Macintosh

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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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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It wasn’t talked about much but it is an often requested feature (and might have made it into a few jailbreak apps if I am not mistaken): The iPhone’s LED flash will now light up on incoming calls and alerts.  Obviously, only if you choose.

It is good to see Apple working their way through these often requested and jailbroken type features.

Thanks Mime454!
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Apple looks like it is tightening its grip on the “App” and “Mac” naming rights area.  Last month, it forced App4mac to change its name.  Sure Apple is now in the Mac Apps game but the company in question is six years old and named itself App4Mac two years before iOS turned Applications into apps.  Patrice Calligaris, CEO writes to tell us:

On May 6, we received this letter from Apple lawyers. On June 1st, our company become adnX.com.  Before we were app4mac.com during six years and it has never been a problem.

We complied only for the first case as other two cases are silly. We fixed the graphics that they did not like.

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The laptop mods keep coming but this one might be our favorite so far.

The new Crux Case Loaded comes with an extra battery and working bluetooth trackpad and will be available in July for $250. Older models without are a somewhat more reasonable $150.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/16274294 w=670&h=377]

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With five days to go before WWDC, Apple now is the official registrant behind iCloud.com. It appears that there may just be some live iCloud demos in store (shocking, we know). Also, it explains why Apple had to go public about the iCloud.com – the domain registration would have went public beforehand anyhow

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Apple dropped prices on current MacBook Air refurbs last night so that the base model now starts at just $829.  That’s $30 lower than yesterday and could mean Apple’s clearing some inventory out for a refresh, perhaps as soon as WWDC.  Or, perhaps not.

Thanks Jay!
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Today only, MacUpdate has FX Studio Pro for $19.99.  That’s half off of retail and the lowest price we’ve ever seen for this powerful post-processing photo editor for both professional photographers and amateurs.

We reviewed FX Studio Pro for Mac here last week.  It is on the Mac App Store for $40.
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An Apple Store Manager relayed to us that the new iPad 2 displays are able to turn into “normal iPads” with a few swipes in secret combination.  To find out if true, I went to the Soho store and tried it out.  Yep, it works.  The button still doesn’t work so it is easy to get yourself stuck – like in Email Setup below:

I’m not going to post the gesture combination unless it hits the web but it does exist and Store managers know it.

Anyway, the moral of the story: Those are normal iPad 2s under the glass, even though they have different part numbers.
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If you’ve ever used Google Apps, you’ve seen what kind of power a collaborative, cross-platform word processor can have.  Today’s Apple iWork.com Web applications fall far short (though they look much prettier) in terms of functionality.  But don’t fret Apple fans!  Patently Apple today shows that Apple is heading Pages toward that same Cloud experience.

While it may or may not be “breakthrough” Apple clearly has plans to put its Pages App/Application into the Cloud.  The sooner (WWDC?), the better.

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We’re getting tips from our retail friends in the South Pacific that Snow Leopard boxes are running short and the channel inventory is drying up.  Apple resellers are literally unable to ge their hands on stock of Snow Leopard boxes.

Even Apple’s website is showing a week’s wait in both Australia and New Zealand.  These types of sporadic delays, which are frequently temporary, are usually an indication that the supply channel is changing and the boxes are no longer being made.

Obviously, this could point to an upcoming Lion release as early as next month at Apple’s WWDC, if not sooner.  The latest build, Lion Preview 3,  has been largely stable and there have been signs that Apple could even demonstrate Lion in Apple Stores next week as part of their Apple Store 2.0 initiative.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

The lawyers contend that AT&T is overbilling for data and they’ve run tests to confirm the data overcharges. Tests include buying a new iPhone, turning everything that would use data off and letting it sit for two weeks. They contend that 35 different data charges occurred during that time.

AT&T contends that the iPhone uses data without the customer knowing. Recently, Apple’s collection of anonymous location data, and subsequent exchange of tower signal strength knowledge was brought into the spotlight. Perhaps that system is a data usage issue – even when data services are turned off.

It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.

(Flash issues? Hit up MSNBC via The Loop)

Update: This looks like an update to an earlier lawsuit reported in February (thanks Seb!)

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Image via Sean Percival

Our spidey sense has been tingling over the past few weeks on this “Late May, 10th anniversary meeting”  we’ve been hearing much about.  Today BGR lays the groundwork for such an event:

• There’s an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
• During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
• There are a wide variety of roles, we’re told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
• Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.
• Apple employees will be putting up black curtains at all stores so that people walking outside cannot see inside.
• Employees have had to download gigabytes of data from Apple corporate labeled, “training” in a password-protected zipped folder that won’t accessible to managers or anyone else until Saturday afternoon.
• Lastly, all Apple retail stores have mandatory meetings on Sunday, May 22nd. Most meeting are scheduled for the morning, but there are evening meetings as well.

Additionally, MacStories is reporting that the normal Sunday evening meeting has been moved to the morning.
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G-Form, a protective-wear company that is transitioning to iPad enclosures loves doing these stunts. In the video below, someone drops an iPad in their extreme sleeve out of an ultralight at 500 feet. The camera falls off but it looks like the iPad survives.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKNdknJI53Q?rel=0&hd=1&w=640&h=390]

Unfortunately they are only on pre-order.  The company promises to deliver on May 10th.
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As Apple transitions its line from NVIDIA graphics cards to AMD (and opens up the OS to much more variety), we’re noting some strong words coming out of each camp on who makes the fastest graphics card in the world.  On the 8th of this month, AMD announced it had released the fastest Graphics card on the market, the AMD Radeon HD 6990.

NVIDIA fired back this week and said they had the fastest Graphics card.  Now it is getting real.

Dave Erskine, Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD just fired this off:

We combed through their announcement to understand how it was that such a claim could be made and why there was no substantiation based on industry-standard benchmarks, similar to what AMD did with industry benchmark 3DMark 11, the latest DirectX® 11 benchmark from FutureMark.

So now I issue a challenge to our competitor: prove it, don’t just say it. Show us the substantiation. Because as it stands today, leading reviewers agree with us here, here, here, and here that the AMD Radeon HD 6990 sits on the top as the world’s fastest graphics card.

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Apple just issued a 4.2.1 update to AppleTV that is meant to fix a few nagging bugs:

4.2.1 Direct Download.
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An unknown portion of the latest MacBook Pros with Sandy Bridge processors and high-speed Thunderbolt connection appears to be affected by an issue where the computer has trouble maintaining connection with iOS devices, even with the latest iTunes 10.2.1 installed. And if more than 215 posts in a thread on Apple’s Discussion forums are an indication, numerous 2011 MacBook Pros are plagued with this issue.

From what we’ve hearing, it’s a software issue easily patched with an upcoming software update (10.6.7). Here’s what the affected owners are saying.

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Apple opened its Mac App Store yesterday, offering Mac users an easy way to pick up and install new software on up to five machines — but within hours hackers began claiming to have hacked store security.

The crack will not be available until February 2011, according to Hackulous member, Dissident:
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Apple has confounded industry watchers who expected the rumored noon launch time and the Mac App Store is available immediately, with over 1,000 apps available to download. Fire up Software Update and go grab it, people…(and read this while you wait). Update: No iWork 11, but you can get the individual apps and Aperture here. Press Release after the break.
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COMPUTERWORLD: We’ll see the reality in a few hours, but there’s already some insight into what to expect from Apple’s new Mac App Store when it opens at 12 (noon) Eastern today. Critically, it’s likely we’ll see iOS developers port their apps at App Store prices, while existing Mac developers attempt to maintain classic pricing levels. (Image above is the holding page, thx to RFly.)

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According to Setteb.it, Apple will have its Q1 2011 conference call on January 18th.  Tune in here to find out how many Macs and  iOS devices Apple sold during the holiday and perhaps we’ll get another cameo by CEO Steve Jobs.
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