In the last 24 hours Apple has posted two separate EFI firmware updates for Thunderbolt-equipped Macs and a software update that provides support for the new Apple Thunderbolt Display. All are available for download from Apple’s Support Downloads Web page.
This update enables Lion Internet Recovery which starts Lion Recovery directly from Apple servers over a broadband Internet connection if the built-in recovery is unavailable. It also includes fixes that resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on MacBook Pro (early 2011) models.
This update includes fixes that enhance the stability of Lion Recovery from an Internet connection, and resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance on Mac Mini (mid 2011) models.
Thunderbolt Software Update “provides support for the Apple Thunderbolt Display and bug fixes for Thunderbolt device compatibility,” according to Apple.
According to Mark Larson, technical manager at Boeing’s Dreamliner Gallery, all 787s now in production will be fitted with Android-based servers and touchscreens.
The Android systems will be used for in-flight entertainment systems throughout first class and coach seating on the giant airliner, according to the report. Panasonic has built Android touchscreens certified for use by Boeing in the 787s.
The report says that “Boeing’s decision effectively locks out Apple [and others]” from being installed on the 787. Not such a big deal, considering how many of the 787’s passengers are likely to be carrying iOS devices anyway.
Feral Interactive on Thursday announced plans to publish a Mac version of Batman: Arkham Asylum on Thursday, October 13, 2011. The game will cost $39.99 and will be available on retail shelves and for online download.
Batman: Arkham Asylum takes the Caped Crusader inside Gotham’s hospital for the criminally insane, where the Joker has taken over and has set traps for Batman, conspiring with the other deranged inmates at the facility.
Players use Batman’s stealth, strength and psychological terror to overcome opponents as he squares off against some of Gotham’s worst criminals, including Harley Quinn, Bane, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow.
The game features a story penned by Paul Dini, Batman writer and Emmy Award winner. It also sports the voice talents of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy, who reprise their roles as The Joker and Batman from the animated TV series.
System requirements call for a 2.0GHz or faster Intel-based Mac with at least 2GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.6 or later. Nvidia 7xxx series, ATI 1×00 and Intel GMA graphics chips are not supported.
Last weekend, Stevie Wonder made a special appearance at a nightclub in Los Angeles, ad-libbing to his songs, playing some other tracks but also taking some time to stop the music to give a speech on helping others with disabilities.At around the 4:38 mark in the video embedded above, Stevie Wonder takes time to thank Steve Jobs and Apple for how they made technology accessible for everyone…
Netflix, which instituted a price hike earlier this fall, says the higher costs are turning off more customers than it expected. The video rental company has cut its third quarter U.S. subscriber projections from 25 million subscribers to 24 million, a four percent cut. The majority of the shrinkage, Netflix says, will come from its DVD-only customers.
Well, Windows on a diet running alone in 2 GB sounds reasonable. Windows plus one non-bloatware application running in 2 GB, maybe. Windows multitasking a half-dozen apps, some of them legacy Windows applications like Outlook, Excel or Photoshop, and a browser with ten open tabs? Good luck with that. It won’t matter that the user can switch between the Metro UI and mobile apps, and something resembling Windows 7 and desktop apps, because it all has to fit in a RAM store that remains cost-competitive with a tablet.
Arrington took issue with a story and posted in the TechCrunch forums:
Erick, I’m still an AOL employee through tomorrow (15th). Also, as you know I had significant input into this list of finalists and spoke to Heather [Techcrunch CEO] for over an hour last night about them. My final list is somewhat different from this one, though, but we agree on four of the companies.Please be careful making statements on my behalf. And remember that reader trust is what matters. You shouldn’t say ‘he was not involved in the final selection of these companies’ just because it sounds nice. Since it isn’t true, you shouldn’t say it at all.Also, going forward, I don’t know if I’ll be disclosing our investments to TechCrunch.
On the PlayBook tablet, Blair’s opinion is even more dour. “Last quarter RIM talked about shipping 500,000 units but did not speak of sell-through for obvious reasons,” the analyst wrote in a note to investors on Wednesday. “Channel fill could turn up another decent shipment number this year in the 500,000 – 700,000 unit range but we believe sell-through has been weak enough that that number will trend down over the year and RIM will likely send the PlayBook into the same graveyard as the HP TouchPad.”
If they would have put out a decent product to begin with, they wouldn’t be in this trouble.
According to the filing, Google increased its bid for Motorola by 33 percent in one day, bringing the purchase price up by $3 billion. This was without Motorola entertaining bids from other companies. The filing also says that Google first initiated talks with Motorola in July with regards to patent issues facing Android, and those talks quickly escalated to a plan to acquire the company.
Google didn’t want to mess around – it wanted Motorola Mobility and its patents, and was willing to do whatever it took to seal the deal quickly.
In an interview with Japanese news organization Nikkei (translated by Andriasang), Nintendo president Satoru Iwata reiterated the company’s stance on creating games for smartphones.“This is absolutely not under consideration,” Iwata definitively replied when asked about Nintendo possibly making smartphone games.
Iwata is resolute and unambiguous – as long as he’s in charge, Nintendo supporting non-Nintendo platforms is off the table.
Earlier this year news sites buzzed when an analyst told his investors he thought Nintendo should start making games for smartphones. The news came a month after The Pokemon Co. announced a rhythm matching game featuring Pokemon characters for iOS, which some news sites conflated as Nintendo making a Pokemon iPhone game. (That game was released in Japan, but hasn’t been seen anywhere else.)
LeVar Burton, a children’s literacy advocate and a former star of Star Trek: The Next Generation, plans to make an ambitious comeback, giving the once-loved Reading Rainbow brand a 21st-century upgrade. Burton’s for-profit venture, RRKidz, plans to launch an educational iPad app that lets children explore topics of interest–such as, say space–in a multimedia-rich environment, with voice-over-enhanced children’s books, familiar videos of Burton at real-life places (like NASA), and, of course, games. Burton tells Fast Company he’s on a mission to “get kids hooked on books,” and says his company is “going to where kids are today; those devices that they love to spend time on.”
Anything that improves childhood literacy is okay in my book, if you’ll pardon the pun. Burton’s Reading Rainbow helped get a generation of kids excited about reading; let’s hope that RRKidz has the same effect.
Now you can quickly and easily convert your iWeb blog to a WordPress blog. Simply export your iWeb website to a Local folder and import it into iWeb to WordPress. In just minutes you will get all of your blog posts and comments into WordPress.
VMware on Wednesday released Fusion 4, the company’s virtualization software, allowing users to run other operating systems on their Macs.
Fusion 4 is a 64-bit Cocoa application, built with Apple’s new OS X Lion in mind. You can add Windows applications to LaunchPad, experience them in Mission Control, view them in full screen or switch between them using Mac gestures.
VMware said Fusion is also optimized for today’s multi-core Macs and delivers 3D graphics up to 2.5-times faster than previous versions.
Fusion 4 now supports OS X Lion in a virtual machine, so you can run OS X Lion, OS X Lion Server, Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server and Mac OS X Leopard Server in virtual machines.
Pat Lee, director of client product management at VMware, pointed out in an interview with The Loop that having the ability to run OS X in Fusion is a great way to test Mac apps, or different setups, without affecting your working machine.
“A big part of Fusion users are switchers that want to run the apps that they still need,” said Lee. “We want to make that easy.”
VMware Fusion 4 is available until the end of the year for $49.99. Customers who have purchased Fusion 3 on or after the July 20, 2011 are eligible for an electronic upgrade to Fusion 4 at no additional cost.
Fusion will not be available from the Mac App Store, but can be purchased from VMware.
Apple and Google are dragging their feet to assist with the Macrosolve and Lodsys patent bullying of small businesses, entrepeneurs, and developers. Without Apple’s and Google’s assistance, the app development community is vulnerable to the strategic attacks made by these companies. Since no Union for developers exists, individual developers are defenseless to the financial and legal bullying brought on by Lodsys and Macrosolve. Small companies and developers cannot afford to invalidate the patents claims made by Macrosolve and Lodsys.
The anonymous person behind the protest suggest developers should pull their apps from the App Store and Android Market.
It’s one thing to look at today’s Windows-8-on-a-tablet and say that it has a lot of potential. It’s another thing altogether to look at it and declare victory.
Exactly right. Windows writers are claiming victory over one of the most popular consumer electronics we’ve seen in years, all based on a half-baked demo from Microsoft.
“If we’re going to be totally honest though, we’d describe Windows 8 right now as incoherent and contradictory.”
In fact, Apple bloggers were apparently so flustered by the platform that they resorted to bombarding Twitter with jokes about cooling fans and Silverlight instead of stopping for a moment to realize that Microsoft is showing us the future of computing.
Like most people, I was shocked with the stupidity of putting a fan in a tablet. I wasn’t flustered, I was laughing my ass off. That’s why I made the joke about needing a fan. If a tablet has noticeable fan noise and heat, you lose.
“However, fan noise is very noticeable, as is the heat coming out of the top vent.”
Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8.
There’s an assumption that Apple’s in the same race as Microsoft. Apple developed the course, the rules and the vehicles. Microsoft is along for the ride at this point.
A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop.
Microsoft is trying to have it both ways.
We are not living in a “post-PC” era today any more than we were on January 26th, 2010, the day before Apple unveiled the magical iPad.
Of course we are. Apple outlined its vision for what will follow the traditional computer and it is the iPad. Millions of sales later and we have the start to a post-PC era.
At that point in time, Apple will be able to offer a computing solution that is infinitely more versatile and capable than the company’s current solutions. A solution like Windows 8.
I just threw up in my mouth.
If the iPad ushered in the post-PC era, then welcome to the post-post-PC era.
The iPad ushered in an era. It’s an era that Microsoft is trying to build on and that’s great for them, but you can’t say that another era has started based on the preview of a product.
When Windows 8 is released and millions of people choose that over the iPad, then you can safely say that Microsoft ushered in something — until then, they have nothing.
In an effort to edge in on MetroPCS and Sprint-owned Boost and Virgin Mobile, Verizon Wireless will introduce a brand new $50 monthly prepaid this week that includes unlimited text, talk and web. The new plan, which first launched back in April as “Unleashed” in limited markets, will be available to customers in Verizon stores, Walmart, Target and Best Buy.
Apple and Starbucks on Tuesday relaunched the partnership that saw the companies bring “Song of the Week” to customers. However, this new program is even bigger.
Dubbed “Pick of the Week,” the new program will include all types of content from iTunes, including including music, apps, TV episodes and books. Launching today is extended sample of Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus,” the first book to be featured in the program.
The book is available at all US Starbucks locations via free cards with download codes redeemable on the iBookstore.
The briefing reportedly told the sales team that Sprint will begin offering the iPhone 4 in October 2011 (next month) with standard Sprint data plans; they will include a $10 data smartphone premium that is not specific to iPhone.
Note that this is the iPhone 4, not the iPhone 5. The Sprint person said the iPhone 5 wouldn’t be coming until next year. Seems strange to me.
Apple has posted MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.1. The update is specifically for “mid-2011”-era MacBook Air models equipped with Thunderbolt high-speed I/O ports.
This update includes fixes that enhance the stability of Lion Recovery from an Internet connection, and resolve issues with Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode performance
If you’re running a different MacBook Air model, then you don’t need this update (and the installer won’t work anyway).
Philadelphia Media Network has announced an offer to customers interested in getting a digital subscription to the Phildelphia Inquirer: a deeply discounted tablet computer made by Arnova. The deal starts today and is limited to the first 5,000 subscribers, on a first-come, first-served basis.
The wireless tablet, the Arnova 10 G2, comes loaded with Android 2.3 “Gingerbread” and a variety of apps. The 10.1-inch tablet operates at 1024 x 600 pixel resolution and runs at 1GHz. It supports Flash and features an integrated webcam.
The tablet is $99 for customers who sign up for a two-year digital subscription to the Inquirer and Daily News, which costs $9.99 per month. Customers who choose a one-year subscription – which costs $12.99 per month – can get the tablet for $129 instead.
Madfinger Games announced Tuesday that Shadowgun is slated for a September 28 release. The game is a third-person tactical combat shooter featuring remarkable console-quality graphics.
Shadowgun is a futuristic shooter set in the year 2350. The game follows the adventures of a bounty hunter (or “shadowgun”) named John Slade, who’s tasked with hunting down a geneticist on the run from a giant corporation. Dr. Simon is holed up in a mountain fortress teeming with mutants, cyborgs and genetically-enhanced humanoids; Slade must fight his way in.
Shadowgun was developed using the Unity 3D game engine, which has its roots on the Mac, but is used to create games for other platforms including iOS, PC, consoles and the Web. The game has been previewed at major game shows like E3 and Gamescom.
Starting this week, 14-year-old Lexi Peters will be stick handling past men twice her size as she plays in the starting lineup for the Buffalo Sabres. Or the Vancouver Canucks. Or any NHL team the 90-pound left-winger chooses.Because when video game publisher Electronic Arts releases the latest edition of its popular NHL series on Tuesday, Lexi will be the first female in its virtual hockey roster.
The teenager wrote EA at the urging of her father to complain about the lack of a female option in the custom character creation mode. EA agreed, and went a step further: with her family’s permission, Lexi is now the default female character.
The report notes that while NHL is still purely a men’s league, women and girls have been a huge growth market for amateur hockey over the past 20 years – from 5,000 in 1990 to an estimated 100,000 today.
Apple’s decision to make China top priority in its global expansion is proving increasingly prescient. The company’s four Chinese outlets are already among the most heavily trafficked Apple stores in the world. And they generate blockbuster sales and profits. For the first three quarters of fiscal 2011, Apple’s revenue in greater China topped out at $8.8 billion, a six-time multiple over a year earlier.
