If you’re a student planning on taking advantage of Apple’s “Buy a Mac, get a Free iPod touch” back-to-school promotion, you might want to plan a trip to the Apple Store in the very near future. Because sources in the Apple reseller community tell Ars Technica that it looks like the company’s current iPod line is being discontinued.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the latest iteration of Apple’s operating system, arrived at market today–about a month earlier than originally anticipated. And while it doesn’t really deliver the GUI enhancements we’ve come to expect from Apple and some incompatibilities are riling people up, Snow Leopard’s under-the-hood improvements and price point appear to have struck a chord with critics. After the jump, a selection of early reviews.
Apple has repeatedly characterized its forthcoming Snow Leopard operating system as an under-the-hood upgrade to the Mac OS, one that focuses on performance enhancements rather than new features.
The Apple Store went offline earlier this morning and when it returned, its homepage featured Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. Available for preorder today, the next iteration of the Mac OS will ship Aug. 28 as a $29 upgrade.
Apple on Wednesday released OS X 10.5.8, the latest point release to Mac OS X Leopard, even as Amazon takes pre-orders for its next iteration–Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). 10.5.8 is largely a maintenance update, though it does patch a number of security vulnerabilities (18 to be exact), some of them fairly old.
Palm has added another Apple alum to its employee roster. Jeff Zwerner, who did stints at Apple as both senior art director and creative director for packaging, has signed on at Palm as senior vice president of brand design.
With the iPhone, Apple is doing to the handset industry what it has done to the PC industry with the Mac: Claiming an inordinate share of profits relative to revenue. Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi estimates that Apple, though it is only the fifth-largest handset vendor, claimed nearly a third of handset industry profits in the first half of 2009.
Interesting turn of events in the Apple-Psystar spat. The Mac clone maker has hired a new law firm in its battle against Apple’s copyright-infringement suit. Why? “Psystar has always been more a Cowboy than a Hippie,” the company said. “Now we’ve changed lawyers to better reflect who we are.”
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner must be so disappointed. Remarking on the company’s “PC Hunter” ad campaign last week, Turner said he’d been ebullient when attorneys for Apple called to complain. But now the company has quietly modified the ad in question to address Apple’s complaints.
Demand for Apple’s iPhone 3GS, which topped one million handsets sold in its first weekend at market, has surpassed even the company’s presumably aggressive targets. Reporting earnings Tuesday, Apple said it sold 5.2 million iPhones in its third quarter and finally copped to something that’s long been apparent to anyone who’s been keeping an eye on its iPhone availability widget: Demand for the new iPhone 3GS is far outpacing supply.
Well, nobody is buying Apple’s conservative estimates for this quarter. Certainly not after the release of the latest Mac sales data from NPD Group this morning. Analysts had been calling for Apple to sell 2.45 million Macs in its third quarter. Instead, NPD says the company sold approximately 2.6 million.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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