Apple’s Back to School promotion has begun in Australia and New Zealand ahead of the new school year. Like previous years, the promotion offers a free gift card with new Macs and iOS devices purchased for education, and it’s open to students, parents, and teachers. This year’s deal includes the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, the iMac and the Mac Pro, and the iPad with Retina display.
Third-generation iPad owners became understandably upset last November when Apple announced a new sixth-generation iPad eight months after theirs went on sale. It was the first time the Cupertino company had launched an iPad within 12 months of its predecessor, but it looks like we’d better get used to it.
Rumors have this week suggested that Apple is now looking to update its iOS devices every six months, introducing two every year. And according to one analyst, that’s exactly what’s going to happen with the next-generation iPads.
It’s taken about 6 months, but Mozilla has managed to officially Retina-ize its Firefox browser on the Mac. A beta release of Firefox brought Retina support back in November 2012, but today’s public release of version 18 brings it to the masses.
Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS6 versions are now Retina display ready, and available for download via Adobe Software Update. You can also grab the update file directly from the Adobe website.
6Wunderkinder has announced a brand new version of Wunderlist that’s coming to Android, iOS, Mac, and PC just in time for Christmas. Wunderlist 2 has been “reengineered, rebuilt and redesigned, from start to finish,” its creators tease. Check out what’s new and get a glimpse of the new app in the preview video below.
When a company like Apple is getting sued every other week, there’s no telling what they will and won’t try to patent and trademark in an attempt to protect their intellectual property. Apple already holds a patent on rectangles with rounded corners, and their latest trademark gives Apple exclusive use of the word “Retina.”
On December 4, 2012, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple two Registered Trademarks. One trademark covers the word “Retina” while the second trademark covers Apple’s Game Center icon.
Apple has issued a press release announcing that the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, and the fourth-generation iPad with Retina display will be arriving in China next month. Both iPads will be available on December 7, while the iPhone 5 will be available on December 14.
Adobe has released a teaser video for Photoshop CS6, which the company will unveil on December 11, and it suggests one of the software’s new features will be support for the high-resolution Retina displays in Apple’s latest MacBook Pros. The 15-inch machine actually features in the clip, and there are plenty of close-ups that show rather crisp visuals.
Mozilla released another public beta of its Firefox browser today. Version 18 beta 1 brings a number of new features and improvements, most notably Retina display support for Apple’s 2012 MacBooks. When this version of Firefox becomes official, the once-popular browser will join the ranks of Google Chrome, Opera and other third party browsers that have already received Retina support.
Although the iPad mini is well-reviewed, a constant complaint that has been leveled against Apple’s smallest tablet is that the display isn’t Retina. In fact, in my review of the iPad mini, I could barely see past the terrible fuziness of the on-screen text, and considered it an otherwise perfect device’s Achilles’ Heel.
Over the last day or so, a lot of thinkers in the Apple space have piped up, saying that it would essentially be impossible for Apple to make the iPad mini with a Retina display.
Summarized, the argument is this: A Retina iPad mini would be too expensive for Apple to make right now, and it would come with other tradeoffs, like a significantly reduced battery life and a much thicker and heavier form factor.
I was curious if this was actually true, so I decided to try an experiment: I’d build an imaginary Retina iPad mini out of technology that Apple already has access to, add up how much it would cost, and then see what the design tradeoffs would be.
What I found out was that Apple could indeed have shipped an iPad mini with Retina this generation without significantly changing the form or battery life of the device, but it would have cost $379. Here’s why.
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