May 21 - 10:10am EDT   Apple has posted a job listing that hints at the company's future hardware direction for the iPhone, iPod touch and possible other devices. The position for a High Perform/Low Level Programmer asks for someone familiar not only for programming assembly-level code for ARM processors, which Apple already uses in its handhelds, but for the NEON vector math units used in the newer Cortex architecture for the mobile chips. Apple is especially concerned about experience with vector math and particularly values anyone with additional knowledge of vector units through general CPUs, such as Intel's SSE or the AltiVec units found on PowerPC G4 and G5 cores. [full story]

November 7 - 5:00pm EST   Mark's Papermaster's new role at Apple in no way represents a threat to IBM, according to new filings. Papermaster is to replace Tony Fadell at the head of Apple's iPod group, but has been accused of violating a non-compete agreement signed when he was employed by IBM, where he helped oversee chip design. In his formal response to IBM, Papermaster claims that Apple and IBM do not compete with each other, and that his hiring was not primarily based on his work with the latter company. [full story]

October 21 - 1:55pm EDT   Apple is currently telling at least some retailers not to expect further Mac mini shipments, according to reports sent to Gizmodo. At least two "major" European outlets say they have been told by Apple not to anticipate more units of the small desktop and get the impression from their Apple sources that the system has been discontinued outright and isn't just encountering a temporary interruption in supply. [full story]

July 30 - 8:40pm EDT   Apple's rumored non-Intel mainboard platform may primarily involve a change of suppliers to NVIDIA rather than any kind of custom development, PCPer suggests. The enthusiast site notes that Santa Clara, California-based NVIDIA has been developing its first nForce mainboard chipset for Intel-based notebooks, currently codenamed MCP79, with the aim of improving several weaknesses that have affected Intel's own designs and thus Apple as well. The architecture would support all the necessary components for Intel's just-announced Core 2 processors, including a 1,066MHz system bus and the option of DDR3 memory. [full story]

May 17 - 9:45pm EDT   Apple will reportedly offer legacy support for PA Semi's line of PowerPC-based processors following pressure from the government and clearing up rumors that surfaced after the chipmaker's acquisition by Apple last month. In effort to continue to push the chip power efficiency envelope, the Cupertino-based company purchased the microprocessor design company for nearly $300 million, but reports following the announcement said that the US Defense Department may have objected if Apple discontinued support for its current chips that are used in a wide variety of military devices, but are not used in Apple's current generation products (PowerPC chips were used by Apple before ... [full story]