Category Archives: Apple Software

By Staff | Published: February 25, 2010

Latest Mac OS X 10.6.3 beta suggests release imminent

A new test build of Mac OS X 10.6.3 has been seeded to developers, with known issues listed as “none.” This typically means that the build is a final test seed and barring major surprises, can be expected to be released in a matter of days. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 27, 2010

January 27th Apple Event Preview part 3: New “Tablet OS” and iPhone OS

After the “Tablet” itself, one of the most anticipated announcements at today’s Apple Event is that of a new operating system — often called iPhone OS 4.0 by rumormongers, but we’ve heard other names for it — that would power the Tablet and be accompanied by a simpler variant for hand-held iDevices offering parallel new features. Here’s a summary of what we hope to see from Apple’s new system software.

These predictions are based on a combination of public information and reporting from our sources privy to iPhone OS development; they are based on projects we know are in the works for release by this summer at the Worldwide Developer Conference, and can only offer our best guesses until after today’s Event is over as to exactly when they will see public release. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 27, 2010

January 27th Apple Event Preview Part 2: iTunes and Content

Whether or not Apple gives it the version number 10 mentioned in roadmap documents, and whether or not it has all of the features we’ve seen in early betas of iTunes 10, a new release of the company’s content-delivery-and-management software is as much a certainty is anything can be for a rumormonger in the lead-up to such an event with its docket under the ultimate control of such a small handful of people.

Although many of iTunes 10’s features have been clearly targeted at the company’s forthcoming Tablet computer/device, and a stripped-down feature set could be carried over into an interim release of iTunes 9 without compromising much of the functionality relevant to existing Macs/iPhones/iPods, the prevailing consensus on the grapevine seems to be that many ostensibly Tablet-specific features — like “e-reader” content delivery — will be available right away on existing Apple products and Windows PCs. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 26, 2010

January 27th Apple Event Preview Part 1: The Tablet

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you are probably well aware that tomorrow, Wednesday January 27th, Apple is hosting one of its infamous “Events” and the centerpiece will be a tablet-like iDevice which was, coincidentally, just “confirmed” by the CEO of publisher McGraw-Hill on CNBC minutes before this post was sent to the presses.

The big questions are, what will it be like? What sort of tech specs will be under the hood? Based on years of following the Tablet’s development through our sources in Cupertino and backed up by grapevine consensus, here’s what we’re expecting at the heart of tomorrow’s announcements.

First, the bullet point tech specs:

  • 10-inch touchscreen display with one of the highest resolutions ever produced, and almost certainly in a 16:9 aspect ratio.
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By Staff | Published: September 9, 2009

iTunes 9 still not 64-bit, internally referred to as “iTunes X”

With the release of Snow Leopard only a short time ago, many of Apples internal applications, save for a few such as iTunes and Front Row, have been rewritten in Cocoa and built as 64-bit applications. The reasons for doing so range from reluctance to retrofit major new features or fix old bugs in an application due for a Cocoa overhaul, to the obvious advantages that come with 64-bit computing; access to larger amounts of memory should it ever become necessary, and new processor features only available in 64-bit mode.

While Apple is no doubt still working on porting their flagship application to 64-bit Cocoa, the release version of iTunes 9 available from the Apple Website is apparently still 32-bit only. Read more

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By Staff | Published: August 4, 2009

Will the ‘iTablet’ run iPhone OS or Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard?

As “iTablet” (Macbook Touch? iPhone Cinema?) rumors have reached a fever pitch in recent days thanks to several disclosures and leaks by third parties privy to late-stage prototypes of the device, speculation has mounted as to which variant of OS X it will run — will it be an iPhone (ARM CPU, iPhone OS) or a Mac (Intel processor, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard)?

The most difficult part of answering this question, for even the most well-informed and -connected of insiders, is that Apple has explored both possibilities and has been extensively revamping countless elements of the Snow Leopard interface to make multi-touch input more practical. One way or another, Macs will eventually adopt multi-touch displays; it’s just a matter of when and what models, at what price ranges. Read more

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By Staff | Published: July 11, 2009

Snow Leopard build 10A402 seeded to developers

Weighing it at twice the size — 1.3GB vs 655MB — of the previous 10A394 build (itself the first major post-WWDC seed update), Snow Leopard 10A402 has been seeded to developers via Software Update from within the beta-stage Mac OS X 10.6. As usual, Apple’s seed notes were short on details….but reader & source reports have already begun to reach our inboxes and the early reviews are very positive.

Snow Leopard build 10A402 was released with typically minimal fanfare or detail in the seed notes which read only: “This Snow Leopard Developer Preview Update is recommended for all users running the Snow Leopard Developer Preview Build 10A394 or later. This update includes general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility, and security.”

However, within minutes of the update being posted to Snow Leopard’s Software Update, reports began to flow in rapidly from developers and others who are running these latest Mac OS X 10.6 test builds — now in early beta phase following last month’s World Wide Developer Conference where the landmark 10A380 build, essentially a feature freeze and beginning of debugging in earnest, was released. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 27, 2009

What’s next for iPhone & other iDevices?

There are many new features and pieces of core hardware that we expect to see in future iDevices — some of which (iPod Touch S) could be announced in a matter of weeks, others (iTablet, higher screen resolutions, 802.11N Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, etc) which we think may reach the market early next year and the truly next-generation stuff (4G cellular network chips, dual core ARM Cortex 9 processors, even more powerful GPUs, 5-megapixel camera with 1080P HD video and so on) that almost certainly won’t be announced until mid-2010.

And that’s just a short list.

But even Apple itself doesn’t necessarily know for certain whether suppliers will hit road-map targets for the components/chipsets that will bring these capabilities to the iDevice platform….nor whether the internally-developed technologies being engineered at Infinite Loop will hit their own. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 26, 2009

New Snow Leopard seed, 10A394 released via Software Update

Today Apple released Snow Leopard developer seed 10A394 through the Software Update system. This is the first Snow Leopard seed to be released in an “update” form through Software Update rather than as a complete separate build from the Apple Developer Connection website.

The download weighs in at 655MB, and requires that build 10A380 already be installed. Apple claims the new build contains the old standby of “general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility and security”, and users are reporting that the new Dock Exposé feature works now.

Rumors’ own beta/nightly-build aficionados and the usual suspects on the grapevine will be spending extensive hands-on time with Mac OS X 10.6 build 10a394 in the hours and days ahead; expect further related posts both on our web site and via our Twitter feed (@MacOSRumors) as information becomes available to us. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 26, 2009

Safari 4 faster, more stable on Snow Leopard than 10.5.x

Though many readers have reported the problems with Safari 4.x on Leopard, few of the same issues were reproducible by testers/developers and sources who have hands-on access to the latest post-WWDC builds (10a380 and later) of Snow Leopard.

We’ve noted the considerable boost to Safari 4 performance that users of Mac OS X 10.6 build 10a380 have experienced in previous posts to our Twitter feed, and it would appear that a similar difference applies to many of the stability problems readers have been reporting with 10.5.x, even after the recent Safari 4.0.1 Update is applied.

In fact, in several cases, it would appear that v4.0.1 actually made some of these issues worse. Paradoxically, though the 4.0.1 Update package is not available for Snow Leopard (requires 10.5.7) and 10.6 is still almost three months away from release with plenty of system-level bugs left to be fixed, virtually all testers we talked to were left scratching their heads in surprise when attempts were made to reproduce the widely reported crashes/misbehavior on 10a380 or more recent builds. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 8, 2009

LIVE Coverage of the WWDC 2009 Keynote

There is no auto-refresh on this page, so we recommend that readers manually reload in their browsers for the latest updates every few minutes. Please do not do so excessively, since traffic load on our servers is already extremely high.

Last Updated: 3:15 EDT (newest updates at the bottom) — Live Coverage is now complete. This is an archive of our postings as of 3:15 PM; more can be found in other posts here on Rumors or by following us on Twitter.

From our Twitter feed: Several readers at the Moscone Center have noted that banners there show the iCal logo w/ the date June 19th…a release date?

Also noted by many attendees on the banners is a new Quicktime X logo. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 8, 2009

WWDC Preview Part 3: iPod Touch, Other iDevices, One More Thing?

As Rumors has previously reported, we expect an entirely new family of iDevices to be shipping by the end of the summer — and although expectations for an announcement of new 2009 iPhones are running high today, the actual shipping date of those new phones is most likely at least a few (3-4?) weeks in the future.

We also believe that at least one other group of iDevices, most probably and expanded/upgraded iPod Touch lineup, will be announced today….with at least some models paralleling the feature set of the high-end 2009 iPhone, including:

*One proposed marketing name for the new iDevices was “iPhone/iPod Touch X2,” denoting the “twice as fast, twice as much, twice the features” advancements over 2007/2008 models….

*Faster CPU (~600MHz ARM Cortex A8/similar, or perhaps a slight upgrade to the existing 412MHz ARM11 in the 500-600MHz range) competitive with the Palm Pre’s 620MHz Cortex A8 chip….and faster GPU (PowerVR multi-core, 5X+ performance gain over today’s iDevices) which supports Anti-Aliasing/Anisotropic Filtering, greatly improving visual quality at the same display resolution.

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By Staff | Published: June 8, 2009

WWDC 2009 Preview Part 2: iPhone OS 3.0 & Snow Leopard

In the case of iPhone OS 3.0, we already have a fairly good idea of its feature set, performance, and reliability from the series of developer betas that have been released over the past several months. Although Apple has not yet made an official statement as to its final release date, there has been none of the hedging that we’ve seen with Snow Leopard; we wouldn’t be surprised to discover that some type of delay, or a “Final Beta” similar to Snow Leopard’s, will be announced today….but the most likely outcome is a release in the near term if not actually today.

Obviously, we’re very excited about that and we know all of you are as well. If we’re forced to wait for one more round of debugging to be carried out and for developers to test their apps against a set of new features, we’ll live…but many things about the dev process thus far, and the state of the mobile operating system itself, suggest that a release is imminent without significant further delay. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 6, 2009

WWDC Preview Part 1: 2009 iPhones

As Rumors has previously reported, numerous indications from within the source code of iPhone OS 3.0 Beta releases….industry leaks from suppliers….and Infinite Loop itself as well as reports from reliable sources all over the planet all converge on a few relatively widespread fact-based predictions:

*At least three distinct 2009 iPhones: “3Gx2” or “3.5G” high-end model with enhanced specs & full support for AT&T’s new 7.2Mbps “Enhanced 3G” cellular data network….an entry-level model more or less the same as today’s iPhone 3G with mostly cosmetic changes and a few tweaks (possibly Bluetooth 3.0, among others), and a third “International” model designed for certain markets such as China which have unique cellular networking standards/requirements.

*Within each model family, there will be at least two pricing/value tiers based largely on storage space (but possibly also storage performance, in some cases); in approximate terms, 8GB 3G $99 — 16GB $149 (3G)/$199 (3.5G) — 32GB 3.5G $299, with a possible additional 64GB tier at $399. Read more

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By Staff | Published: May 17, 2009

iPod Touch, other 2009 iDevices to include video camera?

It is already widely believed among rumor-mongers — with very good reason, based on the extensive source reports we’ve received on this specific detail — that at a minimum, the high-end 2009 iPhone will sport a new CMOS imaging sensor (“camera”) with 3.2MP photo capabilities and video output far superior to that of current 2007/2008 iPhones which only support video functionality when Jailbroken, and even then with poor image stability/quality/framerate.

The latest wave of rumors on the grapevine take this several steps further, suggesting that at least some type of camera will be included across all 2009 iDevices including the new iPod Touch and the much-speculated-upon “fourth iDevice” (entry-level iPhone, high-end iPhone, iPod Touch, and “iTablet” or similar).

Rumors’ sources have led us to go even further out on a limb than that in our predictions: based on the latest reports to come out from under source embargo, we believe that every 2009 iDevice with a camera will have some form of video capability, and most likely will be at least 3.2 megapixels for photographs/1280×720 (720P HD) video resolution. Read more

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