The Apple store went offline Tuesday morning and when it returned, it did so with a groaning board of new hardware, including a range of aluminum and edge-to-edge glass iMacs, new Mac Minis, a 13-inch unibody polycarbonate MacBook and a wireless, multitouch “Magic Mouse.”
Apple has finally acknowledged that a bug in its new Snow Leopard operating system can, on rare occasions, result in a catastrophic loss of data. The glitch, which first surfaced in support forums in early September, is triggered by logging in and out of a guest account and wipes the main user account of all data. Clearly, this is not what Apple meant when it claimed the OS would free up as much as seven gigs of space upon installation.
Apple has long been a subscriber to the underpromise-and-over-deliver school of guidance theory, so it’s not unusual to see research houses raising their guidance on the company in advance of its fourth-quarter financials. Among those doing so today: Morgan Keegan, whose Tavis McCourt says the June refresh of the MacBook Pro line and the recent launch of Snow Leopard have juiced sales at Amazon and Best Buy.
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.
10:01, and lights dim to reveal a movie screen. Onscreen: John Hodgman, as PC, welcoming attendees to WWDC and encouraging developers to slow down iPhone App development. Increasingly frustrated Hodgman finally fires off a raspberry. Replaced by Mac guy, who welcomes everyone to WWDC. Phil Schiller takes the stage now. “Can’t you feel the love in this room.” 25 million active OS X users in the past two years, he says, talking up Leopard. Installed base has tripled in the past two years.
What propitious timing. At a press conference in New York City later this morning, Amazon is expected to announce a new large-screen Kindle designed for reading periodicals and textbooks. And yesterday, on the eve of that announcement, came word that the company had been awarded a patent on the original Kindle design. The patent, #D591,741, is entitled “Electronic media reader” and it makes just a single claim.
What spreads faster than economic gloom and doom, and is more infectious than professional anxiety? That phenomenon known as “25 Things.” Just in time for Facebook’s fifth birthday, the record-breaking waste of time may have reached critical mass this week. Elsewhere this week…
There’s got to be a joke somewhere in the fact that Macworld, the Consumer Electronics Show and the AVN Awards (the “Pornies”) all happen during the same week. Maybe even one that hasn’t been played out 10 times over. All Things Digital was too busy covering two out of three this week to think of one.
Despite its relatively tame product announcements and the absence of Steve Jobs, Apple’s final Macworld keynote wasn’t without a highpoint or two: changes in pricing and digital rights management for the iTunes store, a new 17-inch MacBook Pro with an eight-hour battery life, and a surprise appearance by crooner Tony Bennett, among them. After the jump, the event in pictures courtesy of ATD’s crack photojournalist, Adam Tow.
Next up, the new and expected 17-inch MacBook Pro. Before introducing it, Schiller notes that the MacBook has been the No. 1 notebook computer in the states.
The new machine is largely as predicted. It boasts Apple’s new unibody chassis and a glass touch trackpad. At 6.6 pounds, it’s the world’s lightest notebook. It has a hi-res backlit display. “The best display we’ve ever shipped in a notebook,” says Schiller, with a 60 percent greater color gamut than other machines.
Some last minute grist for the Macworld rumor mill: Word on the street has it that Tuesday’s Macworld keynote address will see the introduction of the 17-inch MacBook Pro that was omitted from Apple’s October 2008 laptop event. As with the machines introduced on that day, the 17-inch MacBook Pro will feature a precision aluminum unibody chassis and a multi-touch glass trackpad. But it may feature something else as well: a fixed silver-zinc battery pack.
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.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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