Next-Generation iMac With SD Slot, Quad-Core, Possible Xeon
French site Mac4Ever reported [Google translation] earlier this week that it had received a number of tips from sources regarding Apple’s upcoming product plans. Among the most near-term topics of interest is the iMac, which has been rumored by several sources to be seeing a refresh in the very near future.
While details of the update have been scarce, Mac4Ever’s sources point to the inclusion of an SD card reader, as found in the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro, and the use of quad-core processors, which conflicts with a subsequent report claiming that the new iMac will continue to use dual-core processors. Interestingly, one of the sources also spoke of the inclusion of Xeon processors, which would presumably only be used in high-end configurations if the information proves accurate.
Mac4Ever’s sources have also reported a number of other tidbits about Apple’s product pipeline for the next few months, including a new 100% touch-enabled mouse capable of advanced mouse functions, as well as a new aluminum Apple Remote. Other claims include a continued shift of Apple’s software to 64-bit and optimization for Snow Leopard, as well as the much-rumored tablet, which sources vaguely claim will be very different from concepts that have appeared on rumor sites thus far.
Using Home Sharing in iTunes 9
Home Sharing is one of the fantastic new features in iTunes 9, and one that slipped between the cracks in our coverage in the days after the software was released. Sang Tang showed us how to use FireWire to speed up transfers over your network, but this is a basic overview of how Home Sharing works and how you can use it to easily share media files to different computers in your household.
This video was made using the new screen recording option in QuickTime X, which proved to be extremely easy and useful.
Push Gmail arrives for iPhone
The Google Mobile team has announced a new enhancement that fills in a major gap in its Google Sync feature that enabled over-the-air, push syncing of contacts and calendars to mobile devices earlier this year. It now supports push e-mail for both iPhone OS and Windows Mobile-based devices.
When we first looked at Google Sync, we noted the odd lack of push e-mail capability. Google Sync uses Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync protocol to enable syncing of contact information, multiple calendars, and now e-mail from your Gmail account—effectively addressing the one major criticism of the service and the most requested feature from users.
Since this works via the iPhone’s native support for ActiveSync, setting yours up to use Google Sync will obliterate any previous Exchange account, so keep this limitation in mind. However, for those who don’t need to sync other Exchange-based account (e.g. for work) and don’t need all the additional features of MobileMe (e.g. iDisk or Gallery), a Gmail account with Google Sync is a nice OTA syncing alternative.
Windows Mobile users also gain push e-mail as well. However, push Gmail doesn’t work with Blackberry, Nokia S60, or other mobile devices also supported by Google Sync.
Snow Leopard Review
Sneaking in a few days before its promised September release, the tune-up for Mac OS X Leopard costs $29 for current Leopard users, and packs just enough punch to be worth your money. Apple is careful to point out that Snow Leopard isn’t a complete system overhaul, but rather a collection of hundreds of smaller refinements to make Leopard run more gracefully. Hidden among smaller tweaks are some technical improvements that result in a smoother, easier-to-use Leopard with plenty for Mac fans to be excited about. The user interface and everyday tasks feel faster in general, although we didn’t notice a substantive improvement in application performance.
Even if you’re not a current Leopard user, the $169 package that includes Snow Leopard, iLife, and iWork is a steal for the system upgrade and two of Apple’s major software suites, not to mention the long-pined-after inclusion of Microsoft Exchange compatibility. Finally you will be able to connect with Exchange Servers (without using Microsoft’s Entourage), but only if your company is using Microsoft Exchange 2007; many still aren’t. Snow Leopard is offered on a single install disk–there are no separate, tiered pricing structures to worry about–and you’re getting every feature and technical enhancement available in a single install. Unfortunately, for those on PowerPC systems, Snow Leopard only works with Intel Macs.
Installation
Installation of Snow Leopard is dead simple and (according to Apple) up to 45 percent faster than Leopard using a newly designed installer that asks only one question during the process. On my test machine, the process took about an hour, including two automatic restarts. The default setting installs Snow Leopard without tampering with any of your saved files, music, photos, or documents. Mostly we had no problems, but on one test machine we needed to reinstall the OS when it had trouble rebooting. Fortunately the new installer is designed for safely reinstalling the OS in the event you encounter any hiccups during your initial installation. On my second try, the OS installed perfectly on our test machine and no files were harmed. PowerPC Macs are no longer supported with Snow Leopard, however; you will need an Intel-based Mac to install the latest Mac OS.
Those who want to do a “Clean Install” (starting fresh by deleting everything for minimal conflicts) still can, but unlike installations in previous versions of previous Mac OS X that offered the clean install as a primary option, you’ll need to use Disk Utility to first erase the volume, then run the install. Apple explained to us that not everyone knows what a clean install is and often chose it, not knowing that they would lose their files. We’re happy with that answer, as long as people still get the option in some form.
Apple also claims that Snow Leopard uses 7GB less space than Leopard because of better file compression paired with selective driver inclusion. According to Apple, Snow Leopard will locate any missing drivers on the Web for you. I had no need of any special drivers during our tests.
New technologies
Apple says a few new technologies in Snow Leopard make it worthy of the upgrade alone, with several features that Apple says will boost performance. Because all new Macs come with 64-bit multicore processors, multiple GBs of RAM, and high-powered graphics processing units, all the major applications in Snow Leopard–including the Finder–have been rewritten in 64-bit to take full advantage of the hardware. (The 64-bit technology allows application developers to allocate more memory to complete tasks so that the software runs faster and more smoothly.)
Apple has also added what it calls the Grand Central Dispatch that manages data sent to multicore processors in an effort to maximize performance; Apple says the GCD will speed up any application task, from processing images in Photoshop to playing your favorite games. The addition of the GCD also takes away the need for software developers to spend as much time managing multicore processors.
Another new technology in Snow Leopard is OpenCL, which allows software developers to tap into the power of any onboard video cards (or GPUs, for graphics processing units) for general-purpose computing without the addition of enormous amounts of code. Like the GCD, these are improvements that will mainly affect software developers. But hopefully it will mean more and better-performing software for users in the future.
To put some of these claims to the test, I decided to pit Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard against Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to see how these new technologies affected overall performance.
In our anecdotal tests of performance within the Snow Leopard user interface (UI), the operating system seems faster and more responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks, Expose, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn’t, however, notice any improvement in application performance.
Overall, we saw only a 2.5 percent slowdown in application performance from Leopard to Snow Leopard on our more processor-intensive performance tests, including our multimedia multitasking test, in which we measure the time for QuickTime to finish converting a short movie while iTunes is performing its own conversion of MP3 into AAC format in the background simultaneously. As this falls within our typical margin of error (5 percent), we saw no significant difference with application performance when moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
New features
Expose
Snow Leopard includes a number of user UI improvements intended to make working with Mac OS X easier and more efficient. Expose, Apple’s system for visually finding the window you want on a cluttered desktop, used to be relegated to the Function keys on your keyboard. Snow Leopard now makes Expose accessible from the Dock; just click and hold on a Dock icon to see thumbnails of all the open windows in that application. Hitting the Tab key lets you cycle through the preview thumbnails of each open application. Using Expose in the Dock is very natural and elegant, making us wonder why this wasn’t already a feature in Leopard.
The Dock
In addition to using Expose to find the right window, you now also have the ability to drag files from one application to another using the Dock. Let’s say you want to add an image to an e-mail, but your desktop is full of open windows. In Snow Leopard you can go to the image, drag it to the Mail icon in the Dock, and your e-mail window will spring-load, allowing you to drop the image into place. Though the ability to drag and drop files in this fashion is nice, we’re not sure it’s much easier than attaching an image by browsing through your folders. Still, if you know the image is already on your desktop, it’s probably the faster method.
Stacks
Stacks got a much-needed upgrade as well. In Leopard, Stacks only listed a certain number of files and applications requiring you to go to a Finder window if your app wasn’t listed. Similarly, if you tried to open a folder in Stacks, you were sent to the Finder. In Snow Leopard, Stacks comes with a scroll bar so icons are still easy to read and anything can be launched out of the Dock. Folders are now accessible within Stacks as well, so you’ll be able to navigate to files within folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changes make Stacks much more useful than before and probably should have been available when Stacks was introduced.
The Finder
While the Finder itself saw little in the way of interface tweaks, the way files behave in the Finder makes it easier to use. A zoom slider has been added to the lower right of Finder windows so you can zoom in on icons. An enhanced icon view has been added, letting you preview multipage documents and even play QuickTime movies without ever leaving the Finder window.
Preview now lets you preview almost any file, even if it was created with software you don’t have on your hard drive. This means common file types from Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and even PDF files can all be previewed without owning the programs they were created in. As an added bonus, Preview in Snow Leopard provides accurate text selection to multicolumn PDF files using artificial intelligence to infer the layout of each page. This means that Preview recognizes that there are multiple columns in your document so you can select the text you want from any column.
Safari 4
Safari 4 has been widely available for some time, but it offers a couple of new features when running in Snow Leopard. Safari 4 already includes Top Sites for viewing all your favorite sites as thumbnails for easy access and full history search, which lets you view your history in a Cover Flow-like interface. But in Snow Leopard, Safari is now crash resistant. This means that if a plug-in crashes, it won’t crash the whole browser. Simply refresh the page to try to load the plug-in again. Also, Safari checks to see if a site you are visiting is known to be fraudulent, is distributing malware, or is known to be a phishing site, and then warns you if it is.
Exchange support
One of the main roadblocks for Mac users in a primarily Windows workplace was the inability to connect with Microsoft Exchange servers. Most Mac users used Microsoft Entourage or available open-source options as a work-around, but it was never as smooth as connecting from a Windows machine with Microsoft Office. Snow Leopard now supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 out of the box so you can easily connect using Apple’s Mail app, grab global address lists in the Address Book, and create meetings with contacts using iCal.
Apple did more than simply give you the ability to connect, however. Common tasks like creating meetings, for example, are incredibly easy with intuitive controls. iCal lets you view work events and personal activities all in the same window (with easy controls to include or not include the information you want). The Apple Address Book works seamlessly across Mail and iCal so you can quickly bring up global address lists, add people to a meeting (including predesigned groups), and invitations will automatically be sent to each attendee. As an added bonus, if some attendees have scheduling conflicts with your proposed meeting time, iCal will automatically figure out the earliest available time that everyone is free. These are features already available in Microsoft’s Outlook for Windows, but in Snow Leopard the process feels much more intuitive.
File Quarantine
According to Apple, File Quarantine has also been refined in Snow Leopard. First introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, File Quarantine checks for known malware signatures, and in Snow Leopard, will now display an alert dialog if it finds a known offender. The dialog will tell users to move the offending file to the Trash. For example, a bogus version of iWork circulated on the Web a few months ago that contained malware. That particular malware is now automatically detected by File Quarantine in Snow Leopard.
Apple says that File Quarantine will be automatically updated via Mac OS X’s software update as new malware signatures are found in the wild. We had no way to test these features, but we are happy to see that Apple is taking strides to defend against malware as more people switch to Macs and the danger of new malware becomes more prevalent.
Universal access
Beginning with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple included VoiceOver to help people who are blind or with impaired vision to better understand and interact with what is happening onscreen. Apple continues to help visually impaired users in Snow Leopard by adding gesture support on multitouch trackpads with easy-to-learn gestures to perform specific functions. We had mixed results with these features depending on the Web page we visited, but mostly we found the features to be useful. The trackpad acts as the viewable area on the current window so you can tap to have Window elements explained to you or swipe to move on to the next item in the window, for example. New features in Snow Leopard are particularly helpful when Web browsing, with options like Web page summaries to explain the various elements on a Web page you haven’t visited before, making it easier to get the information you want.
More than 40 different Braille displays (including wireless Bluetooth displays) are supported in Snow Leopard right out of the box, allowing visually impaired users to plug in and start computing immediately.
Other refinements
Some of the smaller refinements in Snow Leopard are worthy of note, affecting many of Apple’s core apps. iChat is now compatible with more routers, making video chat accessible to a wider range of users, and iChat Theater now offers 640×480 resolution, using only one-third the bandwidth it used before. New Chinese character input via the trackpad predicts which characters you’re creating and offers likely subsequent characters to speed up the process. A new text substitution feature in applications like iChat, Mail, and TextEdit lets you create shortcuts for phrases you use frequently. The Services menu in Snow Leopard has been rewritten to include only the services relevant to the application or content you’re viewing. Core Location technology locates nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to find your location and automatically resets your time zone so wherever you are in the world, your Mac will be set to the correct time. While all of these are small refinements, each make your Mac easier to use with smart features not found in other operating systems.
Conclusions
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not a complete system overhaul and is instead a refinement of the current Leopard OS–some have gone so far as to call it a “service pack.” We think the interface tweaks to Expose, Stacks, the Finder, Mail, and iCal make Snow Leopard more than just a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price. We don’t like that PowerPC users are unable to use Snow Leopard, but we understand that after three years with Intel, Apple is making a decision to continue moving forward with this technology.
The largest of the feature enhancements are probably reason enough for Intel Mac users to spend the money on Snow Leopard. Added enhancements such as video, audio, and screen recording in QuickTime X were once only available to those who purchased QuickTime Pro (which was about $30–the same as this system upgrade). But the killer feature addition for Snow Leopard might be Exchange support out of the box–not even Windows 7 comes with Microsoft Exchange support without buying Microsoft Office.
Overall, we think that Snow Leopard did almost everything Apple says it set out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to make it easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday use, many of our tests indicate it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support.
Keep checking back for more on Snow Leopard.
OS X 10.6.1 leaks out
World of Apple posts the seed notes from the first Mac OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update that has begun seeding to a limited audience. The 71.5 MB update details these changes:
The 10.6.1 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:
- compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
- an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
- some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
- an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
- instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
- an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
- Motion 4 becoming unresponsive
Snow Leopard was officially launched on August 28th. Apple typically continues non-stop development after the initial launch of a major operating system to quickly address remaining bugs and outstanding issues.
At&t “iPhone MMS September 25″
AT&T has issued a press release today announcing that MMS will become active for iPhone users on September 25.
We’ve been working for the past several months to prepare our systems and network to ensure the best possible experience with MMS when it launches – and that launch date is: September 25 for iPhone 3G and 3GS customers. MMS will be enabled through a software update on that day.
AT&T points to the need for the company to build out its network infrastructure to handle the demands of heavy MMS messaging volumes as the primary reason for the delay in launching the service compared to carriers in other countries that have offered MMS since the launch of iPhone OS 3.0 in June.
As announced in June, MMS messaging will be included at no additional cost to users with an iPhone text messaging plan.
There has been much speculation on the availability of MMS from AT&T, some with dubious origins. Next week’s Apple media event had been the subject of some speculation as a possible venue for AT&T to launch MMS, which was first promised at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June, though today’s news has put all such rumors to bed.
Apple board meeting next week to discuss empty seat
As of late, the search giant Google has announced a number of products that directly compete with some of the equivalents that the company Apple offers. The Android smartphone is a competitor to Apple’s iPhone, the Chrome browser competes with safari and the recent announcement of Chrome OS would put a new rival in the same market as Apple’s OS X. Competition is, of course, a very good thing (particularly for consumers), but what happens if the CEO for one company is on the board of directors of the other? That’s what the legal authorities wanted to know, and recently Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, stepped down from his place on the aforementioned board, leaving an empty space. This isn’t ideal for a company, so now Apple’s directors will get together and discuss the situation, in a meeting which normally wouldn’t happen as they usually meet about four times a year.
Officially, this hasn’t fully been confirmed; it was revealed in a Wall Street Journal with the usual ’source’, but it makes a lot of sense. Currently, the board of directors is seven strong, including Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, and former Vice President Al Gore. The Cupertino-based company tends to keep board numbers between seven and eight, though it can be anywhere from five to nine if desired. The company has been criticized for its strong dependance on Jobs, with David Nadler (who is a corporate governance specialist with Oliver Wyman Consulting) saying, “The biggest danger is that the board will be unable to truly take the perspective of the shareholder and will feel beholden to the CEO or unwilling to confront the CEO.”
Some people (and websites such as AppleInsider) expect that the replacement will be Apple’s COO Tim Cook, who plays a huge role in the operations of the company. He took over the helm when Jobs took a brief stint away from the company due to health complications, so he would make a fine member of the board. Either way, there’s bound to be an announcement soon, providing the rumor is true.
Backlash, what backlash, iPhone 3GS customers are happier than pigs in mud
With all the Apple-bashing lately, you’d think that iPhone users—typically a satisfied lot—might be a little less thrilled with their chosen smartphone. Not so, according to a new survey by RBC/IQ ChangeWave. The market researcher polled iPhone 3GS owners and found that an astounding 99 percent of 200 respondents were satisfied with the device. And 82 percent said they were “very satisfied” with the 3GS.
That’s not a backlash, that’s love fest.
The survey results, first reported by Apple Insider, show a disconnect between the average consumer’s affection for the iPhone and the griping from industry insiders and some software developers about Apple’s admittedly heavy-handed tactics, including its rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app, ostensibly to protect AT&T, the iPhone’s exclusive U.S. carrier.
However, while iPhone 3GS owners may be crazy about their handsets, they’re not thrilled with AT&T, which they’ve slammed for charging hefty fees while delivering mediocre-to-poor service.
When asked what they disliked about the iPhone, 55 percent of respondents said the AT&T network. Other turnoffs: 41 percent reported the iPhone 3GS’s battery life was too short; and 8 percent complained that their employer’s IT department doesn’t support the device.
The 3GS did better than the last two versions of the iPhone, which earned favorable reviews from 73 percent of respondents.
Some industry analysts have opined that the Apple backlash has been blown out of proportion. The results of the RBC/IQ ChangeWave survey certainly lend credence to that argument.
Originally appeared on PCWorld.com
iPod Touch camera may be real after all
Well it turns out that the iPod touch with a camera may not be BS after all.
Photo courtesy of Engadget.com
iPod photos fake..
After seeing some high res versions of these pics, we think we can safely rule out the JPG artifacting as the tell-tale sign that these are fake. You know what we can’t rule out? The really bad looking Photoshop work around the lens.
