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25 January 2012
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Apple
Apple are expected to adopt the gigabit Wi-Fi standard much earlier than the spec will be fully ratified by the IEEE, similar to how they supported the draft versions of 802.11n before that was fully ratified. Their support for the new 802.11ac standard will most likely be due to chip-maker Broadcom, who already support the new standard in a few variations of their chips — chips that are used in most Apple products for Wi-Fi.
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24 January 2012
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Apple
As we start to see Thunderbolt devices trickle into the market, we start to see impressive Thunderbolt devices enter the market. The Apollo is one such peripheral from Universal Audio that is a high-resolution audio interface that's rackmountable and features classic analog sound. It's an incredibly impressive piece of hardware for audio professionals, that is best suited for studio-quality recordings.
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23 January 2012
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Apple
IBooks Author is a fantastic new piece of software from Apple that allows users to create interactive textbooks with ease, but its launch has been marred by licensing and format issues, report Ars Technica. More specifically, the EULA of iBooks Author seems to imply that people cannot sell their iBooks Author-produced work outside of the iBookstore — just like apps on iOS, produced using Xcode.
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20 January 2012
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Apple
Apple announced and released a few tools this morning as part of their education event that took place in New York, and one of them was the Mac portion of the iPad education revolution. IBooks Author allows users to create, edit, and publish their own multi-touch books for the iPad using web standards such as HTML5, JavaScript, and webGL, and the final products that can be produced are simply stunning.
Security analysts F-Secure has released statistics to do with malware on the Mac platform. F-Secure says the Mac faced 58 malware threats during the latter half of last year, and of those, roughly half were trojans, with between 10 and 12 occurrences of malware every month.
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20 January 2012
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Apple
AppleInsider describes a patent by Apple that details how episodic TV content could be used in a new Apple TV. The patent, which credits Steve Jobs as the inventor, describes how episodic content could be organised according to metadata, and also the display of that content in a user interface similar to the multi-level system of the current Apple TV.
Inside Apple is an upcoming book which attempts to detail the secrets behind one of the most secretive companies of our time. Audhor Adam Lashinky also tells the story of an Apple executive named Scott Forstall, who, he says, could be poised to become the next CEO of Apple after Tim Cook.
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18 January 2012
Posted in
Apple
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17 January 2012
Posted in
Apple
The past week or so has been a huge week in terms of Apple product birthdays and anniversaries, and this week seems to be no exception. The MacBook Air turned four just the other day, the ultraportable machine that was announced at Steve Jobs' last Macworld appearance and the penultimate Macworld Apple would actually attend. This is truly one of the times we can say Apple was ahead of the competition by four years — only now have competitors' ultrabook machines started to catch up.
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17 January 2012
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Apple
As a part of Apple's continued push towards greener electronics, a company called Volex is making the move to halogen-free power cables. Apple is currently Volex's biggest company, and Volex supplies Apple with USB and power cables. The switch to halogen-free cables is reported to cost around $6 million, but these are one-time costs and Volex is otherwise confident that profits this year will meet expectations.
There's an Apple education event happening in New York in a few days, and Macworld has compiled some speculation as to what will be announced. Dan Moren and Lex Friedman think the event will be all about enhancing the pre-existing iBooks offering, perhaps by making it available on the Mac — or even spruce up iWork for Mac a little more. Only time will tell.
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13 January 2012
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Apple
Apple has confirmed their education event in New York, as reported by Ars Technica. Details are pretty scarce about what the event will actually be about, but all signs point to an improved iBooks platform — perhaps even some sort of self-publishing or other education-related deal, such as the availability of textbooks. Alternatively, the EPUB 3 standard could also play a part, allowing educators to showcase books that contain much more multimedia than we've previously experienced.
Apple has also made official their acquisition of Anobit, the Israeli flash memory company that manufacturers and produces flash memory. Just as the rumour blogs said, Apple paid roughly $390 for Anobit in a deal that reportedly wasn't finalised until earlier in the month.
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12 January 2012
Posted in
Apple
The Mac lineup has been equipped with Thunderbolt for about a year now, and we're finally starting to see Thunderbolt products. Many of these Thunderbolt products aimed at consumers (as opposed to professional video editors or those with incredible storage needs) are coming out of CES, where companies like Elgato, LaCie, and OCZ have unveiled storage options that all feature Thunderbolt; particularly interesting is Elgato, who are probably more well-known for the TV tuning products.
A Lightroom 4 beta has been unveiled by Adobe, who have also made it available for the public at no cost. The free public beta for Lightroom 4 runs until sometime in "early 2012", when the full version will be released. Changes include a slew of new editing tools, support for GPS locations in photos, as well as soft-proofing and the ability to create photobooks — all features Aperture has had for a while now.