Apple Inc. - page 148

Apple’s new 13-inch MacBook Air isn’t anything like the old one. It’s incredible. It’s incredibly thin, light, and powerful. It’s blazing fast. It’s incredibly beautiful and well made.

It has an older CPU and comes up short with only 2GBytes of RAM in the base model, but it is not underpowered. It’s a perfect fit for users like me, who aren’t rendering 3D graphics, it’s more than perfect. It’s hugely better than previous models of the 13-inch MacBook Air. Incredibly thin and light, yet very capable of running a large number of applications without showing the infamous Mac OS X beach ball.

Unlike the 11-inch MacBook Air, reviewed by my editor Leander, there are a few less compromises in the 13-inch MacBook Air. While larger the 13-inch model still excels in the most important things portability, durability, and functionality.

Last year, I also bought a 13-inch MacBook Pro, which I loved, but in comparison to the 13-inch Air, it is huge, only a little bit faster, and comes with an optical drive that I seldom use any more.

I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t this guy toss the new MacBook Air in the dump last week?” Well, last week I did and now it looks like I’m going to have to eat crow after buying a 13-inch MacBook Air last Saturday. Read on to find out why.

Here at Cult of Mac, we love Apple’s new A4-powered update to their “hobbyist” set-top box, the AppleTV… but all is not rosy for everyone. According to reports coming in from users, the new AppleTV might be prone to a very, very subtle skipping problem that — once seen — becomes impossible to unsee.

Last week, we reported that Apple’s new MacBook Airs were shipping without Adobe Flash preinstalled… a radical departure from the norm for Apple, which has been bundling Flash with OS X (and OS 9 before it) as the default for seemingly ages. Was it a fluke, or is this Apple’s new policy?

Nope, not a fluke, according to Apple, who say that Adobe Flash will not come preinstalled on any of their machines in the future.

During his time as head of Microsoft, Bill Gates was famously anti-Apple, going so far as to issue an emphatic decree banning all Apple gadgets on the software giant’s mega-campus. Since then, however, Gates has been replaced by Steve Ballmer and the prohibition against iPods and iPhones has gradually loosened up… but there’s one place where Gates’ fierce rivalry with the House that Jobs built continues unabated: the palatial mansion of Bill and Melinda Gates.

Apple’s new iMovie ’11 is here and while it isn’t the best part of my iLife, like iPhoto, it does make an occasional cameo appearance in my life. The new iMovie features that Apple announced last Wednesday are pretty good making an already great program better.

The new movie trailers, improved audio editing, one-step side effects, people finder, themes, and world premiere all bring new or improved features the give me more opportunities to be creative. I’ll be able to finally craft movies that are almost as good as the ones made by Steven Spielberg. Well maybe not that good, but definitely better than before.

Sadly this is kind of true about the new Macbook Air, since even the base model is two, three, or more times higher in price than most Windows-based netbooks. However, if you compare the two platforms I think you’ll still be better off with the Macbook Air.

[via Macenstein]

Apple’s hissy catfight with Adobe over the future of Flash on the web has reached storied proportion at this point, with Apple claiming that Flash is buggy and slow and Adobe… well… not so much saying otherwise as whining about the unfairness of it all.

Given Apple’s strong feelings about Flash, it’s hard not to give perhaps undue importance to word that the new MacBook Airs are actually shipping without Adobe Flash pre-installed… even though it’s been preloaded on all of Apple’s past hardware.

Apple’s new iPhoto ’11 is here and it will continue to be the best part of my iLife. I’d like to think that many of you would agree with me. The new features that Apple announced on Wednesday are really awesome.

The new full-screen views, enhanced Facebook integration, and other new or improved features give me opportunities to be more creative. I’ll be able to share photos with family and friends in ways I wasn’t able to before and I cannot wait to get started.

UPDATE: Well, turns out we were wrong about this one; it’s been around for awhile. Crow, anyone?

That rumor we mentioned yesterday — the one where we thought Apple would announce a new social network based around Apple Genii? Turns out Apple quietly added something very close to what we predicted yesterday during the virtual Apple Store’s refresh for the new MacBook Air and iLife ’11.

With the launch of the Mac App Store set to occur in mere months and with Apple already encouraging developers to prepare to submit applications to Cupertino in November, it was only a matter of time before the App Store for Mac guidelines leaked out in full thanks to some anonymous NDA-breaking developer.

It’s a long list, which you can see in total after the jump, but there’s a few standout restrictions which are sure to raise some eyebrows. ReadWriteWeb has an excellent overview of the more notable ones. We’re particularly puzzled by Apple’s seeming aversion to RSS readers on the App Store, as well as their specific mention of a policy ban against all Russian Roulette simulators.

This bit from yesterday’s event made me laugh out loud.

This was about 30 minutes in, and Randy Ubillos was showing us the new iMovie ’11 and its built-in trailers. Impressive movie soundtrack music blared out.

Randy turned to the crowd and said: “For the music, we went to London, to Abbey Road studios, and made original recordings with the London Symphony Orchestra.”

He dropped that in so casually, but just think about it for a moment.

For the sound effects used in one feature, in one application that lives inside a larger suite of media apps, Apple hired an orchestra, a conductor, a composer, Abbey Road studios, and all the paraphernalia that must have come with them. Caterers, hotels, management, hangers-on, producers, heaven knows who and what else.

That’s what you do when you have $50bn in the bank.

Apple has released the following updates in order to support iLife ’11 more effectively: ProKit Update 6.0.1, and Aperture Update 3.1. In addition to those updates Apple has also release Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3 in order to better support ava SE 6 to 1.6.0_22.

The updates were made available earlier today. Just launch Software Update on your Mac to download and install these now.

Click the read link below for details on these new updates that were provided by Apple.

With his usual fanfare, Steve Jobs has just strutted onto the stage at Apple’s own Cupertino headquarters for today’s Back to the Mac event.

Steve’s looking confident, and he has every reason to be with $50 billion in the bank. The big question is, what will Apple be announcing today to add to the corporate coffers? iLife ’11 and OS X 10.7 are definites, as is a new MacBook Air… but could we also see a Verizon iPhone, refreshed MacBooks and maybe the slam dunk of a totally new product that Apple has somehow managed to keep completely secret by the end of the next hour and a half?

Place your bets in the comments, but best do it quick: Steve’s about to open his mouth, and that’s when the bets begin to close, one by one.

[image via Engadget]

Just as they did for September’s iPod Event, Apple will be live streaming Steve Jobs’ ‘Back To Mac’ announcements later today, starting at 10:00AM PDT. You can find the official link here.

Like last time, the live stream is only open to people using Mac products. Here are the compatible devices:

• OSX 10.6 Mac running Safari
• iPhone running a minimum of iOS 3.0
• iPod touch running a minimum of iOS 3.0
• iPad

Don’t worry if you’re stuck on an office PC: we’ll be live blogging the event, as usual.

This marks the second time in recent years that Apple has live streamed their own event, supposedly to test their new data centers, although Apple did experiment with live streaming earlier in the decade… only for the whole site to keel over under the strain of just 50,000 viewers.

In just two and a half hours, we can all expect Steve Jobs to strut on stage and orgiastically unburden himself of the many new secret products and developments kept a lid upon in Cupertino for the past few months… but thanks to some too-eager web monkey’s blunder over on the official Apple support forums, we have semi-official confirmation of several new products that we now know to expect later today.

Apparently, the official Apple forums have already been setup with new sections dedicated to iMovie ’11, iPhoto ’11 and GarageBand ’11… all of which are applications to be found in the rumored iLife ’11 software suite that is expected to be announced today.

There’s more juicy gossip than that though: the Polish geeks who found the new product sections also found one for the new MacBook Air, as well as a “Reserved 2010” section, which could be just about anything. Does Steve have a surprise announcement up his sleeve, or will that Reserved 2010 sub-forum turn into an official section for Mac OS X 10.7 or even the CDMA iPhone?

Apple’s put down webOS before in the smartphone wars, but you can’t keep a solid operating system down for the count: six months after HP acquired Palm, they have just announced webOS 2.0 and the Pre 2 smartphone.

Over the weekend, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg met for some dinner, and smart money would rest on the bet that they were trying to work out some sort of deal where Facebook and Ping come together at last.

But could Apple’s interest be far more bold than merely ironing out some differences? Peter Kafka over at All Things D certainly thinks so: he speculates that Apple may want to buy Facebook outright with its $51 billion in cash reserves.

Here’s Kafka’s reasoning. Asked by Jobs what Apple intends to do with all of its cash, Jobs responded: “We firmly believe that one or more unique strategic opportunities will present itself to us, and we’ll be in a position to take advantage of it.” As Kafka sees it, Facebook’s a good bet for such an acquisition.

Here’s a juicy excerpt, already up on YouTube, from Apple’s conference call today where Steve Jobs dropped by and  bashed Google repeatedly with an Apple-shaped hammer.

Apple announced a record $20.4 billion in revenue during the fiscal 2010 fourth quarter, and a profit of $4.31 billion, in a press release ahead of their quarterly financial conference call.

Sales of Macs increased a sizable 27 percent from the same quarter last year; 14.1 million ipPhones were sold, a whopping 91 percent increase from last year’s Q4.

“We are blown away to report over $20 billion in revenue and over $4 billion in after-tax earnings—both all-time records for Apple,” Steve Jobs said in Apple’s press release.

iPad sales topped out at just over four million, and iPod sales declined by 11 percent.

There’s very little information about Apple’s next big update to OS X, 10.7 or “Lion,” which may be previewed at Steve Jobs’ special “Back To The Mac” press event on Wednesday.

People are very excited, though, and they’re letting their imaginations run away with them. Among the features that have been suggested are an App Store for the Mac, multitouch controls, and iOS apps instead of the little-used Dashboard.

It’s an interesting list, but some stuff there that just isn’t going to happen… Here’s what is going to be in 10.7:

[Thanks to OS X Daily for the list]

It seems like just the other day that the App Store hit 200,000 apps, but the juggernaut just never stops, and sometime over the weekend, Apple rolled the speedometer over to 300k.

The numbers aren’t official yet, but according to Mobclix, their data shows that Apple added the 300,000th app to the App Store sometime on Saturday.

That one programmer slaving away on Apple’s iOS Remote app has been working overtime, lately: he’s just issued an update to the app, fixing a number of bugs that showed up after the last major revision.

Two of the richest men in America met a couple of weeks ago to swirl brandy about the translucent skulls of Peruvian albinos and toast evil, say sources.

Well, actually, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg probably just discussed Ping when the Facebook CEO was invited over to Jobs’ house for dinner and a walk. Close enough.

The program is a win-win for customers, like myself, that are interested in recycling electronics (an effort to save the Earth), upgrading to a new iPod, and saving 10 percent on a replacement.

The program allows you to bring an iPod that you no longer want regardless of whether or not it is working to any Apple store in the U.S. for free environmentally friendly disposal. The person dropping off any model of iPod will receive a 10 percent discount on the purchase of a new iPod, excluding the iPod shuffle, but you can turn in a shuffle for a 10% discount on a Nano, etc.

All iPods collected for recycling will be processed domestically in the U.S. and no e-waste or hazardous material is shipped overseas.

This is only a small part of Apple’s recycling program which also accepts mobile phones, computers, and monitors. In some cases even these have some monetary value that Apple will convert into a gift card towards the purchase of a new computer, etc.

More information about Apple’s worldwide recycling programs is available at Apple’s environmental website.

The elusive white iPhone 4 that many of you wish you could get your hands on was recently spotted in New York. The folks over at Pocket-lint managed to catch up to a guy who was seen holding and using a white iPhone 4, which currently, is just as hard to spot as a Yeti in a snow storm.

How this guy happened to get a hold of his white iPhone 4 isn’t clear, but there are several ways this could have happened. He may have gotten it from someone at Apple that he knows, he may work at Apple, or this could be a clever iPhone 4 makeover.