By Staff | Published: January 30, 2008

Macbook Air begins to ship; hard drive units expected Feb. 1st

Many readers have been writing in to say that they have received shipment notifications on their Macbook Air pre-orders; many are now just leaving overseas (China) fulfillment centers near the manufacturing plants, and it appears that solid state models are going to reach customers first — in the next few days.

Those who pre-ordered models with hard disk based storage have received updated shipment date estimates, or in a few cases, shipment notifications with an expected arrival time around the 1st of the month.

We will be covering developments very closely, and many “streaming articles” with continuous live updates will be posted over the coming days as the first MBA’s reach the United States.

If you are a Macbook Air early adopter, or just want to weigh in on the latest developments, don’t hesitate to email us with your thoughts: rumors@macosrumors.com! Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Tagged , | 8 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

iDevice gaming “set to explode,” say game industry insiders

The sheer number of companies actively planning or already executing projects with target platforms like the modern day iPod Nano, iPhone/iPod Touch, and even AppleTV is much bigger than public perception seems to acknowledge. We’ve recently talked with a number of our friends in the gaming industry — from die hard Mac developers now focusing on “Cider” (DirectX –OpenGL abstraction layer, allowing “Windows games” to be developed once and deployed simultaneously on OS X) development, to console companies and newcomers to the gaming world, virtually everyone is very excited about the future of game-style entertainment on Apple devices.

Cute little arcade games like those we see on the Classic iPods are all well and good, but a modernized Breakout with 3D graphics can only keep you amused so long; even Bejeweled gets old after a while. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

Is Apple planning a desktop version of “Macbook Air”? A “Mac Air”?!

As long-time readers of Rumors know, we were among the first to break the initial rumor of a stripped-down, mid-range Macbook designed to target the “ultraportable” market and further raise the bar with stunning industrial design that couldn’t have come from anywhere but Cupertino.

We have also been among the first to reexamine long-standing rumors of a major overhaul to the Mac Mini…..some have even gone so far as to speculate that the Mini as we know it is coming to the end of its lifespan and will be replaced with something categorically similar — but with a different name and striking differences. At this time, however, Rumors is confindent that the Mini, more or less as we know it today, will be around for a while yet — instead of replacing the Mini, we believe we will see an all-new model designed to sit in between the Mini and iMac in the desktop product matrix. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Tagged , , | 24 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

Apple releases iWork Update 2 with vague changelist

Apple released three updates to iWork today via Software Update today: Keynote 4.0.2, Pages 3.0.2, and Numbers 1.0.2.

The only more specific change was to Keynote: “primarily addresses performance issues while playing or exporting presentations.” Read more

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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

Apple quietly seeds Mac OS X 10.5.2 build 9C16 (“Mac Pro build”)

During Macworld San Francisco, the Leopard development team — shifting its focus from the sprinter’s work of getting 10.5.0 the first point-update out the door to the marathon-runner’s slow and steady work of point update development, bug fixes and supporting both hardware and software engineers from various projects across the Infinite Loop campus in ensuring their products play nice with Leopard — quietly seeded the first major build of 10.5.2, 9C16.

Some readers who have become early adopters of the new “Harpertown” based Mac Pro may recognize this version as the very build which shipped with their machines, though it remains versioned 10.5.1 on those systems. 9C16 is far more than just a collection of Mac Pro-specific support files, however; as a matter of fact, it already sports one of the longest changelogs we’ve seen associated with an initial point-update build in recent memory….. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 29, 2008

Apple announces best quarterly financials ever!

Apple has posted a $1.58 billion profit on revenues of 9.6 billion and setting all-time company records in virtually every measure of success from strong product sales — both Macs and iDevices — to the substantial margin by which the results beat Wall Street Estimates.

Unfortunately, due a combination of several factors including the looming general recession, shares of AAPL dropped nearly 4% on the day and more than 10% in after-hours trading; all told, Wednesday’s price drop was $16.57(!), bringing AAPL to 139.07 at the close of trading — this down from the previous month’s high of approximately $200 a share. Read more

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By Staff | Published: January 19, 2008

Macbook Air may be updated a lot sooner than one might think….

According to reliable sources in Cupertino who our Macworld reporting team have been visiting now that the Expo is over, the Macbook Air was originally designed around Intel’s 45-nanometer mobile processors but was instead modified to accept slower-clocked “Santa Rosa/Merom” class Core 2 Duo CPUs at 1.6 and 1.8GHz.

It will take some time, but after the Macbook Pro is moved over to Penryn sometime in late Winter, the Air won’t be too terribly far behind. It will be a solid update, but we don’t necessarily think that readers should play the waiting game

The first 45nm “Penryn” mobile Core 2 Duo processors, sometimes referred to as “Santa Rosa Refresh,” will be shipping at the end of the month but Apple won’t be satisfied with supply levels until somewhere in the late February/early March ballpark. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Tagged , , , | 1 Response
By Staff | Published: January 18, 2008

The iPhone SDK, Hackers, and Malware

Back when the iPhone was officially released in June of 2007, Apple had already made their position on 3rd party applications quite clear, users would never be permitted to install software on the device themselves. Apple releases firmware in an encrypted form to prevent tampering and to protect iTunes purchases, making modification or installation of new apps difficult at best. Apples solution for these 3rd party developers was to treat the iPhone as a web platform, with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, or “AJAX” providing the needed functionality for anything developers or users would want to use on the phone in the future. Apple expected these AJAX applications to provide users with applications that would have a native look and feel, while still running in the relative protection of the Safari web browser. Read more

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Posted in 3rd Party Software, Apple Software, Articles | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Responses
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

Sony pouting over Macbook Air: thinks they did it first, better

In an interview with Gizmodo, Sonys senior vice president of VAIO product marketing Mike Abary gives Apple credit for getting a machine like the Macbook Air so small and thin, but thinks the concessions necessary to do so make the device unwanted by consumers. In his view consumers just don’t care that much about the ultra thinness factor, making the price premium to design and sell a laptop of this sort more than consumers are willing to pay, and he may be right but only to a point. There remains a significant market for the Macbook Air even if it isn’t for everyone.

Mr. Abarys animosity may have something to do with the fact that Sony tried to go down this path in 2004 with a concept model called the X505, which would have been slightly thicker than the Macbook Air and made of carbon fiber. Read more

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Posted in Apple Hardware | Tagged | 18 Responses
By Staff | Published: January 17, 2008

Jobs interview: MBA development, Kindle will fail, CableCARD “loopy”

Jobs gave quite a bit of detail on the development of the Macbook Air and of his fondness for the new laptop, saying he would be the “first one in line to buy one of these”. In a testament to the secrecy surrounding Apple, Jobs stated that they had been developing the Macbook Air for over 2 years, and had gone through over 100 designs before developing something that was light enough, powerful enough but also attractive. Jobs went on to blast competing devices, saying that many of them were “flimsy” compared to the Macbook Air.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jobs doesn’t see the Amazon Kindle being successful, but not because it’s a poor device or undesirable. Jobs is of the opinion that Americans simply don’t read books anymore, and therefore a device based entirely on reading will do poorly. Read more

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Posted in Apple Inc. | Tagged , | 3 Responses
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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Posted in Apple Hardware, Apple Software | Tagged , | 3 Responses
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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Posted in Apple Hardware, Apple Software | Tagged , | 20 Responses
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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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged , , | 26 Responses
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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Posted in Apple Software | Tagged , , | 4 Responses