MacRumors received several reports today from Apple customers who have gotten emails from Apple. In the emails, they were told that the Retina MacBook Pros they had purchased on launch day (through Apple’s enterprise site) have been delayed, in some cases by up to a month.
One such email is quoted below.
Apple is preparing to build another billion dollar data supercenter like the one powering its iCloud in North Carolina. This time, though, it’ll be built right outside of Reno, Nevada. Let’s hope that doesn’t prove to be the biggest little mistake Apple’s ever made.
We all know that despite only selling two different models of the iPhone and iPad each year, Apple owns the lion’s share of profits in the smartphone industry, even when compared to manufacturers who released dozens of different smartphones and tablets every year.
It gets even crazier, though. Look at this wonderful chart by market research firm VisionMobile, comparing shipping volumes, revenues and profits of the mobile industry from Q1 2011 to Q1 2012. In just a year, Apple has pretty much doubled not just the number of smartphones it ships, but the revenue and profit it makes off of them…. even while companies that were, a year ago, struggling to compete have pretty much gone belly up.
Insane. Can anything stop the iPhone and iPad?
Source: Vision Mobile
Via: Infoworld
It’s hardly religious, but Apple tends to drop new developer betas of iOS every two weeks when a major new version is coming up. Today, Apple has started pushing out iOS 6 beta 2 over-the-air to registered developers.
We’ll be digging through iOS 6 Beta 2 today to find out what’s new, but there’s at least one change so far: when you install a new OTA update of iOS 6, the Settings icon apparently animates.
Via: 9to5Mac
Let’s look at a few facts.
Apple Retail stores were the number one retailer last year, taking in more money per square foot than any other US retailer, including number two Tiffany, which made a bit more than half of that. Sounds good, right? Then take a look at what a retail employee, Jordan Golson, has to say.
“I was earning $11.25 an hour,” he said. “Part of me was thinking, ‘This is great. I’m an Apple fan, the store is doing really well.’ But when you look at the amount of money the company is making and then you look at your paycheck, it’s kind of tough.”
The disconnect between the incredible success of the corporation and the relatively low-end pay scale of its retail employees, as well as the reasons those retail employees continue to work for Apple, is the subject of a report in the New York Times today.
In a post on the official Google Mac blog today, editor Scott Knaster wrote a final piece that closed the Mac-centric web log for good. Citing the current mainstream popularity of Apple, Macintosh computers, and of course the iPad, iPhone and iOS, Knaster says that he realizes that a special Mac blog is no longer needed.
The Notes app bundled with the iPhone is great for quick little notes, but it hasn’t really changed since the original iPhone, and offers very few options other than a selection of three fonts. For those that want an app more powerful than Notes, but not as advanced as something like Pages for the iPhone, Just Type by Shubham Kedia might just be the perfect notes app.
Both Apple and Samsung have been engaged in a courtroom battle for what seems like ages now, bickering back and forth like an old married couple. Like a parent intervening between two fighting kids, Judge Lucky Koh has finally stepped in between Samsung and Apple to lay down some rules.
Forget RAM, forget a faster CPU, forget a beefier graphics card. If you are still running a Mac with a spinning, physical hard drive, the best upgrade you can possibly make is to drop a solid-state flash drive into the machine. The immediate effect on perceived performance is stunning: it’s the difference between seeing a spinning beach ball every hour and not seeing one for months at a time.
Unfortunately, for a long time, what has kept most people from making this update to their older Macs has been price. SSDs are more expensive than physical HDDs. That’s still true, by the way, but it’s less so now than it ever has been, making this a perfect time to finally take the plunge.
This week’s TIME Magazine cover story is called “The Cult of Apple in China.” On newsstands tomorrow, it’s an in-depth look at how Apple thrives in China.
The article’s author, Hannah Beech, writes: “The American company is thriving in China, even as other Western tech firms struggle with local competition and communications restrictions imposed by the authoritarian state. Apple products now serve as the ultimate totem of upward mobility in a country with a fast-growing middle class.”
That all sounds rosy, but as Beech makes clear, the future is far for certain as Apple, as the government of China increasingly becomes nationalistic. How long will they allow Apple to profit so handsomely within China without starting to try to take a bigger piece of the pie?
Ever since it first debuted in January 2006, Apple has jealously guarded its MagSafe technology from being poached by the competition. Patented up the wazoo, Apple doesn’t allow knock-offs and goes after companies that try to rip it off, even going so far as to sue companies that make MagSafe compatible accessories that use official recycled MagSafe connectors.
It’s through being so aggressive about its MagSafe IP that, to this day, none of the competition has anything like it. That’s about to change, though: the new Microsoft Surface tablet has a MagSafe-like connector. Prepare for a legal showdown.
The new 2012 15-Inch Retina MacBook Pro marks an evolution of the Mac: it’s the first of presumably the entire Mac line-up to get a Retina display, just like the iPhone and iPad.
Unlike the iPhone or iPad, however, the new Retina MacBook Pro is not aimed at the mass market. This is a professional machine, through and through, and has a price to match, starting at $2,199.
The beauty of the Retina MacBook Pro’s display can’t be overestimated: it’s like living print. Likewise, the Retina MacBook Pro is the most powerful all-in-one professional notebook you can buy off the shelf: it makes every Apple notebook before it look archaic.
It’s a Mac that has been designed by Apple for the first time as they would have it: completely without compromises, using cutting-edge technology that it will take at least a year for the competition to catch-up with.
But is it the Mac for you?
It used to be that video came to our homes in one of two ways: through the TV, or through a VHS tape. Then came DVD, then came the internet, and then came mediageddon.
Now we can get anything we want, any time we like. That’s the simple part, because now we also have to decide how we want to watch it. Luckily, we have put together a list of neat video hardware that will help you convert and push your media around the home, and even outside.
One of Steve Jobs’s favorite quotes was by Wayne Gretzky, a famous hockey player: “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” From the beginning, Apple has been all about looking ahead to the next greatest thing, not concerning itself with aligning with other companies.
It might be Google’s turn to take a lesson from Apple and do the same, or they may miss out on an opportunity of monumental proportion. What is the opportunity you ask? AirPlay.
They’re not for everyone, but if you like ensconcing your Apple devices in sumptuous leather bound hides as if they were dusty and mysterious tomes just pulled off an ancient library shelf, no one does it better than TwelveSouth with their BookBook series.
TwelveSouth has had a BookBook case for iPad for awhile, but they just gave it an overhaul, slimming it down by 33% and featuring an all-new interior frame that allows you to position the iPad at an angle for typing or watching movies.
The new BookBook for iPad is available now in brown, black and red and costs $80. We’ve got one, and we’ll be posting a review in the coming days.
Source: TwelveSouth
Don’t care about USB 3 or the latest processor? Head on down to your local Best Buy to get nearly $400 off the last-gen MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.
According to a report by ABI Research, Apple and Samsung have 50 percent of the smartphone market, and 90 percent of the global profits from that market. These top two companies dominate the smartphone industry so thoroughly, claims the research firm, that there is no one even close to becoming a third player.
“At this point in the year, Nokia will have to grow its Windows Phone business 5000 percent in 2012 just to offset its declines in Symbian shipments,” Michael Morgan, senior analyst for devices, applications & content at ABI, said in a statement.
Apple’s new MacBook Pro follows the fine tradition of the iPhone 4 and third-gen iPad in that it has a super high-resolution Retina display: a 2880 x 1800 panel with an amazing 220 pixels packed in per inch.
It’s an incredible display. In fact, it’s such an incredible display that it actually has about one million, seven hundred thousand pixels more than it needs to satisfy Apple’s definition of Retina, leading some to claim that those pixels are all going to waste.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Apple’s new MacBook Pros have absolutely great displays, but they need every single pixel they have, because the truth of the matter is that Apple’s got a long way to go before it catches its display tech up to the incredible power of human vision. And that’s a good thing, because it means we’ve got a lot to look forward to.
Apple attorneys are surely enjoying the latest ruling in the patent case involving Google’s Motorola Mobility unit, which grants Apple the chance of making its case via an injunction. The judge’s order yesterday is one last chance for both parties to plead the case to continue to trial, a trial that was canceled by Judge Richard Posner last week, with the judge ruling that neither party could prove damages.
In yet another patent filing, it appears that Apple is, if nothing else, researching the idea of interchangeable camera lenses on the iPhone. While the chances of an idea like this actually making it to the iPhone are slim to none, it’s an interesting look into what goes on behind closed doors at Apple.
Samsung rips off everything about Apple.
They’ve ripped off the iPhone. They’ve ripped off the Mac mini. They’ve ripped off the iPhone 3G. They’ve ripped off the iPad Smart Cover. Heck, they’ve even ripped off Apple’s commercial actresses.
We were wondering, then, what it would look like if Samsung just went whole hog and decided to design themselves a new logo the same way they “designed” their smartphones and tablets: by stealing their ideas wholesale from Apple.
Ready? Without further ado, here’s Samsung’s new logo:
So, a mere two days after Apple quietly released an update for its brand-spankin-new MacBook Pro, the magical company is doing it again. This time, the as-yet-released MacBook Air is the target of a new software update.
About MacBook Pro (Mid 2012) Software Update 1.0
This update is recommended for MacBook Pro (mid 2012) models.The update includes fixes that improve graphics stability, external display support, and USB 3 device support.
Sound familiar? That’s because these are the same fixes that Apple reported for the MacBook Pro model. Sounds like someone announced these babies just a bit before they were totally ready? Ah, well, at least it’s all fixed. Right, Apple?
Via: MacNN
The annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is an invite-only event that centers on the video gaming industry. Held across two massive halls of the Los Angeles Convention Center, it is a draw for any journalist interested in games and gaming, and a source of endless news stories during the week in June it’s typically held.
No matter where I looked at the Expo this year, I saw mobile games and mobile devices. With a few notable exceptions (Nyko had a huge booth full of Tegra-enabled tablets to show off their gaming controllers for Android), most of the devices I came into contact with were decidedly of the iOS persuasion. I’m fairly sure that Apple is winning this round.
Back in August of last year, famed jailbreak hacker Comex — the mind responsible for the famed JailbreakMe exploit — hung up his old hacker hat and went to work at Apple as an intern.
Here’s a coincidence then. In iOS 6, the top secret, much guarded exploit used by developers to root their devices — first founded by Comex! — has suddenly been closed after being open for two years, as recent jailbreak superstar pod2g just made note on his Twitter account.
Right now, if you want to learn more about, say, the iPhone, you go to apple.com/iPhone. Pretty soon, though, you will just type in iPhone.apple and your browser will immediately whisk you there instead.