It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
We were just rummaging through our web logs today to see how many of you guys have been upgrading to Lion. Imagine our surprise when we saw that 53% of Mac users who visit 9to5mac have already done the update. Here is the breakdown:
Today’s MacOS breakdown on 9to5mac
While our readership isn’t necessarily indicative of the larger Mac community, it does show that you guys have jumped in the deep end in a big way. We should note that a full 10% of our readers were on Lion on Monday (below), having downloaded it ahead of time. Apple today announced that a million people had upgraded to Lion overall, making it the fastest MacOS update in history. Expand Expanding Close
Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., who chairs the Senate’s Antitrust Subcommitteee, is calling for regulators to block the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile:
“I have concluded that this acquisition, if permitted to proceed, would likely cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest, and therefore should be blocked by your agencies.”
“We believe that AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile would be a troubling backward step in federal public policy–a retrenchment from nearly two decades of promoting competition and open markets to acceptance of a duopoly in the wireless marketplace,” House Energy and Commerce Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chairwoman Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote in their letter to FCC and the Justice Department. “Such industry consolidation could reduce competition and increase consumer costs at a time our country can least afford it.”
Not exactly what AT&T wants to hear. T-Mobile, if it gets out of this AT&T merger, also gets a $3+B check from AT&T for the dance. Expand Expanding Close
The New York Timesreports that Apple is close to approval on the Grand Central Station Apple Store that has been rumored over the past year:
When Apple proposed opening a store on the balcony overlooking the main hall, it submitted its bid in linen-lined boxes, as if it were a wedding present to transit officials, a source familiar with the application process said. The board is expected to approve the deal as early as next week, at its monthly board meeting.
Along with the new MacBook Air and Mini updates today, Apple dropped the previous Apple-Certified refurbished versions to all time lows offering $250 off yesterday’s prices. Remember, Apple’s stock of the older models didn’t just disappear. Many moved to “Refurb”. Apple also includes the same 1-year warranty.
It appears that Apple has dropped the White MacBook from its lineup today with the release of its new MacBook Airs. Searching for White MacBook still brings up cached pages but going to them yields the Mac Homepage.
For those who like plastic, you can still pick up a White MacBook in the refurb store for $849.
Apple today released its new Apple Thunderbolt Display with Gig Ethernet, Firewire 800, USB 2.0 and access to more Thunderbolt accessories, all over one cable.
Those ports are now on the rear of the Cinema display, much like an iMac…
The $29.99 download is 3.5GB so your download times may vary. After Lion downloads we are expecting an update to iWork shortly as well. On the hardware side we are expecting some new Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs, new Mac Minis and a new Thunderbolt Display as well.
How fast is your download? Are you getting the good speed? Full specs and details below:
We’ve just been informed that Apple has a significant upgrade on the way for iWork. The new version has support for Lion’s standout features including Full Screen mode, Resume, Auto Save and Versions. The download, at least in its pre-release form is 90.2MB.
Also, is that Safari getting a little update as well?
Mac App Store version of the application costs $80 and includes all the same editing tools as the full version. However, unlike the full $100 version, it does not come bundled with the Adobe Elements Organizer application. This version is available only in English, and cannot be purchased anywhere outside of Apple’s Mac App Store.
The big deal here is that a huge software maker, that makes a lot of money on selling boxed software, is trying out the App Store. Adobe are also experimenting in the iOS App Store as well. The big question: Will Creative Suite be there soon with Apple taking 30% of the cut? Ouch.
Apple felt incredibly bullish on China in today’s conference call, rattling off numbers that even Tim Cook admitted they wouldn’t have believed if they had been told a year ago. How big is China for Apple?
In the year ago quarter, Apple counted $630 Million in revenues from China. Today, Apple grew that by a factor of six to $3.8B of the total $28+B of their total revenues for the quarter. That’s 13.3% of Apple’s total business by revenue which now comes from China.
To put that in perspective, $3.8B would have been over two-thirds of Apple’s 2007 (iPhone release) same quarter revenue and more than Apple’s whole global revenue for June ’05.
Apple is also being aggressive in their China retail stores, choosing to open larger flagship stores which take more time to build. CFO Peter Oppenheimer mentioned that the Hong Kong Flagship store at the IFC would be opening this quarter. But Apple has an order of magnitude more stores opening up across China. Apple now sells through four stores. They have over 30 planned just for the next year.
If Apple’s growth in China stays on the current pace, which ‘scratching the surface’ seems to at least partially imply, China will account for over $20B in revenue at this time next year – which could start approach Apple’s US revenues even if Apple continues to grow globally as it has.
On the earnings call Q&A just now, CFO Peter Oppenheimer said that a ‘September Quater product transition’ would affect the revenues for the upcoming quarter. Obviously, that screams iPhone, which is now Apple’s biggest product.
To be clear, the September Quarter spans three months so it doesn’t necessarily mean ‘September’…but that isn’t unreasonable either.
On that note, he also mentioned in the opening statement that 220 million iOS devices have been sold all time. We’re not sure if that includes AppleTVs.
As part of the prepared statement of today’s earnings call, CFO Peter “Griffin” Oppenheimer told the audience that Lion was launching tomorrow. In case you didn’t know.
Apple lined up another record quarter (shocker) selling an incredible 20.34 million iPhones, 9.25 million iPads and 3.95 million Macs. iPods were down 20% YOY to 7.9M. The company earned $7.31 billion in net profit on revenue of $28.57 billion for the June quarter. Both are records for Apple…and it isn’t even a holiday quarter.
“We’re thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Right now, we’re very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.”
Just hours before today’s earnings call, the well-connected Yukari Kane, Joann S. Lublin and Nick Wingfield of the WSJ report:
Since Steve Jobs went on medical leave this winter, some members of Apple Inc.’s board have discussed CEO succession with executive recruiters and at least one head of a high-profile technology company, according to people familiar with the matter.
The conversations weren’t explicitly aimed at recruiting a new chief executive and were more of an informal exploration of the company’s options, said these people. The directors don’t appear to have been acting on behalf of the full board, some of these people said. Apple has seven directors, including Mr. Jobs. It is also unclear whether Mr. Jobs was aware
Interestingly, the WSJ actually got a response from Jobs. “I think it’s hogwash.” he said.
According to the report, Board members have even held talks about the company’s leadership with some search firms after those recruiters informally approached them, said three of these people. (…or at least according to voicemails left on their machines?)
It would be shocking if Apple had to look outside its own walls for a successor, at least outside of interviewing for due diligence purposes. Full article available through Google Plus. Expand Expanding Close
Google Plus just showed up in the App Store. It is a free app and will allow iOS users (not iPad universal yet) to connect with their Google Plus ‘Circles’. Bonus: Google+ iphone app doesn’t work with iOS beta 3.
Description
Google+ for mobile makes sharing the right things with the right people a lot simpler. Huddle lets you send super-fast messages to the people you care about most. And no matter where you are, the stream lets you stay in the loop about what your friends are sharing and where they’re checking in.
Features: * Circles let you share the right things with just the right people. * Stream is where you can get updates from your circles or see what people are saying about things nearby. * Huddle is super-fast group messaging for everyone in your circles.
– Better support for blocking unwanted messages in Huddle
– Better support for attaching photos to a post
– Various bug fixes and performance improvements
You’ll probably want to have this on hand if you are getting a new computer in the coming days.
This update addresses an issue with the Migration Assistant application in Mac OS X Snow Leopard that prevents transfer of your personal data, settings, and compatible applications from a Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard to a new Mac running Mac OS X Lion.
It weighs in at 714KB and seems to hint at some new Mac hardware.
We’re big fans of BBEdit over here (and its free counterpart TextWrangler) so today’s update is exciting news. I built 9to5mac a few years ago using BBEdit (on Drupal!) and the software has just gotten better and better (though 9to5mac has since been ported to WordPress.com).
How much is updated today? Just have a look at the release notes if you’ve got some time to kill.
It isn’t upgraded in the App Store just yet but Bare Bones says that any BBEdit purchase since the App Store opened will get a free upgrade. Get it here until October 20, 2011 for $40. Full info below:
Daring Fireball‘s John Gruber today makes note of his complaints about iPad magazines (all valid), including the large files and static page sizes. But he also mentions casually, but apparently factually, that the iPad 3 will have a 2048×1536 Retina Display:
These magazines and newspapers that render each “page” as a static 1024 × 768 image are going to look like utter ass on the iPad 3’s 2048 × 1536 retina display.
Unfortunately, there is no timeframe given to this and with some expecting a Fall upgrade and others putting the release update as far out as next March, we’ll have to wait and see.
We earlier found bits of code which seem to indicate that an upcoming iPad will indeed have double the resolution as the current iPad 2. Expand Expanding Close
We’ve received word that all AppleCare reps are now receiving Lion training as well as getting their workstations upgraded to Lion. The process began over the weekend and looks to be completing today.
Additionally, MacRumors reports that Apple Stores have begun receiving final copies of OS X Lion today.
We’ve also heard numerous reports that new Apple Store display materials have been arriving over the past week as well.
Fortunenotes that shipping times were stuck at 1-2 weeks from mid-April to July 8, when they were cut to 3-5 days.
Earlier this week, Apple let educational affiliates know that iPads were eligible for Affiliate Development fund, an early sign that supply was caught up with demand (below)
Yesterday’s victory in the ITC courts may have seemed like good news for Apple in giving it the upper hand against its Android carrying foe. But, even if the ITC courts hold up the ruling on Apple’s two broad ranging patents from the mid-90s,
U.S. Patent No. 5,946,647 on a “system and method for performing an action on a structure in computer-generated data.”
..it likely won’t be able to stop HTC from selling its popular Android line in the US. HTC has a recently acquired ‘Ace in the Hole’… Expand Expanding Close
