Tim Cook promised that Apple Inc. wouldn't change when he took over the company's helm from Steve Jobs in August.

But the low-key Mr. Cook has already put his operational mark on Apple in ways that suggest the company won't be entirely the same as under its intense and tempestuous co-founder.

Tim Cook promised that Apple wouldn't change when he took over from co-founder Steve Jobs in August but the low-key executive has already put his operational mark on the company. Jessica Vascellaro has details on The News Hub.

In recent weeks, Mr. Cook has tended to administrative matters that never interested Mr. Jobs, such as promotions and corporate reporting structures, according to people familiar with the matter. The new chief executive, 50 years old, has also been more communicative with employees than his predecessor, sending a variety of company-wide emails that address Apple employees as "Team," people close to the company said.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook speaks in front of an image of an iPhone 4S.

Mr. Cook has also displayed some different corporate philosophies from Mr. Jobs. The new CEO recently announced a charitable program promising Apple would match employee donations to non-profits of up to $10,000 a year, starting in the U.S. In contrast, Mr. Jobs said at a company off-site meeting last year that he was opposed to giving money away, according to a person who attended.

Much about the technology giant hasn't changed and isn't expected to. Mr. Cook, an Apple veteran who became chief operating officer in 2005 and who ran the company during Mr. Jobs's multiple medical leaves, isn't a fan of reorganizations, said a person familiar with the matter. He is also a fierce believer in Apple's culture, which prizes product development and design and preaches intense secrecy.

But the moves Mr. Cook has made since he officially took over the CEO title on Aug. 24 provide signs of how he will seek to run Apple in the years ahead, imposing more discipline on a place that for years was guided by Mr. Jobs's gut.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment and said Mr. Cook wasn't available for an interview.

A supply chain whiz fluent in sales charts and forecasts, Mr. Cook is a disciplined manager and a contrast to Mr. Jobs, who had little patience for management matters, according to friends and colleagues of both.

Mr. Cook is accessible, and over the years served as a sounding board for executives who wanted advice on approaching Mr. Jobs, former Apple employees say.

In recent weeks, Mr. Cook has restructured Apple's big education division that deviated from the company's overall organizational structure, according to a person familiar with the matter.

For years, that business had operated fairly independently. Mr. Cook split the business into a sales arm and a marketing arm and incorporated the groups into their respective company-wide divisions, said this person.

The move streamlined Apple's structure and increased the responsibilities of senior vice president of world-wide product marketing Phil Schiller and John Brandon, a vice president who oversees many of Apple's sales channels and has worked closely with Mr. Cook for years, this person said. Apple's education head John Couch, who had reported to Mr. Cook, now reports to Mr. Schiller.

Tim Cook's Career

 

Apple's Inner Circle

 

Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Apple's CEO Tim Cook spoke in Cupertino, Calif.

The Apple Evolution

 

Within days of taking over, Mr. Cook also promoted vice president Eddy Cue to Apple's senior vice president of Internet software and services, bumping up the title of one of the company's most visible executives.

Former executives and people close to Apple say they also expect Mr. Cook to be more open with shareholders and customers than Mr. Jobs, citing Mr. Cook's willingness to meet fairly regularly with investors over the years.

"Steve thought he had all the answers," said Toni Sacconaghi, a research analyst who covers Apple for Sanford Bernstein & Co. "I am not sure Tim thinks he has all the answers." Mr. Sacconaghi also describes Mr. Cook as "surprisingly candid" about parts of the company, such as its iPhone expansion strategy.

One area people expect Mr. Cook to eventually focus on is what to do with Apple's $81.6 billion in cash and cash equivalents. Mr. Jobs was opposed to stock buybacks, according to former Apple executives.

But Mr. Cook seems open to more traditional options for Apple's cash hoard, such as dividends or a buyback, say people who have discussed the matter with Apple executives.

On the company's fiscal fourth quarter earnings call last month, Mr. Cook said, "I'm not religious about holding cash or not holding it."

Any such moves would be up to all of Apple's directors, of which Mr. Cook is one, and wouldn't likely happen soon, according to one of these people.

One other difference with Mr. Jobs: Mr. Cook is "not a product guy," his colleagues and friends often say. That's a sentiment Mr. Jobs himself echoed to author Walter Isaacson in a recently published biography.

People close to the company question whether Mr. Cook can continue the string of hits that have made Apple the world's largest technology company.

In the past, Mr. Cook once asked an employee briefing him on a new service, "tell me again how this helps me sell more phones," according to this person.

Google Android boss Andy Rubin and Microsoft's Windows Phone head Andy Lees have both publicly criticized Apple's new Siri voice assistant and questioned its usefulness.

Apple announced Siri alongside the iPhone 4S, billing it as one of the most exciting features for the new handset. The Cupertino, Calif., company built the virtual personal assistant feature into its new phone after purchasing Siri for $200 million last year.

According to a recent report, the Siri team at Apple is one of the largest software teams at the company. Siri's unique personality and sense of humor has even inspired the creation of numerous websites and blogs detailing its creative responses.

Though initial reviewers have called Siri the "standout feature" of the iPhone 4S, Rubin and Lees don't appear to view it as much of a threat, based on comments they recently made at AllThingsD's AsiaD conference in Hong Kong.

Rubin, who currently serves as Google's senior vice president of mobile, said in an interview on Wednesday that he doesn't "believe that your phone should be an assistant.”

“Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone,” he added.

According to the executive, who is a former Apple employee, it still remains to be seen whether customers will take to talking to a phone and not another person. “We’ll see how pervasive it gets,” said Rubin. He did point out, however, that one of the co-founder of Android had worked on a cellphone speech company. Google itself has already built a measure of voice recognition functionality into Android, though the technology is not as advanced as Siri.

“This isn’t a new notion,” he said. “In projecting the future, I think Apple did a good job of figuring out when the technology was ready to be consumer-grade.”

 

On Thursday, Microsoft's Lees said that he didn't think Siri was "super useful," as reported by Engadget. He also touted Windows Phone 7's own voice recognition implementation as harnessing "the full power of the internet, rather than a certain subset," because it uses Bing for its voice search feature.

It's unclear what exactly Lees meant by the comment, however, as Siri allows users to run searches on Google, Bing and Yahoo, in addition to providing access to a set of services, including Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia and Yelp.

According to the report, Lees implied that Microsoft would avoid having its users speak commands to their phones in public.

 

While Apple's competitors may doubt Siri's usefulness, millions of customers have already voted with their wallets. During launch weekend, Apple sold a record 4 million iPhone 4S units. Company executives have said they are confident that the new device will set an all-time high for iPhone sales in the current quarter, which ends in December.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starbucks customers can get a free weekly download from Apple's iTunes every 

The offer, which launches today and is called ‘Pick of the Week’, allows all Starbucks UK customers access to a free download on iTunes.

The partnership has been live in the US since 2006 and comes a week after Starbucks announced free WiFi is now available in all its UK stores without the need to register.

The first song to be offered for free is James Morrison’s latest track, My Dreams and to mark the launch of the service, there will also be a free iBook, Limitless by Alan Glynn, available too.

Future artists will include Coldplay, Tony Bennett and The Kooks.

When anyone buys a product in one of Starbucks’s 700 UK stores, they will be handed a ‘Pick of the Week’ download card. Once the cards are distributed, customers will have up to 60 days from the date they are available to redeem the complimentary offering on iTunes.

Brian Waring, vice president of marketing and category for Starbucks UK and Ireland, said: “Digital offers are very important to us and making WiFi freely available across our stores is the foundation for many other plans we have moving forward…Content partnerships are key and we also have an extremely exciting digital programme ahead for 2012.”

The iCloud login page should look familiar to former MobileMe users. The big difference: Linen.

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iCloud Email on the Web

You can be forgiven for thinking this interface looks just like Mail on iPad and Mail in OS X Lion.

As mail layouts go, we think iCloud is one of the best looking web interfaces for any mail service.

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iCloud Calendar on the Web

Like Mail, the Calendar app in the web version if iCloud looks almost exactly like Calendar for iPad and iCal for OS X Lion.

The calendar syncing tools are top notch, we just wish it could also suck in our other WebDAV calendars, like those attached to Google accounts.

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Photo Stream in Aperture

Aperture 3.2 and iPhoto 9.2 for Mac OS X support the new Photo Stream feature. With Photo Stream, the last 1,000 photos taken with an iOS device (or manually synced via Aperture and iPhoto) are accessible across devices. Think of it as easy-access to your last month of photos. Anywhere.

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iCloud with Keynote for iPad

When I open up Keynote on the iPad, all of my presentations created or edited on my iPhone or iPad are instantly accessible.

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iCloud with Pages for iPhone

Likewise, Pages for iPhone pulls documents I have created or edited on the iPad.

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icloud-uploads-mac

Unfortunately, iCloud doesn't integrate well with the full versions of iWork. Rather than getting easy access to these files within the apps themselves, users have to upload or download documents to sync with iCloud.

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iCloud and iWork in the Browser

To edit a document started on the iPad or iPhone, I must first download the file from the web.

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Editing in Pages

After downloading the file, I can make edits. However, if I want those edits saved across the cloud I must upload the file back to the web browser.

Anyone who thought iCloud could be a replacement for Google Docs (or even Dropbox) was sorely mistaken.

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iTunes in the Cloud

With iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud, you can easily access your full music library even if those tracks are not on your local PC.

Songs and albums show up like normal files, can be added to playlists and smart playlists and played. If you want to download a playlist, album or selection of tracks for offline and permanent listening, that's easy to do.

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iTunes Match

For $25 a year, iTunes Match may be one of the best services out there for music lovers with large collection of music and lots of Apple devices.

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iCloud Settings for Mac

iCloud requires OS X Lion or Windows Vista/7. A new panel in System Preferences controls the various iCloud features.

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iCloud Storage Plans

iCloud is free for 5GB of storage. Additional storage is $40 a year for 20 additional GB and $100 a year for 50GB.

This pricing is in line with what Dropbox charges. iCloud, however, is no where near as feature rich (at least now).

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Along with iOS 5, Apple officially released iCloud Wednesday. The successor to the much-maligned MobileMe, iCloud is Apple’s first major attempt at unifying its product lines with online storage.

Unlike MobileMe, iCloud is free to anyone with an iOS 5 device. It’s also available for OS X Lion — and yes, that means you have to spend $30 on the upgrade if you’re on Snow Leopard, a fact some have compared to a Mac user tax. On the PC side, both Windows Vista and Windows 7 are supported.

Could iCloud be a Dropbox or Google Docs killer? Here’s the skinny.

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Mail, Calendar, Reminders and Notes

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If you’ve used MobileMe, the email, calendar and notes component of iCloud will be old hat. Apple is giving users a free me.com email address and lets them keep calendars, contacts and email synced across devices.

iCloud is designed to work with Mac OS X Mail and Outlook on Windows, but you can also access email, calendars and contacts directly at iCloud.com.

For iOS users, the syncing aspect of contacts and calendars is fantastic. Apple has updated the web interfaces from the MobileMe days, making the mail, calendar and address book apps dead ringers for their iPad and Mac OS X brethren.

Unfortunately, iCloud cannot subscribe to a Google calendar. Using the website to view my calendars, I only see the ones associated with iCloud, not the others that are accessible on my phone, iPad and Mac.

All iCloud users get 5GB of free storage; that includes your email inbox.

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Photos

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Photo Stream is an iCloud feature that will publish every photo that you take on an iPhone or iPad and store it in the cloud for 30 days. Up to 1,000 recent photos are accessible across your devices.

This means that accessing a photo I took on my iPhone or iPad no longer requires emailing that image to myself. Likewise, I can now get all my iPhone shots imported directly into my Aperture library on my Mac. Photos are automatically downloaded to the Pictures folder in Windows or in your library in iPhoto or Aperture.

Photo Stream isn’t permanent; the photos only remain accessible for a month. The stream can be manually reset, but individual photos cannot be removed. Users need to save an image to their camera roll for permanent storage and editing.

It would be nice to have a web component to Photo Stream, so you could view snaps from someone else’s computer.

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Documents and Data

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iCloud can also store documents and data files. Users can choose to backup their iOS devices, including app data, to iCloud. This is instead of a traditional iTunes-based backup.

Some programs have exceptionally large data stores. Fortunately, in iOS, you can choose what programs to back up. If an app is downloaded on another device or reinstalled on an existing device, the settings and data appear as they did before.

Apple has touted iCloud’s integration with its iWork apps, which led some to think this might be a competitor to Google Docs or Office 360. Unfortunately, it’s not. It isn’t even close.

From a pure iOS play, the way that iWork integrates with iCloud is quite brilliant. Users have access to any files they create in Pages, Keynote or Numbers for iOS on another iOS device. That means I can start a document in Pages for iPad and finish it up or edit it in Pages for iPhone.

I can also view the file on the web — though I have to download it, and can’t edit it online.

Here’s where iCloud integration falls apart: Mac apps. With iWork ’09, iCloud integration is simply pitiful.

In order to access a document I started on an iOS device, I must download it from a browser, open that file in my Mac application, and then save the changes and upload the file back to iCloud.

Meanwhile, iOS apps that use Dropbox work seamlessly on the desktop. If I open that file on my Mac and save it back to my Dropbox folder, changes are automatically linked within those iOS apps.

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Music and Video

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I’ve already discussed iTunes in the Cloud, but it bears repeating that this is one of the best features of the entire product.

Having easy access to songs and TV shows you’ve already purchased is a dream. Even better, iTunes Match will make libraries accessible across devices, without the need to carry around a full iPhone or iPad.

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iCloud vs. MobileMe

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MobileMe launched alongside the iPhone 3G in 2008. Doomed almost from the start, the service suffered embarrassing bouts of downtime that forced Apple to give customers months of free service.

Eventually, MobileMe became a more stable product. Unfortunately, its price of $99 a year didn’t justify many of the features that competitors like Google offered for free.

I was a paying MobileMe user because of the Find My iPhone feature. Apple eventually made Find My iPhone free; a good decision. The rest of the features — save iDisk and iWeb publishing — have made the migration to iCloud.

I was willing to pay for MobileMe even after Find My iPhone became free because of the MobileMe Sync feature. MobileMe Sync allowed users to keep their settings, keychains and mail rules consistent across Macs. What this meant was that a change I applied to my MacBook Pro, in terms of a serial number for an app I purchased or a password to a website, was automatically synced on my iMac.

Unfortunately, this feature is not part of iCloud. There is no word on whether it will get added in the future.

Current MobileMe customers need to convert their accounts to iCloud. To compensate, Apple has given those users an additional 20GB of storage for their files, data and backups through June 2012.

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iCloud vs. Dropbox

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I was hoping iCloud would be Apple’s answer to Dropbox. In its current state, it isn’t even close. Clearly it was built with only one OS in mind: iOS.

This is in stark contrast to Dropbox, which was built to be device-agnostic. With Dropbox, I have a folder in Finder that I can add things to or access. In iCloud, I have to rely on supported apps like Mail, iTunes and iPhoto.

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Conclusion: Does iCloud Live Up to its Promise?

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As a free service, iCloud is absolutely worth it for the contact and calendar syncing alone — as well as Find My iPhone/Find My Mac and the ability to do cloud-based iOS backups. The $24.99 a year iTunes Music Match service is worth its weight in gold.

When it comes to the desktop, iCloud is a step back from MobileMe. This was clearly a product designed for the mobile OS alone. In spite of requiring Mac OS X Lion, iCloud interacts with Mac OS X at a very minimal level.

We might be in a post-PC era, but we aren’t there all the way. If Apple wants developer and platform support for iCloud, it needs to make the service useful to those of us that use a regular computer.

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REUTERS - More than a million people placed early orders on Friday for Apple Inc's latest iPhone, the last product the company debuted before the death of its co-founder Steve Jobs.

Orders for the iPhone 4S, which will appear on store shelves this Friday, surpassed Apple's previous one-day record of 600,000 sales for the iPhone 4, pushing the company's shares up 5 percent to close at $388.81 on the Nasdaq stock market.

The new phone disappointed some fans when Apple introduced it last week, but it is proving to be a bigger draw because more telephone companies are carrying it and it will appear in more countries, analysts said.

Another big factor may be Jobs. Massive outpourings of grief and sympathy over his death last Wednesday at the age of 56, along with testaments to his genius and status as a visionary business leader in the media and by Apple products users online may have spurred sales,

"Many potential Apple customers, who have been on the fences before, will probably now want to (buy) it," said Steven Osinski, marketing professor at San Diego State University. "It's no different than when John Lennon was assassinated, sales of Beatles records shot up for a little while."

The initial skepticism from fans on the iPhone 4S was overridden by their desire to honor Jobs, said Barbara Sullivan, Managing Partner of Sullivan, a branding and marketing agency.

"The preorders may also be part of respect for what Jobs has done," she said. "It's almost like putting flowers by his headquarters."

Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a memo to staff on Monday that a celebration of Jobs' life will be held on Oct. 19.

The employee event will be held at an outdoor amphitheater at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, Cook said in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters.

"Like many of you, I have experienced the saddest days of my lifetime and shed many tears during the past week," Cook said in the email memo. "And I've found comfort in both telling and listening to stories about Steve."

BIGGER ROLL-OUT

The iPhone 4S, which many Apple watchers saw as a minor follow-up to its previous model and featuring only incremental hardware upgrades, is going on sale in seven countries. The previous version was introduced in five.

Stores in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK will start selling the device on Friday. It will be available in 22 countries by the end of October, Apple said.

"It had everything people wanted. The market was disappointed, but the customers looked past the headline to see the content of the device itself," said Hudson Square analyst Daniel Ernst.

The 4S is on the Sprint Nextel Corp network, which is joining AT&T Inc and Verizon Wireless as an iPhone seller for the first time. In Japan, Apple added KDDI Corp as a distributor.

"Part of what's going to make this roll-out so much bigger is that the availability of the product is going to be much better," said Michael Yoshikami, CEO of YCMNET Advisors, which owns Apple shares. "You are going to see sales records set at a faster pace than people really would expect."

Analyst Colin Gillis said Apple still has a long way to go to meet Wall Street's sales expectations.

"It's not the first million. We know there's a large loyal base of users. They need to sell more than 20 million of these in this quarter to hit estimates," said Gillis. "Apple needs to break records to hit expectations."

Apple also must try to stem market share gains by phones running Google Inc's Android software. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which uses Android, is catching up with Apple in worldwide market share.

AT&T, which had exclusive U.S. rights to sell the iPhone for more than three years, took more than 200,000 orders for the 4S in the first 12 hours after it went on sale.

The Apple store in Covent Garden, central London. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

Two people are being held on suspicion of burglary following a smash-and-grab raid at the Apple store in Covent Garden, central London, Scotland Yard said.

Police were called at around 1am on Monday after one of the store's windows was smashed and a haul of Apple devices, including valuable iPads, was stolen.

It is believed around seven masked raiders riding mopeds and motorcycles were involved in the incident.

All suspects were wearing full-face crash helmets and most, if not all, of the motorbikes were carrying a pillion passenger, the Met said.

Shortly after the incident, officers in Islington spotted a moped believed to be involved in the raid and unsuccessfully attempted to stop it.

However, a similar vehicle was found abandoned at Wyclif Court in St John Street, Islington.

A 16-year-old boy and 21-year-old man were arrested at the scene on suspicion of burglary.

Property believed to have been stolen from the store was found in bags in their possession, Scotland Yard said.

Both suspects are in custody at a north London police station.

Detective Sergeant Nathan Tozer of Westminster CID said: "Although two men are in custody on suspicion of burglary, the inquiry continues and other persons are sought. It is essential that anyone who saw the smash and grab, or the suspects making off, contact us as soon as possible."

Police do not yet know the combined value of the merchandise stolen from the store but believe it could run into thousands of pounds.

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Just 24 hours after opening up pre-orders for the new iPhone 4S, Apple has rolled back expected shipping times for the device from expected delivery on the Oct. 14th launch date to an estimate of 1-2 weeks.

The Apple Online Store changed its pre-order availability for all models of the iPhone 4S early Saturday. Apple had promised to begin taking advance orders for the device at 12:01 Pacific on Friday, but slight hiccups delayed sales for Apple and AT&T.

The company's other two wireless partners in the U.S., Verizon and Sprint, were able to begin pre-orders on time, though some customers reported having trouble completing orders from Apple and carriers alike.

AT&T announced later on Friday that it had received more than 200,000 pre-orders for the smartphone in just 12 hours, a record for the company.

Unveiled on Tuesday, the iPhone 4S features the same external design as the iPhone 4, but adds Siri voice control, a faster A5 processor, an 8-megapixel camera and a new antenna design. Though some have expressed disappointment that the handset did not receive a form factor refresh, Wall Street analysts remain confident that sales of the iPhone 4S will easily top previous records set by the iPhone 4.

 

Sprint noted on its website late Friday that it had completely sold out of pre-orders for the 16GB iPhone 4S, though, as of early Saturday, the 32GB and 64GB versions were still available for advance purchase. The carrier does, however, state that the 16GB model will be "available in stores on Oct. 14."

 

Verizon may also have sold out of its initial pre-order allowance of 16GB models. The carrier's website currently lists 16GB models of the iPhone 4S for Oct. 21 delivery. Also, some AppleInsider readers report that orders placed on the Verizon website at 12:01 a.m. on Friday are now estimating delivery on Oct. 21.

Though not a publicly disclosed practice, recent history and evidence supports the fact that Apple allots restricted amounts of devices for its partners to offer on pre-order and at launch.

According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, Sprint has basically "bet the company" on the iPhone and has agreed to purchase 30.5 million iPhones over the next four years.

This is the first iPhone launch in the U.S. where Apple has to manage multiple carrier relationships. The issue is also exacerbated by the fact that the iPhone 4S is a "global model" and the same model can work on both CDMA and GSM networks.

For those willing to wait, Apple will release a GSM-unlocked version of the iPhone 4S in November, with 16GB, 326GB and 64GB models selling for $649, $749 and $849, respectively. The company cautions, however, that the unlocked iPhone will not work with CDMA carriers such as Verizon and Sprint.

Apple has had trouble producing enough iPhone and iPad models to match pre-order and launch day demand in recent years. Even the Verizon iPhone 4, which launched 8 months after the GSM iPhone 4 arrived, sold out of pre-orders on the first day on offer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chipmaker Intel has confirmed that Apple's current lineup of Thunderbolt-equipped Macs will support fiber optic Thunderbolt cables when they arrive next year.

Intel spokesman Dave Salvator indicated to Macworld that the current generation of MacBook Pros, iMacs, MacBook Airs and Mac Minis will be compatible with the upcoming cables. The company's original specification for the technology, which was codenamed Light Peak, was to use optical cables to reach speeds of 100 Gbps.

But, when the interconnect was unveiled in February, the chipmaker revealed that the technology would first use copper cables at speeds of 10 Gbps.

According to Salvator, circuitry will ensure compatibility of next-generation Thunderbolt cables with existing ports. Current Thunderbolt cables feature internal firmware and transceiver chips on each end. Optical cables could be longer, up to tens of meters in length, as opposed to the three-meter limit currently imposed on copper Thunderbolt cables.

However, Intel's spokesperson did not specifically mention whether the optical cables set to arrive next year will be faster than current cables. It's also not immediately clear whether the Thunderbolt chips in current Macs would be able to take advantage of optical cables with higher throughput.

Currently Apple is the only computer maker to offer Thunderbolt-equipped machines. But, Acer and Asus have promised to ship Thunderbolt-capable Windows PCs in the first half of 2012.

 

Thunderbolt peripherals that take advantage of faster optical cables may take some time to arrive, as Intel has warned that fiber optic technology will be substantially more expensive. Adoption will depend on consumers' speed requirements "versus how much they would be willing to pay," Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, said during an interview at the Intel Developer Forum. According to Perlmutter, adoption could take years because of the cost limitations.

A range of products built to make use of Thunderbolt have slowly reached the market. In June, Pegasus released Thunderbolt-based RAID storage options starting at $999. Apple's Thunderbolt Display began shipping earlier this month. Last week, LaCie launched its Little Big Disk Thunderbolt hard drives, which start at $399.95 for 1TB.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AllThingsD reports that Apple will be holding its highly-anticipated iPhone 5 media event on October 4th.

While Apple could certainly change its plans anytime, sources said that the October 4 date has been selected by the company to showcase the iPhone 5. Sources added that the plan is now to make the new device available for purchase within a few weeks after the announcement.

According to the report, new Apple CEO Tim Cook should play a prominent role in the event in order to assert himself as the new leader of the company, although it will almost certainly be a team presentation with other executives such as Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, and Eddy Cue leading portions of the event. It is unclear whether Steve Jobs will make an appearance at the event, with the report suggesting that a decision on whether or not he appears would be a last-minute one based on his health.

MacRumors noted yesterday that Apple is expected to also be introducing minor updates to its iPod line, and had pinpointed the first week in October for that introduction, with availability set for the middle of the month. Apple generally issues invitations to its media events about a week ahead of time, so we can expect official notice of the event to appear sometime around early next week.

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Shares of Apple rose nearly 3 percent Monday to close at a new all-time high of $411.63, padding the electronic giant’s lead over Exxon Mobile as the world’s most valuable company.

Apple’s previous high came on July 26 of this year when the stock hit $403.41 per share.

With Monday’s $11.13 gain, the Cupertino, Calif., iPhone maker retains its title as the world’s largest company by market capitalization, outpacing the former crown holder Exxon Mobil Corporation by $23 billion.

Since Apple overtook the energy giant in August, its market cap has grown by more than $44 billion and now stands at $382.01 billion compared to Exxon’s $358.34 billion.

Though some had expected a sell-off after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs resigned as the company's CEO in late August, shares of the company have actually risen more than 10 percent since then. Wall Street analysts suggested that Jobs' resignation had already been priced into the stock. Investors have compared Jobs to business magnates Henry Ford and Walt Disney, whose companies successfully carried on their legacies long after they stepped down.

The rise also comes amid growing anticipation that the electronics maker is on the verge of introducing the iPhone 5, widely expected to hit the market around mid-October.

 

AAPL trading prices from Monday. Chart via Google.

Last quarter, Apple shipped a record 20.34 million iPhones, accounting for 46 percent of the company’s revenue. One analyst recently told AppleInsider that Apple plans to build 30 million iPhone 5s in the fourth quarter of calendar 2011.

Apple’s growth comes as U.S. markets took a moderate downturn Monday, due to investors shedding risky assets while Greek officials held a conference call with foreign creditors over their looming debt crisis, according to The New York Times.

Meanwhile, the NASDAQ closed down .36 percent while the Dow Jones and S&P 500 both fell .94 and .98 percent respectively.