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Moshi Releases Ultra-thin MacBook Air Shell Case

Accessory maker Moshi has released a new ultra-thin plastic shell protective case for the 11" and 13" MacBook Air models. This type of plastic case tends to be especially popular among students, protecting their machines from bumps and scratches. Moshi claims its case offers better heat dissipation than competing cases because it doesn't block the rear heating vent.

Moshiiglaze

Many MacBook Air cases offered today feature bulky, obtrusive designs, and are often composed of materials which may not last the life of a device. The iGlaze for MacBook Air is an ultra-thin, stylish case created from the same polycarbonate material that’s been proven for durability throughout Moshi’s iGlaze line of cases for iPhone, iPad and MacBook devices. The iGlaze is surface-treated with a specialized coating that not only offers better scratch resistance than alternatives, but also accentuates the device's elegant design.

The iGlaze Air cases come in black, white, and translucent, and are available on Moshi's website for $55 and $60 for the 11" and 13" versions, respectively.

Blizzard Says It Delivered 4.7 Million Copies of Diablo III on Release Day

Blizzard Entertainment said this week that it sold more than 3.5 million copies of Diablo III on launch day, setting the record for fastest-selling PC game. The company also sold 1.2 million copies of the game to subscribers of the World of Warcraft Annual Pass, meaning 4.7 million copies of the game were in the hands of gamers on day one.

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There were a number of server slowdowns and issues for gamers looking to play the game on opening day and, as a result, Blizzard was very apologetic in its statement:

"We’re definitely thrilled that so many people around the world were excited to pick up their copy of Diablo III and jump in the moment it went live," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We also regret that our preparations were not enough to ensure everyone had a seamless experience when they did so. I want to reaffirm our commitment to make sure the millions of Diablo III players out there have a great experience with the game moving forward, and I also want to thank them for their ongoing support."

To cut down on cheating and piracy, Blizzard requires the Diablo III client to be connected to their servers at all times during gameplay, even during the single-player campaign.

Diablo III is available via Blizzard's website and at retail stores.

Seagate Buying LaCie for $186 Million

NewImageHard drive maker Seagate has announced it will purchase data storage device maker LaCie for roughly $186 million.

The company plans to buy the controlling stake owned by Philippe Spruch, Lacie's chairman and CEO, followed by a cash-offer for the rest of the outstanding shares, reports Forbes. Spruch is expected to join Seagate as the head of the company's consumer storage products group.

"The transaction would combine two highly complementary product and technology portfolios, adding LaCie’s line of premium branded consumer storage solutions, network-attached storage solutions and software offerings to Seagate’s array of mainstream consumer storage products," Seagate said in a statement. "The combination would accelerate Seagate’s growth strategy in the expanding consumer storage market, particularly in Europe and Japan, and add strong engineering and software development capabilities, as well as relationships with several key retailers."

Apple Releases Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.13

Iphoto iconApple today released Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.10, bringing RAW image support to Aperture and iPhoto for a number of new cameras.

This update adds RAW image compatibility for the following cameras to Aperture 3 and iPhoto '11:

- Canon EOS-1D X
- Nikon D800E
- Nikon D3200
- Olympus OM-D E-M5
- Panasonic LUMIX DMC-GF5
- Sony Alpha SLT-A57

Full details on RAW support are included in an Apple support document.

Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 3.13 weighs in at 8 MB and requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or OS X 10.7 or later.

New Paris Apple Retail Store Opening Friday, May 25

As noted by ifoAppleStore, Apple is continuing its trickle of retail store openings this week with a new location opening on Friday, May 25 in Paris. The new Les Quatre Temps store will be Apple's sixth in the Paris metropolitan area.

The huge store will be located on Level 1 adjacent to the Gap store. The five-level mall is located in the La Défense district of Paris, along the north extension of the Champs Elysées, and sits adjacent to the iconic Grande Arche building.

No square footage measurement for the new store has been officially released, but based on mall plans and a photo of the construction barrier posted by MacGeneration back in March the store does appear to be one of Apple's larger mall-based locations.


Overall, the store will become Apple's eleventh in France, breaking a tie with Italy for the position as Apple's fifth most popular country for retail store construction, following the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

Binary Nights Puts Mac File-Transfer App ForkLift On Sale for $0.99

ForkliftBinary Nights has dropped the price of its file-transfer app ForkLift to $0.99, down from $29.99, for a limited time.

ForkLift is a well-reviewed file management app that offers FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, iDisk, SMB, AFP, and NIS support, as well as a dual-pane, tabbed file management window -- it works as a Finder replacement for power users as well.

ForkLift is a robust and elegant file manager and FTP/SFTP client, fully embracing the Apple methodology of bringing incredible power to a beautiful and easy-to-use, approachable interface, it also integrates multiple features you would normally buy in many separate applications. Batch Rename, App Deleter, Archive creation & management, powerful Folder Sync, and the ability to Split and Combine large files are all at your fingertips.

Binary Nights didn't specify when the price will rise back to $29.99, so interested users should take advantage while they can. ForkLift requires Lion.

ForkLift for Mac is temporarily available for $0.99 on the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

Apple to Continue Offering Support for Me.com Email After MobileMe Discontinuation

As highlighted by TidBITS (via Macworld), Apple has informed the last holdout users still on the company's MobileMe service that they will be able to continue using their Me.com even after MobileMe's June 30 discontinuation, even if they do not fully convert to iCloud. The option, which is detailed on Apple's MobileMe transition guide, will be of particular benefit to those users whose devices aren't compatible with iCloud.

What if I just want to keep using my email on all my devices?
As of May 1, you can choose to keep using your mail after MobileMe ends, even on devices that don’t meet the iCloud system requirements. Just go to me.com/move and select the option to keep using your email after MobileMe ends. Once you have completed this short process, your mail will continue to work on devices that don’t meet the iCloud requirements after MobileMe ends on June 30th, 2012.

Apple's notice to current MobileMe members was actually detailed by The Mac Observer back on May 1, including screenshots showing the option at me.com/move for users to opt out of moving to the full iCloud service and simply retain access to email and calendars.


Apple's process suggests that only web-based access to Me.com/Mac.com email will be available following the migration, but TidBITS notes that users can bypass Apple's automated iCloud email setup to manually access MobileMe accounts.

In Mail, after moving your address to iCloud, delete your existing MobileMe account: Choose Mail > Preferences, click Accounts, select your MobileMe account in the list on the left, and click the – (minus) button. Then click the + (plus) button to add a new account and fill in your mac.com or me.com address and password. But now hold down Option while clicking Continue. This bypasses Mail’s automated setup process (which would configure the account for the MobileMe servers — not what you want). On the next screen, choose IMAP from the Account Type pop-up menu. Enter imap.mail.me.com for the incoming mail server address, click Continue, and enter smtp.mail.me.com for the outgoing mail server address. Once you’ve completed the process, Mail in Snow Leopard should be able to check your iCloud mail both now and after MobileMe is turned off.

Most notably, iCloud is not officially compatible with OS X Snow Leopard, leaving some users who systems are not compatible with OS X Lion without access to iCloud. Apple has been trying to push all potential MobileMe users toward iCloud as the MobileMe service heads for discontinuation next month, even offering free copies of Snow Leopard to help users of even older operating systems to move to iCloud-compatible Lion.

Ashton Kutcher Spotted Wearing Steve Jobs' Trademark Wardrobe

The casting of Ashton Kutcher in the role of Steve Jobs in an upcoming independent film focusing on the Apple co-founder's life has certainly generated a significant amount of attention for the project, despite the fact that the film is a completely separate effort from the high-profile planned Sony Pictures film to be based on Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Jobs.


With filming on the indie film starring Kutcher having already begun with the star on break from his work on the TV show Two and a Half Men, TMZ shares a few photos of Kutcher seen wearing Jobs' trademark outfit of a black turtleneck, jeans, and sneakers. The photos were reportedly taken on Friday while Kutcher was walking to the set of the film.


Kutcher has been said by some to bear an uncanny resemblance to a young Steve Jobs, particularly with having adopted a close copy of Jobs' hairstyle and facial hair from those days. Jobs did not adopt his trademark wardrobe until a number of years later, but Kutcher is clearly taking on that aspect of Jobs' identity for the role as well.

Spotify Updates Mac App With Pandora-esque Radio Stations

Spotify has updated its Mac app to version 0.8.3, bringing Pandora-like playlist-based radio stations to the music service. Users can start a new radio channel from any playlist or album in order to listen to similar songs.

Playlist radio
Among other new features, users can now get HTML embed codes to easily share Spotify songs on websites, as well as new sharing links to post songs directly to Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.

Current users can download the update from within the Spotify app, or directly from Spotify's website.

Another New Apple Store Coming to Spain on May 12

Roughly two weeks after the debut of a new Apple retail store in Madrid, Apple is preparing to open another store in Spain. As noted by ifoAppleStore, Apple has officially announced that the grand opening of its Nueva Condomina store in Murcia will take place on Saturday, May 12.

The seventh Apple retail store in Spain will open this Saturday inside the Nueva Condomina shopping mall in the southern city of Murcia. The store fills in coverage along the Mediterranean coast of the country between existing stores in Valencia and Marbella.


The report notes that Apple is expected to open four more stores in Spain over the next year, marking a substantial expansion of the company's presence in the country.

Elder Scrolls MMO Coming to the Mac in 2013


The Elder Scrolls Online massive multiplayer online game will arrive on the Mac and PC in 2013, reports Game Informer magazine.

Long rumored and much anticipated, The Elder Scrolls Online is finally being unveiled in the June issue of Game Informer. In this month's cover story we journey across the entire land of Tamriel, from Elsweyr to Skyrim and everywhere in between.

Developed by the team at Zenimax Online Studios, The Elder Scrolls Online merges the unmatched exploration of rich worlds that the franchise is known for with the scale and social aspects of a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. Players will discover an entirely new chapter of Elder Scrolls history in this ambitious world, set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm.

More details for the game will be forthcoming, including in the June issue of Game Informer.

Amazon Releases Mac App to Access Cloud Drive From Finder


Following on the heels of Google launching its Google Drive cloud storage service, Amazon has released Mac and Windows clients for its Cloud Drive service, which launched last year. Previously, Cloud Drive was only accessible through a web browser.

Like Dropbox and Google Drive, Cloud Drive includes 5GB of free storage. The Cloud Drive app requires Snow Leopard or Lion.