News - page 2251

‘Conventional Wisdom’ (and the rumor mill) suggest that Apple will remain on the Xenon platform for it’s Mac Pro line. Yet, while browsing Geekbench results, I came across this result indicating an i7 powered Mac Pro 4,1, published less than a Half Hour Ago on Geekbench (which also if we remember broke the existence of i7 powered Mac Book Pro’s a couple of months back).

It’s not too far fetched that Apple might use i7’s in its entry-level Mac Pro. While previously the single and dual processor versions of Apples top box were effectively the same, with the only difference being the number of processors installed, the current version changed that. The current Mac Pro’s have already segmented the line with the entry level being powered by Intel Xeon X3540 processors (which can not be deployed in a dual processor configuration), and the top model being powered by the Intel Xeon X5570.

This split is important because for the first time it require Mac Pro’s to have different motherboards, EFI, etc depending on the variant of the pro machine. Since they’ve already segmented the line based upon architecture, it’s all the more reasonable that they might use the i7 in the low-end Mac Pro.

The only argument against this is performance. As bench-marked, the alleged i7 pro-box scores lower than the current entry model. Turning lemons into lemon-aid however, perhaps this is the mid-level (ie between the Mini and the Mac Pro) tower many of us have been waiting for forever.

A new survey shines more light on just who is buying Apple’s iPad. The survey, by Morgan Stanley, found 4.6 percent of Americans asked said they were “extremely interested” in buying an iPad, with 16.4 percent “somewhat interested” in the tablet device.

The survey of 2,500 U.S. consumers indicates 4-5 million iPads could sell in the U.S. over the first year, or 7-9 million globally, analyst Katy Huberty told investors Wednesday.

This is Iggy. Along with this cat, Iggy is the first in a new generation of iLolcats. They will appear on YouTube in ever increasing numbers, playing with their owners iPads until somebody makes an app called CatToy or CatNip or iNip or PadCat or something.

Wait, I typed that as a joke, then searched the App Store. There are already several cat toy apps. Whatever happened to balls of string?

This cat, on the other hand, totally fails to get it.

Earlier today, we mentioned how the iPhone’s iPod Out feature will make it safer to play DJ while driving. But SoundMan Car Audio have taken it one step further by building a custom dash that allows an iPad become the centerpiece.

Steve Jobs has sent another of his off-the-cuff customer emails, this time about the not-so-fast chip in the new 13-inch MacBook Pro.

Some observers are complaining that the 13-inch MacBook still sports a rather lowly Core 2 Duo chip, which also powered the previous generation machine. Meanwhile, the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBooks got speedy Intel Core i5 and i7 processors.

One MacRumors reader sent Steve Jobs a note about it, who responded that Apple chose to offer better graphics and battery life rather than an increase in CPU performance.

Customs officers in San Francisco confiscated a shipment of 2,000 iPhoneys they estimate to be worth $1.2 million.

The faux iPhones flew in via Taiwan before being ferreted out by customs agents on March 9.

They must have been pretty good fakes it took about a month to verify that they were, in fact, fraudulent.

A video from local ABC station show some pretty heavy-handed knock-offs sans Apple logo on the back.

One of the tip-offs: the almost-iPhones had a sliding back cover to remove the battery while on the real deal, the battery compartment is sealed.

The iPad is a total babe magnet, writer Jim Colgan has discovered.

Colgan took his new iPad on the streets of New York and got so much attention, he says it’s better than borrowing a puppy to talk to girls.

“If you’re looking for a dating aid, leave your friend’s dog alone and borrow an iPad,” he says.

Newsweek has its pom-poms out, leading a cheer for team U.S.A. This week’s cover story about how business is bouncing back for the “comeback country” cites Apple as a company whose innovation turned profits, despite the downturn, comparing the iTunes model to the efforts of Thomas Edison.

But more important is the rise of systems innovation, like Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse building electrical systems. “That leads to new models of infrastructure and new kinds of consumption.”
Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in April 2003 with a single product: songs selling for 99 cents. Seven years later, iTunes is a much larger business: hardware like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad; audiobooks, movies, ringtones, apps, and e-books.

It’s a boon for retailers, movie studios, independent coders, analytics firms, and accessories makers—the market for cases, sleeves, and headphones for i-devices is north of $1.5 billion annually. In late March, the venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers doubled the size of its two-year-old iFund, which backs app makers, to $200 million.

Summing up the 2,561-word pep talk — where Google and Apple are hailed as the new iconic American brands, taking the place of Chevrolet and McDonald’s (you pick which is which), the journalists conclude:

“If the U.S. continues to adapt as it has, and if it produces a few more game changers like Google and Apple, there’s no reason that the expansion that started in July 2009, against all the odds and predictions, can’t last just as long.”

Via Barron’s

In case you doubted that an iPad jailbreak was imminent, this gorgeous little image posted by hacker extraordinaire George Hotz should prove the point: Cydia running on the iPad. Now stop being coy and give us a hint at a release date already, George!

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbco58GnS9c

iPhone OS 4.0’s new iPod Out functionality didn’t get a lot of attention when it was briefly shown at last week’s event, but TUAW has posted a good overview of what to expect, along with the informative video above, which prominently features the horftastic caterwauling of country singing nightmare Wynonna.

iPod Out is a new application that displays a simplified, iPod Classic like interface for controlling music playback, with the menu system piped to the display of a car stereo system, which could not only handle the iPhone’s audio but support hands-free integration.

TUAW only mentioned stereos, but obviously, as long as the connector required isn’t to esoteric, this could potentially be used when hooking the iPhone up to a television as well. The only problem with the latter theory is the current lack of support for video in iPod Out, but that feature may simply be MIA until the official unveiling of the next iPhone model, which will hopefully be able to output video through HDMI.

The less-expensive versions of the iPad (16GB and 32GB) have become the Zhu Zhu Pets of the tech world. Remember the news footage of parents going from store to store, only to find shelves bare of the mechanical hamsters? The same thing is happening to Apple fans searching for something other than the 64GB iPad.

J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz surveyed 15 stores this week, finding 11 stores had the 64GB iPads compared to just four stores able to sell a 16GB or 32GB version of the popular tablet device.

Lengthily discussing Apple’s heroic focus on iPhone OS 4.0 for the past few month’s, Daring Fireball says not to expect the next version of Apple’s other operating system until at least 2011.

Gruber writes:

A few months ago, I heard suggestions that Apple had tentative plans to release a developer beta of Mac OS X 10.7 at WWDC this June. That is no longer the case. Mac OS X 10.7 development continues, but with a reduced team and an unknown schedule. It’s my educated guess that there will be no 10.7 news at WWDC this year, and probably none until WWDC 2011.

Frankly, this doesn’t concern me too much. Snow Leopard was a solid effort that deep cleaned and tightened the bolts on an already excellent operating system. Short of the addition of multitouch or the addition of deeper integration with the iPhone OS, I’m hard pressed to think of any new features I would really like to see in OS X… although knowing Apple, they’ve thought of some I have not.

Either way, even in 2011, OS X 10.7 won’t be overdue: Snow Leopard’s barely been out for eight months, and it took thirty months to see Tiger transition to Leopard. The real question is whether or not the proud and noble Bornean Clouded Leopard (pictured) can gain enough support in the next two years to get the nod as 10.7 spirit cat.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gew68Qj5kxw

Atomic Antelope’s Alice in Wonderland app for the iPad is certainly plenty frabjous — and makes a strange case for the iPad as the twenty-first century’s digital successor to the pop-up book — but what I really want to see is how the iPad changes the reading game when it comes to drier books.

As beautiful as this adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is, it’s also an easy approach. But how will people use the iPad’s capability to expand upon the text of a book like Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan or Nabokov’s Ada, or Adror, or Eco’s The Name of the Rose, or other less playful and anarchic works? I can’t wait to see.

To help you handicap next week’s earnings report set for April 20, we’ve compiled analyst expectations for iPhone sales during the second quarter of 2010. The range is from a high of 7.85 million from independent Apple analyst Turley Muller, who blogs at Financial Alchemist, to a low of 6.0 million from Citigroup analyst Richard Gardner. Even if Apple’s results are on the low side, it would mean a 58 percent increase over the same period in 2009.

If Muller is correct — and he’s often right on target — Apple could announce a 107 percent jump in handset sales. You be the judge.

Woe be Verizon. After chasing AT&T for a share of the iPhone piggy bank, a report recently emerged claiming the carrier could sell a CDMA version this summer. That word was quickly pounced upon by doubting analysts. Now another expert suggests even if Verizon could sell iPhones, the handset would be a drain on revenue. The iPhone would be a “mixed blessing” Bank of America analyst David Lynch told investors Monday.

“While clearly accretive to market share in our view, it is not accretive to earnings, even assuming steady pricing, until 2013,” Barden writes. In other words, although the iPhone would boost Verizon’s market share, it wouldn’t see any money from the deal until another three years.

As we reported eariler the Apple Store was closed this morning when I went for my ‘O-Dark-Thirty’ run, and as anticipated, we’ve got new i5 and i7 Macbook Pros to enjoy. I will be picking one up today if possible and will give a full rundown later in the week for an in-depth hands on.

Pricing looks great too, with $200 off the 17″ model. The 17″ configured as I’d buy it with an i7, is just $200 more (or in other words back to the original pricing).

No updates today for Macbook Air, or Macbook Pro… Which is good ’cause I don’t think I could justify to even my generious and understanding wife, upgrading two three thousand dollar machines at once!

Beautiful. Thanks Steve.

Check back here this weekend for a deep-dive hands on.

The apple store is being updated as I write this, new Macbook pros anyone? Let’s hope so

After a wait of 20 days, Opera Mini has been approved by Apple for release to the App Store.

Steve Jobs appears to still be banging out email replies to regular Joes and Janes. His latest customer missive was sent out to German Apple owner Niko, who wanted to know whether Apple would still be supporting or updating the iPhone 2g.

Jobs’ typical cut-to-the-chase answer? “Sorry no.”

The death knell for the 2g isn’t super surprising, it wasn’t part of the iPhone 4.0 presser and in device years, the original iPhone was pretty long in the tooth, discontinued in the US in summer 2008.

For those of you curious about what device Jobs used to send this answer, this one came from his iPhone, not his iPad.

Via Mac Stories

Pilgrims trekking Italy to ogle the the Shroud of Turin, on public display for the first time in a decade, now have iPhone apps to help them see more.

Last time thousands of visitors flocked to peek at the yellowed cloth said to depict the face of Jesus, the best mobile option was probably some lame WAP browser.

This time around, iPhone apps can help negotiate the challenges of Italian travel — opening hours, monuments off the grid — with the flick of a finger.

iSindone (“sindone” is Italian for holy shroud) costs $0.99, and offers opening times, directions for getting there and info on the cathedral. There’s also a hi-res image of the shroud, rumored to be a medieval fake, which may give you a better look than the quick drive-by visitors get of the real thing.

Instant Turin, gratis for the next two weeks in honor of the shroud unveiling, promises to steer you clear of restaurants with dreaded tourist menus and get you to the Mole on time.

The official app,  also called Sindone, hasn’t been released yet. Registering on the web site will give you details when it launches,  we’re going to hope before the shroud display ends May 23.

And, if you need to walk off the chocolate and Barolo, try the sprawling gardens of  Venaria Reale outside Turin — just remember to get bus times and hours handy or printed out or you will risk getting stranded.

Had you bought stock in Apple Computers when the Macintosh was introduced in 1984, you’d have received quite a nice return on your investment over the past 25 years. Had you bought Apple stock in 2001, when iTunes was introduced, your nine-year ROI would look pretty stellar, too. Heck, if you’d bought some AAPL in 2007, when the iPhone came out, chances are you’d have doubled your money in three short, mostly lackluster stock market years.

But what about now? Is 2010, the year of the iPad’s introduction, time to buy or time to sell shares in the company Steve Jobs founded?

Self-described mobile industry enthusiast, author and chronicler Tomi T Ahonen is unequivocal: “[Apple’s] time of ascendancy has come to an end.”

Apple’s upcoming iPhone OS 4 removes any mention of Google from the iPhone’s search feature, the latest step by the Cupertino, Calif. company to erase any connection with the Mountain View, Calif. Internet giant.

Already part of iPhone OS 3.2 used by the iPad, the elimination of the word “Google” from the iPhone’s Safari Web browser is part of iPhone OS 4, currently in beta stage. The current iPhone 3.1.3 includes a “Google” button in the bottom right corner of the handset’s touchscreen keyboard. The beta software will likely be made public this summer.

We already know Apple has a lock on consumers, particularly teens. However, the world of the corporate cubicle has been dominated by Microsoft and the Blackberry. That picture may be changing, according to a new survey finding corporate interest in the iPhone increasing.

Apple share of the corporate smartphone market reached 27 percent in February, up from 22 percent in November, according to ChangeWave Research. The three chief reasons: demand by employees, more corporate applications available on the “cloud” via the iPhone, and improved security.

Jon Berg injected some fresh life into his broken 17-inch iMac G4 by cramming a touchscreen PC’s guts inside and re-skinning the desktop to resemble OS X.

I wonder, though, why he didn’t decide to make it a dual-boot hackintosh. Windows 7’s multitouch is a total hack job. It’s hardly worth sacrificing OS X as your day-to-day operating system.

It’s certainly exciting that the iPhone is getting multitasking… but with only the very last generation of iDevice’s supported, a lot of people are going to be left behind. Even Apple seemed a little bit embarrassed not to be rolling multitasking out across all devices.

Presumably, the issue is one of horsepower, but not complete inability for pre-3Gs devices to multitask. A developer has discovered that by switching just one variable, you can enable multitasking on the iPhone 3G fairly easily.

Personally, I wonder if Apple wouldn’t have been wise to be a little more flexible on their rigid performance expectations for multitasking. When Apple introduced the App Store, they essentially eliminated the biggest and most obvious reason why the average iPhone owner would choose to jailbreak their devices: the ability to run third-party software. Getting multitask on older iPhones and iPod Touches is going to be a big reason for people to start jailbreaking again.