Archives for July, 2010

The iMac and Mac pro lines have both been updated:

Mac Pro

Under the tag line “Mac. To the power of 12.”, the Mac pro line receives better standard graphics; new Solid State Drive (SSD) flash storage options and an option for 12 processing cores!

• Mac. To the power of 12.

Available in August. Standard configurations are Quad-Core for $2499 and 8-Code for $3299. The 12 core option is provided by upgrading to two 6-core Intel Xeon X5670 processors.

iMacs

The iMac line receives an upgrade to the Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 processors and a higher performance graphics chip.

• The ultimate all-in-one. Turbocharged.

The new iMac models are available now.

In an interesting and fairly unexpected announcement, Apple is now selling a Bluetooth track pad designed to be used with desktop machines!

• Apple: Magic Trackpad

Price is $69.

Why should notebooks have all the fun?

Desktop users, your time has come. The new Magic Trackpad is the first Multi-Touch trackpad designed to work with your Mac desktop computer. It uses the same Multi-Touch technology you love on the MacBook Pro. And it supports a full set of gestures, giving you a whole new way to control and interact with what’s on your screen. Swiping through pages online feels just like flipping through pages in a book or magazine. And inertial scrolling makes moving up and down a page more natural than ever. Magic Trackpad connects to your Mac via Bluetooth wireless technology. Use it in place of a mouse or in conjunction with one on any Mac computer — even a notebook.

And to keep it in batteries you can now buy the Apple Battery Charger.

The Library of Congress has announced exemptions to the (in)famous Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that allow iPhone, iPod touch and iPad owners to legally jailbreak their devices.

• The Library of Congress Statement
• USA Today: Library of Congress authorizes a jailbreak for iPhone and cell phone users
• Yahoo News: New gov’t rules allow unapproved iPhone apps
• ars technica: Apple loses big in DRM ruling: jailbreaks are “fair use”
• It’s legal to jailbreak iPhone, but it voids warranty

Other exemptions involving fair use of DVD content, video games and hardware “dongles” are also included. Understand that while this means it is legally permissible to jailbreak one of your devices that does not mean that Apple has to condone or support it. In other words, don’t expect your warranty to survive your jailbreak efforts.

A Taiwanese News program presents quite possibly the best overall explanation of the iPhone 4 issues you’ll find anywhere:

• Reality distortion field remains strong with Steve Jobs after antennagate

There are no subtitles but I think the animations speak quite clearly for themselves.

Bonus points to the first person who spots the Monty Python reference.

Apple has released minor updates for the current iPhone, iPod touch and iPad OS releases. After installing these updates iOS 4.0 becomes version 4.0.1 and iPad OS 3.2 becomes version 3.2.1.

iOS version 4.0.1 contains “bug fixes and improvements including the following: Improves the formula to determine how many bars of signal strength to display.”

The iPad OS 3.2.1 includes: “Improved wi-fi connectivity; Fixed an issue that could prevent copy and paste of single page PDF attachments in Mail; Addresses an issue that could cause video playback to freeze; Improved reliability of video-out when using iPad Dock connector to VGA Adapter; Added Bing as an option for Safari’s search field.”

The updates are installed via iTunes. Connect the device to be updated, launch iTunes, select the device in the left column, then click the Update button on the Summary page. It’s probably also a good idea to perform a Sync before applying the update.