Apple today updated its professional-grade audio software Logic Pro X to version 10.0.4, adding support for project files generated by the new version of GarageBand released yesterday.
Logic Pro X, launched in July, represented the first major update to the software since 2009. Logic Pro X introduced "Drummer" a customizable virtual session player that automatically plays along to recorded tracks. Drummer made its way to Apple's consumer-level GarageBand in yesterday's launch, with one drummer included free of charge and a set of 14 additional drummers with various styles available for $4.99 as an in-app purchase.
Apple's latest retail store, a two-story location in the new IAPM mall in Shanghai, will open on Saturday October 26.
The gigantic six-story mall occupies 1.3 million square feet and includes an IMAX theater, a high-end grocery store, late night hours -- the Apple Store will be open until 11 PM daily -- and a number of international retailers including Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and many more.
Apple already has several retail stores in Shanghai, including a stunning store first opened in the Pudong district in 2010, another on Shanghai’s famous Nanjing Road that opened 2011, and a third located in Shanghai's Hong Kong Plaza.
Apple announced yesterday that the new iPad Air would launch in China day-and-date with the rest of the world, the first time China will not have to wait for a new iPad.
In his lengthy and ultra-detailed review of Mavericks, John Siracusa of Ars Technica conducts battery benchmark tests to measure Mavericks' power saving features on both a 2007 MacBook Pro and a 2013 13.3-inch MacBook Air.
While both systems saw notable battery gains going from Mountain Lion to Mavericks, the 2013 MacBook Air in particular saw impressive improvements of up to 30 percent, lasting for more than 15 hours in some instances.
For his battery tests, which were conducted using OS X 10.8.5 and the GM build of Mavericks, Siracusa created a light Web browsing and text-editing automation script, including websites that used Flash. In his tests, battery life varied significantly, but provided, on average, an increase of two hours of work time.
I suspect the aggressiveness of the auto-playing Flash ads that happen to be on specific websites on a particular day may partly explain the huge variability in Mountain Lion's numbers. Some of the lower-scoring Mountain Lion trials may have also had the bad luck to coincide with energy-intensive periodic jobs—jobs that are prevented from running on Mavericks due to AC power or battery-level restrictions as part of centralized task scheduling.
These tests may or may not be representative of how you use your Mac, but regardless, it's clear that Apple's efforts have not been in vain. Mavericks really does consume less energy than Mountain Lion when performing the same tasks.
Since its debut at WWDC, Apple has touted the power saving features bundled into Mavericks, poising improved battery life as the keystone of the operating system. Mavericks is designed to cut down on CPU activity using Timer Coalescing, Compressed Memory, and App Nap.
While Timer Coalescing bundles low-level operations into a single batch action that reduces CPU utilization by up to 72 percent, App Nap cuts down on the power usage of apps that are not running in the foreground, reducing their overall power draw by up to 23 percent. Compressed Memory also works in conjunction with these two features, compacting the least used processes so less time is spent reading and writing virtual memory swap files on disk, which improves power consumption.
There's also a new power saving feature built directly into Safari, called Power Saver. With Power Saver, Safari intelligently detects plug-in content playing in the margins of a website and pauses it, preserving battery life.
During Apple's October 22 event, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi also highlighted Mavericks' battery saving capabilities on the new 13-inch MacBook Air, noting that the operating system provides an extra hour of web browsing and an hour and a half of extra video time.
Mavericks is available for free from the Mac App Store and is a one-step update for all Mac users running OS X Snow Leopard and above. It can be installed on most computers produced after 2007. As of this morning, total Mavericks adoption hovered at approximately seven percent.
Following yesterday's announcement that T-Mobile would begin selling the iPad, the company today debuted introductory plans to offer customers 16 GB cellular versions of the Retina iPad mini and the iPad Air with no downpayment.
Like other T-Mobile "UnCarrier" offerings, the tablets will require a monthly hardware fee, which starts at $26.25 per month for the entry level 16 GB iPad Air and $22.08 for the 16 GB iPad mini with Retina Display. At 24 monthly payments of $26.25, the 16 GB cellular iPad Air ends up costing $630, which is ultimately the same price Apple and other carriers sell the iPad for.
Payments for the 32 and 64 GB versions of both iPads will increase with storage capacity, as will the downpayment. For the 32 GB Air and mini, customers will need to pay $99 up front, and $199 up front for the 64 GB versions. The first-generation iPad mini will also be available from T-Mobile, at zero downpayment and $17.91 per month.
Downpayment comparison chart
T-Mobile plans to provide customers with an entry level data package of 200 MB at no cost, with additional data, up to 4.5 GB, available for an extra fee. T-Mobile also offers daily and weekly data passes for the iPad Air and the iPad minis, charging $5 for 500 MB of daily data or $10 for a week of unlimited data with 1 GB available at LTE speeds.
"When you buy a product as amazing as iPad, you should be able to connect when and where you want, simply and affordably," said John Legere, president and CEO of T-Mobile. "By offering free data for life with incredible upfront pricing, T-Mobile is un-leashing customers to fully enjoy iPad as it was meant to be enjoyed - mobile and connected."
Apple's iPad Air will be available for purchase on November 1, while the iPad mini with Retina display will be available later in November.
Apple debuted a number of videos at its special event yesterday and it has now posted a number of them on YouTube.
Before introducing the company's newest iPads, Tim Cook ran this 'Life on iPad' spot "to celebrate our customer's creativity and genius in using their iPads." The two-minute film shows the iPad being used in a wide variety of different situations, including in a surgery suite, by musicians, firefighters, tourists, football players, and many more.
No Apple product launch would be complete without a Jony Ive-led video showcasing how much detail and thought went into the design of the new product, and the iPad Air is no exception. The videos are so iconic that they have been endlessly parodied in commercials and on late-night comedy shows.
Finally, the company produced a new television ad for the iPad Air in keeping with the theme from the keynote that the iPad can be used for a limitless variety of tasks. The ad, called 'Pencil', starts with a pencil on a desk, with a voiceover suggesting the ad is about that simple writing implement. At the end, the new iPad Air is revealed from behind it.
It's an extremely simple tool, but also extremely powerful. It can be used to start a poem, or finish a symphony.
It has transformed the way we work, learn, create, share. It's used to illustrate things, solve things, and think of new things.
It's used by scientists and artists, scholars and students. It's been to classrooms, boardrooms, expeditions, even to space.
And we can't wait to see where you'll take it next. Introducing the thinner, lighter, more powerful iPad Air.
During yesterday's media event, Apple played a video highlighting the production process for the upcoming Mac Pro, a machine that will see Apple bring Mac production back to the United States and is already seeing over 2,000 people in 20 states working on the project.
The video showed a number of steps in the production process, taking an initial chunk of aluminum and sculpting it into the shape of the Mac Pro enclosure before subjecting it polishing, anodizing, and other steps. Brief segments also provided glimpses of the massive heat sink in production and chips being placed on boards to be installed in the machine.
Product designer Greg Koenig has offered an expert overview of what exactly is shown in the video, explaining for the layperson the tools and processes Apple is using. Koenig notes that the "big story" is Apple's use of hydraulic deep draw stamping for the Mac Pro's enclosure, a process that stretches the initial chunk of aluminum into the general shape of the enclosure.
Deep drawing is a process that very efficiently produces a "net shape" part. Apple could have just chucked a giant hunk of aluminum in a lathe and created the same part, but that amount of metal removal is extremely inefficient. Deep drawing efficiently creates a hunk of metal that is very close to the final shape of a Mac Pro in just a couple of operations. After that, the Mac Pro enclosure is lathe turned to clean up the surface and achieve desired tolerance, polished, placed back in a machining center to produce the I/O, power button and chamfer features and finally anodized.
Koenig goes on to share a number of stills from the video with captions explaining what is going on in each step, including lathing, polishing, grinding, protective film application, I/O cutout milling, and anodizing.
Other stills capture production on some of the other parts of the new Mac Pro, including bead blasting of the main triangular heat sink, pick-and-place assembly of circuit boards, and parts delivery for final hand assembly of the machines themselves.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Flextronics is in the process of hiring 1,700 workers at its facilities in Austin, Texas to work on a "next generation desktop computer". That computer is presumed to be the Mac Pro, given that Apple had previously revealed the machine would be assembled in Texas, Apple and Flextronics had previously been reported to be working together on the project, and Flextronics' Austin facilities are only a mile from Apple's large and growing operations campus in the area.
The game, described by Anki as a "video game in the real world", is somewhat similar to slot car racing, but uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and iPhone-based controls.
The Anki Drive starter kit includes the vinyl "track" and two cars for $200. Two additional cars are available for $70 each, the red RHO, and the blue and gold KATAL.
Each Anki Drive car has its own unique name, personality, and statistics, with some offering greater acceleration speeds while others having more energy. There are multiple gameplay modes, including multiplayer and single player modes, with cars lacking a human controller using a proprietary AI system.
Anki will also be holding a series of special events at prominent Apple Retail Store locations around North America over the next few weeks, hitting San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boston, and Montreal.
Following the announcement of Apple's iPad Air and Retina iPad mini, multiple accessory manufacturers are preparing cases and other products to accompany the new iPads ahead of their November release. Below are some of the new product offerings from a number of well-known vendors, which should be able to ship before or shortly after the new iPads are available to consumers.
Belkin has announced an array of new accessories for the iPad Air, including several keyboard cases and standard folio cases. Belkin's keyboard cases start at $80, with the $100 version offering a front cover and the $130 version offering an extremely thin aircraft-grade aluminum body.
Zagg has invisibleSHIELDs and keyboard Folio cases ready for the iPad Air. The screen protectors range in price from $30 to $35 and are available in high-definition and smudge proof varieties. The $100 ZAGGkeys Folio is available in black, with white coming soon.
Zagg
Incipio has announced several different folio-style cases for the iPad Air, ranging in price from $35 to $70. There are also a range of folio and shell cases for the Retina iPad mini priced at $30 to $45, including the popular Smart Feather.
Incipio
Otterbox has announced Defender Series cases for both the Retina iPad mini and the iPad Air. While the Retina iPad mini version can be pre-ordered for $70 in three different colors, the company has yet to announce pre-orders or pricing for the iPad Air version.
Otterbox
Griffin has multiple products coming for the iPad Air, including the $80 Slim Keyboard Folio and the $80 Survivor Case, which is similar to Otterbox's offerings. The company also plans to debut a $50 Back Bay Folio and a folio-style $40 Journal Case. Griffin is currently selling multiple cases for the Retina mini, including the Folio and the IntelliCase for $45 and $40, respectively.
Griffin
Cygnett has debuted a range of folio cases for the iPad Air as well, each with varying colors and designs. Prices range from $40 for a basic fabric folio case to $70 for a leather origami-inspired case that can be folded into multiple stand angles. The company's flexi-folding Paradox cases are also available in several colors for $40.
Cygnett
In addition to the cases listed above, the following companies also have iPad Air and Retina iPad mini cases available for purchase: Grove, Speck, M-Edge, Gumdrop, Hard Candy, iLuv, and X-Doria.
While the iPad Air has taken on a full redesign necessitating all new cases, the Retina iPad mini is just 0.3 millimeters thicker than the previous generation. It is unclear whether existing cases will fit the new Retina iPad mini, so consumers would be wise to check with vendors about fit before purchasing a first generation iPad mini case for the Retina mini.
Apple will begin accepting orders for the iPad Air on November 1, with orders for the Retina mini commencing later in November. As with the iPhone 5s, the company does not plan to offer pre-orders.
Less than 24 hours after OS X Mavericks launched for free in the Mac App Store, roughly 7% of Mac traffic is already coming from machines upgraded to the new operating system, according to a live tracker hosted by analytics firm GoSquared. The tracker shows adoption sitting at around 0.5-0.7% yesterday until beginning its upward march upon the public release.
While analytics data is difficult to compare between services, last year Chitika found 3% of Mac traffic coming from OS X Mountain Lion as of 48 hours after its launch. Unsurprisingly, GoSquared's data hints that Mavericks may be seeing significantly faster adoption compared to Mountain Lion due to the free nature of the new upgrade.
GoSquared CEO James Gill tells MacRumors that his firm currently provides analytics for over 40,000 sites, allowing it to monitor billions of page views per month. That base allows the firm to offer a reasonable snapshot of activity at any given time.
While Mavericks is growing rapidly, it still represents a small fraction of the Mac user base, with GoSquared's numbers showing just under 50% of traffic coming from OS X Mountain Lion and almost all of the remainder split nearly evenly between OS X Lion and OS X Snow Leopared. Users on any of those systems can upgrade directly to Mavericks at no cost through the Mac App Store.
Following yesterday's introduction of new Retina MacBook Pro models, the machines have already begun showing up in Geekbench benchmarks, offering the opportunity to see how their raw performance compares to the previous generation.
While several of the entries appear to be fakes, there are enough legitimate results to begin to get a sense of the new machines' performance, which arrive with the following 32-bit Geekbench 3 averages so far:
As is fairly typical for updated machines, most of the benchmarks come in at approximately 4-10% higher than their predecessors, while the increased efficiency of Intel's Haswell chips has allowed Apple to improve overall battery life. Apple has also made the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro thinner, matching the thickness of its larger sibling but at the cost of a slight decrease in battery capacity from 74 Whr to 71.8 Whr.
The base 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro had shown up back in June in results from Geekbench 2 benchmarking software, which uses different baseline scores than the current Geekbench 3. A 15-inch model also showed up in early July, but with a chip that Apple ultimately elected not to use in yesterday's update. The chip in that early machine was Intel's i7-4950HQ at 2.4 GHz, but Apple bumped the high-end chip in the released lineup to the i7-4960HQ at 2.6 GHz, a new chip that was officially launched just last month.
Some users with legacy versions of iLife and iWork that were not purchased through the Mac App Store are having difficulties upgrading to the new versions released earlier today, according to Macworld.
Users who own iWork '09 or iLife '11 are supposed to receive the latest versions of both those app suites for free through the Mac App Store, but some are having difficulties.
Some users (including yours truly) are reporting issues where the Mac App Store doesn’t recognize their copies; when they click on an iLife or iWork app’s price, they receive the following alert: “[App] is already installed and was not purchased from the Mac App Store. Do you want to buy [app]?” Macworld spoke with an Apple spokesperson who noted that there’s currently an issue with some legacy customers, and the company is working on a fix.
Users who do not yet own iLife '11 or iWork '09 can purchase them from the Mac App Store. The iLife apps are $14.99 each, while the iWork suite is $19.99 per app.
Image editing software Pixelmator was today updated to version 3.0, adding several new enhancements including OS X Mavericks support, new liquify tools, non-destructive Layer Styles, and a new image editing engine.
Pixelmator has been designed to take advantage of OS X Mavericks features like App Nap and Compressed Memory, making it more responsive and power efficient. The app’s new image editing engine is also designed to take advantage of multiple OS X technologies to make file manipulation faster than before.
Pixelmator 3.0 FX became dramatically faster and more powerful. Pixelmator’s development team took an extra step to build a truly modern and innovative image editing engine that takes advantage of the full power of OS X, by combining technologies like Core Image, OpenCL, OpenGL, 64-bit architecture, and Grand Central Dispatch, giving you the speed you need to keep pace with your creativity.
Layer Styles allow users to quickly apply shadows, gradients, outlines, and reflections to their images, while Liquify provides a new way to manipulate images. Layer Styles are non destructive, and the Liquify tools include Warp, Bump, Pinch, and Twirl.
Pixelmator 3.0 FX is the most advanced version of Pixelmator to date, introducing lots of new features and improvements, including the following:
- Layer Styles: Thanks to non-destructive Layer Styles, creating polished and advanced compositions is now so much simpler, faster, and more enjoyable - Liquify Tools: Shape images in multiple ways—slightly twist an element, add an artistic detail, or completely distort an entire image - New Image Editing Engine: The new state-of-the-art image editing engine harnesses the full power of the latest OS X technologies making Pixelmator feature rich, yet blistering fast - OS X Mavericks support: Tags, Multiple-Displays, App Nap support and more
Pixelmator is only third-party app mentioned on Apple’s Mac Pro performance page, where it is used to demonstrate the new tower's blazingly fast performance.
Pixelmator 3.0 is a free upgrade for existing users, while new users can download the app from the Mac App Store for $29.99. [Direct Link]
The company has since followed that up with a number of new software updates to some of its more minor apps, as well as small compatibility updates for more prominent apps. It also released the Mavericks version of OS X Server.
- OS X Server 3.0 is the server version of OS X Mavericks. It is available for $19.99 on the Mac App Store and includes a number of new features related to file sharing; development; calendar, contacts and mail servers; profile management and more. [Mac App Store]
- iTunes 11.1.2 adds support for OS X Mavericks, the Arabic and Hebrew languages, as well as additional performance and stability improvements. It's available through the Mac App Store software update page and on Apple.com.
- Xcode 5.0.1 adds new SDKs for Mavericks, Mountain Lion and iOS 7, along with a few other features. [Mac App Store]
- iBooks Author 2.1 allows users to preview books in iBooks for Mac, while fixing other unmentioned issues. [Mac App Store]
- Apple Configurator 1.4.1 adds an option to configure which Setup Assistant steps will display during device setup, alongside unmentioned improvements and bug fixes. [Mac App Store]
- Apple Remote Desktop 3.7 includes support for OS X Mavericks, improves support for Macs with multiple displays and IP addresses, enhances multi-observe with gesture support for swiping between screens, and fixes several other issues. It is available for $79.99. [Mac App Store]
- Logic Remote 1.0.2 supports the new version of GarageBand for Mac, as well as some other stability and performance improvements. [App Store]
- WorkGroup Manager 10.9 is for use with Mountain Lion and OS X Server. [support.apple.com]
- Migration Assistant Update is actually two separate updates to provide support for Lion and Snow Leopard systems looking to migrate to Mavericks. [Lion, Snow Leopard]
Apple has added a new iMovie Theater channel to the Apple TV, designed to work in conjunction with the iMovie Theater feature that was added to both the iOS and Mac versions of iMovie in today’s update.
iMovie Theater is a cross device feature designed to allow users to watch shared clips, movies, and trailers on all Apple devices, including the Apple TV. Projects that are created within iMovie for iOS or Mac and shared using iTunes Theater within those apps will automatically show up within the Apple TV channel.
The channel is activated by signing into an iCloud account that is connected to an iOS or Mac version of iMovie. It is available through an over-the-air update and should be available for users running the most recent Apple TV software. Apple also bundled a number of other new features into its iMovie update, which is available for download today.
iMovie for Mac and iOS have been redesigned to make it easier than ever to browse your video library and instantly share your favorite moments. iMovie for Mac includes simplified editing tools that let you quickly improve the look of your movie, add fun effects, and speed up or slow down your video.
iMovie for iOS brings desktop-class moviemaking to your iPhone® and iPad, so you can create split screen and picture-in-picture effects or advanced audio edits in just a few taps. And with iMovie Theater, you can watch your shared clips, movies, and trailers on all your Apple devices, even your Apple TV®.
iMovie is available for both iOS and Mac, priced at $4.99/$14.99. [Direct Links: iOS/Mac]
The three apps have all been updated for iOS 7, with the Podcasts app in particular seeing several new features, including an updated Top Charts section, a new Search tab, and auto-updating so the app will automatically download new episodes even when it isn't open.
All three apps are free downloads from the App Store for the iPhone and iPad.
Alongside the new iPad Air and Retina iPad mini, Apple debuted new Smart Covers and Cases for the devices. Like existing products, the Smart Covers product the device display while Smart Cases wrap around the entire device.
The polyurethane Smart Covers will retail for $39 for both the iPad mini and the iPad Air, and the iPad mini version will fit both the first and second-generation tablets, which means existing iPad mini Smart Covers will fit the second-generation Retina devices. The covers will come in yellow, blue, green, black, pink, and Product (RED).
Apple’s new Smart Cases feature a dark leather exterior and a microfiber interior and will be available in 6 colors: brown, beige, black, blue, red, and yellow, much like the iPhone 5s. Smart Cases will retail for $79 for the iPad Air and $69 for the iPad mini.
Both the new Smart Cases and the new Smart Covers will be available for order on November 1 from Apple’s Online Store. Apple's iPad Air will also launch on November 1, while the Retina iPad mini is expected later in November.
During today’s iPad-centric event, Apple announced that more than 20 iOS and Mac apps would receive updates over the course of the day. Aperture, Apple's photo editing and management software, has just been updated to version 3.5 adding new features and bug fixes.
The update includes support for iCloud Photo sharing, allowing users to post content to shared streams and add videos to photo streams. Aperture’s "Places" feature uses Apple maps to display photo locations, and integration with Smug Mug has been included. Multiple bug fixes have been bundled into the update, and stability and performance improvements have been added as well.
- Adds support for iCloud Photo Sharing, including the ability to post videos to shared photo streams and to have multiple subscribers contribute to a shared stream - The Places feature now uses Apple maps to display photo locations - New integration with SmugMug, with support for publishing and syncing galleries directly to a SmugMug account - Adds support for iOS 7 camera filters applied to photos imported from iOS devices - Fixes an issue that sometimes resulted in Retouch adjustments not being applied to exported images - Addresses an issue that could cause the black and white points in Curves to shift incorrectly when using the eyedropper tools - Fixes a problem that prevented caption data from being embedded correctly when exporting versions of some RAW file types - Improves reliability when adding names to Faces - Addresses an issue that could cause Aperture to hang after adjusting a very large panorama - Fixes a problem that could prevent memory cards or hard disks from ejecting properly after import when clicking the Delete Items button - Improves reliability of slideshows on a 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display - Addresses an issue that could cause thumbnails to display incorrectly in the iLife Media Browser - Videos up to three minutes long can now be shared to Flickr - Captions instead of version names are now synced between Aperture and Facebook for newly-created albums - Improves reliability when printing a light table - Fixes an issue that could prevent adjusted images from being published to My Photo Stream - Includes stability and performance improvements
Following the introduction of both the Retina iPad mini and the iPad Air, Apple has lowered the prices of its refurbished iPads. The entry-level first-generation iPad mini is now priced at $249, down from $279 and $50 less than a new model, priced at $299, with price cuts across the board for all Wi-Fi and Cellular configurations.
Apple’s fourth-generation iPad with Retina display is now available for $379 for the 16 GB version, a total of $120 off the original retail price of $499, and $20 less than the $399 iPad 2. Entry level cellular models are now priced at $409, which is a $170 total savings.
The entry-level iPad 2 is priced at $319 for the Wi-Fi model, which is a 20 percent savings off of the original price of $399.
All of Apple’s refurbished units come equipped with the same one-year warranty that brand-new products carry and have been thoroughly tested for reliability. The units also come with brand-new batteries and outer shells.
Stock fluctuates based on availability, but at the current time, most models and capacities of the fourth-generation iPad, the iPad mini, and the iPad 2 can be purchased.
Some users with legacy versions of iLife and iWork that were not purchased through the Mac App Store are having difficulties upgrading to the 
Image editing software 
During today’s iPad-centric event, Apple announced that more than 20 iOS and Mac apps would receive updates over the course of the day. Aperture, Apple's photo editing and management software, has just been updated to version 3.5 adding new features and bug fixes.
