Apple

MacRumors is reporting that Apple is readying Black MacBook Airs in its next refresh.

We’ve received several anonymous tips claiming that at least some models of the next-generation MacBook Air will be be available with a black finish, different from the aluminum case used on the current MacBook Air and most of Apple’s other Macs. The most specific of the claims suggests that a black anodized aluminum case would be available on a top-end MacBook Air model, in much the same way as Apple once offered a high-end black MacBook on top of the standard white offerings.

Remember that when we first broke the news of a MacBook Air way back in 2007 (without Optical drives), we’d been told there was a black version.  That information was later verified with the Ebay auction selling a prototype MacBook Air with a Black aluminum shell (pictured above, another shot below).

We’ve also received an anonymous tip with a similar Lion/Sandy Bridge/Thunderbolt/Next few weeks release information.  That tip also said a $899 starting price point.

Update: A reliable source has told us that they haven’t seen any Black in the new MacBook Air materials

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CNET’s Brian Tong claims that Apple is gearing up to launch a revamped Mac Pro and an upgraded Mac mini in either late July or early August – more likely in August. Details are scarce on what this “next-gen” Mac Pro holds, but if what 9to5Mac has previously been told is showing up in these 2011 models, we’ll be seeing a smaller, rackmountable design that can hold multiple solid-state-drives. Lending credence to the report are shortages of the Mac Pro server model.

EXCLUSIVE: My sources tell me ALL NEW Next-Gen Mac Pros and Mac Minis will launch either end of July first week of August.

The Mac minis are said to be receiving the Thunderbolt I/O and Sandy Bridge Processor treatment, which the MacBook Pro and iMac families received earlier this year. Summer 2010 was the scene of a major Mac mini redesign, so those hoping for an all new Mac mini should wait a couple of refreshes. Mac minis (and Mac mini servers – on Amazon as well) are currently short on supply (thanks, Mr. X!). Separately, we’ve been hearing independently that Apple is gearing up to release upgraded MacBook Airs – we should have our own details on that soon.

August more likely, Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt on both. NO details for specs or configurations given. DO NOT BUY! WAIT for the new Macs!

Tong’s tweets also say that these upgraded Macs will be packed with Lion at first boot. Tong says that the source of the new Mac Pro and Mac mini information is the same source that correctly predicted an early May launch for the new iMacs. The iMac ended up being updated on May 3rd with Thunderbolt ports and faster Sandy Bridge processors from Intel.

Also in the pipeline are new AirPort Extremes and Time Capsules.

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Nortel decided to extend the deadline for the start of the auction for its patents until June 27 citing “significant interest” from third parties. Today we learn that two Silicon Valley giants are significantly interested in Nortel’s war chest of more than five thousand wireless patents said to be worth well over a billion dollars. They are Apple and Intel, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Other bidders include Ericsson AB and a company called RPX Corp which “defensively buys up patents on behalf of other companies to stop them from being used against them by investors”.

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Today, Apple supplied educators and businesses with instructions on how to upgrade to the upcoming OS X Lion release. The document is pasted after the break:

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Originally planned for late July, the Brazilian Minister of Science and Technology, Aloizio Mercadante told Globo that iPad production would being in Brazil later this Fall at Foxconn’s new plant outside of São Paulo. Roughly machine translated:

“The handle access to the company, which would be used to drain the production plant in Jundiaí (SP), was not ready in time, due to construction delays.In addition, there is a shortage of skilled labor in the country.The company has hired 175 engineers, who had to send them to China where they are doing stage.The company, however, need more than 200 engineers to the sector, “said the minister.

One reason for the additional factories? A 40% reduction in consumer costs, according to the post.  Not because the iPad is cheaper to make (though it could be) but the government won’t levy taxes on domestically produced products.

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Third-parties are prepping new Thunderbolt products ahead of the upcoming Final Cut Pro X release. Japanese site Macotakara.jp got a chance to play with Blackmagic Design’s UltraStudio 3D, a Thunderbolt-enabled 3D capture and playback for SD, HDMI and analog. Although BlackMagic’s site lists the device as having one Thunderbolt port, the unit on display has two ports. Engineers apparently haven’t yet made the final decision on that. The above clip shows a cool portable editing solution consisting of an early-2011 17-inch MacBook Pro, an UltraStudio 3D box, a Promise R6 Pegasus RAID and a Video-422 deck controller.

The rig works in perfect harmony, allowing for video recording to the Pegasus RAID with real-time previews on an external display and real-time video effects in 2K and 3D. The same site noted Tuesday that Final Cut Pro X would be available next week. Apple announced the video editing suite revision back in April at the NAB show, confirming that the software would be available in July via the Mac App Store at a reduced price of just $299.

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As a part of Apple’s MobileMe-to-iCloud transition, Apple will be bringing expired MobileMe accounts back to life. We have gotten our hands on login information for a long-expired MobileMe account and have discovered that Apple has already migrated these accounts over to the free iCloud service (shown above). In order to setup these newly resurrected accounts you need to be running Apple’s upcoming iOS 5 and OS X Lion (with iCloud beta installed). Your old MobileMe username and password will now function as your iCloud Apple ID.

The reason being is that these new iCloud e-mail, calendar, and other accounts no longer work at me.com. That’s right, for the time being, users who have their old MobileMe accounts migrated over to the iCloud service can no longer access their email on the web. We got our expired test MobileMe account up and running as an iCloud account on a Mac running OS X Lion (with iCloud installed) and an iPhone running iOS 5. Mail, contacts, calendar, and the rest of the suite work perfectly with native apps, but not in Apple’s me.com web apps. Find my iPhone is the exception.

There has been a lot of talk lately over whether or not iCloud will support the MobileMe web apps, usher in their own redesigned web apps, or leave the web in the dark. Our discovery points to no web app compatibility, but that is likely because the iCloud web apps do not exist yet. The Loop and others say that iCloud web apps are, in fact, in development. We’ll likely see those when iCloud is ready to launch this fall. Thanks, Kristian!

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TechCrunch continues their profiling of Facebook (once) secret projects with news that Zuckerberg and company plan a web-based alternative web store to Apple’s App Store for iOS devices.

Dubbed Project Spartan, the project is a framework for apps that would use social hooks and work inside of Facebook’s ecosystem.

As we understand it, Project Spartan is the codename for a new platform Facebook is on verge of launching. It’s entirely HTML5-based and the aim is to reach some 100 million users in a key place: mobile. More specifically, the initial target is both surprising and awesome: mobile Safari.

Yes, Facebook is about to launch a mobile platform aimed squarely at working on the iPhone (and iPad). But it won’t be distributed through the App Store as a native application, it will be entirely HTML5-based and work in Safari. Why? Because it’s the one area of the device that Facebook will be able to control (or mostly control).

Project Spartan will also be available on Android but according to TechCrunch, Facebook has Apple in its sights first.

As of right now, there are believed to be 80 or so outside developers working with Facebook on Project Spartan. These teams are working on apps for the platform that range from games to news-reading apps. Some of the names should be familiar: Zynga and Huffington Post (owned by our parent AOL), for example. The goal is to have these apps ready to roll in the next few weeks for a formal unveiling shortly thereafter.

‘Project Trojan’ sounds like a better name.

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(above, Apple’s Back to School Ads go live –thx)

Last week we told you that Apple was going to unleash its Back to School sale today and would include a $100 gift card to the App Store. We’ve seen the artwork and the packages were supposed to be opened today to be displayed.  That’s what the outside packaging said anyway.

Late last night, @chronic tweeted that there was going to be a slight delay in the unveiling.  We’re not 100% sure if/why the delay happened.  It could have been the abrupt departure of Apple Store Head Ron Johnson or some other issues with the rollout.

But that doesn’t mean that the event isn’t going to happen and that the $100 in credit that we called didn’t happen.

Macrumors posts the image (below) which shows the $100 gift card that we’d heard about.  Apple Stores are rolling out the imagery now (so technically we weren’t off on rollout ;) and the $100 begins tomorrow and goes until September 20.

Remember, Lion is free with any Mac purchased now and there are already significant educational discounts for Apple products.

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Twitter user Chronic, a credible source of Apple rumors in the past (and lately), has dispelled his own rumors of an alleged Sandy Bridge MacBook Air refresh this week. Instead, he writes on Twitter explaining that “source had mixed up part numbers”, it is unlocked iPhones that will be headed to US Apple Stores for Wednesday. Here are your part numbers: MC603 (16GB, Black) MC604 (16GB, White) MC605 (32GB, Black) MC606 (32GB, White). It isn’t clear whether those phones are actually unlocked in the traditional sense or whether they are just being sold without plan like Apple has done traditionally in the past before a major refresh.

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If you are an iOS 5 developer (or play one on TV), you may be interested in jailbreaking your iOS 5 devices (iPad 2s need not apply) so that you can build Notification widgets or something.  The good news is that you have two different options.  One is from @iH8sn0w who has released the snowbreeze 2.8b1 jailbreak for tethered iOS devices.

That follows the Dev team, which released redsn0w 0.9.8b1 for Mac (Windows) on Friday.

Both jailbreaks are “extremely beta”, but can be used to exploit notifications and other iOS 5 technologies.
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Sources have told 9to5Mac that Apple will be holding one of their retail store overnights on Tuesday. Since Apple has a flurry of upcoming product releases, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what Apple will be releasing – if anything, on Wednesday, June 15th. We first heard about this last week and figured it was OS X Lion related, but now that new chatter has arisen and now that we know Lion is coming in July, we feel it is the right to time to rundown Wednesday’s new possibilities.

The first item on the list would be new MacBook Airs with Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt I/O. Digitimes and CNET have said that the new Airs are coming in either June or July and ChronicWire says they are coming this Wednesday. We have since heard from a source that there are still some current generation MacBook Airs shipping to retail stores across the world into the next couple of weeks. Because of our own independent information, we doubt a new MacBook Air launch for Wednesday. It does make sense though based on the scheduled retail overnight.

Next would be servers. We were first to report that Mac Pro and Mac mini server models are at the constraint stage for supplies, and since then we have been told that supplies have diminished even more with no more current generation models coming through to retail channels. Also, Time Capsules and Airport Extremes are showing the constraint status.

Additionally, sources tell 9to5Mac that Tuesday’s overnight may be related to Apple removing parts of their rumored-be-disappearing software wall. At this point, we are unsure of what is exactly going down Wednesday. It could be new MacBook Airs, Mac minis, Mac Pros, Servers, AirPorts, Time Capsules, or absolutely nothing related to a major product release. We’ll let you know when we hear more.

Update: Wednesday could be related to Apple’s annual Back to School promotion.

Update 2: Another source says that some of the new visuals pertain to the Teach for America Foundation. This is the same foundation that Apple is promoting the donation of iPads toward. This “teaching” theme may or may not confirm the start of the Back to School promotion on Wednesday.

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For those wondering when Apple’s in-house apps will go 64-bit, we have some good news and some bad news. In Lion, the developer release of iTunes 10.5 is 64-Bit (finally). The developer version of iPhoto with Photostreaming to the iCloud however, is still 32-Bit, at least currently.

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Someone made an iPad with $1.2 million worth of diamonds attached to it.  Worst part?  It is an iPad 1.  D’oh.

Shot of the back below.
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From 9to5toys.com:

Best Buy takes 15% off all Apple iTunes Gift Cards. With free shipping, that’s the best deal we could find on these cards and the first time we’ve seen them discounted in several months. After the discount, a $15 gift card costs $12.75, a $50 gift card costs $42.50, and a $100 gift card costs $85, among others. They’re good for both music/video and app purchases.

Obviously, with a Lion purchase coming up, it might be a good time to stockpile iTunes credit.
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The winners were announced at WWDC yesterday:

iPhone Developer Showcase

Related articles

• Is Apple recalling Verizon iPad 2s? (9to5mac.com)
• Official: Steve Jobs to unveil iCloud, iOS 5, and Lion June 6 at WWDC (9to5mac.com)
• HHI Snap-On Hard Back Shell Case for iPad 2 w/ $2 credit for $9 + $3 s&h (9to5toys.com)
• WWDC 2011: Apple unveils iMessage, am iChat-like new messaging service for iOS 5 devices (9to5mac.com)
• This year’s Apple Design Awards is only for apps distributed via App Store and Mac App Store (9to5mac.com)

The Mac/PC is no longer the hub of your digital world according to Steve Jobs and while the traditional computer was demoted to just a  ‘device’, iOS devices did get some promotions at WWDC this week as well.

One notable addition is that you can set up an Apple Airport or Time Capsule from an iOS 5 device, like in the screenshots above.

Let’s just say this one more time: No Mac Needed.

Thanks Clay!
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Everyone’s favorite iPad insurance provider Square Trade decided to waste a few perfectly good tablets (well one is) to drive home the message: Dropping glass screens on cement will break them.

Conveniently, Square Trade just happens to be in the business of insuring iPads and other tablets (Shocking, we know).
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Looking at the graph above it really feels like Apple is taking huge leaps in growth while the rest of the industry is happy to be taking baby steps.  iSuppli today says that with the help of the iPad, Apple passed Samsung and HP in 2010 to become the largest consumer of semiconductors in the world.  While 2010 is relatively close still, 2011 will have Apple pulling away from the pack.

Apple in 2010 bought $17.5 billion worth of semiconductors, a 79.6 percent increase from $9.7 billion in 2009. This represented the highest rate of increase among the world’s Top 10 OEM semiconductor buyers, allowing Apple to rise up two positions to take the No. 1 rank in 2010. Apple in 2009 was the third-largest semiconductor purchaser, behind Hewlett-Packard Co. of the United States and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. of South Korea; it was sixth in 2008.

NAND Flash for iOS devices was a big contributor to Apple’s rise.

“Apple’s surge to leadership in semiconductor spending in 2010 was driven by the overwhelming success of its wireless products, namely the iPhone and the iPad,” said Wenlie Ye, Analyst for IHS. “These products consume enormous quantities of NAND flash memory, which is also found in the Apple iPod. Because of this, Apple in 2010 was the world’s No. 1 purchaser of NAND flash.”Apple is likely to continue increasing its semiconductor spending during the coming years at an above-average pace, allowing the company to extend its lead over Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and other OEMs in 2011 and beyond. In 2011 Apple’s semiconductor spending is expected to exceed that of Hewlett-Packard by $7.5 billion, up from $2.4 billion in 2010.

Via iClarified
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Before we even start, obviously this is something that isn’t covered by warranty and may destroy your phone.  Once you go to iOS 5, you cant go back. APPLE WILL LIKELY FIX THIS IN AN UPCOMING iOS 5 UPDATE AND YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO USE YOUR DEVICE (until iOS 5 final is released or a developer adds your phone to his or her device list).

Gizmodo posts a video on how to activate an iPhone on iOS without having your device ID provisioned by a developer/Apple.  The exploit uses a combination of Voiceover and the pull down notifications to activate the phone.  The user that found this exploit says the device continues to work after restarts (so you won’t need to activate it every time you restart).  The steps are below:

1. Download the iOS 5 IPSW file from the web (it’s easy and readily available. Just Google it and torrent it down).
2. Update your iPhone using iTunes. To do this, connect your iPhone to your computer, click on the Check for Update button with theOption (Mac) or Shift (PC) key pressed. Select the iOS 5 IPSW file from the place you downloaded it to.
3. Wait until it upgrades. A new activation screen will appear.

Activate iOS 5

1. Triple click the home button. This will activate the Voice Over.
2. Triple click the home button and Emergency Call will appear.
3. Click on Emergency Call and, while it’s switching, swipe with your three fingers down.
4. The Notification Center will appear!
5. Click on the Weather widget. The Weather app will load.
6. Click on the home button to exit to the iPhone’s springboard.

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TUAW notes that inside the USB device profiles of iOS 5 are profiles for two never before seen devices called “iPad3,1” and “iPad3,2.”  Obviosuly Apple is going to be making more iPads in the future and devices often show up in these profiles many months before they are delivered.  However, there was some speculation earlier this year that an enhanced iPad 2 or iPad 3 with a Retina display would be released in time for the holidays.

Most analysts currently estimate that the next version of the iPad will hit at the beginning of next year so.

Interestingly, TUAW notes that there are no new iPod touches listed.  Touches usually are released in the Fall, but with no new iPhone hardware announced or released at WWDC, Apple’s traditional hardware release schedule has been put in question.  
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