Apple promotes Jeff Williams to senior VP

Apple has updated the executive biography of Jeff Williams from vice president of operations to senior vice president of operations, explaining that the decade-plus veteran of the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is "responsible for end-to-end supply chain management and dedicated to ensuring that Apple products meet the highest standards of quality."Williams, who will continue to report to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, had served as vice president of operations since 2004, and prior to that had been head of worldwide procurement. AppleInsider was the first to catch wind of the promotion. There have been no explicit signs connecting this promotion to anything surrounding a high-profile "standards of quality" issue that Apple has faced lately: reports from iPhone owners and reviewers that the iPhone 4's external antenna causes degraded reception when held a certain way. The tempest culminated in a rare press conference by CEO Steve Jobs on Friday addressing the issue. Jobs insisted "weak spots" are not unique to the iPhone 4 but that customers are entitled to a free rubber bumper accessory that would alleviate the problem.But just after the "Antennagate" fix was announced, Apple reported blowout quarterly earnings. Fueled by sales of the iPhone and iPad devices, its $15.7 billion in revenue was the highest the company has ever reported.

Apple promises iOS update to fix iMessage delivery issues

Apple confirmed on Tuesday that a software issue is disrupting the normal delivery of iMessages, but the company said it was readying a software update to resolve the issue.For the past several days, iOS 7 users have complained about being unable to send texts on Apple's instant-messaging service, which provides free texting between iOS devices. A frequent complaint is that while messages appear to have been sent successfully, they later appear with an indication that delivery failed."We are aware of an issue that affects a fraction of a percent of our iMessage users, and we will have a fix available in an upcoming software update," Apple said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. "In the meantime, we encourage any users having problems to reference our troubleshooting documents or contact AppleCare to help resolve their issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this causes impacted users."Since its release on September 18, Apple's completely rebuilt mobile operating system has been praised for its simpler color scheme. But a week later, Apple released a supplemental update to fix a bug that would let users bypass the passcode security on the lock screen.