Apple is pretty unforgiving about system requirements for Final Cut Pro X. The software needs at least an Intel Core 2 Duo-based Mac with 2GB of RAM and an OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later. It’s understandable that Apple wants to guarantee a minimum performance in a heavy-duty program for video die-hards, even if system requirements pretty much rule out 2006 Macs or earlier. It turns out you can nevertheless trick Final Cut Pro X to run on older Macs that don’t feature OpenCL-compatible graphics, here’s how…
DigiTimes, a Taiwanese trade publication, is out with a new report quoting supply chain sources that claim Apple’s parts suppliers will begin delivering components for the anticipated Sandy Bridge MacBook Airs. Apple is gearing up to manufacture eight million units for the third quarter, twice as much over the previous quarter. As expected, the new Airs should launch in July:
Shipments of parts and components for MacBook lineups totaled an equivalent of 2.2-2.4 million MacBooks in June, and orders for July are likely to top 2.7-2.8 million units, said the sources, noting that the increase is in line with Apple’s previous strategy to ramp up deliveries prior to the launch of new products. The sources have also raised the projected shipments of MacBook notebooks for 2011 to 15 million units, compared to 13 million forecast previously. The new MacBook Air is also expected to feature Apple’s new Mac OS X, Lion, and support the Thunderbolt interface, the sources indicated.
MacRumorspoints out that eight milliom MacBook Airs in the third quarter represents twice as many all Macs Apple shipped in the second quarter – 3.69 million notebook and desktop units combined. That said, you should probably take the report with a grain of salt – unless Apple really has high hopes for its popular ultrathin notebook.
Still, the news jibes with most of what others have reported so far. CNET, for example, said that an estimated 48 percent of Apple’s laptops will be from MacBook Airs. Intel last week unveiled new Sandy Bridge chips and Reutersadded that Apple would initially ship 380,000 MacBook Airs late June.
From the earliest days Steve Jobs has tirelessly and continuously been molding Apple into a place where art meets form and technology. This romantic notion is still very much alive and embodied in the iconic products of today like iPad and iPhone, having especially become evident in Apple’s vision of tomorrow, the breathtaking (and incredibly expensive) Mothership spaceship campus. And Apple’s boss himself is being often deemed an artful storyteller and a masterful marketeer. You may have noticed how Jobs often wraps up his presentations with a huge street sign image depicting the intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts streets.
“We’re not just a tech company, even though we invent some of the highest technology products in the world. It’s the marriage of that plus the humanities and the liberal arts that distinguishes Apple”, Jobs remarked at the end of the iPhone 4 introduction last summer. The message is consistent with a recent iPad commercial entitled “We Believe”, but also jives well with the now 14-year-old Think Different advertising campaign.
What you may have not known is that Apple’s product philosophy, their design language, the marketing and communications strategies and the collective DNA all stem from a single focal point, a random event from the early days when the technology bug had bitten the two Steves in Jobs parents’ garage. Addressing staff and students recently after receiving an honorary doctorate from Concordia University in Montreal, Dr. Steve Wozniak let us in on a secret, telling this (mark 1:18):
Computer maker Hewlett-Packard today issued a firmware update which adds support for wireless printing from iOS devices via Apple’s AirPrint technology to eight new LaserJet printers, bringing the number of AirPrint-enabled LaserJets to thirteen. If you own HP’s LaserJet P1102w, LaserJet P1606dn, LaserJet Pro CP1025nw, LaserJet Pro M1212nf, LaserJet Pro M1213nf, LaserJet Pro M1214nfh, LaserJet Pro M1216nfh or LaserJet Pro M1217nfw, better get downloading. HP also supports AirPrint in six PhotoSmart printers, six OfficeJet models and the Envy100 e-AiO.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group announced today it added Apple and Nordic Semiconductor to its board of directors. According to a statement, both companies were appointed for two years by unanimous vote of the current board of directors and will officially begin on July 1, 2011. Nordic Semiconductor is well-versed in wireless health sensors, a fit for the lower power requirements of the Bluetooth 4.0 standard.
Apple, of course, has a penchant for industry verticals such as medical where its iPad has become the physicians’ favorite tool (especially in Australia). Apple’s appointment to Bluetooth SIG’s board of directors might also help popularize dedicated wireless accessories for iOS devices, such as this dongle that lets you take your own electrocardiograph readouts. Full release below.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could pull a widget during your favorite TV show to read the latest show-related news or cast and crew information, watch special features, access social networking components and interact in other relevant ways with your TV content? The latest patent application from Apple seeks to tackle this burning issue and is noteworthy for making a specific connection to a big screen TV, which is interesting in the light of a DailyTech story calling for an iOS-powered, Apple-branded television set this Fall. From Apple’s patent application:
Recently, a few consumer electronics companies have extended the widget paradigm to television. For example, while watching TV programming on a widget-enabled TV set, the viewer can manipulate the TV remote control to interact, for example, with a “chat” widget displayed on the TV screen to send text messages back and forth with others connected to a common chat network.
We also learned this morning via another patent application that Apple could allow third-party widgets in the iOS 5 Notification Center. As for the widgets that interact with television content, Patently Applesummed it up nicely:
Apple’s paradigm involves taking widgets to the next level of live widgets that will interact with TV shows like NBC’s “The Voice” so that users could directly vote for their favorite candidates from their HDTV effortlessly. The system will also work with live sports like football with other live content is in the works. The system still involves Apple’s AppleTV set-top-box but with a twist. It will finally hook up with regular Cable TV networks.
Apple says content-aware widgets could be able to retrieve your geographical location in order to further personalize media content. Triggers and visual tags could indicate during media playback that a widget could be invoked. Content-aware widgets, Apple explains, could also respond to the media state in order to present the right features at the right places…
Fruity Loops, a popular music creation software for Windows PCs, has made an iOS debut. The FL Studio Mobile app lets you create soundtracks on the go, featuring 133 instruments, drum kits and sliced-loop beats. You can also import your mobile projects into the FL Studio Desktop PC version (all instruments map seamlessly), just like GarageBand (but not vice versa). The 166MB download has been launched at special introductory price of $15 in both iPhone and iPad versions. Screenies and a list of rich features right below.
Unofficial widgets for jailbroken iOS 5 devices: SpringPrefs (left) and Music Center (right)
The Apple patent win for the original iPhone interface has generated a lot of buzz, also causing quite a turmoil among industry watchers for fears that the California-based gadget maker would sue rivals that dare implement capacitive multitouch interfaces. That patent, however, also holds interesting clues hidden from plain sight that point to third-party widgets for the iOS 5 Notification Center. RazorianFly explains:
As seen above, Apple specifically mentions “User-Created Widget(s)” as well as something called the“Widget Creator Module”. Apple’s market-blowing patent describes the possible user-creation of such widgets, which could, (theoretically), run on devices such as the iPhone, and iPad.
With patent clues and iOS 5 hooks in place, all Apple needs to do is enable some public APIs to allow for the creation and installation of third-party widgets in the iOS 5 Notification Center…
A new United States Patent & Trademark Office patent application from Apple entitled “Image Capture Device Having Tilt and/or Perspective Correction” has surfaced this morning, detailing how Apple is actively seeking to improve image taking and camera capabilities on mobile devices. According to Apple, future iPhones could automatically compensate for tilt or perspective distortion during image capture or later, by determining a device orientation relative to the object.
The correction could occur on the fly – using dynamic crop lines or a virtual level (a bit akin to the grid lines in the iOS 5 Camera app) – prior to storing the image in the memory and even afterwards, in which case the orientation and distance data would be embedded in the image itself, using custom tags withing the EXIF file. As a result, you’d get perfectly aligned snaps that require little or no post-processing in image editing programs in order to compensate for perspective distortion. And how would the iPhone’s camera figure out whether or not your shots are perfectly aligned with the horizon?
Aircel offers the iPhone 4 in India with the following prepaid tariffs
Apple’s practice of limiting iPhone sales to cherry-picked wireless operators while leaving other operatorsout of the picture is raising red flags with the Indian government which is on the verge of probing the company for alleged anticompetitive behavior, reportsPCMag.
A Competition Commission of India official said on Wednesday that a case was filed against Apple about a month ago. The complaint alleges that the company violated competition law by selling the iPhone 4 through only two mobile operators, Bharti Airtel and Aircel. The official, speaking anonymously, said the Commission would look into the complaint’s merits. He did not disclose the complainant.
Apple on its parts says that both carriers sell unlocked iPhone 4s with optional data plans. Some third-party retailers also carry the handset separate of any wireless contract. The iPhone 4 hit the 1.2 billion people market of India on May 27, immediately drawing concerns from some would-be buyers…
This is how much it costs to get an iPhone 4 in India with a two year service agreement (postpaid)
MIC Gadget runs this blurry shot said to depict Apple’s op-chief Tim Cook visiting China Mobile’s headquarters this morning. A First Financial Daily reporter who snapped up Cook described the executive as being “happy”. China Mobile, the country’s largest wireless operator, confirmed in May that it had “reached consensus” with Apple about supporting their fourth-generation TD-LTE radio technology in future iPhones.
Of course, Cook may be touring China Mobile in an attempt to secure a distribution contract as the carrier still doesn’t offer the handset to its 600+ million subscribers. On the other hand, we doubt a carrier deal would require the presence of the #1 executive who runs Apple in Jobs’ absence. Perhaps Cook is meeting the state-owned wireless operator to discuss the intricacies of a 4G LTE iPhone? File this one under the pure speculation drawer as we don’t get to see the man’s face.
Don’t you hate it when, for example, T-Mobile USA bills their HSPA+ network as being pure 4G when in reality it’s just an upgraded third-generation technology? A new legislation proposed in the US House of Representatives – called the Next Generation Wireless Disclosure Act – will attempt to put an end to delusional marketing practices. The bill should force carriers to detail their 4G coverage and guaranteed minimum data speeds when you sign up for a 4G device or service, reportsMacWorld.
The bill would require mobile carriers to offer potential and existing customers information on pricing, including caps on so-called unlimited data plans, and it would require carriers to disclose what technologies they use to deliver 4G service.
Additionally, FCC would have to provide side-by-side charts comparing the prices and 4G speeds of the nation’s ten largest wireless operators. Better late than never…
Judging by the comments, many of our readers are actually liking the N9, Nokia’s inaugural smartphone running MeeGo software. Some even deemed it the worthiest iPhone wannabe to date (and a killer Android apps phone), even if it borrows slavishly from Apple. An eight-megapixel back camera with Carl Zeiss lens and autofocus is one of the N9’s selling points so Nokia took it upon themselves to tell the world in a blog post that it’s also one of the fastest smartphone cameras around (see the below chart).
The N9’s camera launches from the lock screen in 2.6 seconds, Nokia says. This is the time to turn on the camera app, ready the viewfinder, focus on the subject and capture the image. Yes, the N9 beats Apple’s iPhone 4 (three seconds), HTC’s HD7 (8.3 seconds), Samsung’s Galaxy II (5.8 seconds) and even Canon’s Powershot S95 point-and-shoot digital camera. Nokia’s test doesn’t take into account an iOS 5 optimization which cuts down latency by providing direct camera access from the lock screen, by double-pressing the Home button. More N9 camera features and another nice promo clip below.
We’ve heard rumors that Amazon is planning multiple mobile devices and their chief Jeff Bezos teased us to “stay tuned”. In addition, they shaved $60 off the Kindle’s price and opened up the device to developers reacting to the original iPad release, According toDigiTimes, a pretty reliable Taiwanese publication, the online retailer is gearing up to launch their inaugural tablet PC driven by Android some time in the August-September time frame, which is the first time market sources have narrowed a possible release date down to a one-month window:
Amazon is poised to step into tablet PCs and will launch models as soon as August-September, with targeted global sales of four million units for 2011, according to Taiwan-based component makers. The timing of launch is to meet the peak sales period prior to Thanksgiving in the US and the year-end holidays in the US and Europe, the sources pointed out.
Four million units is a pretty aggressive target for about four months worth of sales, however…
The Kindle brought Amazon a lot of expertise building vertically integrated wireless devices
Best Buy Music Cloud lets you stream music to your iOS, Android and BlackBerry devices
Come on, you knew this day would come now that Amazon, Google and Apple have legitimized music lockers in the cloud. Yes, Best Buy is jumping on the bandwagon with a cloud service of their own, dubbed Music Cloud and powered by Catch Media Inc’s Play Anywhere platform. Should you care? It depends, as Music Cloud seems to be a mixed bag of best ideas taken from others, clearly with some limitations stemming from their lack of Apple’s stranglehold of the music industry.
You can upload songs to Music Cloud, just like with Google’s Music Beta and Amazon’s Cloud Player. More importantly, the service lets you stream songs from the cloud to any device, unlike Apple’s service that only lets you download individual files (although that’s likely to change in the near future). Best Buy’s offering, however, excludes the scan-and-match feature that Apple’s iCloud will offer for $25 a year come this Fall. Music Cloud has a couple of other nice perks (and more annoying limitations)…
The Cielo Vista Mall, built in 1974, is just two miles from the Mexican border. Photo: G. O’Graffer
While Apple has yet to open its first retail store in Mexico, the El Paso, Texas store the company is allegedly mulling should be Godsent for Apple’s Mexican fans – it’s just two miles from the Mexico border town of Ciudad Juarez. According toifoAppleStore, the company will positing the store on the ground floor, next to the Gap store, of the 1.2 million square-feet Cielo Vista Mall along Interstate 10 on east side of El Paso. If all goes well, the El Paso store should open in early 2012.
Importantly, on the US side of the border, the store will fill in a huge, seven-state black-out zone serviced only by the ABQ Uptown (NM) store. From the other side of the border, it will attract Mexico residents to the closest Apple store access across the entire chain (Otay Ranch, Calif. is second-closest at five miles). And significantly, government research says those Mexican residents account for about 16 percent of retail sales within El Paso, or about $1.6 billion a year.
Interior shots of the Cielo Vista mall from the owner, The Simon Property Group
Spelling Nazis, it ain’t a typo – the episode is in fact entitled Summer Pignic, not Picnic. It’s about smashing pigs after all. So kick back, relax and enjoy the trailer. The video doesn’t reveal much apart from hinting “One bird, one mission: Save the eggs from the green pigs” (but you already knew that if you were a fan of the Angry Birds series).
From release notes on YouTube:
Get Ready for Angry Birds Seasons – Summer Pignic! The pesky pigs never break for holidays, and it’s up to you to save the Angry Birds’ eggs!
Bonus: Did you notice a redesigned Home button in the trailer? Did Rovio just inadvertently leak an iPhone 5 redesign? Just kidding…
[UPDATE 1: June 22, 2011 9:05 Eastern]: Angry Birds Seasons with the new Pignic episode has just hit the App Store, get downloading (iPhone, iPad).
It’s no secret that MobileMe hasn’t exactly lived up to Apple’s expectations. Sure, they’ve been able to keep the cloud running by selling an estimated hundreds of thousands subscriptions to the $99 a year service, but that’s peanuts by Apple’s standards. According to RBC Capital Markets, MobileMe will pale in comparison to iCloud, which is due this Fall.
Based on a survey of 1,500 iPhone users polled from June 7 to 14, they found out that iCloud could reach 150 million users, or three-quarters of the 200 million iOS devices that Apple sold as of this month. That’s a lot: For comparison, Twitter has 300 million users and Google’s Gmail service has some 200 million users. The price is right, that’s for sure. Apple’s iOS 5-to-iOS 5 messaging service dubbed iMessage – another freebie – will be a sure-fire hit for 73 percent of respondents who plan on using this feature. The report notes that iMessage might create a new halo effect:
The iMessage service could boost loyalty among existing iPhone users and convince the 60 million iPod Touch users to pick the iPhone over Android or other competing phones if they upgrade.
iTunes Match? Nearly one-third of respondents, or thirty percent, pledged to use the service to scan-and-match their legally purchased digital music, ripped CDs and even low-quality pirated songs (and upgrading them to 256Kbps versions). At $25 a year per user, this means a cool $1.5 billion annually in iTunes Match revenue alone, shared among record labels, artists and Apple.
A Needham & Co. analyst has nice words for Apple fans, quoting IDC data showing Android losing ground to iOS in the US. Despite Android being the leading smartphone platform in the US with the first quarter market share pegged at a whopping 49.5 percent (versus 29.5 percent for Apple), that was a loss for Google which in the previous quarter controlled 52.4 percent of the US market for smartphones.
Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt pointed out that this was Android’s “first sequential loss ever in any region of the world”. The author also quoted Charlie Wolf’s Monday note to clients:
In our opinion, this is just the beginning of Android’s share loss in the US. The migration of subscribers to the iPhone on the Verizon network should accelerate this fall when Apple coordinates the launch of iPhone 5 on the GSM and CDMA networks. The iPhone could also launch on the Sprint and T-Mobile networks.
In other words, Wolf writes, the simultaneous AT&T and Verizon launch of the iPhone 5 in September should have substantial effects on iPhone sales compared to past launches which, despite tremendous media blitz, were limited only to people on the AT&T network. And John Paczkowski writes for All Things D that Verizon customers are probably holding off their Android purchases in anticipation of the iPhone 5 launch.
According to a morning report by Taiwanese trade publication DigiTimes (via MacRumors) printed circuit board (PCB) suppliers are seeing their orders from Apple dropping in the second quarter. This is usually a telling sign that manufacturing of a current-generation product is winding down ahead of a new product introduction. The cut likely involves iPhone 4 because another report claims iPad shipments are expected grow 70 percent sequentially, hitting eight million units in the second quarter. Digitimes explains:
The Taiwan-based PCB companies, which are shipping products for iPads and iPhones, have seen disappointing orders for these devices in the second quarter, the sources said. Orders thus far for June show no signs of a rebound, the sources indicated.
Sources tell the publication that PCB suppliers have cut quotes for the quarter by 10 percent amid decreasing orders from Apple. Suppliers are expecting to see iPhone orders rebound soon, ahead of a third quarter launch of iPhone 5.
Samsung has issued a statement regarding claims of high-level talks with Apple concerning an ongoing legal dispute involving flagship mobile devices from both firms. A company spokesperson toldV3.co.uk yesterday:
We are unaware of any meetings or discussions between the two sides over this matter.
The comment follows a report by Reuters which asserted that US district judge Lucy Koh told both parties during a Friday hearing to get their act together and come to an amicable solution. Apparently, Apple’s legal counsel Harold McElhinny told judge that Apple and Samsung executives are involved in talks. It’s obvious one of the parties is not telling the truth. This cat-and-mouse game is beginning to point at a possible settlement because neither party would benefit from dragging each other through the mud in a multi-year lawsuit. Plus, Samsung is Apple’s key supplier after all…
WebKit-based browsers are about to pass Firefox which has been losing market share since December 2010 – and they absolutely dominate in mobile. But if you still rely on Firefox over Apple’s Safari or Google’s Chrome for your everyday browsing (and a lot of people in Europe do), Mozilla has you covered with a major new release of its browser.
Among the changes, Firefox 5 sports speed gains across the board, an improved do-not-tracking switch available from the top of the privacy pane, support for CSS animation, improved standards support for canvas, HTML5, XHR and MathML markup languages and more. The Firefox 5 page will be updated later today with release notes and features, but download links are already live so you can get downloading (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux).
Patently Applereports that Apple has successfully transferred the “Airdrop” trademark from Urban Airship, Inc., a company behind the AirDrop service that provides marketing services to Android developers. AirDrop in Apple’s hemisphere, of course, is a new Lion feature that lets the user easily share files with other nearby users. The trademark was transferred to Apple on May 11 and effective on June 9.
Apparently, “there was no financial transaction disclosure made available with this transfer”. Patently Apple also discovered that Apple filed for the ‘AirDrop’ trademark in China and another one in Canada related to the Photo Stream feature of the iCloud service which automatically uploads and syncs up to a thousand most recent photos across all iOS devices authorized with the same Apple ID.
Ron Johnson, Apple’s former head of retail, will not automatically assume the CEO position come November 1, the date JC Penney set for the succession of its CEO and chairman Myron Ullman III. Instead, Johnson will take the helm on February 1, following a three-month transition during which time Ullman will serve as executive chairman, we learn via a report by MercuryNews.com:
The retailer said Monday that Johnson will only take over merchandising and marketing responsibilities on that date [November 1, 2010].
This leaves Johnson plenty of time to conceive a revamp for the retailer’s fugly brick-and-mortars. Expand Expanding Close
