Category Archives: Apple Software

By Staff | Published: January 17, 2008

New 1.1.3 update fixes bricked iPhones

Back in late 2007, Apple made no secret of the fact that AT&T would be the only supported network on the iPhone for the next few years, and that unlocked iPhones would re-lock and in some cases quit working entirely upon updating the firmware. Accusations flew back and forth, and everything from revenge to unintentional firmware problems were offered up as reasons for the bricking. The truth of course is never black and white, and the real reason may be a bit of both.

Apple obviously has a responsibility to keep customers phones working and secure, which means they must be able to update the phone and fix problems even if it means overwriting the areas of code hackers had altered to unlock it. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 17, 2008

No rentals for 5G video iPods?

In the Macworld keynote, Steve Jobs did say that “current generation iPods” would be able to utilize rented movies, but notice he did not say ALL video capable iPods, so there may be some truth to the idea that this is intentional. Perhaps Apple simply hasn’t updated the firmware on these iPods to support the rental functionality, they could be readying an update right now to allow 5G video iPods to playback rented movies.

However, it would seem unlikely that Apple would let this sort of incompatibility slip through the cracks. It may also be possible that these rented movies are protected to a further degree than other iTunes content, which may have caused compatibility problems if the older video iPods are incapable of supporting the tougher protection. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 17, 2008

Sign the iPod Touch petition!

The folks over at onlinepetition.com have put up a simple page calling on Apple to free the new iPod Touch apps from their $20 shackles. We aren’t quite sure what effect this will have, even if a large number of people sign the petition it is unlikely that Apple will change their plans at this point. Apple does have a long history of expecting users to pay for significant upgrades to previously released products, so this may be just one more in a long line of for-pay product upgrades.

So what do you think? Is this petition going to change anything? Is Apple going to release these applications to previous iPod Touch owners for free?

To see the petition and sign it, click here Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 15, 2008

New iPod Touch apps cost $20, released to considerable controversy

It will take time to see what the sales numbers are like, but as with last year’s decision by Apple to charge a nominal fee for the “802.11n Enabler” for Core 2 Macs that already had the supported hardware yet shipped with 802.11g-only firmware, we expect that a great many people will be tempted to pirate this package rather than pay for it.

As part of a strategy to mitigate that tendency, Apple has made the package an iTunes Store purchase and there is undoubtedly at least some degree of “digital rights management”-type protection to ensure that piracy is not a widespread problem.

Along with the five apps included in the software update — Mail, Google Maps, Weather, Notes and Stocks — (sound familiar?) — there are a number of system tweaks and improvements that come with the “January Upgrade” as well. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 15, 2008

Several Software Updates released following MWSF keynote

As the executives and marketroids did their thing in San Francisco, Apple’s network engineers and software update team were hard at work posting several new packages to the SWU servers.

The brand new software update packages include:

  • iTunes 7.6 (44.7MB 10.5/Intel) — Support for the new HD movie rental service, many changes to the iTunes Store, and support for AppleTV firmware 2.0
  • QuickTime 7.4 (57.9MB 10.5/Intel) — “Numerous bug fixes,” support for AppleTV 2.0
  • Front Row 2.1.2 (17.4MB 10.5/Intel) — Bug fixes, “improved iTunes compatibility,” presumably for the new v.7.6.

All in all, this has been a very exciting start to a Macworld which has also seen far more vibrant third-party offerings and attendance by major players in countless segments of the Mac economy — including, most particularly, many companies who just last year didn’t consider themselves part of the Apple/Macintosh economy at all. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 15, 2008

iPhone v1.1.3 “January Update” released to much fanfare at MWSF

One of the accurately predicted rumors, the “January Update” to the iPhone’s firmware, v1.1.3, has been released with all of the predicted features we’ve seen in various developer/beta releases of the firmware leading up to the Expo.

The most in-depth description of the new iPhone update’s features is here: http://www.apple.com/iphone/gettingstarted/guidedtourupdate2/

Highlights include the ability to customize the Home Screen, the “wiggling icons” indicator which shows you when you are in edit mode on the home screen(s), multiple home screens that can be switched between with a sideways “flick,” a major overhaul of both Maps and GMail functionality by Google with tons of new features including location triangulation, Drop Pin, Hybrid View mode (overlays street names and map info with satellite imagery) and much more; numerous enhancements to the iTunes Wifi Store including the ability to use gift codes and integration with the new Movie Rental system to let you know how much time you have left on a rental……and the ability to switch between chapters in iTunes downloaded content. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 15, 2008

AppleTV software updated to “2.0;” hardware remains the same

In somewhat of a let-down — at least relative to rumors posted here and elsewhere about a major hardware revamp which we still strongly believe is coming…..we were simply to optimistic on the timing, it would seem — Steve Jobs has indeed announced “AppleTV 2.0” but it is not the Blu-ray equipped, totally overhauled device that we had predicted.

Instead of hardware changes, Apple has left the iDevice unchanged (right down to the 40 & 160GB HDD options) except for price and a substantially improved new operating system/onboard software suite. To take full advantage of the capabilities which have existed since it was first released a year ago but haven’t been properly utilized, Apple is overhauling the AppleTV components of the iTunes Store to offer High Definition (720P) movie rentals. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 1, 2008

December 2007 highlights

It turns out your iPhone could be running almost twice as fast! One of our Xerces sister sites, The Black Hole general-interest discussion forum, recently tackled a topic that has come up numerous times on Mac OS Rumors: Is the latest mainstrean media news about “Mac Malware” for real, or just greedy security companies looking to make a buck?!

Rumors has confirmed that a new, larger AppleTV flagship model will be added to the lineup along with two enhanced versions of the existing AppleTV devices — all sporting larger hard drives. The new “AppleTV Unity” as it is sometimes referred to at Infinite Loop, will include a faster Intel CPU, enhanced media decoding DSP chipset, more RAM, an optical drive and numerous other improvements over the “standard” models. Read more

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By Staff | Published: October 7, 2007

October Highlights

Apple has reported its best second-best quarterly financial results in the company’s history on very strong sales of Macs, iPhones and other iDevices.

If the AppleTV’s lack of an optical drive has been an issue for you, look no further than a soon to be announced update to the popular iDevice for that very issue to be addressed. Also, the entry-level model will be dropped to $249 with a 60GB or maybe even 80GB HDD (depending on market conditions about six or seven weeks from now), and two other models at $299 and $399 sporting 120-160 and 200-250GB drives respectively. The optical drive may not be available on all models, another vagary of our most recent source reports on the subject. Read more

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By Staff | Published: September 7, 2007

September Highlights

Apple is reportedly having a growing number of iPhones that experience partial failures of the touch-input system — often starting from the top and sometimes moving down the screen vertically in “rows” roughly equal to the height of the application icons on the “Home screen.” Many users contact Apple and get replacements before the problem worsens beyond the uppermost ‘row,’ but the problem does appear to be progressive in most cases if left uncorrected. More on this as reports come in.

As our contributors and writing staff have had the chance to use Apple’s new Keyboards in both Wired and Wireless forms, it’s remarkable how much they match the prototypes we’ve been talking about for months….but also striking how different they are from anything that has come from Apple or anyone else in the past. Read more

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By Staff | Published: August 7, 2007

August Highlights

As predicted by Rumors, the new iMacs sport Core 2 desktop CPUs that are substantially faster at a given clock rate than the mobile Santa Rosa chips used in the latest Macbook Pros.

An entry-level model clocks in at 2GHz, while the other standard models offer 2.4GHz — with an optional upgrade to a 2.8GHz Core 2 Extreme CPU for a massive boost of muscle.

Early reports from trusted industry analysts suggest that in the configuration Apple is using, with a FW800-enabled chipset that delivers substantially improved memory, FSB and interconnect/northbridge bandwidth over previous generation iMacs…..the 2.4GHz Duo model could outperform the 2.4GHz Macbook Pro and previous 2.33GHz iMacs by upwards of 50% in average real-world tasks, up to 120% in certain CPU/bandwidth-intensive operations, and the ATi Radeon X2400 (128MB XT on the entry-level model, 256MB Pro on the 24-in) simply crushes previous generation GPUs with benchmark numbers that are two full generations ahead of the X1600 and GeForce 7600 GT used in Core 2 Mobile iMacs. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 28, 2007

10.4.10 Update Released

Delta and Combo updates for Intel, PowerPC, Consumer & Server versions of Tiger range in size from 58MB for the Server-PPC Delta Update to 391MB for the Universal Server Combo Update. Consumer updates range in size from 72MB for the Intel Delta update, to 293MB for the Intel Combo version.

Generally, rather than applying the Delta Update via Software Update, we always recommend downloading the Combo Update from Apple’s web site….. the various versions, Server/Consumer and Intel/PPC/Universal, are each linked below.

And here are Apple’s release notes for 10.4.10:

What’s included?

The following improvements apply to both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs unless otherwise noted:

Bluetooth
Addresses an issue in which a Bluetooth headset may show up as an available device for sound output in the Sound preference pane after it had been removed from Bluetooth preferences. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 6, 2007

ZFS in Leopard

The original “leak” occurred this morning when Sun CEO Jon Schwartz mentioned in front of a corporate media event for Sun’s latest blade servers that Apple will be announcing at next week’s WWDC (World Wide Developer Conference) that ZFS will be Leopard’s default file system.

The news spread across the grapevine like wildfire, coming close on the heels of similar rumors which rumor-mongers have been analyzing since last week.

Thus far we have been able to get clear-cut confirmation from at least three separate, well-established sources in Cupertino and fairly confident confirmations from several third party developers who are privvy to the “mainstream” build of Leopard which includes many features not included with developer seeds to date.

The “mainstream” build will be merged into the developer-test variant as of the WWDC Developer Preview 2 release (last year’s WWDC brought DP1 and there have been over 20 major seeds plus countless minor ones since then) and only a handful of features, if any, will remain secret after that according to the latest source reports out of Infinite Loop. Read more

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By Staff | Published: June 4, 2007

New 10.4.10 builds


According to reliable sources in Cupertino, many of the projects that will be rolled into 10.4.10 were planned for Leopard but are needed to support products that will now be shipping before Leopard is expected to roll out.New components include improved ATi and nVIDIA graphics drivers for existing products, a new driver for the forthcoming ATi Radeon HD 2900XT series cards that will be introduced to the Mac Pro soon….updated networking code….security tweaks, an updated Java Runtime, and substantial improvements to Core Audio.

The aforementioned Core Audio changes are partially to support new Macs which are expected to ship in the next few months — while also rumored to support a new Apple accessory device similar to the long-rumored “Asteroid” Audio I/O accessory over which Apple sued several Rumor sites hoping to supress related reports. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 1, 2007

Macworld 2007 preview

With Steve Jobs’ MWSF keynote address fast approaching the grapevine has reached a fever pitch and is bursting at the seams with a whole spectrum of speculation and rumors about what will be announced at this year’s event.

Here is, in short order, a list of the most credible rumors about tomorrow’s announcements and a short analysis of the more controversial items:

  • “iPhone”….this one needs little explanation, and has been detailed in many articles on Rumors over the past three years or so. The real questions are what its real name will be, whether or not it will really be introduced at MWSF (there is more doubt & debate about this than the grapevine may seem to indicate lately!), and whether the device will be a true Mac OS Embedded type device, or simply a cellular phone with a suite of Apple-style applications and an iPod-like interface.
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