9to5 Staff

Four years since the great Intel transition for the Mac platform was revealed at WWDC 2005 (see above clip), Adobe has announced that future versions of Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Macs.

Four years since the great Intel transition for the Mac platform was revealed at WWDC 2005 (see above clip), Adobe has announced that future versions of Creative Suite will run only on Intel-based Macs.

This news helps seal the fate of PowerPC Macs, which are all now effectively consigned to some environmentally-friendly landfill, that’s the situation.

Of course, it’s not just Adobe who is turning its back on PowerPC. Apple has also confirmed years of speculation it will do the same, on news that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will itself be Intel only.

Flash back to WWDC 2005, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs stunned developers with confirmation of then current rumours the company intended moving to an Intel architecture.

Justifying this, Jobs pointed to the failure of Apple’s PowerPC partners, IBM and Motorola, to keep pace with their processor speed road map, saying, “As we look ahead, we can envision some great products we want to build for you, but we can’t imagine how to bring them to you using PowerPC.”

The move sparked a mass migration to the Intel platform as developers rushed to release software capable of supporting both the Intel and PowerPC platforms, and Apple hustled out Intel-supporting Macs at a dizzying pace.

Not so Adobe. Even one full year since the transition was announced and relevant development software was released to developers, Adobe still attracted criticism from users, frustrated the company hadn’t yet managed to ship key software applications such as Photoshop for Intel Macs.

Seems we’ve come full circle, on Adobe’s announcement yesterday it will now abandon PowerPC support for future iterations of Creative Suite.

Existing Creative Suite 3 and Creative Suite 4 customers can of course use the software on both types of Mac, but the company will only provide limited support for this, and wanted to warn customers of its intention so they could figure out a migration part for the as-yet unannounced Creative Suite 5.

The PowerPC has reached the end of the road. Here’s a history of the platform.

We got a kick out of this one. Hope you do too.

Trip Chowderly, who wrongly forecasted "no new Mac upgrades until  2010" and Costco iPhones, is predicting that Apple is going to release a tablet with 8-10 inch OLED screens from LG Electronics.  The device will be powered by an ARM Cortex A9 multi-core processor and will come at the end of the year with full scale shipping starting in 2010.

Apple was rumored to be building a MacBook with an LG OLED screen earlier this year and Microsoft’s Zune is confirmed to have an OLED screen.

While a lot of this is rumor is rehash, the 8-10 inch LG OLED screen would be a surprise since three different sources said the screen would be from Wintek.  THe ARM Cortex A9 would probably be from PASemi since Samsung hasn’t developed a processor in this class yet.  That is, if any of this is correct.

Apple by the end of the year will announced an $899 “SmartBook,” with 8-10 inch OLED screens from LG Electronics, and an ARM Holding (ARMH) dual core Corex9[sic] chipset. He writes that his contacts are “almost positive” that such a device is coming, that Apple wants to launch this year, but that widespread availability isn’t likely until Q1 2010. I’d note that there have been rumors about Apple sourcing OLED screens from LG for some months now; rumors that a tablet will be based on a Cortex chip have been around since late last year. And there have even been some stories asserting that the new Apple whatever-it-is will be priced at $899. Chowdhry writes that the new device is being benchmarked against the Archos Windows 7-powered NetBook, a device called the Archos 9PCtablet, and could look similar. Here’s a picture of that device, taken from the Archos Web site:

Apple has solved its Chinese puzzle, sealing some deal with carrier, China Unicom, under which the latter firm will begin selling iPhones in China next month, the latest information shows.

Zhou Youmeng, deputy general manger for the China Unicom Guangdong branch, confirmed this news in chat with SinoCast Daily Business Beat yesterday, the report suggests.

The iPhone will be made available in China Unicom outlets in the Carrefour Guangdong stores and “some self-run outlets”, apparently. China Unicom has purchased as many as five million WCDMA network-based iPhones fron Apple.

Key here is that in order to get into the Chinese market, Apple has given up the revenue-sharing deal it had until now insisted on, a compromise China Unicom demanded in order it should ship the product in the huge population country. The report adds Apple usually gets 20-30 per cent of revenue generated from iPhone users.

“The fact is that Apple get fat profits from iPhone sales, even if it does not share revenue with its new collaborator," said a source close to the original equipment manufacturer,” the report continues.

However, for all this certainty it appears some sticking points remain in finalising the deal, with a China Unicom spokesman warning that “there are uncertainties” before final agreement is reached.

That uncertainty leads us to warn that this mooted Sptember launch may be delayed, even while Dell prepares to enter the territory imminently.

Despite the stop/start nature of these Apple/China Unicom announcements so far, we do note that a senior team of Apple execs, led by Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone Product Marketing, visited China last week.

In a post titled Apple Recruits eBay Data Center Executive Olivier Sanche, Can Apple Change Data Centers the way they changed cell phone and media players?, Dave Ohara from the Green Data Center Blog reports that a key eBay data center executive is shifting over to Apple, perhaps to oversee the construction of its new North Carolina facility.

“There is no other person I can think of who could better prepare Apple for Greening the Data Center,” Dave writes. “Olivier is one of the few data center managers who uses a Mac, and he craves the moment he can drop the blackberry and switch to the iPhone.”

Dave continues:

Good Luck, Olivier.  I am placing my bets Apple will change the data center industry the way they changed cell phones and media players with the iPhone and iPod.  It is not just the environmental issues, there are huge opportunities to leverage the data center servers with client devices – iPod, iPhone, and Macs.  Photos, Music, and Video and the associated media industry is Apple’s strength.  Google focuses on Search.  Microsoft focuses on Windows, Office, and competing against Google.  Apple focuses on consumers.

Who do you think is going to change the data center industry the most Google, Microsoft, or Apple?

Or maybe what individuals will change the data center industry?  Keep your eye on Olivier.

We’ve gotten word that Hulu and Apple are working on a product for the iPhone/iPod touch and possibly an Apple tablet.  While making a Hulu port for iPhone would be fairly straightforward, with Apple’s iTunes selling TV shows through iTunes and AT&T not wanting to break its network any further, it becomes more complex.  Here’s what out tipster has told us:

• The service would be ad-based just like the desktop/browser versions
• The service will utilize Apple’s new variable bitrate HTTP streaming protocol.  The quality will be good but not as good as iTunes versions
• It was originally hoped for release in September but rights issues have pushed the release back into late 2009/early 2010.
• The Hulu app only works on Wifi but it may "in the future" be allowed to run on carrier networks.
• AT&T will offer competing services on the iPhone.  They will coexist.
• There will be ties to iTunes store links.  For instance, if you are watching an episode of Lost, you’ll be able to buy prior seasons from iTunes with one click.
• Hulu is poised for international expansion in 2010.  The iPhone version will expand with the full version
• The app won’t be free

A court in patent-friendly Eastern Texas has issued an injunction stating Microsoft will have to stop selling and demonstrating Microsoft Word within 60 days.  At issue are the rights to XML in reading and writing XML, DOCX, and DOCM files.  Presumably, this affects Mac Office 2008 customers as well.

The judge ruled that Microsoft Word’s XML systems violate patents by Toronto-based i4i Inc and specifically their 1998 XML patent #5,787,449.  MS will have to pay i4i about $290 million in damages.

Realistically speaking, Microsoft will have to cough up some cash and/or file appeals to get this thing sorted out, something they have developed a real knack for over the years.

It’s a wonderful world according to Gizmodo, as a bored Dell employee with too much time on his hands as the recession continues to savage sales of Windows systems decided to make a little funny in a simple but effective exercise – installing Mac OS X on an in-store Dell netbook.

We can’t guarantee it’s a true story, though we’d point out Gizmodo seem pretty convinced of the veracity of this versatile experiment with a Dell Inspiron Mini 910v netbook. Incidentally, that particular Dell netbook has the, ahem, interesting reputation as being a model that’s relatively easy to install Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard (available at a discount at Amazon) upon.

While the report won’t say where this Dell/Mac was on show, won’t say who did the deed, or anything much else, Gizmodo observes: "It’s easy to understand why Dell and Best Buy can’t officially market netbooks as Hackintosh machines, but it’s nice to see a Best Buy employee so attuned to the needs of his customers."

What needs indeed. What joy Apple could bring by reversing its Boot Camp paradigm and offering an OS X flavour for Wintel boxes. And while that’s hardly likely to happen, as it would cannibalise Apple’s own hardware sales, it sure would lay the smack down against the Windows hegemony.

There’s definitely an unreleased Apple product looming – and while that bald statement is pretty much an eternal truism, product marketing plans for this one are advanced, a report this morning explains.

Apple has already filmed an ad for this new product, and, as you’d expect, security was tight on the film set yesterday. “Because the product they were advertising hadn’t been released, members of the group didn’t release any information, or allow any photographs,” a local report claims.

The ad was shot at a Californian restaurant – a beautiful 1940’s style diner – called Jax on the Tracks, which was chosen by a location scout. Filming took place Tuesday afternoon, with restaurant owner Bud Haley telling the Sierra Sun, “Apple found us, they’re trying to show us as a hip and cool spot for the 20-something crowd.”

Now we can only imagine what this unreleased product may be, but the location and target demographic most strongly suggests a new iPod ad to us, potentially involving a new model iPod touch – equally, we can see the target demographic as being an ideal one for the much-rumoured Apple tablet device.

After all, we think this system will be aimed fair and square at internet media-centric people, possibly in education, perhaps in their first jobs, who move around for work and pleasure and have a steady income.

We’re interested to see this ad appear, if only to find out what the unreleased product’s going to be. And as we head into the news blackout which constitutes August’s news agenda, we’re happy to report yet another little nugget that boosts expectation as we approach Apple’s next major product introduction cycle…

Photo from Chow.

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Apple last night shipped an essential software update for Boot Camp users, boosting performance of the Apple Multi-Touch trackpad when running Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista on a Mac computer using Boot Camp.

The update’s for Boot Camp users with 13-inch unibody MacBooks released in late 2008 or any MacBook Air model released since late 2008.

A tech support note from Cupertino says:

"This update improves the performance of the Apple Multi-Touch trackpad when running Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista on a Mac computer using Boot Camp.

"For information on how to install this update, please visit this website: About the Multi-Touch Trackpad update 1.1 for Windows XP and Vista".

Users should download the update while running Windows XP or Vista. When the download is complete, double-click on the AppleBCUpdate.exe file that will appear on the desktop and follow the onscreen installation instructions.

The 3.93MB update is available now.

Stung by falling market share and Apple’s iPhone ascendancy, unlikely bedfellows Nokia and Microsoft are hatching a few joint plans to unseat the smartphone champion, and it seems Office support in Nokia handhelds will be part of this attack.

Microsoft today will announce an alliance with Nokia, an alliance which seems set to spawn a new era of Office suite app compatibility on Nokia phones.

This news comes as the Redmond beast prepares to introduce Windows 7 (at higher prices than Snow Leopard), and hatches plans to boost its mobile OS and Office software offerings.

It’s thought the alliance will see Nokia devices enabled to access Microsoft’s purported future software as a service offering based on its Office products.

That announcement will be given by Stephen Elop, head of Microsoft’s Business Division and Kai Oistamo, executive vice president of Nokia Devices, Reuters explains.

In a second pronged attack, Nokia is expected to launch its own Music Store (in India) later this month, offering users of its handset a catalogue of music and movies to purchase through their handset.

India is a potentially huge market for Apple, but competing handset makers there have a major price advantage, and this Nokia move also seems set to beat Apple to the punch, as it’s thought to be preparing launch of an iTunes Store in India.

With a value conscious market, Nokia has a further string to its bow, and will not charge users for the media they download for the first year.

Nokia is changing its business plan from relying on hardware sales to developing a business as a services operator, claims the Economic Times.

“We want to generate revenues through services and music is one of them. We will soon launch our online digital stores,” Nokia marketing director Vineet Taneja told ET.

Apple, Sony and Nintendo are in the legal crosshairs once again this week, as a WiFi network company, Bandspeed, has slammed litigation down against the three tech firms, alleging patent infringement.

Bandspeed describes itself as, “the leader in next-generation WiFi management, providing access point (AP) solutions that make possible mission-critical WiFi voice, data and video applications for the business mass market.”

The company reckons Apple, Sony and Nintendo offer devices which infringe on two patent that firm holds. The offending gadgets are the iPhone, Wii and PS3.

Bandspeed says the patents in question relate to “managing wireless communication channels using frequency hopping”. The patents are U.S. Patent No. 7,027,418 (entitled “Approach for Selecting Communications Channels Based on Performance”) and 7,570,614 (entitled “Approach for Managing Communications Channels Based on Performance”),

The lawsuit was filed last week, little additional detail is available at this time.

Research In Motion has tacitly confirmed it thinks the web browsing experience on BlackBerry smartphones fails to match that offered on an iPhone – and customers will have to wait until next year before the Canadian firm catches up, an analyst said today.

TD Newcrest analyst, Chris Umiastowski, has released a video, Evaluation of BlackBerry and iPhone, in which he quotes RIM saying they expect the BlackBerry Browser to be on par with Apple’s browser by next summer…

The seventeen minute video also shows the iPhone to be beating BlackBerry in almost every category from a non enterprise perspective, bar text entry and email, but warns RIM could catch up by next year.

(Assuming Apple hasn’t overtaken itself by then, which, let’s face it, it usually does).

The analyst points out that RIM’s non-enterprise user base has grown to account for 80 per cent of the installed base since the iPhone switched on consumers to smartphones. And RIM’s up against the iPhone in the non-enterprise sector.

“It is becoming quite clear to us that RIM has a lot of catching-up to do in the non-enterprise space,” Umiastowski said.

He looks at video capture, pointing to RIM’s lower resolution video capture to note, “this was probably standard on mobile phone video, but Apple has raised the bar once again.”

There’s lots of information in the original video, but we suggest you contact the analysis firm to ask for more, or try this link.

Via: Rimarkable.
 

Last week Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of Marketing, sent out an email to Daring Fireball correcting the blog on a few facts related to a story about a app getting rejected from the App Store.  Now Steve Frank (developer of the popular Coda/Transmit software), who has gone on his own seperate but parallel rants about the iPhone App Store, has also gotten and email from Phil Schiller:

to summarize, he said: “we’re listening to your feedback”. Not all of my suggested solutions were viable, he said, but they were taking it all in as they continue to evolve the app store.

He went on to say that the rumors of widespread e-book app rejection I’d heard were false — that specifically one e-book app had been rejected because it facilitated iPhone-to-iPhone sharing of (potentially copyrighted) books. But that otherwise, there was no sweeping ban on e-book readers.

Since Phil is listening to his feedback, Steve is considering putting down his new Android phone and coming back to the Apple side after his week-long boycott. 

It is interesting that Apple is choosing this medium of communication rather than using the typical PR channels and/or a developer relations-type approach.  Steve Jobs often directly responds to emails as well so maybe this is the preferred means of communications..  This particular email seems to have worked on Frank.

(via TechCrunck)

According to MacPlus with additional confirmation from MacRumors, Snow Leopard 10A432 has gone Golden Master.  While most developers haven’t gotten their hands on this 10A432 version, someone has been testing it out at popular benchmarking site Geekbench using a MacBook Pro.  The results were taken down for whatever reason but live on in Google’s cache.

Hopefully the low prices will cut down on the torrent file image downloading that has caused malware to spread in the past.

Safari 4.0.3 just updated.  Nothing too exciting to reveal.  It will, however, be interesting to see what Apple does with the HTML 5 video tag.  Will it allow viewing of Ogg Theora files like Firefox?

This update is recommended for all Safari users and includes improvements to stability, compatibility and security including:

– Stability improvements for webpages that use the HTML 5 video tag 
– Fixes an issue that prevented some users from logging into iWork.com
– Fixes an issue that could cause web content to be displayed in greyscale instead of color

For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Amazon has inadvertently(?) released pricing for the new ZuneHD according to Computerworld.  The good news for consumers?  They are coming in at about $100 below current iPod Touches with comparable memory.  The bad news for ZuneHD fans?  The iPod touch will be likely be $100 cheaper when it goes on sale next month…with a video camera built-in and a trillion more apps.  The one major advantage for Microsoft is that the screen is an OLED variety which is superior to the current iPod touch screen.  Currently, the Amazon links don’t work but we’d expect them to be up shortly.

Tired of accusations of being over-secretive and smarting at the reaction to some decisions made by its App Store approval team, Apple’s getting social and plans to weave many more social networking features into iTunes 9, a report this morning claims.

Last week’s hot tip claimed the company intends adding Blu-ray, Last.fm and iLike support within iTunes 9. Today, the Boy Genius Report informs us that Apple is developing its very own social networking application to integrate your iLife with your social networks.

“We’ve been informed that Apple has plans to tie iTunes 9 into a “Social” application that they plan to release in the future. It was said that the application (separate from iTunes) will be similar to Yahoo’s OneConnect offering and consolidate all your social networking services,” the report states.

Among other features, you’ll be able to share the music you’re listening to right now, connect with friends of your friends and update your status message on multiple networks at the same time. Oh, and you’ll be able to broadcast music statuses, also.

Another much-wanted new feature, iTunes 9 will offer users the chance to sort out the appearance of applications on an iPhone screen in numerous ways, including custom arrangements and by date of addition.

These new social features feel all the more interesting in view of other recent reports which told us Apple may have plans for the introduction of its own iTunes music streaming service – could these social networking plans tied to an a la carte download service and a streaming service mean you’ll be able to listen to tracks your friends are playing in real-time using the internet, streaming them to sample them, and then purchasing the download? Perhaps ads-funded?

Is it not also possible WiFi-enabled iPods, including the iPod touch and iPhone, will also be harness these features, perhaps even offering the capacity to share songs with other users of these products over the same wireless network?

We’ll see, but this could make entering the US market a tough proposition for music label-owned streaming music service, Spotify…

Apple already offers the best tech support from any computer company according to Laptop magazine, but with all the focus on mobile, its surely reassuring to know Apple also make the best desktop computers in the world, according to an unbiased independent UK survey.

Apple achieved a 94 per cent rating for customer satisfaction, an 85 per cent assessment for reliability and a four star ranking for tech support in a UK consumer research survey which crossed our desk today.

UK mag Which? has an international reputation as an unbiased title. It carries no advertising and offers no hidden agenda. In its most recent computing survey it asked thousands of Which? members how many problems they’d had with their machines, and what they thought of the tech support line….and Apple topped the pack by a country mile.

Which? states: “Apple gets an impressive 91 per cent in our customer satisfaction measure. It’s also rated highly for support, earning a good overall rating.  Apple Mac are reliable too, with an above average reliability rating.”

Runner-up Sony achieved 80 per cent customer satisfaction, didn’t achieve a reliability score and won two stars for tech support. In third place PC maker Novatech came in with 79 per cent.

Interestingly, the survey is based on a sample of 384 Mac users. Dell’s 75 per cent customer satisfaction rating being based on 1,884 users – a fairly reliable guide in either case.

And probably well-timed as rumours claiming new Blu-ray-equipped iMacs are looming on Apple’s product road-map, likely for introduction this month, perhaps September.

The much-awaited TomTom for iPhone solution may finally reach stores next month, as the company plans a special media event on September 22, a report claims.

As noted by MacRumors, Dutch site Bright.nl disclosed TomTom to have distributed press invites for the media event in a recent Twitter post.

The invitations, distributed to local journalists, say: “TomTom will reveal the future of navigation to you" on Tuesday, the 22nd of September (from 10:30 am until 2 pm) … Save the date!”

As we revealed last week, UK retailer Handtec prematurely leaked the local £99 price of the TomTom for iPhone system.

The system includes a windscreen mount, iPhone charger, amplified speakers, a hands-free kit and a GPS dongle. It also features a navigation application for iPhone; an Apple version of TomTom’s award-winning turn-by-turn navigation software, including IQ Routes and latest maps from Tele Atlas.

Some may recall the heady days of early this year, when colleague Cleve Nettles revealed a job ad from TomTom, seeking an iPhone/Mac OS developer. This caused us to speculate at a TomTom for iPhone solution then. And judging from the interest surrounding the product, we think the Dutch firm may have a winner on its hands on the product’s release.

If there’s any TomTom PR people out there, we’d like to take a look at your solution.