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Following up on early benchmarking tests that showed Apple's new quad-core Core i5 and Core i7 iMacs boasting significant performance improvements compared to their Core 2 Duo-based counterparts, Macworld has utilized its own Speedmark suite of real-world tests and found similar results.

Speedmark is Macworld Lab's standard test tool for benchmarking new and upgraded systems running Mac OS X. It uses real-world applications and everyday tasks. It is a general-purpose suite that includes tasks everyone from a high-end user to a new user performs every day.

Macworld Lab follows a detailed script to perform the 17 tasks. Each task is performed three times. We compare the results to a 2.13GHz MacBook with 2GB RAM (Mid 2009), which is assigned a score of 100. We then take the geometric mean of the normalized scores.

Macworld's tests compared the new quad-core iMac models with the base-level Core 2 Duo-based 21.5" and 27" models, as well as the entry-level 2.66 GHz previous-generation 24" iMac, revealing the expected significant performance improvements. Macworld also compared the new models to Apple's latest entry-level quad-core and 8-core Mac Pro models, with both new quad-core iMacs even out-performing the Mac Pro in this real-world battery.


Speedmark 6 Composite Scores
Detailed scores for individual tasks available in article
As Macworld notes, the new iMac is an attractive option for even professional users, comparing extremely favorably with the company's latest Mac Pro models.

With the new 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac and the 2.8GHz Core i7 iMac, Apple has not only blurred the line between consumer and professional systems, it's darn near erased it. The 2.66GHz Core i5 iMac offers faster performance at most tasks than the 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro. The Core i5 iMac also has more memory and more storage space than the 2.66GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro, while being $500 less (plus you get a 27-inch screen with the iMac). Unless you absolutely require additional PCI cards, multiple internal hard drives, or a lot of RAM, the Core i5 iMac makes a strong case for the being the go-to system for most Mac professionals.

Reuters reports that prominent iPhone game developer Gameloft is scaling back its efforts to produce content for the Android platform in the face of weaknesses of its application store. Gameloft also notes that it is not the only one making the move, with other game developers reportedly experiencing similar frustrations.

"We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference.

The company's frustration comes from a lack of success on the Android platform, contrasted with Apple's App Store ecosystem and its ability to drive sales for developers.

"It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," Rochefort said.

Games for iPhone generated 13 percent of Gameloft's revenue in the last quarter. "We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android," Rochefort said.

Several months ago, mobile app developer Larva Labs offered an analysis of the massive sales gap between the iPhone and Android platforms, noting a number of major deficiencies in Android's application store implementation. While Android developers have since moved to address some of those issues, the platform has yet to generate the buzz and critical mass to drive application sales to levels that make financial sense for software developers.

InsanelyMac reports that a member of its forums has created a workaround allowing users who have modified their Intel Atom-based netbooks into "Hackintoshes" in order to run Mac OS X to upgrade to OS X 10.6.2. The 10.6.2 update had specifically disabled native compatibility with those processors.

The changes Apple made to the latest mach_kernel removes support for this processor, leaving updated netbooks in a useless state. Fortunately, insanelymac user "teateam" patched the new kernel just two days after Apple rolled out the update. The original post can be found here. Many users are reporting success with this patch, so if your an Atom user looking to update to 10.6.2, give it a try, and let's not forget to give "teateam" a round of applause for saving all our hackintosh netbooks!

The reasons for Apple's disabling of Atom compatibility in 10.6.2 remains unknown, although some of speculated that the company is attempting to make it more difficult for users to create their own netbook Macs ahead of a possible tablet launch next year.

Google today held a preview event for Chrome OS, the company's forthcoming browser-based operating system scheduled to launch initially on netbooks in late 2010. Among the major announcements was that, like Google's Chrome browser, Chrome OS has been open-sourced as "Chromium OS" to allow any interested developers to contribute to developing the best possible operating system.

Today we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

Chrome OS is being positioned as a solution for users' secondary machines, offering a speedy, browser-based operating system consisting of Web apps and cloud-based data storage. The focus on speed begins at the top, with boot times currently clocking in at approximately 7 seconds.

Chrome OS will ship only on specific hardware from as-yet unnamed manufacturers with whom Google is partnering for development. As a cloud-based operating system, Chrome OS-based netbooks are planned to forgo traditional hard drives and instead utilize flash memory and remote cloud storage for their data handling needs. Pricing of Chrome OS-based netbooks is yet to be determined, but Google is anticipating that they will be in line with current netbook prices.

Google has also posted a promotional video highlighting the concept behind Chrome OS.

In a patent application filed in May 2008 and published today, Apple discloses that it has been researching methods to allow media devices such as the iPod to "push" their graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to accessory devices for the purposes of controlling the media devices remotely. In pursuing this technology, Apple notes that while remote control accessories for media devices are common, the interfaces are generated by the accessory itself, leading to incomplete functionality and varying experiences when multiple devices are used with a single accessory or a single device is used with multiple accessories.

But existing remote GUIs are defined and controlled by the remote control device, and consequently, they may bear little resemblance to a GUI supplied by the portable media device itself Certain functions available on the portable media device (such as browsing or searching a database, adjusting playback settings, etc.) may be unavailable or difficult to find. Thus, a user may not be able to perform desired functions. Further, GUIs provided for the same portable media device by different remote control devices might be quite different, and the user who connects a portable media device to different accessories with remote control may find the inconsistencies frustrating.

As a response to these issues, Apple proposes methods for media devices to "push" their own GUIs to accessory devices, allowing for full functionality and a consistent user experience across compatible devices and accessories.

The portable media device can provide the accessory with an image to be displayed on the video screen; the image can include various user interface elements that can resemble or replicate a "native" GUI provided directly on the portable media device. The accessory can send information to the portable media device indicative of a user action taken in response to the displayed image; such information can indicate, for example, that a particular button was pressed or that a particular portion of a touch-sensitive display screen was touched by the user. The portable media device can process this input to identify the action requested by the user and take the appropriate action. The action may include providing to the accessory an updated GUI image to be displayed, where the updated GUI image reflects the user action.

The lead inventor on the patent application is William Bull, former iPod User Interface manager at Apple and currently Senior Director of Mobile User Experience at Yahoo. Also among the inventors is former Apple executive Tony Fadell, the "father of the iPod".

The Associated Press reports that a judge has refused to grant AT&T's request for a temporary restraining order forcing Verizon to halt its commercials comparing the two companies' wireless network coverage.

AT&T filed the lawsuit in federal court in Atlanta earlier this month and asked for a temporary restraining order and a permanent injunction to stop the ads. It contends they are misleading and amount to deceptive trade practices.

Verizon argues that the commercials are valid and truthful.

A hearing has been scheduled for December 16th to allow the case to proceed.

Since publishing a public response to Verizon's commercials late last week, AT&T has now begun rolling out its own television ad, featuring actor Luke Wilson offering a comparison of AT&T's and Verizon's network using the same factors highlighted in last week's press release.

Digitimes claims that Apple is planning on postponing the launch of their long rumored tablet device from March to the second half of 2010 as they make some final adjustments to the device's components.

According to their sources, Apple is working with Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), Quanta Computer and Pegatron Technology in the manufacturing of two different tablet PCs, one with a 10.6 inch TFT LCD while the other will have a 9.7-inch OLED panel. The reason for the delay is speculated to be related to the relatively high cost of the OLED panel itself which could bring the total cost of the device near $2000. Meanwhile, the 10.6 inch LCD device is estimated to cost around $800-$1000.

It's not clear why Apple would release two such similarly sized models if the only difference was the screen technology. Another interesting possibility, however, mentioned in the article is that the cost of the tablet could be discounted with 3G service, as has been done on the iPhone.

Meanwhile, publishers are already planning ahead for the possibility of a device. Conde Nast is reportedly readying a digital version of Wired magazine in anticipation of increasing popularity of these tablets.

Bloomberg reports that Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs has acknowledged that the company is in talks to bring its chips to the iPhone.

"We continue to discuss it, but haven't made it yet," Jacobs said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Hong Kong today. "Hopefully, in the future, we will have the opportunity."

The vaguely worded statement makes it unclear whether Qualcomm is making a specific push for the iPhone or if Jacobs is simply acknowledging that the company is always looking for new opportunities for its products, wherever they may be.

Qualcomm is the company behind the CDMA2000 3G technology used by Verizon and Sprint for their wireless networks, lending hope to U.S. users hoping for an iPhone capable of being deployed on those companies' networks. It appears doubtful, however, that a CDMA2000-based iPhone would be able to make an appearance before the technology begins to be phased out in favor of the LTE 4G technology that vendors worldwide are coalescing around.

TechCrunch reports that Google is preparing to launch its own Android-based phone in the very near future, likely bringing yet another device designed to compete head-to-head with Apple's iPhone.

Most of our sources have unconfirmed information, which we describe below. But there are a few things we have absolutely confirmed: Google is building their own branded phone that they'll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

While Google reportedly played a major role in the design of the Motorola Droid that has gained significant publicity over the past month, the company's own phone would obviously provide it with even greater control over the final product.

There won't be any negotiation or compromise over the phone's design of features - Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google's pure vision of what a phone should be.

Other information about the new device remains unknown, although TechCrunch is betting based on what it has been able to piece together that the device will be manufactured by a Korean partner, most likely LG.

Rumors of a Google phone have been circulating since at least early 2007, but in response to a question raised about whether a "Gphone" was in the works at the launch of the Android platform later that year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt offered only that if there were to be one, it would run Android.

Update: In a follow-up article, TechCrunch notes that it has now heard that the Google phone may lack traditional voice services, instead using only data services paired with VoIP for calling purposes.

Users could still make calls just like a normal phone, of course. The calls would just be over the data service instead. In fact, this is the exact vision Google proposed back in 2007 when they were bidding on the FCC auctions for the 700MHz spectrum.

Google can even issue phone numbers to users via Google Voice. In fact, I've already ported my mobile number to Google Voice, and Google has plans to roll out that feature more broadly. Google Voice can also handle the VoIP function for the phone.

The report notes that AT&T has been rumored to be the primary candidate bidding for the service, and may be willing to offer $20/month standalone data plans to Google phone users under certain conditions.

Less than three months after the launch of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, evidence has surfaced that Apple is already working on the next version of OS X, presumably to be designated Mac OS X 10.7. The information comes from an entry posted earlier today in a database of changes to the open source "launchd" framework, which oversees booting of Mac OS X and administers processes running on the system. In particular, today's entry cites an error message containing the text string "11A47", a reference to the Mac OS X build number being used.

< rdar://problem/7386864> 11A47: SecurityAgent no longer visible via Accessibility

Apple's build numbering scheme utilizes a numerical prefix indicating the major release version, followed by a letter code indicating the minor release version and a numerical suffix indicating iterations of that version throughout its development. For example, the initial shipping version of Mac OS X Snow Leopard was termed Build 10A432 while the 10.6.1 update carried a designation of Build 10B504 and the 10.6.2 update released last week was termed Build 10C540. Meanwhile, Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) carried a build number of 9A571 when it first launched.

Based on this numbering scheme, the "11A47" entry cited in the launchd change database would refer to the initial version of Mac OS X 10.7, with the "47" suffix indicating that, while still early in the development process, Apple has been working on builds of the next major operating system revision for at least the last month or two.

Of course, news that Apple appears to be working on Mac OS X 10.7 is certainly not surprising given the long development time required to refine and polish Apple's major operating system releases. While 10.6 incorporated many "under the hood" changes, however, some have speculated that we may see more radical end-user changes in 10.7.