Enterprise

Well, here’s unexpected – the Apple Store appears to be out of action in the US and the UK.

We’re not saying there’s an imminent product upgrade coming, but we’re pretty curious to see if there’s any changes. Sure, this could be for maintenance, but as news-starved hacks we get all jiggy when the shop shuts down…we’re on a permanent search for Apple-related topics to talk about after all.

While you wait, it may be interesting to reflect on the following data:

Market research firm NPD has just revealed Apple’s revenue share for PCs over $1,000 is 91 per cent. So that’s interesting, right? Betanews reports that Apple’s revenue share went up to 91 per cent from 88 per cent in May.

Check back later for any new product news, or just a slightly disappointed sigh. Which will it be? You decide…

UPDATE: We now know that new products are currently being announced, and they’ll be a boon to creative Mac users in the music and video markets, because they are Logic Pro 9 and Final Cut Pro 7. We’re attempting to secure details on these releases, and we’ll tell you more about them later on.

What if Apple had baked some Facebook goodness into Snow Leopard? Would you have luv’d it more? 

The two companies spent a lot of time collaborating early on in Facebook’s development.   FastCompany talked with Facebook’s senior platform manager and former Apple employee Dave Morin on how Apple was resistant to using Facebook’s platform in their OS.  According to him, Apple didn’t think computers could do social.  Dave then made the jump to Facebook where he is trying to prove the opposite.

http://service.twistage.com/plugins/player.swf?v=a08db74f17004&p=fctv_social

 We’d add that Apple has added a lot of Facebook integration to iPhoto and we’ve heard things about upcoming Addressbook/iCal (birthdays) ties to Facebook as well.

Speaking of tiny screens, head over to pocket calculator pioneers, Casio, and feast your eyes on this rather lovably dramatic example of an incredibly high-res screen of a two-inch punch.

This thing of beauty is a 2.0-inch a-Si TFT (amorphous silicon thin-film transistor) color liquid crystal display with the industry’s highest resolution of 546 ppi (pixels per inch).

Gizmodo did a little thinking on that 546ppi to tell us,

Remember last week’s brouhaha about the new MacBook Pros only being able to connect to SSDs at SATA 1.5Gbs (as opposed to SATA II) speeds?  Apple has addressed this issue in a firmware update (direct link) released today. 

 

Notably, Apple says the following:

MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.7 addresses an issue reported by a small number of customers using drives based on the SATA 3Gbps specification with the June 2009 MacBook Pro.  While this update allows drives to use transfer rates greater than 1.5Gbps, Apple has not qualified or offered these drives for Mac notebooks and their use is unsupported.

If by small number, they mean every single new MacBook Pro customer, perhaps. Also, they seem to be leaving the door open to these high speed SSDs not working properly by saying they aren’t "qualified".

Get out your wallet, you can now buy a MacBook Pro.

Update: IF you’ve updated to 3.1 (naughty!) – there is now a way to get your iPhone to tether to AT&T.

 

iPhone 3.0 is live! so we are going to repost our tethering tutorial with some big improvements.  You now don’t have to do any downgrading or torrenting.    Seems you can just run a little command in terminal (Make sure you are on OS 3.0 on a 3G iPhone and iTunes 8.2):

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE

After that, the steps become a lot more simple. 

1. Download this file (for AT&T) and mount the disk image (thanks Gizmodo) for other carriers, try here.

2. Option-click on "restore" in your iTunes with your iPhone attached.  Browse to the opened disk image file and hit OK.  It will update phone settings for a few seconds.

3. You have tethering.  Now go into your iPhone/settings/general/network/Internet Tethering and turn it on.

Boom – 3 steps to tethering…

Oh, and how to you like cut and paste and spotlight search?

 

Nothing like a little negative publicity to light a fire under Apple Security’s backside.  Today, Apple released a security patch for Java.  No restart required but you have to *gasp* shut down those browsers.

 

Sure, we’ve all heard of the iPhone App Store approval process issues.  But overall, how happy are developers with Apple and its developer tools?  According to a recent LinkedIn survey (PDF-last page), pretty happy:

 …and no one had to act like a monkey either (NSFW):

 

Apple Senior Vice President, Devices Hardware Engineering, Mark Papermaster finally got his headshot in the Apple Bios.  You might remember he was involved in the IBM lawsuit to keep him from going to Apple, which was eventually resolved with undisclosed amounts of greenbacks.

Until now, there wasn’t much floating around the web with his likeness. He obviously got the black shirt not-optional memo.

 

Here’s a good idea: Open up a shop that sells Apple clones.  Not a shady internet operation.  An actual storefront with people working inside.

We’re sure Apple will let it slide.

"It’s exciting. We are trying to stay as close to Apple as we can with our products," Rashantha De Silva, Quo founder, told CNET News. "We are trying to mimic things as much as we can. I’m hoping that Apple sees the value in what we are doing."

"They probably will (sue us)," De Silva said. "There are others doing this, but we have a different attitude. There are thousands of people in the ‘Hackintosh’ market, but many of them are creating bad products. I don’t think anyone wins in that environment."

Good luck with that. 

 

It wasn’t hard to see this coming.  In fact, many will wonder why it took so long. Psystar, the unauthorized Apple Clone-maker, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week.  While the Miami-based business may or may not have been successful selling Apple clones, its biggest expenses were most likely Apple’s lawsuit-related fees. 

Apple had insinuated during previous statements that it believed Psystar had some nefarious legal backing from a third party.  The bankruptcy filing means that their backers likely pulled out or aren’t rich enough to take Apple to court.  That doesn’t mean that they won’t be outted at some point.

The Florida court will hold a hearing on June 5 where Psystar’s equity creditors will be revealed — which means if there have been deep pockets behind the company’s fight against Apple, those names will finally come out of the shadows.

Psystar’s bankruptcy filing will temporarily slow down Apple’s case in northern California because all legal actions involving the PC maker are automatically put on hold while the bankruptcy court begins its proceedings. The judge overseeing the case will, however, most likely lift that stay within a few months, allowing Apple’s case to start moving forward again.

Even as Psystar is closing (well, not yet), yet another Apple Clone-maker, AppleOpenUSA, is opening up shop. 

 

Citrix (via MacRumors) demonstrated a new version of its Virtualization software for the Mac Platform this week.  As a background, Citrix has had Windows client software for the Macintosh since OS9 which allows you to login to a Windows box somewhat like VNC.  They’ve also built an iPhone client for this functionality which we covered last year.

This new virtual machine software they’ve produced for the Mac is much like VMWare Fusion or Parallels in functionality but operates on a lower level, letting the Windows partition have native access to hardware like the 3D card, thereby theoretically giving you Boot Camp performance in a virtual machine.  Citrix is enterprise player so they haven’t really explored the usage for gaming.

There is a quick demo below.  You’ll want to head to the 42:30 marker for the "One More Thing".

http://www.citrix.com/tv/s/tv/players/ctv_viral_1_0.swf?ctv=423&autoStart=false&height=412&width=486

This is also interesting because it makes a virtual machine out of the MacOS called "Type 1 hypervisor".  While initially you might consider that only MacOSX Server is allowed to be virtualized, Citrix is able to circumvent this restriction by running the virtualized MacOSX on Apple Hardware.  IT still seems like a gray area to us.  We’ll see how/if Apple responds.

Interestingly, you could theoretically use this software as another way to run MacOS on PC Hardware.

Updated 9pm Saturday: Woops! – the job has been removed by Apple – here’s another view of it.  You know what that means, right?

Remember that little tip we got last month about the minor update to the MacBook line?   It looks like that update might be an integrated 3G Wireless chip.  Hit Computerworld for the deets. 

 

Sometimes you’re away from a power supply longer than your battery will allow you.  It’d be nice to have a swapable battery but Apple seems to be going away from that idea in its latest product offerings.  What to do?  One (bad) option is carrying around a heavy UPS.  A better option just came up:

HyperMac is offering an external battery with Apple’s MagSafe connection.  According to their website, this adds up to 32 hours of usage time.  Official times and real times sometimes aren’t always the same.

Users can check the HyperMac battery level anytime with the built-in 4-stage lighted LED indicator. HyperMac battery also comes with a USB power port to charge any USB device including the latest iPhone 3G individually or simultaneously with the MacBook.  The HyperMac battery and car charger are now available for pre-order at www.HyperMac.com and will be shipping later this month for $149.95 (car charger), $199.95 (60-watt-hour battery), $299.95 (100Wh), $399.95 (150Wh) and $499.95 (222Wh)..

We have to wonder how long one could run an iPhone alone on one of these things.  Might be good for camping.  Little pricey for the high end models however.

 via Engadget.

HyperMac – World’s Exclusive Apple MacBook External Battery Pack That Works With All MacBook, MacBook Pro And MacBook Air Models.

Extends MacBook Battery Life Up To 32 hours.

05.04.2009 –

SUNNYVALE, California

– Sanho Corp., the company behind the HyperDrive photo backup devices introduces HyperMac– external MacBook battery packs that work with the entire Apple MacBook family of notebook computers, including all MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models.

Available in 4 different capacities of 60Wh, 100Wh, 150Wh and 222Wh (compared to MacBook Air 37Wh only internal battery), the external battery is capable of powering the MacBook for up to 32 hours – allowing for long haul flights, extended outdoor shoots, expeditions to remote locations or any situation where electricity is simply not an option. When on the road, there is also the HyperMac car charger which powers and recharges the MacBook directly from the automobile cigarette slot.

Every HyperMac battery is compatible with all MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models courtesy of proprietary variable power technology which enables the battery to adjust the charging power automatically when connected to different MacBook models. For maximum compatibility, HyperMac charging cables are spliced with the original Apple MagSafe connectors. Not only does HyperMac provides power for the MacBook, it charges the internal battery as well.

Users can check the HyperMac battery level anytime with the built-in 4-stage lighted LED indicator. HyperMac battery also comes with a USB power port to charge any USB device including the latest iPhone 3G individually or simultaneously with the MacBook

Daniel Chin, President of Sanho Corporation, states, "HyperMac allows the MacBook user to easily extend their MacBook battery life." He adds, "With the MacBook moving towards unibody designs with built-in batteries, HyperMac is the only viable option to extend the unibody MacBook’s mobile computing time beyond the power grid.""Using HyperMac external batteries will also help to reduce the strain on the MacBook internal batteries and extend the overall life span of these difficult to replace batteries," he concludes.

HyperMac batteries uses the same high-end lithium ion cells that are supplied to the U.S. military. It is rechargeable up to 1000 times and comes with a ONE-year warranty – comparing to industry standards of only 300 recharges and 3 months warranty. With a great attention to detail, HyperMac batteries’ silver color aluminum housing are color matched to the MacBook. With clean lines, laser engraved logo and all-white accessories completing the Applesque look.

The HyperMac battery and car charger are now available for pre-order at

www.HyperMac.com

and will be shipping later this month for $149.95 (car charger), $199.95 (60-watt-hour battery), $299.95 (100Wh), $399.95 (150Wh) and $499.95 (222Wh).

Specifications

Dimensions: 4.92 x 3.78 x 0.83" (60Wh); 7.48 x 4.92 x 0.8" (100Wh); 8.9 x 4.92 x 0.83" (150Wh); 10.1 x 5.91 x 1.34" (222Wh)

Weight: 0.8 lb (60Wh); 1.6 lbs (100Wh); 2.4 lbs (150Wh); 4.7 lbs (222Wh)

 

Battery: Lithium ion

 

4 stage LED battery level indicator lights

 

USB 5V/1A power out

 

For more product information and specifications, please visit:

www.HyperMac.com

HyperMac is a trademark of Sanho Corporation

 

Apple, MacBook and MacBook Air, MagSafe are registered trademarks of Apple, Inc

 

We really like the Live Chat helpdesk idea in general and are glad to see Apple jumping on the bandwagon here.   When done correctly and scaled reasonably, it allows a much better experience than talking on the phone.  It is also a lot easier to cut and paste from a chat than from a phone conversation. 

Hopefully, you won’t need it but it is there when you do…

Apple’s site says:

We’re pleased to announce that English language Live Chat support is now available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you encounter an issue while using MobileMe and would like to address it immediately, simply go to MobileMe support. Click on the topics at the bottom left of the page to see if your question has already been answered. If it’s not, click the Chat Now button to initiate a realtime help session with a MobileMe support agent.

Just a thought here – we realize this is pretty much not going to happen – but would there be any interest at all in Sun from Apple?  Bill Joy said the two companies almost merged three times in the 90s (when Jobs wasn’t running the show). IBM just walked away from the table on a $7 billion dollar buyout opportunity.  They wouldn’t take the $9.40 a share offer.

Apple has a few bucks laying around.

We know Apple never buys big companies and prefers to develop from the inside rather than purchasing its technology knowledge.  But its hard not to speculate that there might be some interest in a $7 billion Sun Microsystems pickup after IBM walked away.  There are three technologies that Apple could be  interested in, as well as getting a roster of enterprise clients (does Apple even want that?):

• ZFS the File System that Apple is widely expected to use in its mainstream OS
  
• Open Office Another Office Suite to go with iWork
  
• Java On OS X.  Little interest for the iPhone
  

What else could Apple gain from a Sun pickup?  The most obvious answer is the human capital.  They have amazing Unix people, some processor people and even some nice facilities around the Valley.  Any thoughts out there?

We are giving 1 in 10,000 odds.  Any takers?

Update: Just to clarifyx10, we don’t think Apple should buy Sun, we were just throwing out the possibility for discussion.

 

For those of us still on the Apple enterprise bandwagon (95% of you can disregard), Xserve refresh times are an important thing to gauge when making purchases.  You don’t want to be on the tail end of a cycle and end up with a product that has been refreshed before you’ve even had a chance to deploy.  If you are in that camp, do not buy an Xserve yet.  Apple is about to do an update the Xserve line to the Nahalem architecture.  It doesn’t appear that much else will change.

PCWorld caught the HK Apple Store prematurely readying the Store webpage for the Nahalem processor XServes.  Macrumors caught a screengrab before Apple took it down.  This means we are days away from a refresh.  Be patient!

Apple is most likely clearing out inventory of current XServes before releasing the new product.  As there are no big events scheduled in the next few weeks, this seems like it might be one of Apple’s silent updates.  Expect a press release with a quote from Phil Schiller and, unfortunately, not much else.

 

 

Retrospect 8 is now shipping for Mac.  It has been forever and a day (5 years!) since version 6 first shipped.  Version 7 was PC only.  Since then, the product has been getting older, less reliable and, to many, unusable.  I did a roundup of backup solutions almost two years ago for the Macintosh platform.  Unfortunately, not much has changed since then.  Mac shops don’t have a great answer to their backup needs.

Today, I am using Time Machine for day to day backups which works acceptably for most things (I turn off everything but my Docs folder).  For cloning, I use Carbon Copy Cloner which was just updated recently to vers. 2.2 and works great. 

Overwhelmingly however, I am sending more and more data into the cloud with services like Mozy (Retrospect’s Parent company, EMC also owns Mozy – they’d be smart to offer a hybrid solution).  Carbonite’s recent loss of data makes this kind of scary, still.

I haven’t recommended Retrospect in over a year for small-medium businesses.  Hopefully version 8 will turn this around.

via Tidbits and TUAW

 

Steve Ballmer is making a pretty regular habit of putting his foot in his mouth on Apple’s success.  He was this week quoted by Techflash as saying:

Apple gained about one point, but now I think the tide has really turned back the other direction.

The economy is helpful. Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment – same piece of hardware – paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be.

The bad news for Microsoft?  We aren’t paying that extra $500 for the hardware. 

While Apple hardware is the best you can buy, there are other companies that are making some pretty good machines.  People who can afford it often choose the MAc because Microsoft’s offering is substandard.

Former Director of Field Engineering and Professional Services at Apple, Chuck Goldman, and some former Apple and Motorola employees have started a business that focuses on building mobile apps for Enterprise.  This field, which is blowing up at the moment, is ripe for exploration by smaller companies because the bigger consulting firms have little to no experience with mobile application development, especially on a platform like the iPhone.

Speculation is that Apple may be an investor. 

Though Goldman can’t yet name any of Apperian’s clients, he says they include “some unbelievable billion-dollar customers.” And when it comes to selling projects, the startup’s roots at Apple don’t hurt. “We have a great relationship with Apple,” says Goldman. “We can’t claim that we’re ‘officially supported by Apple’—no one gets that. But they are highly encouraged by Apperian.”

In Xconomy, Chuck lays out some of the interesting apps the Apperian team is currently building:

• For a large automobile insurer, Apperian is working on an application that would let insured drivers submit insurance claims directly from accident sites. (That’s what Goldman means by “point of service”—using the phone to take care of a situation where and when you need to.) “You get in an accident, you whip out your iPhone. The phone knows where you are. You take a picture of the accident scene. With a few clicks using a preformatted template, you send in a report. You’re on your way, and you get your claim adjusted quickly.”

• For a big commercial real estate company, Apperian is creating a mobile property management system designed to free agents from the hassles created by being in the field so much of the time. “Currently, all these agents have laptops and cell phones, and they’re ducking into the closest Starbucks and trying to access their corporate databases. They’re faxing blueprints. It’s a very manual process. With an iPhone app, they’ll have always-on access to everything that their prospective clients need. They can…flip through building portfolios, bring them up on a map, use a ‘Near Me’ functionality—the Loopt functionality—to see whether all their other agents are. Agents will have lease information at their fingertips, laser-measured blueprints that they can e-mail to clients right from their phone.”

Having access to Apple, their former client lists and a fresh new set of former Apple salespeople certainly gives Apperian a good start.

Yesterday’s news that a few heads were rolling in Apple Enterprise sales was probably a downer for those of us working on corporate Apple products.  The shift, however, in Apple’s Enterprise strategy is best explained by a questioner at the CIO Summit:

“With platforms like the Google phone and iPhone coming out, it’s really tough to continue to stand behind Windows Mobile when our employees are bringing these consumer devices into our environments,” the questioner explained. “And in your presentation you put Windows Mobile right in the center there, but it was a phone that doesn’t work in America and an operating system that you haven’t released. I’m wondering what your commitment is to continuing to get newer versions of the operating system in our hands so that we don’t have to fight this battle on the ground.”

Ballmer: "soon"

Just making the better consumer product sometimes works better than hiring salespeople for busting down corporate walls.

 

 

Apple updated its Time Capsule and Airport Extreme’s with some new features today.  It isn’t yet clear if this is a hardware update or software only – we’re looking into this.  Guest Sharing and Simultaneous dual-band support.   Update: Oh, and a biggie, Internet sharing your Airport hard drive.

From Apple:

Guest Sharing:

 

Simultaneous dual-band support

Some Wi-Fi devices use the 2.4GHz wireless band, including iPhone, iPod touch, and devices using 802.11b/g. Other devices can use either 2.4GHz or the higher-speed 5GHz band, such as the latest 802.11n-based Mac computers and Apple TV. Instead of choosing one of the bands, AirPort Extreme now operates simultaneously on both bands, and your multiband devices automatically use the best available band. This means all your Wi-Fi devices get the fastest possible wireless performance and the best possible range.