Mercury News reports on Apple quitting the US Chamber of Commerce.

Apple quits U.S. Chamber of Commerce over global warming views

By Dana Hull

Adding momentum to the revolt against the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Apple on Monday resigned from the business group because of its opposition to federal efforts to limit greenhouse gases.

Apple is the fourth company and the largest, as well as the first tech company, to part ways with the chamber as the debate over global warming legislation heats up in Congress. It is also the most significant defector because Apple is a leading American brand and consumers strongly identify with its products.

And the NRDC jumps in as well.

"Apple's departure is a clear signal that more and more of the chamber's members want it to download a new tune when it comes to climate change," said Peter Altman of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Apple further explains its position.

"Apple is committed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world," Catherine Novelli, Apple's vice president of worldwide government affairs, said in a letter to Thomas Donahue, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. "We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases."

The move comes amid efforts by Apple to burnish its green image. The Cupertino-based company revealed its carbon footprint — or total greenhouse-gas emissions — for the first time last month, announcing on its Web site that 53 percent of the 10.2 million tons of annual carbon emissions it takes responsibility for comes from consumer use of its products.

The company has taken a broad view of greenhouse gas emissions, using a "life-cycle analysis" to calculate greenhouse gas emissions for each product, from production to transportation, consumer use and recycling.

"We believe it has resulted in the broadest possible measure of the carbon footprint for each of our new products," Apple said in response to a lengthy questionnaire by the Carbon Disclosure Project, which publishes emissions data for the world's largest corporations. "No other electronics company reports this information at the product level, but we think they should."

and news.com reports on Apple being a top green brand according to another study.

Report praises Apple's environmental efforts

by Jim Dalrymple

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Apple won praise for its latest efforts to rid its products of harmful chemicals in a new report released Tuesday from environmental organizations ChemSec and Clean Production Action.

While Greenpeace seems to have completely missed Apple's environmental advances in its latest report, ChemSec and Clean Production Action's report, "Greening Consumer Electronics: Moving Away from Bromine and Chlorine," highlights Apple's efforts as one of seven companies who have come up with solutions negating the use of harmful chemicals. Apple was the only computer maker to make the list.

With Apple winning points as a green leader they are joining Wal-mart who has also strategically chosen to make green a competitive advantage.

WSJ.com has post on a UBS analyst upgrading Apple inc (AAPL).

UPDATE: Apple Upgraded On Hopes For New Service Platform

   By Dan Gallagher

Apple Inc. (AAPL) was upgraded to a buy rating by UBS on Friday morning on higher expectations for the company's popular iPhone, as well as speculation for a services platform the company may be developing.

In a note to clients, analyst Maynard Um said he believes Apple may be working on building a service "to provide seamless access and mobility of digital content across all its products." Such a service, he argues, may act as a "halo" that drives future product sales.

"We envision a service that seamlessly allows access to media-focused content of iTunes and user-generated content of MobileMe (pictures/videos/email/calendar) as well as social networking integration from any existing Apple product," he wrote in a note to clients.

Um raised his rating on Apple to buy and boosted his price target on the stock to $265 from $170. Apple shares were trading up 2.2% at $184.87 in recent late-morning activity.

"We are less concerned with regard to margin pressure as demand does not appear to be shifting to the $99 iPhone 3G and a lower end 3GS does not appear to be forthcoming, as we had originally feared," he wrote.

The Data Center part is here.

He also cited data pointing to an increase in capital spending on infrastructure and corporate facilities. He believes this is part of a plan to build out data center system, "which we hypothesize will be the foundation for a service that provides seamless access and mobility of digital content across all its products, at any time, and from any place."

The Register speculates on Apple’s rumored redefining print, and the possibility of using Apple’s under construction $1bn data center.

Although Adobe Air is currently promoted as a web-application platform, there's no reason why it couldn't also be used as the foundation for presenting content downloaded from Apple's übersuccessful App Store - or, for that matter, streamed from Apple's $1bn data center, now under construction in North Carolina.

Gizmodo is the one who has the scoop on Apple Tablet rumors.

Apple Tablet To Redefine Newspapers, Textbooks and Magazines

By Brian Lam, 7:00 AM on Wed Sep 30 2009, 126,074 views

Steve Jobs said people don't read any more. But Apple is in talks with several media companies rooted in print, negotiating content for a "new device." And they're not just going for e-books and mags. They're aiming to redefine print.

Several years ago, a modified version of OS X was presented to Steve Jobs, running on a multitouch tablet. When the question "what would people do with this?" couldn't be answered, they shelved it. Long having established music, movie and TV content, Apple is working hard to load up iTunes with print content from several major publishing houses across several media.

Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a "new device." The R&D labs have long worked on versions of the paper meant to be navigated without a keyboard or mouse, showing up on Windows tablets and on multiple formats using Adobe Air. The NYTimes, of course, also publishes via their iPhone application. Jobs has, during past keynotes, called the NYTimes the "best newspaper in the world."