the creation of the Mac, Steve Jobs has always preferred teams to be around that size. It’s a way to keep a team focused and organized. It’s also a way to replicate a startup within a bigger company.

Don’t promote people just for the sake of promoting them

At most companies, employees who do well in their job are looking for promotions, title bumps, and increased responsibilities. According to Lashinsky, Apple will give people raises, but it tries to keep people in jobs where they excel.

For instance, if you’re a great designer, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a great manager of designers. In a normal company, though, you’d have to be promoted to manager to move up in the company’s hierarchy. At Apple you can be paid more to do the same job. The idea is to get people in the perfect job, and keep them there.

Lashinsky says Jobs, “Let people’s talent their jobs, not the jobs define the people.”

Control your message

Apple’s PR control is notorious. It rarely answers the press. It rarely makes its executives available for comment. Its number one vehicle for getting its message out is big staged events. In those events it uses the same phrases over and over to drive home its point. And those phrases are always simple and clear for the press and consumers to understand.

Start with design, and let it lead the way for the rest of the product

Most companies come up with product ideas, marketing plans, and all of that before talking to the designer of the product. At Apple it’s flipped. The designers hold all the cards. They determine what’s going into the product. From there, Apple figures out the rest.

Above all else, focus on the customer

This is the most important thing at Apple. Create products and experiences that users will love. If you do that well, then the rest will fall into place.