Brand new from the maker of desktop Gmail client Mailplane is Replies, an app designed for people who do a lot of customer support.
The idea was born from Mailplane developer Ruben Bakker’s own success with Mailplane. He was soon so inundated with support requests, he found himself writing similar replies time and time again.
So, enter stage right: Replies, an app to make that part of his job easier.
Reuben points out that, far from turning all his emails into clones of each other, Replies saves him time on writing the dull stuff and frees up time to add personalised extras. So his messages end up being more personal and more useful, yet take less time to write than before.
One nice touch is that Replies indexes the emails in your Sent items folder, which means you can quickly search for replies you’ve written before, then insert them into new messages.
The app will be in beta soon, so if you’re interested in trying it out, go sign up to the announcement list.
Apple’s Developer Forums going crazy about the new way to install OS X Lion through the Mac App Store. There’s complaints about failed downloads, invalid redemption codes and overall installation issues. But once developers get it installed, they say the new OS is awesome and totally opens up the Mac to new possibilities.
Along with the release of OS X Lion this summer, the Lion version of Server will also be enhanced, and will feature profile management for iDevices and wireless file sharing with the iPad, easier setup and collaboration through Wiki Server 3.
While everyone else is talking about the new almighty Thunderbolt ports the new MacBook Pros are sporting, one big switch that isn’t getting all that much attention is Apple’s switch from NVIDIA GeForce GT graphics processors to AMD’s Radeon HD GPUs.
The switch takes place on the 15″ and 17″ units while the smaller 13″ MacBook Pro just has the standard Intel integrated graphics card. Apple is claiming that the switch to AMD has increased performance threefold over the old MacBook Pro models.
Apple has updated the MacBook Pro line this morning with the additions of the new 15″ and 17″-inch models.
Speed is the key feature — they come equipped with the first implementation of Thunderbolt high-speed I/O technology as well as the first quad-core processor in a laptop. Prices range from $1,199 to $2,499.
OS X Lion will usher in a new look for the Mac’s native email client, with the company promising even better organization of email threads into what it calls “conversations.”
The new Mail will automatically group messages from the same conversation — even if the subject changes along the way. Clicking a “conversation” in the inbox will reveal a streamlined feed of individual messages in chronological order, which can be easily filed or deleted individually or by an entire conversation.
Users of Mail in iOS will already be familiar with the functionality, which is presumably being brought to the desktop with improved file coordination on the developer side.
In the flurry of commentary about Apple’s release of its long-awaited update of the MacBook Pro, along with talk of new graphics and the FaceTime HD camera is word of a next-generation data transmission technology, known as Thunderbolt. The new port comes with a lighting-bolt icon, providing data speeds of up to 10 Gbps.
The first hint of use for the fast-lane built by Intel and Apple is the FaceTime HD camera, offering 720p video chats and triple the resolution of previous MacBook Pro cameras. However, there could be more uses for Thunderbolt.
Apple has just dropped the first developer preview of OS X 10.7 Lion and is now pumping it out to applicable devs through the Mac App Store. At the same time, they’ve updated their Mac OS X Lion page, revealing some new features including universal auto save, a possible new version of Safari, some new multitouch gestures, a new way to wirelessly transfer files between other Mac users, and much more.
After hints China engineers had ‘jailbroken’ the Verizon CDMA iPhone to operate on that nation’s networks, now comes word China Telecom may offer customers the new iPhone as soon as June. A key breathrough appears to be the decision to “burn” subscriber identification onto the unit instead of a SIM card, lacking in the Apple CDMA iPhone.
The iPhone 4 first undergoes testing in Guangdong then will be available to Beijing consumers, according to news agency Xinua, citing unnamed sources. Instead of visiting China Telecom offices, subscribers will be able to activate the handset over the air. Photos of a working CDMA iPhone 4 connected to the carrier’s 3G network were also published.
Apple has just update their official website with an overview of Thunderbolt, which they all-but-confirm is Light Peak and designed in collaboration with Intel Labs (who has their own press conference scheduled for later this morning).
Thunderbolt is up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0 and twice as fast as USB 3.0. It’s a single cable that consolidates almost all existing ports, from FireWire to USB to miniDisplay to eSATA. This is one cable to rule them all.
And even though the new MacBook Pros come with only one Thunderbolt port, it shouldn’t matter for end users: two 10Gbps channels on the same connector mean you can daisy chain multiple high-speed, data-intensive devices and multiple displays to the same port without using a hub… and without reducing performance.
Forget everything else about the new MacBook Pros: this is the most important Apple announcement of the week. Apple and Intel’s reticence to adopt USB 3 now makes sense: they were out to kill it and every other connector out there once and for all.
Preparation is underway at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, with workers busy slinging up a massive Apple banner heralding next week’s iPad 2 event.
Apple’s invite made no bones about the fact that the March 2nd event was all about the iPad 2, but the murals fronting the Yueba Buena conference center tend to foreshadow the content of the event pretty accurately. For example, the September 1st iPod event featured a guitar with an Apple logo.
So here’s the question: what do all of those colored dots foreshadow, given that this is an iPad 2 event? They could be touchpoints, but that would only seem to foreshadow the iPad 2 upping the previous generation’s display’s capacity for ten simultaneous touch points, which seems unlikely unless Apple envisions a rise in polydactylysm.
So what is it? The March 2nd invite does prominently feature an iPad, but says “Come see what 2011 will be the year of.” That means this is going to be about a lot more than the iPad 2 (which we know will be a modest update anyway). This is about what 2011 will hold for iOS.
Here’s my best guess: the dots represent nodes in the cloud, and on March 2nd, Apple’s finally going to unveil some of their cloud aspirations, starting with a radical overhaul of MobileMe.
What do you guys think? It’s a lot to take from a bunch of little dots, I know, but Apple never does anything without a reason. Those dots mean something. Leave us a comment with your best guess.
Although buyers of new MacBook Pros should have it come preinstalled on their machines, if you want FaceTime on your existing Mac, it’s going to cost you some bread, or beans, or shekels, or whatever your preferred pecuniary vernacular.
It won’t cost you much, though. Coming out of public beta, FaceTime for Mac has just hit the Mac App Store for just $0.99.
Changes over the beta aren’t significant… but explicit mention is made that 720p video calling is supported. Considering the fact that today’s MacBook Pros ship with “FaceTime HD” cameras, it looks like Apple has finally embraced the full capabilities of their 1280×1024 FaceTime nee iSight webcams.
iLounge is posting a pair of rumors, one which is a pretty obvious extrapolation of what we know about the 2011 MacBook Pros, but the other one a gossipy little number about the iPad 2.
In regards to the MacBook Pros, iLounge says that the 2011 MacBook Pros will be a modest upgrade, and won’t boast a new redesign. I think that’s less a rumor than fact at this point, as we’ve seen glimpses of promotional materials that indicate the new Pros’ only real difference physically from the previous models is a larger trackpad.
So when iLounge goes on to say that 2012’s MacBook Pros will be a new “milestone” and boast a radical chassis redesign, I say “ho-hum.” Of course it will. If they didn’t do it this year, they have to do it next year, since it’ll be three years at that point since they first rolled-out the unibody aluminum design. More MacBook Air like Pros should be par for the course in 2011.
More interesting, though, iLounge claims that the iPad 2 will be a more modest update than we were expecting, thanks to the production bottlenecks we heard tell about on Tuesday. Considering the fact that few expected a radical reinvention of the iPad this generation, that’s a pretty bold statement, and it implies that Apple might pull a last-minute switcheroo on case makers, as they did with the third-generation iPod Touch (which was heavily tipped as having a camera before launch). Or it could simply mean that while Apple will announce the iPad 2 next week, it won’t ship for quite some time.
I don’t see the latter being likely: Apple’s not going to pull the same boner as the mob of Android tablet makers, revealing products months ahead of time. The iPad 2 will be available within a month of announcement, even if it means Apple has to downgrade functionality behind the scenes.
The question is, though, if the iPad 2 is more modest an update than expected, how? All we’re really expecting from the iPad 2 is a routine processor and RAM bump, the addition of FaceTime, a new speaker and possibly dual GSM/CDMA functionality. With the exception of the latter feature, that’s hardly mountain shaking. What would Apple possibly ditch to get over the hump?
In an otherwise routine disgorgement of recently awarded design patents for extant Apple products, one notable little slip: an E-Wallet icon tattooed in at the bottom of a pen-and-ink lithograph representing the familiar iOS home screen of every new iPhone.
That E-Wallet icon could betray Apple’s ambitions for near-field communications with a future NFC-capable iPhone 5. Near-field communications would not only allow future iPhones to be used for mobile credit card payments just by waving the device with Obi-Wan-style nonchalance in front of a teller or kiosk, but also are rumored to enable Apple’s ambitious remote computing strategy by allowing Mac users to effectively carry their most critical Mac files and settings around with them.
Presumably, E-Wallet would be the iOS app giving user access to NFC data. Not that it will necessarily be called that: as Patently Apple points out, E-Wallet is trademarked to someone else, and trademark trolls are already sitting on three seaerate iWallet trademarks, hoping to get Cupertino to write them a check.
The Apple Store is down, and new MacBook Pros are on their way. We saw the 13-inch yesterday: now we’ve got the details on one of the 15-inchers and 17-inchers, respectively.
Here’s what we’re looking at for the 15-inch and 17-inch:
• An Intel Core 2.0 GHz i7 quad-core processor with a 6MB cache (15-inch)
• An Intel Core 2.2 GHz i7 quad-core processor with a 6MB cache (17-inch)
• 4GB of DDR RAM at 1333 MHz (both)
• 500GB hard drive (15-inch)
• 750GB hard drive (17-inch)
• 15.4-inch LED backlit screen with 1440×900 resolution (15-inch)
• a 17-inch LED backlit display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution (17-inch)
• Intel HD Graphics 3000
• AMD Radeon HD 6490M GPU with 256MB of memory (15-inch)
• AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5 memory (17-inch)
• FaceTime HD camera
• 8x SuperDrive
• Thunderbolt and Mini DisplayPort
• SDXC slot, FireWire 800 port and two USB 2.0 ports
• Audio and Ethernet ports
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Like the 13-inch we saw yesterday, these are more modest updates to the MacBook Pro line than we anticipated, boasting no LiquidMetal design or ubiquitous SSDs. The only notable update is the adoption of Light Peak, branded by Apple as Thunderbolt.
There’s still two new MacBook Pros (a 15-incher and 17-incher) to be revealed, but expect them to be variations of these two. We’ll let you know price when the Apple Store comes back up.
Many people have seen the 1984 SuperBowl commercial introducing the Macintosh to the masses. In the fall of 1983, Jobs gave a preview of this spot to an enthusiastic crowd of Apple shareholders and insiders. With full Reality Distortion Field in place, a young, passionate Steve Jobs describes the history of computing, IBM’s missed opportunities, and their current threats to Apple and the computing industry.
Happy Birthday, Steve – you haven’t lost your touch! Apple SuperNerds will notice a few soundtrack differences between this preview and the commercial that actually aired – can you spot them?
Apple is issuing press invites to a special media event on March 2 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, according to Loopinsight.com.
“Come see what 2011 will be all about,” says the invite. Looks like Apple is pretty confident about the iPad 2.
The event starts at 10:00 am. It’s the same venue Apple traditionally uses to introduce products.
Given how wildly popular the Photo Booth software that ships on every new Mac is amongst trout-lipped, mall-loitering teenagers from sea to shining sea, it’s amazing to me that Apple’s gone four years without bringing Photo Booth to iOS. Recent plist references in iOS 4.3 beta firmware suggest, however, that Apple is soon to remedy that omission as soon as the iPad 2 drops… implying that Apple’s simply been waiting for the whole family of iOS devices to have a front-facing webcam. In addition to Photo Booth, iPhone users can also take advantage of various iPhone photo edit settings formula to enhance their selfies and images. Learn more about editing selfies like TikTok on iPhone.
Now a new patent has been found by Jack Purcher over at Patently Apple, not only confirming that Cupertino’s engineers have been working on bringing Photo Booth to iPhones, but also suggesting that it might be a more radical revision than first expected, taking advantage of the gamut of iOS hardware, including mic, GPS and accelerometer.
Panic, the makers of popular Mac FTP client Transmit, quip about Dell’s outright theft of their official logo: “If only Dell charged the Apple Tax, they could afford to draw their own truck.”
But at least the Dell Tax was enough to cover Photoshopping in one of their monitors!
Although the public is used to seeing Steve Jobs as the face of Apple, a growing number of consumers are comfortable purchasing products from the Cupertino, Calif. company even if the iconic iPod salesman is not at the helm. That’s the finding of a recent survey comparing consumer reactions to questions surrounding Jobs’ health.
Some 93 percent of people questioned in a RBC Capital Markets and ChangeWave survey said a change of Apple leadership would either have no impact or would not alter their buying choices. This compares to a June 2008 survey finding 18 percent of people would be less likely to purchase Apple products if Jobs left the CEO position.
