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Charles Eicher, The Register
Today, Apple seems unstoppable - its new products dominate their markets or create entirely new ones. But there was a time, 20 years ago, when Apple seemed to have lost everything.
In 1984 I was caught in the middle of all this: I was a sales rep for ComputerLand Los Angeles; the top Macintosh salesman at the largest computer store in the world in Apple's largest metropolitan market.
Erica Ogg, CNET
Starting today, when you send a friend request or accept a friend request, your real name in addition to your gamer tag or nickname will be shown to that person. Apple added that new policy in a change to its terms of service agreement to Game Center.
John Siracusa, Macworld
From its experience with iOS, Apple believes it has discovered—or perhaps rediscovered—the secret to selling consumer technology products: simplicity. This doesn’t mean that the Mac we know and love will disappear. Rather, by stealing the most successful ideas from iOS, the Mac OS of tomorrow could slowly shed its legacy constraints while still remaining true to the power, utility, and spirit that has always defined the Mac.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Identity thieves can hide URLs on the iPhone's limited screen real estate, tricking users into thinking they're at a legitimate site, a security researcher said today.
In a pair of blog posts, Nitesh Dhanjani demonstrated how criminals can easily hide the true URL of a site from users by building a malicious Web application.
Mike Melanson, ReadWriteWeb
Shouldn't the feature - meant to protect you from thievery - require you to enter a password to disable it?
Betalogue
Deep down, I cannot help but feel that there is a bit of a swindle going on here, something that Apple is aware of and not doing anything about because they know that the majority of customers involved can afford the extra cost and are only a small minority of Mac users globally anyway.
Bambi Brannan, Mac360
Barry Collins, PC Pro
A leading Mozilla executive has attacked Google, Apple and Microsoft for installing browser plugins without permission.
"When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me?"
The Economist
The inscription on the logo's border is a quote from William Wordsworth, a romantic English poet: "Newton... a mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought... alone." Could it be that Mr Jobs himself is a hidden romantic?
Ron Adner And William Vincent, Forbes
The Apple iPad is a major and misunderstood strategy departure for today's most talked-about tech firm. With both the iPod and the iPhone, Apple launched products with value that was high on a standalone basis. External partners clamored to join the party once it got going, but their support was not needed to get the party started. In contrast, the iPad depends critically on buy-in and participation from other businesses for its success. But it's not at all clear that these partners really understand the game they've signed on for.
MacNN
Robert Evans, I4U
Will 'iPad' be to 'tablets' as 'iPod' is to 'media players'?
John Chan, CNET Asia
Though not unreasonable for Apple to stop supporting an old version of its OS (Tiger was released in 2004), what makes this issue hard to swallow is that Windows users running XP have access to iTunes 10.1, and thus iOS 4.2.
Adam Satariano And Susan Decker, Bloomberg
t stake is leadership in the U.S. smartphone market. Cupertino, California-based Apple is trying to protect its right to import the iPhone, while shutting out rivals, particularly those whose phones are powered by Google Inc.’s Android operating system, the world’s most popular smartphone software. Android-based phones also are made abroad.
“These are very well-known, deep-pocketed, high-end manufacturers,” said Lyle Vander Schaaf, an attorney at Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione in Washington, who handles cases before the commission. “Usually you have one 800-pound gorilla going after a new entrant. Here you’ve got 800-pound gorillas fighting each other.”
Eric Bleeker, Motley Fool
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS
Alice Rawsthorn, New York Times
Imagine that you’re a designer and a dazzling new digital device comes along giving you the opportunity to reinvent some familiar products that the rest of us use every day. What could be more exciting?
Not much, you’d think, especially if that device is a soaring commercial success, and rich, powerful companies are eager to invest in your efforts to design new versions of their products to be used on it.
Eli Dourado
The real reason Apple offers free engraving is to weaken the secondary market.
David Quilty, TUAW
Ambrosia Software has released WireTap Anywhere 2.0, an upgrade to the company's professional audio routing and mixing software. Following up on the 2008 release of version 1.0, this upgrade claims that "hardwired is out; softwired is in" and allows users to capture, map, and independently adjust audio channels from any combo of applications or input devices and route it to the audio processor application of your choice.
Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land
Electronista
Apple has rejected a "magazine" app from Danish publisher Mediaprovider because the content was exclusively about Android, the rival mobile OS to Apple's own iOS -- reinforcing charges that Apple's censorship is heavy-handed, arbitrary and in some cases hypocritical -- in fact, a magazine app from the Netherlands called Androidworld Reader is already available on the App Store.
Adam Walters, Software-Related Intel
So, here’s my all time favorite OSX keyboard shortcut: Shift + CMD + /. This is the universal shortcut to toggle an application’s help menu. Not only can you search for application help topics, but menu items are also returned.
Matt McGee, Search Engine Land
Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
I can see why Apple picked this particular photo. The band looks relaxed and confident, as if totally at home in their Beatles skin. But it's also revealing that no one is smiling. The band is nearing the end of its time together, and it's likely that by the time the photo was taken, everyone already knew it.
Whitson Gordon, Macworld
While you can export Pages documents to Windows-friendly formats, you might sometimes get caught in a bind and be able to send only the original .pages file to one of your Windows-using co-workers. But an anonymous Hints reader found a workaround.
John Brandon, Macworld
Password management is not exactly the most exciting subject in the world. Yet, when you really need that one password for some arcane ancestry site you found last year, a password manager can be a major help. Agile Web Solutions’ 1Password 3 is one of the best password management tools I’ve used. Several robust and powerful features make it nearly indispensible. Yet, at the end of the day, what I liked most was that 1Password did not change our daily computing habits all that much.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
More than a third of American consumers planning to purchase a laptop in the next 90 days will buy from Apple, a market research company said this week.
The surge for Apple is likely being driven by the new MacBook Air, the lightweight notebook that debuted a month ago, said Paul Carton, vice president of research at ChangeWave Research.
Sophos
Michael Rose, TUAW
It's not Friday in the US yet, but you can get an early look at Apple's discounts for Black Friday on the store site now. Savings include $101 off the purchase of new MacBook Pro or MacBook Air laptops, and the same off new iMacs. The iPad is available at a $41 discount, and the iPod nano costs $11 less tomorrow.
Dave Bailey, Computing
Parallels Desktop 6.0 Switch to Mac Edition was easy to set up and gave impressive results – after minor niggles were sorted out. It allowed us to run Windows desktop operating systems on Mac hardware, and also individual Windows applications.
Martin Bryant, The Next Web
Now, I know Apple makes a lot of idiosyncratic decisions entirely in its own interests, and it’s perfectly entitled to do that. However, this makes absolutely no sense at all. Individual radio station apps serve up unique content, this is nothing like yet-another-identical-fart-app.
Brett Terpstra, TUAW
ForkLift 2 was officially released this week. This is the second generation of the FTP client-cum-Finder replacement, and it brings with it a veritable shipping palette full of new features.
Medical Joyworks
Lesson 1 : Thou shalt test thy app in all supported iOS versions.
Sam Holmes, Wall Street Journal
The Singapore government Thursday said it plans to pump more land into the city-state's private residential property market in the first half of next year to help temper building price pressures.
The continuation of the aggressive land supply program seen in the second half of this year comes amid signs the government remains concerned about the formation of a significant housing bubble despite three rounds of measures to curb speculative activity since September 2009. Singapore's home property prices rose 14.4% in the third quarter of this year from the fourth quarter of last year, according to data from the URA.
Brandon Bailey, San Jose Mercury News
At a time when Apple is adding new workers almost as fast as it sells new iPhones and iPads, the pioneering computer maker has made a 98-acre land purchase that will roughly double the size of its home base in Cupertino.
Apple's latest acquisition is the longtime Cupertino campus of rival tech giant Hewlett-Packard, the Mercury News learned Wednesday. HP announced over the summer that it planned to move out of that site, which it had occupied for decades, as it consolidates operations at its Palo Alto headquarters over the next two years.
Whereoscope Blog
Turning off location access will remove an application’s ability to turn on the GPS chip, but that is only one of the ways to drain your battery. Continually sending data over the network via Edge or 3G is almost as bad, and the only way to stop that is to delete the app.
Alexis Kayhill, Mac360
For Mac users, beyond the keyboard, which Mac device do we use the most? It’s the mouse, right? How can you make left-click or right-click more productive than just a click?
Peter Cohen, The Loop
Field of Glory is a turn-based strategy wargame originally developed by HexWar and published for the PC by Slitherine. It’s based on an eponymous tabletop gaming system. The Mac release of Field of Glory comprises the original game and three expansion packs – Rise of Rome, Storm of Arrows and Immortal Fire.
David Chartier, Macworld
New in Kiwi 2.0 is a tabbed interface, allowing greater flexibility if you manage multiple accounts or check in on other conversations or timelines often. Each account can have its own tab, and viewing a reply chain between multiple users will open a separate tab as well.
Richard Gaywood, TUAW
Since upgrading, I have found myself unable to use the handy shift-drag trick to type capitals.
John Boudreau, San Jose Mercury News
As 2010 draws to a close, much of the tech world is struggling to regain its footing after a difficult recession. Then there's Apple.
Susan Pulliam, Wall Street Journal
Wall Street analysts have been left bewildered in recent days, as federal prosecutors begin to home in on insider-trading cases that appear to involve routinely published information about public-company supply chains.
Case in point: Apple Inc., one of the hottest stocks of the past year, for which an entire industry of well-known and obscure analysts and "expert networks" scramble to report every detail of the company's undisclosed production plans.
Cade Metz, The Register
Apple is now barring all single-station radio applications from the iPhone and iPad, insisting that "single station apps are the same as a fart app and represent spam in the iTunes store." So says Jim Barcus, the president of DJB Radio Apps, an outfit that has long helped build iPhone apps and other mobile apps for radio stations across the country.
According to Barcus, Apple began rejecting single-station radio apps on November 10, declaring that it "will no longer approve any more radio station apps unless there are hundreds of stations on the same app." Barcus can't see the logic. "[Apple doesn't] understand that radio stations are in fierce competition," he tells The Reg. "[Apple] just wants all radio stations to be on one big fat app, and that's just not going to happen."
Dan Frakes, Macworld
When you install the Printopia System Preferences pane, the utility automatically shares all printers currently configured on your Mac, allowing you to print to any of them, over your wireless network, from iOS 4.2 devices. It doesn’t matter how a printer is connected to your Mac—if your Mac can print to it, it works with Printopia.
Brooke Crothers, CNET
Though I've just begun to dig around inside of iOS 4.2 on my iPad 3G, it's already obvious that this upgrade is only going to increase the amount of time I spend on the iPad. This will happen at the expense of my MacBook Air, the only other computing device I use regularly.
Tim Beyers, Motley Fool
Apple TV finally looks like a winner, and it's all because of the iPad.
Josh Ong, AppleInsider
The U.S. International Trade Commission formally announced Tuesday that it is launching an investigation into Motorola smartphones in response to Apple's allegations that Motorola violated several multi-touch related patents.
Topher Kessler, CNET
Many times OS X will come with machine-specific driver modifications that will not be present if an older OS is installed, and therefore even if the OS boots properly you may have problems getting the system or its components to work, or work stably.
Martin Kaste, NPR
Since 2003, a growing list of smart phones have come loaded with software from Microsoft that makes remote wipes — and many other remote-control commands — possible.
The phone doesn't need to download any new software. All that's necessary is for the phone's user to configure it to receive e-mail from a Microsoft Exchange Server — the kind most big companies use.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Sinead Carew And Sayantani Ghosh, Reuters
Retired Apple Inc co-founder Steve Wozniak said he was "totally wrong" in recently suggesting the iPhone maker had bought speech-recognition software maker Nuance Communications Inc.
Joe Kissell, TidBITS
The short version: DEVONthink To Go works, and version 1.0.1 does indeed fix the bugs I personally found most irritating. The app still feels like an early effort, though—not quite fully baked. The current limitations don’t prevent me from using it, but as I discuss later, they may frustrate certain types of users. At the same time, after discussions with DEVONtechnologies president Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann, I’m optimistic that in another version or two, this could become an app to be reckoned with.
Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle
Neil Hughes, AppleInsider
St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants, a firm that sued Apple a year ago over camera-related patents, has filed a new suit in relation to patents it owns regarding power maintenance and processors.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Here's two good strategy game releases for Mac OS X this week (in case you want to spend a little time away from the family after the turkey's carved and eaten).
Derek Flanzraich
Ray Willington, Hot Hardware
In conclusion, yes, most Apple machines cost a bit more than similar PC counterparts. But if you put a great deal of value on longer battery life, generally improved resistance to viruses, eye-catching designs that use high-quality materials, and will make use of the robust iLife '11 software suite, then the tax--if you can even call it that--is worth paying. The real take-away here is that there's no reason to argue whether or not the Apple Tax is worthwhile; it will always be a case-by-case value-based decision for each consumer. Depending on your needs, one product or the other will or won't make sense. Now, can't we just all hug and make up?
Athima Chansanchai, MSNBC
Developers: think twice about submitting an app to Apple. All your hard work may earn you nothing more than a stinging rejection with reasons that seem arbitrary.
Tony Bradley, Computerworld
The iPhone and iPad are both now protected against more than 80 vulnerabilities -- many with critical security implications -- that most users were not even aware existed two days ago.
Victor Agreda, Jr., TUAW
Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC
Many of us carry almost every detail of our lives on our phones - so how secure are we from those who might want to know what we're saying and doing on the move? We know how insecure the voicemail of some famous folk turned out to be a few years back; surely today's sophisticated smartphones are much less vulnerable?
Whitson Gordon, Macworld
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
AirPlay is the killer feature for Apple TV. But perhaps we’d better keep that in the future tense for now: it’s going to be the killer feature for Apple TV. After installing today’s various software updates for iOS devices, the only apps I’ve seen where AirPlay works for video are the built-in iPod app (a.k.a. “Video” on the iPad and iPod Touch) and YouTube. In other apps, AirPlay is audio-only.
Sam Grobart, New York Times
Apple’s AirPlay is a very simple, elegantly executed workaround to the larger problem of the fractured world of digital media, and the conflicting interests and alliances that prevent all of our purchased content to be viewed on any device, at any time.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Two years ago, Apple executive Phil Schiller apparently signed up for Twitter and started tweeting. But he didn’t tweet often, and few people followed him, probably assuming it was a fake account. But if Twitter’s verification process is to be believed, the account is real. And further, Schiller has gotten a lot more active in recent weeks on the service. And he’s active on the hot photo sharing app Instagram too!
Mobile Web Programming
Today, iOS 4.2 appears as a free update for every iPhone, iPod or iPad device. This release provides some major changes on HTML5 and W3C future standards support, like WebSockets and Accelerometer support, new events, print support, new JavaScript data-types and better SVG support.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
Basically, you can have "apps" on your Apple TV without actually installing apps—your iOS apps can stay on your phone or iPad, and you can stream that content to the big screen.
The catch here is that AirPlay support varies on a per-app basis, and not all apps will have support.
TidBITS
For those of us with an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 4, it has been torture to switch back and forth between one of those devices an an iPad with iOS 3.2, the version it shipped with. We miss fast-app switching, folders, background audio, the unified mailbox, and other features that seemed invaluable the minute they became available. It has felt like a long wait for the iPad to get its due at last—so long that determining what’s new between iOS 3.x.x on the iPad and iOS 4.2.1 took some research. Here’s our list of the highlights.
James Galbraith, Macworld
While you can get most anything from your iOS device to a printer, it can be a clunky, time consuming hassle. That explains why AirPrint was the one of the most anticipated features of iOS 4.2, the new operating system for Apple's mobile devices. At launch, however, AirPrint is so limited as to be of little use to most people.
Ron McElfresh, Mac360
Joel Mathis, Macworld
The update adds MobileMe Calendar syncing to the program’s existing range of services, which already includes syncing with iOS devices and Google Calendar. In addition, the software features including To-Do lists that display within the calendar, customizable calendar views, live weather feeds, sticky notes, and other offerings not available in Apple’s iCal software.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
IT-Enquirer
Michael Gray, TUAW
Multitasking in 4.2 will already be familiar to many iPhone users. When you switch away from one of the iWork applications, the iPad will save the state of your work in iWork. When you come back to that application later, you'll be able to resume right where you left off.
Brent Simmons, Inessential
I used to think sometimes: “Hey, I’m a professional of many years. I know what I’m doing. I can break this rule because I know for sure it will be fine.”
I don’t allow that thought anymore. Instead, now I think: “Hey, I’m a professional of many years. I know what I’m doing. I’m wise enough to use every tool at my disposal to make sure my code is correct.”
Glenn Fleishman, TidBITS
As sold through 3Gstore with a particular firmware update, the router can create a mobile hotspot from an iPhone using USB-based tethering.
Joe White, AppAdvice
David Chartier, Macworld
New in WireTap Anywhere 2.0 is more fine-grained control over routing audio. You can create virtual input devices and assign them any number of audio channels, plus combine audio channels from both software and hardware devices into any arrangement you want. In addition, you can tweak per-channel audio levels both before and after you mix them, then preview the mix before you begin recording.
Dan Miller, Macworld
Jackie Dove, Macworld
Printer vendors, accustomed to letting their devices make most of the noise, adopted a quietly watchful stance amid the speculation surrounding Apple's iOS 4.2 AirPrint feature.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
I’m already loving AirPlay. It’s such a natural way to integrate all of your devices that contain media. The desktop edition of iTunes, plus any app on the iPad or iPhone that deals with media, has an AirPlay button. Tap it and you’re presented with a popup list of all of the devices on the network that can stream AirPlay audio and video. It’s the same basic mechanism as when you decide to plug something into a set of amplified speakers. It’s spontaneous and it works.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
This is one of those things that quite rightly annoys Apple’s critics. They can make valid and productive complaints about the limitations of their hardware — particularly their iOS devices — and Apple really has no way to respond.
…Except to update the OS, which is what they’d planned all along.
Jason Snell, Macworld
The big new feature in the update is support for AirPlay, a new Apple technology that allows devices running iOS 4.2 or Macs and PCs running iTunes 10 to stream video over a local network and have it played back on a TV set via the Apple TV.
Jason Snell, Macworld
As a part of Monday’s release of iOS 4.2, Apple will make the “Find My iPhone” set of remote-control features previously found in its $99-per-year MobileMe service available for free to owners of all iOS devices capable of running iOS 4.2.
Jason Snell, Macworld
On Monday, Apple will release iOS 4.2, a free software update that brings the features of iOS 4—including multitasking, fast app switching, and a unified mail inbox—to the iPad for the first time. Apple says the update, which also adds the new AirPrint and AirPlay features to all compatible devices, will be available at approximately 10 a.m. Pacific Time.
Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun-Times
Andy Ihnatko, Macworld
John Boudreau, San Jose Mercury News
The China App Store offers few applications created by independent developers specifically for Chinese, said Bo Wang, CEO of Bokan Technologies, one of the largest iPhone app developers in China. "Two-thirds of our downloads come from the United States. The rest are from Europe and Japan. In terms of the Chinese market, it's almost zero," he said.
Apple may have trouble persuading top Chinese developers to make iPhone apps specific to the country, Wang said, because of China's copycat culture. Most of them prefer to work for major companies, such as Tencent QQ, the popular portal and instant messaging service, that offer good salaries to engineers who know Apple's iOS mobile platform, he said. Independent developers can make money off services provided through apps but not necessarily from the sales of apps, which can be copied, Wang added.
John Boudreau, San Jose Mercury News
Like other western Internet companies, Apple, if it wants to operate in China, has to follow the rules of the Communist government, which does not want its citizens accessing politically sensitive information.
Ebenezer Samuel, New York Daily News
Developers are still learning how to best utilize the gigantic touchscreen interface, but more and more often, we're seeing iPad-specific gems pop up in the iTunes Apps Store. The best part? Unlike consoles, most of the games come at comparable budget prices, while still offering plenty of fun.
Kim Tong-hyung, Korea Times
The competition between KT and SK Telecom in tablets accounts for the second-round of the proxy war between Apple and Samsung here.
KT selling more than 1 million iPhones here was a crushing blow to the ego of Samsung, which never before saw its local handset dominance challenged, and the Korean technology giant appears fired-up to prove that whatever Apple can do, it can do better.
Daniel Jalkut, Red Sweater
As I moped along De Anza Boulevard that afternoon, I thought that I might not be cut out for software engineering in general, let alone at a world-class company like Apple. After I retreated back to my office and got a surge of help from a trusted colleague, I realized that I was perfectly qualified for the job. Especially if I could ask for help every once in a while.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
New evidence uncovered in recent iOS 4.2 builds and the iOS 4.2.1 golden master seed is suggesting, however, that Apple will be offering a free MobileMe tier to users. The evidence comes in the form of a new private framework known as AppleAccounts.framework that includes a series of device-specific error messages referring to free MobileMe accounts.
MacNN
Organize your digital tidbits in a logical way and find them again quickly. Yojimbo 3 adds iPad and scanning support in this easy to use program.
Alexis Kayhill, Mac360
Alexis Kayhill, Mac360
IT-Enquirer
Scrivener 2.0 is an important upgrade of the number one writer’s tool for Mac users. It has numerous improvements and some new features, such as a template startup screen, better integration between corkboard, outliner and text mode, collections, page view, and the ability to publish to ePUB directly.
SC Magazine
The quantity of malware targeted at the Mac platform has been highlighted since the roll out of a free Mac anti-virus solution.
Frederic Lardinois, ReadWriteWeb
Clearly, Ping is not going viral on Twitter yet. Indeed, users barely ever retweet a Ping like.
Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat
But it turns out that iPhone game developers have not only embraced Apple’s Game Center, which offers features such as leaderboards for games, developers have also continued to use OpenFeint on top of Game Center. That’s because Open Feint has features that the developers can’t live without, said Peter Relan, chairman of Burlingame, Calif.-based OpenFeint, in an interview. Not only is the game platform surviving, it’s thriving.
Financial Times
Instead, the operators seem to be taking a different route: they said on Thursday they would develop their own soft Sim together. This would at least give them control over a universal standard. It could also facilitate two long-held dreams: a world where phones are used to pay for purchases in shops, and where all sorts of technology, including cameras and even cars, are connected to mobile networks.
Joel Mathis, Macworld
The publication will be available for download each Thursday by 4 p.m. Eastern, with the full print edition, and all articles are cached for offline reading. The app also includes the magazine’s audio edition, which is read by professional newscasters, so that users can switch between reading and listening.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
The program forgoes all but a single menu of its own, leaving the rest of the menu bar free for other uses. Whenever you want to access a menu-bar icon that’s been overrun by menu titles, just switch to NoMenuBar.
Kim Tong-hyung, Korea Times
It appears the Apple iPad is going to be a huge hit here. It’s hard to imagine, however, Korean consumers being all smiles once they begin using their trophy gadget.
This has nothing to do with what Apple’s new tablet can’t do, but rather how the local computing environment has users stuck with badly-aged Microsoft technologies in computer operating systems and Web browsers.
Eric Slivka, MacRumors.com
Blair Hanley Frank, Australian Macworld
If you’re looking for an affordable Mac laptop that does everything you need without sacrificing quality, look no further than the MacBook. All things considered, it’s the best Mac for the average consumer.
Josh Ong, AppleInsider
Carriers in Europe are threatening to cut subsidies if Apple releases an iPhone with an embedded SIM card, a new report claims.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Serenity Caldwell, Macworld
The 3.2 Boot Camp software—available in two different flavors for users of 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows, respectively—adds support in Windows for the ATI-Radeon HD 5870 graphics card, Apple USB Ethernet Adapter, and MacBook Air SuperDrive, and addresses a variety of unnamed critical bug fixes. Apple recommends all users of Boot Camp 3.1 upgrade to this new version.
Alexis Kayhill, Mac360
Alexis Kayhill, Mac360
Gene Steinberg, TechNightOwl
The long and short of it is that the enterprise suddenly looms as a major and surprising source of growth for Apple.
Andy Ihnatko, Macworld UK
And the thing is, Apple has never hesitated to make the Big Play when it think’s it’ll increase the user experience. Will Apple still allow desktop users to retain their freedoms a year or two from now, when the Store controls 95 per cent of individual app sales and the company has come up with a Great Idea for improving the Mac OS user experience that requires everybody to give something up in return?
Well, if Apple ever truly earns the title of Evil Company, at least we can be sure that it’ll only be evil like the machines in The Matrix as opposed to the aliens in Alien. Apple wants us to be blissful and happy like a babe in a womb. Google and Facebook want to lay their eggs inside our chests until their next product tears its way through our sternums.
Nilay Patel, Engadget
Some comments attributed to Steve Wozniak caused quite a kerfuffle this morning -- according to Dutch paper De Telegraaf, Woz said that "Android phones have more features," which would help Google's OS become the dominant smartphone platform. Obviously, a statement like that from Apple's co-founder rocketed around the web, and it's set off yet another round of furious Android-vs-iOS debate. There's just one problem, though: Woz never said anything like that. Turns out Woz is an Engadget commenter just like you, and when we saw that he'd left a clarification on the post, we called him up for a quick chat to sort everything out.
David Chartier, Macworld
AppleInsider
Apple on Thursday released an update containing bug and security fixes for its Safari Web browser, with version 5.0.3 for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard, and 4.1.3 for Mac users running Tiger.
David Chartier, Macworld
Itching to make some fast cash in the mutant-hunting trade, but worried about ruining your favorite pair of jeans? id Software, the folks that popularized the first-person shooter genre, has some Rage for you.
Kevin Purdy, Lifehacker
While the majority of changes are quiet, background algorithm and efficiency improvements, the app now has a more native, Mac-like look, and queries to choose files are more advanced.
Adam Rosen, Cult Of Mac
“The trend in higher education computing is this concept of mobility” said Greg Smith, George Fox University’s chief information officer, “and this fits right in.”
Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM
The GSMA, the organization representing most of the world’s mobile operators, today changed its rules to allow for a programmable SIM card much like we described Apple building with Gemalto a few weeks back. It also set up a task force to create rules around how carriers will provision the remote-activated SIM cards with the goal of completing such rules by Jan. 2011. In a release, it said it expected devices with such remote-activated SIMs to be in devices by 2012.
Mark Sigal, O'Reilly Radar
Lessons learned while building a top 20 ebook for the iPad.
Scott Raymond, ZDNet
But if you do, you’ll find me enjoying it to the fullest.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
Killian Bell, Cult Of Mac
Mac Slocum, O'Reilly Radar
Xavier Lanier, Gotta Be Mobile
If I brought all four of these devices I would be able to do approximately 14 hours of work (web, writing and light photo editing), watch 10+ hours of movies on my iPad and talk for about seven hours on the iPhone. That should pretty much cover me on any trip of any kind.
Jeffrey Mincey, Mac360
Ron McElfresh, Mac360
Macworld
Everything you wanted to know about Microsoft's Entourage-replacement.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
David Chartier, Macworld
Google talks about Web apps being the future, but the company sometimes takes a while to bring some of its most powerful features to all devices. Case in point: after four generations of the iPhone and seven months of the iPad, Google Docs can finally be edited on iOS devices.
Jake Coyle, Associated Press
With the Beatles finally on iTunes, Garth Brooks and AC/DC are among the few notable acts that continue to staunchly hold out, unwilling to agree to Apple's restrictive pricing schemes and loath to see their albums chopped into singles.
Kid Rock and Bob Seger have also refused to cave in, like holed-up gunfighters.
Robert Lemos, InfoWorld
Whole-disk encryption is a key security technology, especially for mobile corporate users. Yet the two companies seem to lack any effective channel of communication to prevent show-stopping issues.
A lack of communication hurts both companies and their users.
Nick Spence, Macworld UK
Apple's announcement of The Beatles on iTunes received mixed reviews on Tuesday, but sales still appear strong despite or because of the hype.
Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune
Maybe Jobs should have been picked the year the Apple II took off. Or the year he introduced the Mac. Or the year he came back to Apple. Or the year he brought out the iPod. Or the iPhone.
But can someone make the case in those meetings that Jobs and his iPad did more to change the news in a Koch brothers, Glenn Beck, Wikileaks kind of year?
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
Cue the double standards.
Nick Spence, Macworld UK
Integrating technology of Wolfram|Alpha, the Mathematica-powered computational knowledge engine, makes it possible to enter math or data calculations in plain English and get immediate answers or start an extensive analysis.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
David Chartier, Macworld
SOHO Labels 5 is the more significant of the two updates, as Chronos brought over a number of features that debuted in its other products, including SOHO Business Cards 3 and iScrapbook 3. These include a Cover Flow browser for graphic iScrapKits and a new Smart Template system with more than 300 templates to get you started.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
“The Beatles will be available for digital downloads exclusively on iTunes, with the exclusive expiring in 2011,” an Apple spokesperson told The Loop.
Andy Ihnatko's Celestial Waste of Bandwidth (BETA)
Which surprised me a little when I became convinced of it last night because in recent weeks I’d been working under the theory that bringing the Beatles catalogue to iTunes was a high priority only for Apple…not for the Beatles or EMI.
I think it’s more about exposure than unit sales.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
If you’re such a fan that you’ve followed the labyrinthine legal maneuvers that took place after the band broke up—including Apple Records’ infringement issues with Apple Computer—then today has been a long time coming.
And, of course, if you’re Steve Jobs, this is a personal triumph.
Dan Moren, Macworld
It’s the culmination of years of rumors, half-starts, and legal disputes between Apple and The Beatles’s Apple Corps. In a day and age where most new music is released online, The Beatles have long been the most promninent holdout from digital downloads.
With Tuesday’s move, Apple becomes the first music download service to offer The Beatles, which is no doubt a feather in Steve Jobs’s personal cap. But, more importantly, it means that we no longer have to endlessly speculate about when The Beatles will finally arrive on iTunes. And there’s just no price tag you can put on that.
Megan Lavey, TUAW
It slipped out a bit early, but the Beatles complete back catalog is available through iTunes. The individual albums clock in at $12.99 while a boxset of the Beatles' entire work is available for $149.
John Brandon, Macworld
PDFpen Pro 5 is a powerful Mac-only tool that helps you edit PDF files. It’s much more affordable than Adobe Acrobat Pro, but provides many of the same features.
Dan Miller, Macworld
The crux of the problem is that bundles like GrowlMail are configured to work with specific versions of Mail.app and the Message.framework; those versions are identified by their Universally Unique Identifiers (UUIDs). To get the old add-ins working with the new Mail, you have to tell those bundles what the new UUIDs are.
Kelly Guimont, TUAW
Josh Ong, AppleInsider
Apple released Mac OS X Server 10.6.5 build 10H575 late Monday, after having quietly pulled the previous build, 10H574. Mac OS X Server 10.6.5 was originally released last Wednesday alongside Mac OS X 10.6.5, but users quickly reported issues with the update.
According to Apple, the updated version fixes a flaw where "a user may receive mail intended for other users."
Dave Winer, Scripting News
I never said they could. What else did they do with my contacts? Send a copy to their server for safe-keeping? Foolish me, but I thought that was my iPhone and my contact list. I paid huge money for the iPhone, so it's not like it could be anyone's "business model" to use that data. But now, as far as I know, some unknown startup in California has all my data.
Ethan Smith, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc. is preparing to announce that its iTunes Store will soon start carrying music by the Beatles, according to people familiar with the situation, a move that would fill in a glaring gap in the collection of the world's largest music retailer.
The agreement would represent a watershed in a fraught, decades-long relationship between two of the biggest icons in their respective fields.
Ron McElfresh, Mac360
Jeffrey Mincey, Mac360
Is there a single video player that plays every type of video? If there is, it’s likely to be called VLC. It’s a free, open source, cross-platform multimedia player that plays what Flash, QuickTime, and Windows Video cannot.
Hannah Bouckley, T3
However, we’d be tempted to pitch the 11-inch Air as more of an iPad rival. OK, the operating systems are slightly different, but it takes up a similar space in your bag (only weighing a few hundred grams more), adds the keyboard many iPad users crave and you've got the Mac App Store coming soon. It's certainly a viable alternative to the iPad for anyone whose main prioirty is work and email.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
"Instead of having to worry about one thing being updated -- the operating system -- users will now have to worry about three things being kept up to date: the OS, Java and Flash," said Charlie Miller, an analyst with Baltimore-based Independent Security Evaluators (ISE) and co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook.
Michael Rose, TUAW
Jeffery Battersby, Macworld
Basic text editor for iOS devices makes creating text a pleasure.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Currently a MobileMe subscription at Amazon is going for $58.55 versus Apple’s $99 a year.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Apple will host holiday-themed workshops for kids ages six to 13-years-old this month. Topics will include photos, videos and presentations. That sounds just swell, but the bad news is that the workshops will take place at a very limited number of Apple Stores.
Adam Rosen, Cult Of Mac
Dana Blankenhorn, ZDNet
It’s all about the Great Game, and you’re not invited to play.
Preston Gralla, Computerworld
I think Wu is on target about Jobs' overweening desire for control, but I'm not sure that Apple will be able to continue to exert that kind of control when he leaves the company.
Lawrence Latif, The Inquirer
It's easy to take apart Apple's decision to recommend the Mac Mini as a replacement for the Xserve, but what this graphically illustrates is Apple's recently growing reliance on the use of marketing wordplay to shift products rather than clever design or pray, any real innovation.
Waffle
Since it’s only being teased in some countries, I’m guessing it’s an iTunes Store thing.
There’s no real pattern that I’ve been able to tell with regards to any existing iTunes Store feature.
Kirk McElhearn, Kirkville
Michael Kan, IDG News Service
Apple products are hitting the Chinese market faster than they used to, with the company's latest version of its MacBook Air scheduled to be released in the country this month.
Chinese consumers once had to endure a long wait before Apple's newest products officially arrived in the country. In the case of the iPhone, more than two years passed between Apple's launch of the iconic smartphone and the start of official shipments to China in late 2009.
Dan Warne, Australian Business Traveller
Kiwiblog
I’ve had an iPad for around three months now and I have to say I find it absolutely invaluable. Cunningly, they have invented a device which will not replace either your phone or your laptop, but complements them both.
Tim Bradshaw And Joseph Menn, Financial Times
Agencies gave Apple’s entry to the mobile ads market a rapturous reception in April, hoping it would add fuel to a slow-burning format that has yet to live up to its potential. But that enthusiasm has waned amid high prices for ads, a slow production process and client withdrawals.
Jean-Louis Gassée, Monday Note
The careful application of a common veneer on both Mac and iPads is, in my interpretation, a preparation for a transition to a shared OS, or to variants of the same underlying software engine adapted to the two usage modes: Lean back and lean forward.
Electronista
A Chinese dispute with Apple's iPhone patents may negate some of the company's legalaction against Meizu, the Beijing Times said Saturday. Local firm Herron Network Information has sued Apple arguing that a patent for the iPhone's design was invalid as it wasn't attached to the product name.
Fleur Doidge, CRN
Damon Darlin, New York Times
Product designers have always tried to cram new features into their wares. They may finally be figuring out how to build in some brand loyalty, too.
Alexander Vaughn, AppAdvice
Good news for all of you Ping addicts (and we know there are many of you), Apple has now made Ping, its social network for music, available on the iPad.
Sam Abuelsamid, TUAW
For anyone that makes a living sitting in front of a computer screen, little tools that help speed your way through various tasks are always welcome, and at least one of these apps might be just what you've been looking for.
Peter Cohen, The Loop
To wit, at no point did PrimeSense present Apple with a Kinect gaming peripheral. The company shopped around its sensor technology, which powers the Microsoft Kinect. The Kinect is still a Microsoft product, designed for the Xbox 360.
Chris Taylor, Fast Company
You know that old wives' tale about how we only use 10% of our brain's potential? It isn't true, but up until now, I felt like I was using my iPad at 10% of its potential. A new software update goes a long way towards increasing that number.
Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider
The update package installs the latest printer, fax and scanner drivers specific to the devices the user has installed. The driver update does not appear unless the 10.6.5 update has been applied.
Derek Sivers, Wired
Whatever. Fucking Apple.
Liquidpubs
Now that Apple has released the market-leading iPad, with a barrage of other tablet computers and dedicated eReaders flooding the market, it’s worthwhile to look back and see where all of this came from. The focus will be on Apple, and their history with tablet computers.
Apple’s history with tablet computers dates back to at least 1979. A good stock of the following pictures and associated captions/background information are themselves derived from the book, AppleDesign, The Work of the Apple Industrial Design Group, by Paul Kunkel/Photos by Rick English (1997).
Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review
Rands In Repose
Yet in a crowded market of low-end mobile photo editing tools, Instagram has become an overnight success. Why? They said no — a lot.
Dan Frakes, Macworld
CopySwap comes in handy in the specific situation where you want to swap text between a document and the Clipboard—in other words, when you want to replace one section of text with another snippet, but keep the original for use elsewhere.
Dan Moren, Macworld
Java enthusiasts can relax a little bit: on Friday, Apple announced that it will work with Oracle to help create an open source Java SE 7 implementation for Mac OS X.
Ted Landau, Macworld
Tom Kaneshige, CIO
Apple has come a long way, secretly courting the enterprise to adopt iPhones and iPads, but a closer look at its iOS Developer Enterprise Program shows that Apple still has much to learn about the needs of companies.
David Chartier, Macworld
Tunes 10.1 brings full support for AirPlay, its new technology evolved from AirTunes. AirPlay allows you to stream music, video, and photos from iOS-devices or iTunes to other AirPlay-enabled devices. iTunes 10.1 also supports syncing an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with iOS 4.2, which Apple is expected to release soon.
David Quilty, TUAW
While Apple's own website states that "AirPlay is coming soon and will be available on all iOS 4 devices," which one would imagine includes the 3G iPhone, it looks like it is not meant to be.
YUKARI IWATANI KANE And EMILY STEEL, Wall Street Journal
Apple Inc.'s iAd interactive mobile ad service is having an unintended impact on rivals: It's largely helping their businesses by generating broader advertiser interest in mobile phones and gadgets.
Iljitsch Van Beijnum, Ars Technica
In Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, Apple introduced IPv6 support. Like other IPv6-capable operating systems, Mac OS will prefer IPv6 over IPv4 if it has a choice. That is, until yesterday's 10.6.5 Snow Leopard update. With regular IPv6 connectivity, the newly updated Snow Leopard will still try to connect over IPv6 first, but for IPv6 destinations that are reachable over 6to4, the snowy cat prefers IPv4 instead. It will only connect over 6to4 to IPv6 destinations if there's no IPv4.
The disadvantage of all this automatic behavior is that if something doesn't work, it's really hard to get around the breakage. 6to4 gateways can be flakey—they are operated for free for the good of the Internet after all. Some ISPs don't carry the 6to4 route in their network, while many universities filter 6to4 packets.
Tim Wu, Slate
Apple's vision of the future is based on the marriage of 21st-century technology with the 20th century's approach to integration. The best content from Hollywood and New York and the telephone and networking power of AT&T converge in Apple's tools, which respond instantly to every human desire. It is a combination of undeniable power and attraction. Best of all, the worst of the Internet—the spam, the unreliable apps, the messy, amateur content—are eliminated.
Marco Arment
I’m sticking with the Apple convention for now, but it’s always going to annoy me until I come up with a better solution.
Cascade Software Corporation
Steve Jobs has a well-deserved reputation for creating great quality products and for his passion for excellence and user experience. I’ve also read that he is a detail-oriented executive and a hands-on guy who is intimately involved with his company’s work (in a way that few other CEOs are).
His phone-call reinforced those notions and went further to suggest that he was also a very conscientious guy who cared about people. The fact that he took the time to read my email, think about the app and then personally call me was amazing.
Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe
Most of us would want every conceivable option for our thousand bucks. But if you spend the money on a MacBook Air, you’ll get perhaps the best option of all: simplicity.
Tom Reestman, The Small Wave.
In the world of mobile devices doing general tasks, the iPad rules, and even the MacBook seems overblown and outdated. But get the MacBook among its PC peers and one remembers just how much it still blows the majority of them away.
Mark Gurman, 9 To 5 Mac
Jonny Evans, Computerworld
In future I hope not to read headlines saying political satire apps are unavailable to me, or find that deskop or user interface enhancements I may enjoy to use aren't available via the most easy-to-reach store simply because they do not pass Apple's self-made guidelines.
On my Mac, the only thing I want Apple to reject software for is because it is buggy, insecure or contains malware.
Topher Kessler, CNET
A number of people have mentioned not being able to update to OS X 10.6.5, especially when they have used the standalone Combo updaters that have been found at sites like MacUpdate. After installing these updates, they have found the system still to be running OS X 10.6.4.
Dan Moren, Macworld
All five major film studios—Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Paramount, and Fox—are onboard, as well as several Japanese studios, including Asmik Ace, Fuji TV, Shochiku, and Toei. That will give Japanese users access to both domestic and international titles.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Dan Moren, Macworld
Among the more prominent fixes included in the update is a fix for a bug in Apple Type Services which could allow the downloading of a maliciously crafted font file to lead to arbitrary code execution. That bug, originally caught by security firm Core Security, was similar to a vulnerability in Apple’s iOS that allowed hackers to jailbreak devices running that software. Apple patched the flaw in an iOS update.
David Chartier, Macworld
This 6MB update adds compatibility for nearly a dozen new-ish cameras, including the Canon EOS 60D, Canon PowerShot S95, Hasselblad H4D-40, Nikon D3100, Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5, Sony DSLR-A290, Sony DSLR-A560, Sony DSLR-A580, Sony SLT-A33, and Sony SLT-A55.
David Chartier, Macworld
Announced on Twitter’s official blog, Ping now integrates with the popular microblogging service. You can hook your Twitter account up to Ping to share your purchases, music “likes,” and other activity. Perhaps most importantly, Ping can sift through your Twitter account to help you find and add friends.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Apple removed support in Mac OS X 10.6.5 for printing from iOS devices to shared printers at the last minute. This made AirPrint a less appealing feature for many users, since it is now apparently limited to certain HP printer models. Developer Steven Troughton-Smith found the configuration files necessary to reenable that support, though, and in the process discovered the mechanism that makes AirPrint discovery work.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
First, give us the option to be more selective about what we automatically tweet. For instance, tweet only links to music you’ve posted about—where you’ve taken the trouble to write something about a particular hunk of music rather than tweeting about each song you’ve liked. Next, shorten the URLs.
Tim Chaten, AppAdvice
The iBookstore is tied to a user’s iTunes account, and regular iTunes gift cards will still work to purchase your next iBook. But, these gift cards are a great way to remove any doubt a recipient may have regarding whether an iTunes gift card will work in the iBookstore.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
When Apple announced that AirPrint was coming to iOS devices this November, the company said that it would be compatible with shared printers connected to a Mac or PC in addition to AirPrint compatible models from HP. New evidence suggests that shared printer support may be dropped for now, making AirPrint far less useful a feature than previously promised.
David Chernicoff, ZDNet
This doesn’t rule out a careful set of limited partnerships between Apple and server hardware vendors to build OS X server rack-mountable systems, but doing so would be a major change in the Apple business model. Not impossible, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
Jason Hiner, ZDNet
The MacBook Air 11-inch is the ultimate small form-factor laptop and it will naturally appeal to a lot of executives and road warriors in business. IT departments could certainly use a high-quality system that they could deploy to some of their most mobile professionals that need a mix of durability, portability, and performance.
Dan Frommer, Business Insider
Eric Slivka, MacRumors
"AirPrint has not been pulled. Don't believe everything you read."
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
Remember Square? Well, the innovative company launched last December by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has finally opened its doors to the public after a 10 month private pilot. Now anyone can request a free credit card reader for their iOS device from the Square website.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Dan Frakes, Macworld
Once the sun starts to go down, the utility gradually—over the course of an hour—dims your screen and shifts its color temperature to match that of the type of lighting in the room.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
The new version provides a little more security, stability, and reliability in a few areas, helps out iPhoto and Aperture image processing, and should fix some outstanding issues with various apps and accessories.
Dan Moren, Macworld
“Two words: ‘I wish!’” Wi-Gear CEO Mark Pundsack said via e-mail, when asked about the rumors that Apple had bought the company.
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Microsoft today explained why it has not patched older versions of its Office for Mac, but would not disclose a release schedule for doing so. "We cannot give an exact date, but we expect to provide these updates during one of our normal monthly update cycles very soon," said Jerry Bryant, a group manager in the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC).
Leander Kahney, Cult Of Mac
Apple’s retail stores have suspended sales of iPhone 4 slide-on cases because of concerns about trapped dirt causing scratches and cracks — the so-called “Glassgate” issue.
Matt Mullenweg
I imagine prior to the launch of the iPod, or the iPhone, there were teams saying the same thing: the copy + paste guys are *so close* to being ready and we know Walt Mossberg is going to ding us for this so let’s just not ship to the manufacturers in China for just a few more weeks… The Apple teams were probably embarrassed. But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.
AFP
Apple and Japanese advertising giant Dentsu Inc. are teaming up to bring the California-based company's iAd advertising network for portable devices to Japan early next year, the companies said Wednesday.
Dentsu, Japan's largest ad agency, will sell advertising space and produce commercials to be distributed through the iAd network to iPhone and iPod touch users in the country.
Erica Ogg, CNET
All of those things amount to big hurdles, but Apple has one very important thing going for it: the end users are often very familiar with their stuff. And with its momentum in mobile devices and the overall "consumerisation" of technology, now is the time to make this kind of move.
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
Andrea Wong And Lilian Karunungan, Bloomberg
Apple Inc.’s suppliers in Taiwan say earnings are being crimped as the local dollar climbs faster than the rest of Asia’s currencies in the past month, raising the prospect of higher prices.
The Taiwan dollar has strengthened 2.6 percent against the U.S. dollar in the past month, the most among 10 Asian emerging- market currencies tracked by Bloomberg.
Federico Viticci, MacStories
We have been told from a few Mac developers that a few days ago Apple removed all the references to printing via OS X 10.6.5 and PCs both from Readme files and other online documentation posted in the iOS developer center. It seems like all that’s now mentioned in the release notes are the aforementioned HP networked printers, as if the shared printing option never existed.
Charles Hamilton, GigaOM
Jeffrey Mincey, Mac 360
Ron McElfresh, Mac 360
Gregg Keizer, Computerworld
Security researchers today warned that Apple's OS X contains a critical vulnerability that attackers could use to hijack Macs running the older Leopard version of the operating system.
Although Leopard was supplanted by the new Snow Leopard operating system more than a year ago, the older version still accounts for about a third of all installations of Mac OS X.
Mike Keller, PC World
I was using the Netflix app the other night on my iPhone 4 and had a shocking revelation: this is one of the worst designed “professional” apps I’ve ever seen. Yes, I can stream video over 3G. I can also search for movies and manage my queue. In many ways, Netflix for iPhone delivers, but it is relatively new and clearly a work in progress. In fact, the current version is a prime example of what not to do in terms of iOS app design. Here are some reasons why.
Philip Michaels, Macworld
Release notes for the Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 14.0.1 Update say that the release fixes “critical issues” in the latest version of Office that could cause components of the suite to stop responding or quit unexpectedly. Microsoft says the update also fixes a security vulnerability that could allow an attack to overwrite the contents of a computer’s memory with malicious code.
Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider
Many of Apple's customers in enterprise environments are shocked by the company's decision to discontinue the Xserve. There's an easy answer why it happened: they weren't selling well. Here's why, and how the company may address the server market in the future, using lessons learned from iOS.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Dennis Sellers, Mascsimum News
Peter Cohen, The Loop
Notebooks.com
There are plenty of things to like. Here are a few things that I find easier to do on a Mac.
Doug Gross, CNN
Tagged Tuesday with an orange "coming soon" label, a page on Apple's website said that the upcoming version of the company's operating system for its mobile devices -- iOS 4.2 -- will bring more than 100 new features to the iPad.
Among them, Apple says, will be multi-tasking, or the ability to run multiple apps at the same time. The inability to do so was a common complaint about earlier versions of the operating system.
Carrie-Ann Skinner, PC Advisor
The BBC is set to launch an international version of its catch-up TV service, iPlayer, after the BBC Trust gave the project the go-ahead.
Nitesh Dhanjani, Sans
I do agree with Apple that third-party applications should also take part in ensuring authorization from the user, yet their stance leaves the following concerns unaddressed.
Rob Griffiths, Macworld
Needless to say, people were quite thrilled with how this first event turned out.
Dave Caolo, TUAW
Dan Frommer, Business Insider
Amazon just announced a new program that would allow newspaper and magazine publishers to receive a 70% royalty split from Amazon, which has become the sort-of industry standard revenue share for content, led by Apple's iPhone App Store in 2008.
The Age
So why should Apple expect anyone to buy the 11-inch MacBook Air when it's worked so hard to convince us that the iPad is a better solution? Because Steve Jobs is wrong - the iPad isn't always the best tool for the job.
Chuck Goolsbee, TidBITS
The conclusion we come to is that the Xserve never sold as well as it could have. It was hobbled from the start, by Apple’s lukewarm support, by its basic design, and by software that never quite lived up to its promise. Apple says “servers don’t sell,” yet selling servers is exactly what Dell, HP, and others do, in high volume and with good margins. So why did the Xserve have to die?
Electronista
Rich Trenholm, CNET
I'm talking about how Apple took something that tech-savvy souls already understood and repackaged it with an extra helping of style -- and made it desirable to the average consumer. The Internet has seen the computer replace the TV as a hub for the home, but that simply couldn't have happened with the brown or grey monstrosities that predated the iMac. Computers had to get sexy, and Apple made the iMac sexier than anything else.
Tony Sarno, Apc
My hunch is that Apple's recent price drops across its MacBook line are as much to do with maintaining sales of the outdated spec as with a desire to own the cheaper segments of the market.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Joel Mathis, Macworld
In addition to a user interface designed to more closely resemble a newspaper, the iPad app offers video content and a Live Topics feature that combines headlines with social media conversations from Facebook and Twitter.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Rene Ritchie, TiPb
iPhone 3G’s hardware isn’t as fast and it’s RAM is literally a quarter of iPhone 4’s but it did a decent job typing, scrolling, pinching, and zooming its way around iOS 4.2.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
Angus Kidman, Lifehacker
Qantas has made a lot of noise about the new Macs in its domestic Qantas Club lounges. But it hasn’t been so keen to point out one of the key features of those machines: when you sit down at them, you’re offered a choice of whether to run Windows 7 or Mac OS X.
Craig Wilson, USA Today
Call them iTots. Wunderkind of the 21st century. One-, 2- and 3- year-olds who know their way around an iPhone or an iPad better than you do.
Fabrice Hoss, New Zealand Herald
The commercial tsunami unleashed by the iPhone and its similarly capable iPod Touch has served as a launch pad for the videogame industry in Montreal, which hopes to seize on the success of Apple's smartphone.
Xavier Verhoeven, Australian Macworld
Apple has quietly updated the Australian prices of every Mac in its lineup over the last week or so – most likely due to the current exchange rates, though Apple has not discussed the changes.
Daily Mail
Owners of Apple's iPhone are being warned to manually reset the alarms on their smartphones as the clocks go back this weekend amid warnings a glitch in the gadget will fail to set the alarm clock off on time.
Users in Australia and Europe have already taken to the internet in outrage after their alarms went off an hour later than they should have when the clocks went back there last weekend.
Ross Rubin, Engadget
Apple hasn't yet offered extensive details on how these iPad calques will work in Lion; there doesn't seem to be any requirement for users to use these in Lion. But the hope is that Apple will blend them into the Mac OS rather than graft them on. Just as with the new MacBook Air, the key is to recognize what is relevant and what is not.
Steve Lohr, New York Times
I.B.M. and Apple can be viewed as the yin and the yang of high-tech innovation, as two companies with more in common than is generally understood. There is a lot of eureka invention and deep science in I.B.M.’s varied businesses, industry experts say. And Apple’s continuing success, they add, is explained in good part by its ability to make innovation a managed system, more machinelike.
John Naughton, Guardian
Most people who buy Apple laptops are more like iPhone users than they are like geeks (who like to tinker with their computers). So most will prefer to have a crippled operating system running their laptops too. And another bastion of freedom will have fallen to Mr Jobs. QED and fade to black.
John C. Welch, Macworld
Apple's proposed alternatives won’t work, but its communication is the bigger problem.
Anand Lal Shimpi, Anand Tech
There’s a tangible difference in regular use between the base and upgraded models. While I wouldn’t consider either fast, I’d say that extra 10 - 20% performance increase you get from the upgraded CPU and memory makes a very big difference. If all you’re doing is writing and web browsing I’m not sure it’s necessary, but anything beyond that could probably make use of the upgraded specs.
Jeff Carlson, Seattle Times
The MacBook Air is the future of Mac laptops: I can't wait until every model is thin and fast in the coming years.
Leander Kahney, Cult Of Mac
“Apple is a pain in the ass."
AppleInsider
Apple on Friday added a new server option to its Mac Pro lineup Friday, with a $2,999 system that is designed to replace the Xserve hardware which will be discontinued in early 2011.
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet
All-in-all the new MacBook Air is the best second Mac that you can buy, and deficiencies aside, it’s the perfect companion for a larger notebook or desktop Mac. If you really need the screen real estate, go for the 13.3-incher, but the smaller 11.6-inch model is the sleekest thing to come out of Cupertino since the iPhone.
TJ Luoma, TUAW
Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review
Many people, myself included, hope and pray that Apple will update Finder to make it more useable. I think that Apple may be forgoing Finder, instead choosing to focus on UI features that simplify the file system, not ones that further add a level of complexity to the file system.
Rob Griffiths, Macworld
Sure, there were a fair number of people who were upset, but there was also a sense that Apple realized they hadn’t really won a spot in the server rooms of the world, and hence, the Xserve’s departure was somewhat expected.
Stephanie Kent, Macworld
Above all, the visual appeal of Shadow at the Water’s Edge is its strongest asset, but the game combines an interesting plot, distinctive characters and challenging mini games to create a strong, well-rounded game.
Steven Sande, TUAW
Slash Lane, AppleInsider
Apple's official internal policy on replacing devices with dead LCD pixels leaked this week, revealing that the company will replace an iPhone if it has just one dead pixel, while an iPad must have at least three to qualify.
Nathan Alderman, Macworld
Sam Abuelsamid, TUAW
The server chassis will not be available for sale after January, but the 160 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB drive modules will still be available for sale until the end of next year. Apple has posted a transition document on its website that recommends either the Mac Mini server or Mac Pro with Snow Leopard Server as alternatives.
Troy Wolverton, PhysOrg
For its light weight and blazing fast speed, I think the Air is more than worth the trade-offs.
Victor Agreda, Jr., TUAW
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Like most of the developers we've met up with at the conference this week, Jalkut is hesitant but optimistic about the way the Mac App Store will work. His most recent issue is with so-called "land grabbers" on the App Store -- some developers are already grabbing up names (since submissions just started recently), and Jalkut is worried that Apple regulations means he won't be able to call his upcoming iPhone app by the same name as his widely used Mac app. "Which, as you can imagine," he told me, "is kind of a challenge and a problem."
David Pogue, New York Times
The 11-incher will delight you with its practical nonexistence but disappoint you if you think of it as your main machine. But if you think of it as a satellite for a full-blown computer, you’ll be very happy with it. It’s sort of like an iPad with a keyboard.
Daniel Eran Dilger, AppleInsider
Apple released a new version 9.1 update for iPhoto '11, adding back support for creating calendars, fixing bugs and offering additional letterpress holiday greeting card themes.
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
Jim Dalrymple, The Loop
The Blue Sweater
While the government tries to establish such a historical and arguably cultural continuity between the past and the present, it conveniently ignores the fact that its policies have disrupted that continuity between the different generations of Singapore society.
Joe Kissell, Macworld
Time Machine's limitations and how to overcome them.
Stephen Hutcheon, Sydney Morning Herald
At this stage, there aren't enough of the first release books and those that are there appear to be much more expensive that comparable books in the US.
Charlie Sorrel, Wired
Anecdotal reports of the new Airs say that they run cooler and quieter than other Mac notebooks, unless they are using Flash.
Nick Farrell, The Inquirer
Motorola Mobility has complained that Apple infringed some of its patents regarding wireless devices, mobile phones, portable music and data processing devices, computers and components. This is just the latest of several investigations that the ITC has launched in the mobile phone arena.
Elinor Mills, CNET
PayPal rushed a fix out today for its iPhone app after learning that it contained a flaw that could be used by attackers to trick PayPal users into divulging their account information.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Developers can send apps in right now to have them ready for the approval process for the new Mac App Store. There's no word yet on which developers are jumping on this, but I'm sure we'll find out when the store goes live soon which developers took advantage of this opportunity right away.
AppleInsider
Apple's documentation notes that users can resolve the issue by setting the repeat interval on an alarm to "Never." If users reset their alarm every day, the daylight saving bug will not affect them.
The support note says that after daylight saving ends in the U.S. on Nov. 7, users will be able to set their alarms to repeat again.
Topher Kessler, CNET
To make things easier, Apple includes a couple of system utilities that can help you when you need to use alternate characters.
Dennis Sellers, Macsimum News
Mike Schramm, TUAW
Greg Sandoval, CNET
There's a reason for the tough approach. Apple is in a hurry to get the deals done so it can offer the longer samples for holiday shopping. Time is running out.
Eric Chan, Huffington Post
The bottom line for consumers is that Apple's desktops, laptops, iPads, iPhones, Internet TV platforms and whatever else the company invents over the next decade, will likely be cheaper to buy than they were in years past.
Geoffrey Goetz, GigaOM
Securing your Mac can be both simple and complicated, depending on your usage and expertise, but the best place to start is with the access privileges granted to each user account created.
Chris Morris, Variety
Rather than choosing one sector to conquer, the house that Steve Jobs built opted to fight a multi-front war. What's amazing is that Apple has won so often on so many battlegrounds.
Apple may not exactly be looking to take over the world -- but Jobs loves to talk about changing it. Certainly he and his company have expansionist designs on the world's leisure time.
Lex Friedman, TidBITS
The fix? Delete the iPod Photo Cache folder.
Karl Hodge, Macworld UK
Opacity is a vector drawing tool optimised for interface components. Sounds pretty dry, we realise. But Opacity, and its budget cousin Opacity Express, are tools that have far more going for them than first appears.
Charles W. Moore, Power 'Book Central
I’m increasingly of a mind that Steve Jobs is right about the new MacBook Air being a foretaste of the future of notebook computing, and that the diminutive but powerful and far less-compromised than their predecessor new Airs represent a third revolution in the evolution of how we use and relate to personal computers.
Jonny Evans, Computerworld
This isn't a pipedream. This is what games industry insiders are whispering about.
Dennis Sellers, Macsimum News
Trailrunner, a Mac OS X solution for folks doing long distance sports, has been updated to version 3.2. The upgrade can import activity recordings from the new Nike+ GPS app for the iPhone.
David Dahlquist, Macworld
Dennis Sellers, Macsimum News
Ergonis Software has released PopChar X 5.1, an update of the tool for finding and typing special characters. The upgrade supports the brand-new version 6.0 of the Unicode standard and can now identify more than 23,000 characters by their names.
Alexander Vaughn, AppAdvice
To please their now 200 million mobile users, Facebook has proceeded to add a new interface to their iOS app to let users manage the new Groups feature. Also, the Places feature has been improved with support for pictures, as well as enhanced tagging.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
In a recommendation submitted to the judge presiding over the patent dispute filed against Nokia by Apple, International Trade Commission staff members suggested that "the evidence will not establish a violation" of Apple's patents.
Christopher Breen, Macworld
For the price of a single Apple adapter you can have both a DVI and a VGA adapter from MonoPrice.com.
Lance Whitney, CNET
After its recent approval by Apple, Skyfire, a mobile Web browser that converts Flash videos to HTML5, hit the App Store today at 2 p.m. PT.
Ben Brooks, The Brooks Review
The 13 is a wonderful Mac and I can do just about everything on it that I could on my MacBook Pro. 14 Somethings are not as fast as they used to be, but those are things that I do infrequently and that when I am doing them I am never in a rush to finish them.
I couldn’t be happier switching to the ‘limited’ 13” MacBook Air as my primary Mac.
Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica
In a lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of California for San Diego, plaintiff Biana Wofford alleges that Apple purposely crippled the iPhone 3G with its introduction of iOS 4 in order to boost iPhone 4 sales, and hopes to get her lawsuit elevated to class action status.
Dan Frommer, Yahoo!
Apple seems to be making the rare move of putting the customer's needs after Apple's own desire for consistency across its device lineup. In other words, Apple is screwing the customer, forcing them to do more work than previously necessary to access a device's useful feature.
Jake Widman, Computerworld
It's faster, more capable, more fun to use and all-around nicer than any previous version this century. With Office for Mac 2011, Microsoft has gotten it right.
Mike Schramm, TUAW
"Coming."
John Gruber, Daring Fireball
The whole point of Apple’s success with iOS has been the opposite of “write once, run anywhere”. It’s more like “write a version that is specifically optimized for this particular device”.
52 Tiger
Don’t dismiss Preview as a mere PDF reader. It’s one of the many useful tools that comes with every Mac. With a little exploration, you’ll find that it’s more powerful than you thought, and maybe all you need.
Symphnoic Distribution
iTunes (and Apple) will be increasing the length of music clips on their system from 30 seconds to 90 seconds! We have just received the notification from Apple that this will be happening soon and are very excited to report the news as we firmly believe this is a decision that will show an increase of sales for our partners.
Chris Foresman, Ars Technica
The 11" MacBook Air is svelte, solid, and performs many common tasks without breaking a sweat. But whether the new laptop is right for you depends on your willingness to trade poor performance and a high price tag for this new MacBook Air's signature combination of style and battery life. In this one respect, the new MacBook Air harks back to the original iMac—an eye-catching piece of cutting-edge industrial design wrapped around a feeble, long-in-the-tooth microprocessor.
Adam Satariano, Bloomberg
Apple Inc.’s piggybank, stuffed with $51 billion in cash and investments, is earning a lower return than a typical U.S. savings account. Some investors say Steve Jobs should put that money to better use.
Isabella Steger, Wall Street Journal
Apple's market share in Asia is still tiny, but rising, notably in smartphones.
ifoAppleStore
As part of the expected rush of holiday shoppers, and a change in philosophy on serving customers, Apple has quietly ended its free Personal Shopping service that provided appointment-based product demonstrations and selection assistance.
Dean Takahashi, Venture Beat
About 95 percent of all tablet computers shipped in the third quarter were iPads, according to a study by Strategy Analytics. The Boston market research firm said that tablet computer shipments were up 26 percent from the previous quarter.
MacNN
Some owners of the latest MacBook Air notebooks have begun reporting reliability problems with displays. Several threads on Apple's discussion forums include claims of various distortions, incorrect colors, horizontal lines, vertical lines, and blank screens. A few users also claim the devices will not wake from sleep.
Joe Aimonetti, CNET
Apple, after releasing the iOS 4.2 beta Gold Master version of its mobile operating system, is now accepting apps for the App Store that have been tested against iOS 4.2 GM and are ready for public release.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
Apple isn’t in a rush to switch everyone and everything to the cloud just yet. Apple wants to get it right this time around, and customers will likely see these changes happen slowly.
TreeHugger
Bryan Wolfe, AppAdvice
Now, customers are able to transfer a plan from one device to another. But, there is a catch: the policy only covers plans purchased within the last 30 days.
Jeff Carlson, TidBITS
Dan Frakes, Macworld
David Chartier, Macworld
The flames of impending Mac insecurity are once again getting fanned, as Sophos and ESET are the latest security software companies to pitch new products for the Mac.
Minyanville
The world-famous puppetville have spoofed Apple products and its recently trademarked phrase "There's an app for that." In fact, the entire segment is centered around the line.
John Biggs, CrunchGear
Users are all different and if you have the cash and the impetus to buy a very slim MacBook, then you should look into the Air. Otherwise, steer clear.
Nathan Alderman, Macworld
Despite the redesign, Microsoft made sure to retain many of the bonuses and shortcuts that made Entourage a power user tool. Here are some favorites you might have missed.
Larry Dignan, ZDNet
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched the iPad it wasn’t clear how aggressively these newfangled devices were priced. Now we know because Android tablets and other rival tablets can’t hang on pricing.
Joel Mathis, Macworld
It’s often tough to justify purchasing a paid app that duplicates many of the features in a free offering, but Podcaster—a $1 app from Alex Sokirynsky—is so much better than the iPhone’s native iTunes app that the cost is worth it.
Arnold Kim, MacRumors
Craig Arko, Macworld
One of the more repetitive tasks you can do on a computer is prepare items for printing. We're going to look at a few ways Automator can help out with these to get you started.
Elinor Mills, CNET
Sophos unveiled free antivirus software today that Macintosh users can install to detect and block malware that targets computers running the Mac operating system. Sophos Anti-Virus Home Edition for Mac also detects malware written for Windows that Mac users can spread via USB drives and e-mail, Chet Wisniewski, a senior security advisor at Sophos, told CNET.
Macgasm
Apple’s new ad says the iPad is Electric, and continues along the same lines as the previous commercials, showing off applications one after another.
Harry McCracken, Technologizer
This Air proves that it’s possible for a personal computer to be a breeze to tote around without any crippling compromises. It’s not for everyone, but I suspect the folks who like it–who haven’t had a Mac aimed at them until now–will really like it.
MacNN
GoGadget is a new program for Mac from third-party sync experts Mark/Space that promises to allow iTunes and iPhoto syncing with almost any third-party media player through a simple, intuitive interface. The program will sync photos, music, video, documents and even ringtones from your Mac to the third-party device simply using the USB cable, limited only by what the device is capable of playing or displaying.
Phil Baker, San Diego Daily Transcript
So after two weeks with the Air, much of it on the road, my conclusion is that the new Air is that computer we've been searching for, the perfect solution for the business traveler. Its lighter weight and smaller size has allowed me to leave my heavy wheeled briefcase at home and carry a much smaller shoulder bag. That's real progress for the business traveler.
John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal
With Apple’s shares trading near all-time highs, a few of the company’s top lieutenants are cashing in some of their equity for big paydays.
Nick Bilton, New York Times
Dennis Sellers, Macsimum News
Akvis Software has released Akvis Magnifier 4.0, an update of the tool for increasing image resolution for Mac OS X and Windows. Version 4.0 4.0 introduces an advanced algorithm for reducing images.
Matt Buchanan, Gizmodo
The 11-inch Air might be the first computer you can seriously take with you everywhere and almost never regret leaving your beefier machine at home. The pain of dropping a thousand dollars won't last for very long, either.
Greg Sandoval, CNET
A trademark lawsuit filed against Apple by a Web advertising firm over the term "iAds" was quietly settled in July. No one has disclosed exactly how the case was resolved but Apple now owns the "iAds" trademark, and last week a company peripherally involved in the suit posted a note to the Web that said Apple paid a "seven-figure settlement."
Brett Terpstra, CNET
This release will be of great value to anyone who wants to be able to quickly create professional-sounding audio, whether for iMovie soundtracks or your next homebrew album. The new features add great power without sacrificing simplicity.
Paul Miller, Engadget
Apple is apparently blaming the "conductive flanges" used in many of Monster's earbuds for erratic stopping and starting of playback on Apple devices.
Joe Kissell, Macworld
Switching to Outlook need not be traumatic, but it’s different enough that you may be disoriented at first, or have trouble figuring out how to do a few basic tasks. These tips will get you started.
Joe Kissell, Macworld
Your fingers may have to learn some new habits. A number of common keyboard shortcuts changed between Entourage 2008 and Outlook 2011, and some even took on the opposite meaning!
Stephanie Kent, Macworld
To me, taking a normal item—a t-shirt, say, or a water bottle—and slapping an Apple logo onto it doesn’t magically make it special. But don’t tell that to the hordes crowding the Apple Company Store in Cupertino, California.
Troy Wolverton, San Jose Mercury News
For its light weight and blazing fast speed, I think the Air is more than worth the trade-offs.
Chris Rawson, TUAW
With the switchover to Standard Time in Northern Hemisphere nations, European and Middle Eastern countries that have switched are now experiencing the same problem we saw in New Zealand and Australia, but in reverse: Europeans' recurring alarms are going off an hour later following the switch to Standard Time.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.