Just a couple weeks ago, Apple updated their iLife suite up to the year 2011… but despite the fact that iLife ’11 requires Snow Leopard to run, Cupertino did not see fit to upgrade the executables to 64-bit…. even though programs like iMovie ’11 would certainly have benefited from the support.
What about Final Cut Studio, then? Last updated in July of 2009, Final Cut Studio is one of the top movie-editing software packages around… and it too could desperately benefit from some 64-bit support.
Evan Agee recently emailed Steve Jobs to see about Final Cut Studio, expressing his hopes of a 64-bit update to the package. As he’s sometimes wont to do, Apple’s CEO fired back a reply: “Stay tuned and buckle up.”
Before the iPad debuted, the tablet market was basically limited to niche convertible laptops with stylus-driven displays largely marketed to digital artists. The iPad changed everything: it placed the tablet as a bridge device between a phone and a laptop and made it less about the creation of a few specific types of digital media than a gadget aimed at the consumption of digital media.
It was a genius redefinition of a product class, and Apple’s basically dominated the tablet market ever since it was released. You might be surprised by how utterly complete the iPad’s domination of the tablet market is, though: according to statistics released by Strategy Analytics, the iPad accounts for 95.5% of all tablet sales.
That number’s going to go down, of course. The iPad basically caught gadget makers with their pants down, and we’re only just staring to see devices like the Galaxy Tab and the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook creep out of electronic makers’ design factories to challenge the iPad’s crown. Apple’s percentage of the tablet market is largely due to the fact that there just aren’t any good tablets out there besides the iPad.
So that number’s going to go down, but by guess, with that sort of head start? Apple’s still going to sell more than half of all tablets made for at least the next couple of years.
Apple’s patent battle with Nokia might not be going to plan for Cupertino’s lawyers: staff of the International Trade Commission have reportedly told the judge in the case that Apple’s patent allegations are “unfounded.”
The case is being heard for the first time before Judge Charles Bullock today, but as Bloomberg reports, the third-party of the ITC does not feel Apple’s patents have merit.
November 7th’s turning out to be an important date for big box retail. It’s not just the day that Target’s slated to get the iPhone for the first time, but also the day that all 158 Best Buy Mobile stores will finally get the iPad.
Best Buy’s Mobile store locations are more Lilliputian Best Buys that focus on mbile electronics and are most often found in shopping malls or in congested downtown city locales.
There’s some obvious advantages for Apple pushing the iPad through as many outlets as it can this holiday season. Cupertino clearly does not want anyone to be able to fall upon the excuse of merely not being able to find an iPad or iPhone to buy a loved on this Christmas, and by selling iPads at Best Buy Mobile, Apple is able to expand its retail presence even to malls that don’t have an Apple Store.
Pretty soon, about the only excuse anyone’s going to have not to own an iOS device is sheer obstinance.
Apple reportedly has hired a former Warner Music Group executive with intimate knowledge of negotiations between the music publisher and retailers, which presumably included the Cupertino, Calif. digital music giant. Elliot Peters, Warner’s senior vice president and head of its digital legal department next month will become the head of corporate legal affairs for iTunes based in Luxembourg.
In a memo, Warner told employees Elliot “had a hand in almost every major WMG digital deal.” Among the parties with which Elliot has negotiated: Columbia House Music and Video Clubs, Word Entertainment, and Warner Bros. Publications. Apple is the largest U.S. music retailer and digital music sales are expected to overshadow CD sales in 2011.
An analyst Tuesday issued a very bullish prediction for iPhone and iPad sales next year, double that of other onlookers and following lower-than-expected fourth-quarter sales. Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair believes the Cupertino, Calif. company will sell 100 million iPhones and up to 48 million iPads in 2011.
While Blair admits the sales estimate is a “staggering number any way you look at it,” he insists Apple is prepping for a “nearly 100 percent year-over-year growth for iPhone” next year. By comparison, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner believes Apple will sell 52 million iPhones and 23 million iPads during 2011. On the low end, following lower than expected fourth-quarter numbers, Needham & Company analyst Charlie Wolf predicts Apple will sell only 18 million iPads, but cautioned even that figure may be too high if tablet distribution doesn’t increase.
Early MacBook Air adopters have been reporting problems with their new notebooks that include video problems and frequent kernel panics. Now some of these users have released pictures and video evidence demonstrating the flickering video and computer freezing issue that appears to be happening on nearly all 11-inch and 13-inch models of the new MacBook Air.
We were the first to report this issue last week-end and since then there are more reports of other MacBook Air users encountering the same problem. Users in Germany are reporting problems and the folks at MacWorld have reported seeing the problem happen on of their new MacBook Airs.
It’s doubtful as to whether any online apps will be able to match the gadgetry the pundits have on television to interpret election results, but one elegant graphic on the New York Times’ web site has been optimized for the iPad, and looks worthy of a bookmark.
SocialPhone is a brand new app for iOS that combines an impressive, full-featured address book with access to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in one handy application.
At 9 AM ET on Thursday, November 4, the Skyfire Browser will be coming to iOS and will allow users to watch Flash video on their iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch by converting it to HTML5.
Priced at $2.99, Skyfire Browser has been available on Android devices since May 2010, and has been incredibly popular with 1.5 million downloads. Now, after a “rather rigorous review,” Apple has finally approved the app for iOS devices, and it will soon be available in the App Store.
Apple’s advertising team has thrown a lot of hyperbolic adjectives at the iPad like “legendary”, “amazing” and “magical,” but their latest advertisement might be pressing it. “Cinematic,” sure. “Elementary”…. uh, okay. But by the time we’re at “full size” and “electric,” I think maybe we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here.
Evil Dead — Sam Raimi’s story of five horny college kids who go to an abandoned cabin in the woods to do their rutting and accidentally unleash an ancient, murderous evil — isn’t as well known as its sequels, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness. It’s a more serious and frightening film, and Bruce Campbell’s Ash (known in the first movie as “Ashley”) has yet to become the chainsaw-handed, catchphrase-spitting zombie killer we’d all come to know and love later in the franchise.
It also seems like a bad fit for an App Store game, but I’ve got to tell you, this trailer for the upcoming Evil Dead game has won me over. You’d think using Mii-like bobblehead avatars to tell the story that prominently features melting zombies, ankle-stabbing and tree rape would just fall apart, but instead, the trailer’s just incredibly funny and well done… not to mention loyal to the spirit of the (NSFW) original trailer, which I’ve embedded below.
At first, Chris Pollock‘s hack to connect his iPhone to a computer’s serial port seems like a “because I can” sort of project, but in reality, it appears that it’s actually incredibly useful.
Why? Chris apparently works in IT, and as it turns out, a jailbroken iPhone armed with a serial port connector and many of Cydia’s console packages is a godsend for an IT worker: it’s an entire computer that you can just whip out of your pocket in a pinch to do some mainframe troubleshooting.
Fantastic. Now if only your could use this serial port hack to sync through iTunes.
If you’re the type who likes to do all of your shopping in one place, good news: Target stores have confirmed that starting on November 7th, the Big Bullseye will be selling the iPhone.
The Sesame Street Workshop’s charming take on Apple’s “There’s An App For That Campaign” and featuring the so-called “iPogo” is plenty cute, but after watching the whole thing, does anyone else think that the idea of a pogo stick with knives built into the handle might not entirely be child-friendly?
If you use a pair of Monster brand headphones using Apple’s Remote and Mic technology and if you’ve been noticing your iPhone or iPad fritzing out on you when they’re plugged in, don’t worry: it’s not in your imagination and you haven’t just gotten a dud pair. There’s an issue with Monster cans, and Cupertino is very aware of it.
It seems that Google and Apple might be in another bidding war… this time to acquire BOKU, a payment startup which aims to bring “bank-grade payments technology” to mobile gadgets like the iPhone or iPad.
Apple has never been very happy with the prospect of fixing your iPod or iPhoneunder warranty just because you dropped it in the toilet. That’s why they’ve started cramming so many moisture sensors into the gadgets: the tiny stickers — which change color if they are exposed to an inordinate amount of moisture — give Apple an excuse to deny you service if things get too wet.
Apple’s rationale here is pretty sound. After all, if you trip and spill your iPhone into the drink, that’s pretty clearly not their responsibility. The problem is that those moisture sensors and their accuracy are both highly contentious: Apple’s fighting a lawsuit in which a California woman claims they are trigged erroneously by the humidity, and indeed, those who live in more humidclimes have been complaining about false moisture positives for years.
With that in mind, it’s sort of distressing to see that the new MacBook Air uses a record amount of moisture sensors internally. In fact, by my count, there are 9 moisture sensors exposed in the image above alone… and there’s apparently even more hidden underneath connectors.
A major point update to Snow Leopard is likely to start shooting down through Software Update soon, if internal reports pegging the imminent release of OS X 10.6.5 are accurate.
It sounds like the setup to a heist movie: a speeding truck smashing through a wall, screeching to a halt and almost instantly disgorging itself of a gang of robbers, perhaps all wearing disguising Dead President masks. Take away the masks, though, and you have the real-life caper of a bunch of Apple-coveting thieves who just hit up a reseller in Oregon.
More confirmation of what most already assumed: Apple’s iPad dominates the tablet market. Earlier, we reported 80 percent of people considering a tablet plan to buy an iPad. Now comes word from another research firm that Apple owns more than 90 percent of the global market, with Android-based equivalents far behind in the single-digit basement.
According to Strategy Analytics, 95.5 percent of tablets sold in the third quarter bear the Apple logo. In addition, the Cupertino, Calif. company shipped 4.4 million iPads, higher than the 4.19 million Apple reported for September.
The growth of tablets – particularly Apple’s iPad – is dampening consumer demand for low-cost netbooks. Only 14 percent of people planning to purchase a laptop in the next ninety days will pick a netbook – a 10-point drop from this summer, according to ChangeWave.
“The decline of Netbooks is attributable to a combination of factors including the end of the recession and the mounting penetration of Tablet computers – notably the Apple iPad,” said Paul Carton, Vice President of Research, Tuesday. The company’s October survey of more than 3,000 consumers also found plans to purchase a laptop remain flat at 8 percent while future desktop purchases grew by just one point to 6 percent, compared to August.
Unkrich during production of "Toy Story 3" in November 2009 (Photo by Deborah Coleman / Pixar)
This is a guest interview by Mike Bastoli of The Pixar Blog, a popular news blog about the studio.
Lee Unkrich is the director of Disney-Pixar’s Toy Story 3, the highest-grossing animated film of all time, which was released on DVD, Blu-ray and iTunes today. He also served as co-director of Toy Story 2 and editor of Toy Story, and is a member of Pixar’s Senior Creative Team.
Unkrich is an avid Mac user and Apple ‘addict’ who can be spotted at Apple’s events from time to time. “Whenever I’m invited, it’s something awwwwwwesome,” he tweeted to his 80,000 plus followers on Twitter ahead of the launch of the iPad in January.
Here’s an exclusive interview with Unkrich, who talks about his first Mac, Apple cameos in Pixar’s movies and Steve Jobs feeding his Apple addiction.
Living in the Eurozone, it can often be frustrating to go to buy a new Apple product being appraised of its cost in dollars, only to find Apple charging an amount in euros far greater than what the exchange rate would imply.
In truth, the price discrepancy is usually (mostly) imaginary: if a Mac costs $999 in the States and the same in Euros, most of the discrepancy is made up by the obligatory Value Added Tax. Still, Apple does make a small but real margin on every Mac sold in Europe compared to the price they charge in America… and when the exchange price fluctuates, sometimes Apple can seemingly come way ahead.
It’s good to see Apple occasionally jiggle their European Mac prices to more closely align with the current exchange rate. In fact, Cupertino’s just done exactly that in Europe, dropping the price of the two Mac mini models from £649 to £599 and £929 to £879 in the U.K., and from €809o to €709 and €1149 to €999 in the rest of Europe.
That makes it a good time to buy a mini if you’re a European. You might want to get in on this soon, before the exchange rate fluctuates again and Apple changes its mind.
Apple’s massive new data center is a 21st-century broadcasting system to rival the TV networks of old, says a leading expert in cloud computing.
Nick Carr, author of the “The Big Switch” a bestseller about the cloud, says Apple’s North Carolina facility is a “broadcasting system” not unlike NBC or CBS, but one that distributes software as well as media.
“Apple increasingly views its mainstream computers, from iPod Touch to iPhone to iPad to MacBook Air, as media players, with “media” spanning not just audio and video but also apps,” Carr wrote in an email. “From that perspective, the North Carolina data center can be seen as essentially a broadcasting system that will enable Apple to make the shift from a downloading model of media distribution to a streaming model. It’s a proprietary broadcasting system (not altogether unlike traditional broadcasting systems), which means it’s a very different model of the cloud from the open model promoted by Google.”
At 500,000 square feet, Apple’s $1 billion data center will be among the largest in the world. The unusual size of the data center suggests that Apple has ambitious plans for cloud computing.
It’s assumed it will be used to stream music and movies from iTunes. Reports suggest the company is going to build a big office complex next door and is “going after the cable market.”
But it goes deeper than that, says Carr. The facility will help transition Apple from a download model of computing to a streaming model of computing.
Here’s what else he had to say about Apple’s unique take on the cloud:
