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Apple TV 3.0, iTunes 9.0.2 Released

Written on October 29, 2009 by Charles Jade and 13 people have commented

Following a presumably unintentional disclosure in the terms of service for the iTunes Store, Apple has released Apple TV 3.0, as well as a corresponding update for iTunes.

As previously reported, Apple TV 3.0 supports iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, and does so with a new look. According to Eddy Cue, Apple VP of Internet Services, [...]

Apple TV 3.0 Will Support iTunes LP and Extras, Needs More Still

Written on October 29, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 10 people have commented

Apple recently introduced two new formats, iTunes LP and iTunes Extras, which deliver additional content to album and movie purchases, respectively. Apple also only just updated the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions agreement, and AppleInsider spotted some key changes in that document that point to an upcoming Apple TV update that will support the new [...]

Rumor Has It: Next-Gen Mac Pro Getting Six-Core “Core i9″ Processor

Written on October 15, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 2 people have commented

Apple’s powerhouse configurable tower desktop aimed mostly at semi-pro and pro users could be getting some update love in the near future, according to the latest rumblings coming out of the rumor mill today. Hardmac.com is reporting that one of its sources has solid information on the new Mac Pro, which should appear sometime in [...]

The Never-ending Dilemma: Upgrade Your Old Mac or Get a New System?

Written on October 08, 2009 by Charles Moore and 17 people have commented

MacNewsWorld’s Chris Maxcer addresses the abiding conundrum of whether to upgrade one’s existing system or buy a new Mac, noting that when you’ve had your Mac long enough, it’s only natural to start thinking about more speed and more memory.
So the operative question is whether to dig deep and go with a full hardware upgrade, [...]

Windows 7 Takes Pricing Cue From Snow Leopard

Written on September 18, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 12 people have commented

Snow Leopard is selling like hotcakes. It’s selling  much better than Tiger, and a lot better than Leopard, too. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say those strong sales numbers had something to do with price. Microsoft appears to think so, too.
For a limited time, Microsoft is offering students the opportunity to grab one [...]

Debunking the “Snow Leopard is a Service Pack” Myth

Written on September 01, 2009 by Mark Crump and 35 people have commented

For a while the blogosphere has been running its mouth off about how “Snow Leopard is just a service pack Apple has the gall to charge for.”
TechRadar.com reports, “Despite all of the necessary ‘under the hood’ improvements in Snow Leopard, this release has the inescapable air of a service pack about it.”
Gina Trapani says, “Even [...]

ATI Returning to Mac With 4000-Series Graphics Cards

Written on August 31, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 7 people have commented

Poor NVIDIA — it looks like your honeymoon with Apple is over. There hasn’t been an official announcement from Cupertino yet, but a glance at the customization options for high-end iMacs (the ones that use discrete graphics) and Mac Pros reveals that ATI Radeon HD 4000-series cards are already available as new configurable alternatives to [...]

Does Mom Need Snow Leopard?

Written on August 31, 2009 by David Klein and 32 people have commented

Naturally, as a contributor to this blog, I purchased a Snow Leopard family pack the first possible day. Some people may have pre-ordered on Amazon, but they missed out on the in-store experience. My mother lives close to an Apple store, so I decided to stop by and upgrade my Macbook Pro while catching up [...]

Tip From Mossberg: Snow Leopard Upgrade Good for All

Written on August 27, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 15 people have commented

While many of us had suspected it to be the case, Walt Mossberg of All Things Digital in his review of Snow Leopard has confirmed it: The 10.6 upgrade will work with 10.4 Tiger. Which means that if you’re not keen on iLife or iWork ‘09, you can skip the full version included in the [...]

Upgrade Strategy: Get Ready for Snow Leopard

Written on August 03, 2009 by Jon Buys and 32 people have commented

Snow Leopard’s release is just around the corner, so here are some quick and easy steps to make sure that you are ready to upgrade.
Turn On Time Machine
If you haven’t already, now is a great time to turn on the Time Machine built in backup. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great first line of [...]

Apple Officially Puts PowerPC Behind Them With Snow Leopard

Written on June 10, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 10 people have commented

One detail that escaped mention during the keynote presentation at Apple’s WWDC earlier this week likely does not sit well with users still clutching their beloved G4 machines, namely that OS X 10.6, also know as Snow Leopard, will finally drop PowerPC support and only run on Intel Macs. It’s unfortunate for people attached to [...]

13″ MacBook Makes It to the Big Leagues, Turns “Pro”

Written on June 08, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 21 people have commented

Apple announced a slew of hardware updates today, including a number of upgrades to its notebook lineup.
For me, the most notable among these was the upwards shift of the 13-inch aluminum MacBook into the MacBook Pro category, alongside the 15- and 17-inch models, both of which also got their own feature and hardware improvements. The [...]

“Mystery” of the White MacBook Upgrade Unravelled

Written on June 03, 2009 by Charles Moore and 6 people have commented

Last week Apple quietly upgraded the entry-level white MacBook’s Core 2 Duo processor clock speed from 2.0 GHz to 2.13 GHz, added an additional 40GB of standard hard disk capacity, and upgraded its RAM specification to 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Obviously, additional speed and capacity is a plus, but as The Mac Observer’s Ted Landau questions, [...]

Apple Gives White MacBook a Nice Little Spec Bump

Written on May 27, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 6 people have commented

Apple must be trying to throw us off with its erratic update schedule. First, it released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 only one week after beta 4, and it hasn’t released one since, and now it surreptitiously updates the entry-level white plastic MacBook model like a thief in the night, instead of during Tuesday Apple [...]

OS Upgrading: More Customer Education Needed

Written on May 04, 2009 by Charles Moore and 6 people have commented

Apple arguably could do a better job of educating their non–tech oriented customers about the advisability and desirability of periodic software — especially OS version — upgrades.
That epiphany dawned on me during a telephone conversation last weekend with a friend I don’t see or talk to very often. This individual bought a G5 iMac several [...]

Is This the (Rear) Face of the New Mac Mini?

Written on February 20, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 8 people have commented

This photo has been making the rounds since yesterday, after having originally popped up in the MacRumors forums. The photo’s poster claims that it is the business end of the new, redesigned Mac mini, which he was apparently shown by a friend. No word on who that friend might have been, but “Monthy,” the original [...]

White MacBook Gets NVIDIA, Better Specs

Written on January 21, 2009 by Darrell Etherington and 7 people have commented

They didn’t cry it from the mountain, but Apple this week did indeed update some hardware. Specifically, the 13-inch white MacBook, a holdover from previous models, now ships with the same NVIDIA GeForce 9400M of its bigger, aluminum unibody siblings. Not only that, but it also gets a processor bump up to the 2.0GHz Intel [...]

Upgrades, Darn Upgrades and Statistics

Written on November 21, 2008 by Bob Rudis and 1 person has commented

Hopefully Benjamin Disraeli will posthumously forgive me for the major abuse of his quote (made famous by Mark Twain), but the fine folks over at the Omni Group gave us all a sneak peek into some very interesting data they’ve been allowed by users to collect on various details of the operating system their applications [...]

Upgrade Your iPod Touch to 2.0 for Free and Fast Cash Money

Written on July 21, 2008 by Jethro Jones and 3 people have commented

The long-awaited day came and I headed down to my local Apple Store to get a new iMac and a 16GB iPod Touch to take advantage of Apple’s back-to-school promo. (It might be a sign that I have been waiting so long for this that my daughter’s first word was Apple.) Many of you, like [...]

Aperture 2 Released

Written on February 12, 2008 by Josh Pigford and No one has commented

Apple is on a software-release roll. Yesterday they released Leopard 10.5.2 and today they have released Aperture 2.
Aperture is Apple’s pro-level photograph editing and management software that has been picking up a lot of steam in the past couple of years.
There are over 100 new features in Aperture 2, some of which are:

Updated user interface
Quick [...]