Seth Weintraub

According to TWIT’s Leo LaPorte, Apple has hired away Tomlinson Holman, the brain behind Lucasfilm’s THX sound and the world’s first 10.2 surround sound system.

This is exciting not only because the opportunity for better sound in Macs, AppleTVs and iOS devices but also because Apple gets one of the superstar pioneers and great minds behind digital media technology on its roster.  That leads to better hires which leads back to better tech.

Tom Holman currently teaches film sound at the University of Southern California (Fight on!?), and his book Sound for Film and Television is required reading in many college film courses.

Oh, and the next Mac startup bong has been modified to the below…

via GigaOm
Expand
Expanding
Close

iOS Firmware shows some new iOS firmware hitting Apple’s servers this afternoon.  iOS 4.3.3 reduces the size of the tracking cache, doesn’t back it up to iTunes and turns it off when you tell it to turn off.  No word on any battery savings.  Direct downloads below:
Expand
Expanding
Close

According to TonyMacx86, the mid-2011 iMac lineup integrates the Intel BD82Z68 Platform Controller Hub. Indeed, iFixit’s teardown analysis confirms this.  The Intel Z68 platform isn’t set for official release until May 11th so it looks like Intel is being really friendly with Apple again.

But wait, it gets WAY better…

Expand
Expanding
Close

…and was said keyboard originally meant to work with those new iMacs?

screenshot from new ’11 iMacs

Here’s something interesting we’ve found in the new ’11 iMacs: The Keyboard System Pref contains the same option to illuminate the keyboard that MacBook Pros have.  Previous iMacs as well as all other Macs without lit keyboards don’t have this option.

Many Macs without lit keyboards have ambient light sensors to know how bright the screen should be lit but those machines don’t offer keyboard brightness settings.

Could Apple be preparing or have delayed a wireless keyboard with backlighting?  I can say with 100% certainty that Apple would have a winner if they released something like this, at least in my home.  Bonus points if it has a built in trackpad.

As MacGeneration notes, there is a new light sensor located to the left of the camera on the iMac (above) and corresponding control panel for brightness (below).

On the other hand, Apple could have just made a rare mistake, perhaps copying one too many of kext settings from the Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros perhaps?

Thanks mime454 and EdnKM!
Expand
Expanding
Close

As people start benchmarking the new iMacs on Geekbench, the new new Sandy Bridge systems are showing pretty strong results coming in near the Mac Pros released last year and significantly above the speedy Sandy Bridge MacBook Pros released earlier this year.  To give an idea where it falls, here is a bit of Geekbench’s normalized results for Mac systems:

Macworld also benchmarked a new 3.1 GHz Core i5 27-inch iMac and found it to be the fastest  iMac ever tested with the Speedmark 6.5 suite of tests…
Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um4gLMZDXkA?rel=0&hd=1&w=640&h=390]

Nice. .
Expand
Expanding
Close

An interesting one from el Reg this evening.  At today’s ESC conference, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak dug into Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen who he chided for stifling innovation.  Allen of course bought a patent engineering firm and is suing every technology out there for supposed patent violations.

“The other night Paul Allen was speaking at the Computer History Museum and I had four tickets. And I decided at the last minute not to go, because I remembered he’s suing all these companies like Apple and Google – but he’s not suing Microsoft – because he bought all these patents.”

From Wozniak’s point of view, Allen’s lawsuit will not help anyone except Allen and his lawyers. “Well heck,” he said, “Paul Allen should be out there investing in companies that are doing something, making products, actually making a new future for the world, and not ‘I’m … going to sue people, and get in bed with the lawyers to make my money.’ That’s not the right way.”

“It’s not really special what they come up with,.” he said, referring to patent-seeking teams of engineers. “But since you were a rich company, you can investigate [a technique] years before it’s going to be affordable for products. You could investigate it … and patent it, patent it, patent it.”

Woz then recalled that Apple had to pay RCA $5 or so for every one of the original Apple IIs for one such silly patent.

On the bigger picture, it is interesting how two number 2s could have turned out so diametrically opposed. 
Expand
Expanding
Close

SAI spoke with perhaps one of the biggest Apple Bulls we’ve ever seen.  Investor James Altucher of Formula Capital (short Apple?) thinks that AAPL is worth more than a trillion dollars and that is at a two thirds discount because it is a huge company.

Of course, there is the Jobs question:

And what about the biggest concern most people have about Apple, the heath of its founder and visionary, Steve Jobs?

Steve Jobs is indeed an amazing leader, Altucher says. But Apple is now large and diversified enough that, if Jobs can never return full-time, the company will be okay without him.

Be careful to catch Blodget and Task almost fall off the chair they are sharing when he says “$3Trillion!”

Expand
Expanding
Close

Earlier today, we noted that Adobe had introduced three new iPad apps.  Adobe today also announced availability of its Creative Suite 5.5 digital authoring software with HTML5 enhancements:

Creative Suite 5.5 Web Premium Suite is packed with innovations in HTML5 and Flash authoring tools, empowering customers to create, deliver and monetize rich content and applications for virtually any screen. Designers and developers can create rich browser-based content across screens using HTML5. Adobe Flash® Professional CS5.5, Flash Builder™ 4.5 Premium and theFlex® 4.5 framework allow users to quickly and easily develop, test and deploy high-performance mobile applications for Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS and Apple iOS.

The other biggie in this release is the ability to publish to tablet platforms (read: iPad):

Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium Suite builds upon Adobe’s product innovations in publishing already deployed by some of the world’s leading newspaper, magazine and business publishers to create print and stunning digital versions of their properties for the latest tablet devices. Using Adobe InDesign CS5.5, in combination with the integrated Folio Producer toolset, designers can add new levels of interactivity to their page layouts targeted at tablet devices. Adobe today also announced the immediate availability of the Professional Edition of Adobe® Digital Publishing Suite, a turnkey solution that includes hosted services and viewer technology that allow publishers to cost-efficiently publish content to Android tablets, BlackBerry PlayBook and Apple iPad (see separate release).

Pricing and Availability

Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 products are immediately available through Adobe Authorized Resellers, the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/store in North America and Adobe Direct Sales. Estimated street price for the suites is US$2599 for CS5.5 Master Collection, US$1899 for CS5.5 Design Premium, US$1799 for CS5.5 Web Premium, US$1699 for CS5.5 Production Premium and US$1299 for CS5.5 Design Standard. Upgrade pricing and volume licensing are available.

Amazon has pre-orders up with $100 discounts.

A 30-day free trial is also available.

Students and Teachers as always get up to 80% off your Adobe purchases.

Full Press release follows:

As predicted, the Apple Store went down this morning.  We’ve just heard that these are the new Sandy Bridge, Thunderbolt-equipped iMacs:

Update: The Apple Store is back up with SKUs to match:

As always, thanks Mr. X!
Expand
Expanding
Close

We’ve been keeping an eye on this all day.  Apple’s iWork trial download went down some time morning (or last night?) and hasn’t returned.  Perhaps Apple taking down the iWork trial download may mean that an iWork update is in the cards for tomorrow – or it could just be a blip.

As we were first to report, we expect Apple’s iMacs to be updated tomorrow morning with Thunderbolt ports and Sandy Bridge processors.  Other Mac products could see updates as well, including the white MacBooks, Minis and Pro machines but those seem much less likely.

Oh, and Mr. X has promised to drop the new product codes on us as soon as the Apple Store goes down so make sure to stop by in the morning.

Thanks Kivers!
Expand
Expanding
Close

A report relayed by EETimes today has Intel chasing after the next generation Apple AX chips contracts that will go into iOS devices.

”Based on a number of inputs, we believe Intel is also vying for Apple’s foundry business,” said Gus Richard, an analyst with Piper Jaffray & Co., in a new report.

”It makes strategic sense for both companies. The combination of Apple’s growing demand and market share in smart phones and tablets gives Intel a position in these markets and drives the logic volume Intel needs to stay ahead in manufacturing,” Richard said.

”Intel’s manufacturing lead gives Apple an additional competitive advantage in these markets and distances it from Asian competitors that are knocking off its products,” he said. ”Furthermore, it would also serve to weaken Samsung who is a significant competitive threat to both companies.”

Before the release of the A5, reports had been that apple was looking at TSMC for their chip foundry work.  However, since the A5 was revealed to be the work of Samsung, who has manufactured all of Apple’s iOS device processors, TSMC was assumed to be on the back burner.

Since Apple is suing Samsung (and vice versa) Apple may be stepping up its attempts to get its AX processor line manufactured somewhere else.

Intel, however, isn’t in the foundry business.  It designs and builds its own integrated processor architectures.  Apple and Intel have had a pretty good relationship since the PowerPC handover over five years ago.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Best Buy currently is having a special promotion on all MacBooks, Pros, Minis and iMacs (Plus Free Shipping).

At first we thought this was to clear out old iMacs ahead of tomorrow’s refresh but Best Buy is lopping off up to $260 off of other Macs as well.  Also, the sale runs until the end of the week so it might be better to wait until after tomorrow morning to hit the buy button, at least where iMacs are concerned.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Last week, Apple said it would be updating iOS software (“bugs”) to only store a week’s worth of location data as well as allowing users to turn off the storing of location data.  That update is coming in a few weeks according to BGR:

…we have been told it will address:

• The update will no longer back up the location database to iTunes.
• The size of the location database will be reduced.
• The location database will be deleted entirely when Location Services are turned off.
• Battery life improvements.
• iPod bug fixes.

Expand
Expanding
Close

From the Toys Section:

Today only, Amazon.com offers Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 for Windows and Mac, model no. 65089532, for $59.99. The $20 mail-in rebate drops it to $39.99. With free shipping, that’s tied with last month’s mention, the lowest total price we could find by $20, and within a buck of the best deal we’ve ever seen on this software. Photoshop Elements offers photo manipulation and organization.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Over the past few weeks we’ve been getting multiple tips from developers saying that their apps are being tested with iOS 5.  The new OS is being tested on all manner of iOS devices including iPods, iPads and iPhones.  Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any unreleased devices likely because Apple is aware that usage logs go out to developers and wants to keep those devices under wraps.

This is interesting because widespread testing of apps usually precedes the developer release of a major iOS release by a few months.

Also interesting is that we’ve seen iPhone 3GS’s getting tested (not in the screenshot above, obv).  It isn’t immediately clear if the final version of iOS 5 will support iPhone 3GS, but we do know Apple is testing it.

In the past, Apple has seeded new major iOS releases to developers in April, but obviously this year that’s not the case.  We’re hearing that iOS 5 will be released in beta form to developers at WWDC in June, perhaps alongside a finished version of Mac OS 10.7, Lion.

Expand
Expanding
Close

From the Toys section:

Today only, until 4 pm ET, MacMall via eBay Daily Deal offers the current-generation, 2.3-lb. Apple MacBook Air Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz 11.6″ Notebook, model no. MC505LL/A, for $879 with free shipping. That’s $120 off retail.

Features include an Intel Core 2 Duo 1.4GHz dual-core processor, 11.6″ 1366×768 LED-backlit widescreen glossy LCD, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD drive, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, multi-touch trackpad, iSight webcam, and Mac OS X 10.6.
Expand
Expanding
Close

Among other subtle changes, in Lion when you shut your MacBook’s screen while connected to an external monitor, the machine no longer goes to sleep but instead switches immediately to external monitor-only view while staying active. Reader Ben shows us how this works:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HqH-7F6m08&w=640&h=390]
Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple knows what it is doing in suing Samsung, right?

We hope so.

The soon to be biggest phone maker in the world, who has been making phones and patenting its technology since before Apple was making iPods, is suing Apple in the US after suing Apple abroad last week.  The move is in obvious response to Apple suing its biggest parts contractor for allegedly copying its iPhone and iPad designs with its Android phones and tablets. Samsung received the second-highest number of U.S. patents last year after International Business Machines Corp.

The lawsuit intensifies a legal dispute that began when Cupertino, California-based Apple sued Samsung earlier this month, claiming the Galaxy products “slavishly” copied iPad and iPhone technology and design. Samsung, which is also a supplier of some Apple chips, retaliated last week with lawsuits in Seoul, Tokyo and Mannheim, Germany.

In the U.S. complaint, Samsung accuses Apple of violating patents that “relate to fundamental innovations that increase mobile device reliability, efficiency, and quality, and improve user interface in mobile handsets and other products.”

The patented technology includes ways that a phone allows calls and Internet surfing at the same time; improvements in how text messages and attachments are sent; reductions in interference among mobile devices; and increases in the capacity of mobile networks, according to the complaint

Good times.

Expand
Expanding
Close

With this post, we’re hoping to put the white iPhone postings to bed: Yes, it appears that the plastic on the White iPhone is ever so slightly thicker, though Apple’s site doesn’t acknowledge it.  It is probably within the standard deviation and everyone’s cases will fit just fine.  Time to move on.  Please.

Expand
Expanding
Close

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBEtPQDQNcI?rel=0&w=640&h=510]

Interesting video from 1994 which seems to predict the iPad’s success a decade earlier. What took so long?

via TUAW, Paliofuture.

Expand
Expanding
Close