MacRumors

CNet's Brian Tong has revealed on Twitter that "all new" next generation Mac Pros and Mac minis will arrive in late July or early August.

EXCLUSIVE: My sources tell me ALL NEW Next-Gen Mac Pros and Mac Minis will launch either end of July first week of August.

Tong previously accurately predicted the arrival of new iMacs in the "end of April or 1st week of May". The iMacs did arrive in the 1st week of May as predicted. Tong indicates his source for the Mac Pro and Mac Mini updates are the same as for the iMac updates.

No details are provided on the specs of the machines besides the expected incorporation of Thunderbolt and Sandy Bridge CPUs.

Readers who are disappointed with Apple's new Back to School promotion may be interested to hear that electronics retailer Best Buy is offering to match Apple's promotion with their own.

Apple recently launched their 2011 Back to School promotion. Instead of the typical iPod giveaway, Apple is now offering a $100 iTunes/App Store gift card instead. We've been told that Best Buy will be matching this promotion with a $100 Best Buy gift card for the same qualifying customers. This is an unadvertised promotion, so customers will have to ask for it specifically.

Apple's Back to School promotion is open to college students, students accepted to college, parents buying for college students or faculty/staff at any grade level. Qualifying computers include the MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iMac, and Mac Pro.

Now, we can watch a newspaper; listen to a magazine; curl up with a movie; and see a phone call.

Now, we can take a classroom anywhere; hold an entire bookstore; and touch the stars.

Because now, there's this.

Thanks Geoff!

MobileMe's sync conflict resolver. Via BusySync

In iCloud, I believe you will never be presented with [a sync conflict] dialog, no matter how much has changed in one of the instances while it was "offline". The server-side iCloud, when there seemingly is a conflict, will make a decision and it will decide which one is the best (in Apple's terms the "truth"). That is what Steve Jobs means when he says "The Truth is in the Cloud." iTunes will decide which one is right and that's it. iCloud will push that right one to any device that has this account that has a different version.

But, here's the trick – what happens if it's not the right one? On the server side, it will remember all of the other ones, almost like versioning. There will be some sort of interface like "go and look at your contacts." There will be some sort of way to say "show me previous versions and let me pick the one that is right". You pick it and push it back up into the cloud and tell it "that's the truth" and Apple will push it out.

Currently, MobileMe pops up a dialog box (shown above) forcing users to resolve conflicts, before a sync can continue.

Apple hasn't officially revealed many details about exactly how its new services are going to work, iTunes Match nor the other various bits of iCloud. Gruber claims this isn't just a theory, that he knows is sure this is how iCloud will work. We'll know more when iCloud launches this fall.

Apple today released a PDF documenting (PDF link) how large business and educational customers with many Macs will upgrade to Lion via the Mac App Store. It appears that even for those customers, Apple will not be offering Lion via physical media. Like the consumer release, OS X Lion will be available via online delivery only.

Apple will offer business customers volume license contracts for $29.99 per license, with a minimum of 20 licenses. Education customers can purchase the Apple Software Collection (Mac OS, iLife and iWork) starting at $39 per license, with a minimum of 25 licenses.

For customers wanting OS X Lion Server, it will be available as an add-on for $49.99, in addition to the $29.99 upgrade for standard Lion. Snow Leopard Server is not required to purchase Lion Server, but existing Snow Leopard Server installations can only be upgraded to Lion Server. Both Lion and Lion Server need to be purchased for Snow Leopard Server-equipped machines.

To actually download Lion, volume license customers will receive one redemption code for each contract. The redemption code can be used to download Lion from the Mac App Store. When the redemption code is entered, the Lion installer will download to the Applications folder, but will not install immediately. This Lion installer is used to install Lion on other systems. Download once, install many times.

IT departments will be able to use the same mass installation techniques they use today. To install Lion on multiple systems, they'll copy the Install Mac OS X Lion application from the Mac App Store to each target system. Once copied, the installer will be launched and Lion will install in place. There is no need to boot from an external disk. Administrators will also be able to use System Image Utility in OS X Lion Server to create NetInstall or NetRestore Images.

Apple previously announced that it will be releasing OS X Lion in July.

Engadget has a hands on with Firemint's Real Racing 2 HD with support for Apple's AirPlay mirroring feature coming in iOS 5. While you can mirror anything on the iPad's screen to your Apple TV, some game developers have been building in support to provide a different interface on the device itself vs. the screen. This is similar feature to what Nintendo's new Wii U console offers.

For this game (and we imagine many more to come), you use the iPad as the controller -- both while navigating through menus and in race mode -- while the game appears only on your TV (though the tablet does display some vitals, and a map of the track). There's noticeable lag between the iPad and Apple TV when using AirPlay, which may be an issue for games where timing is important, such as Rock Band, but didn't seem to set us back while playing Firemint's racing game.

This ability to display different images on the device and the video out isn't actually new with iOS 5. Several other iOS games such as Max Adventure and Chopper 2 also offer a similar experience under iOS 4. But without AirPlay mirroring feature, users have needed a $29 VGA adapter to take advantage of this feature. In iOS 5, AirPlay mirroring also offers this ability to those with Apple TVs.

Spotify is finally (almost) ready to launch in the U.S., closing deals with three of the four big music labels -- Warner Music, predictably, is the lone holdout -- and a massive funding round, raising $100 million at a $1 billion valuation.

Spotify is a freemium music service, offering both free and paid subscription offerings, similar to Pandora. Spotify lets users listen to whatever songs they wish, in whatever order they wish, rather than building "channels" of like music on Pandora.

Spotify has a significant presence in Europe, with more than 1 million paid subscribers and 6 million ad-supported free users. In the US, it may face a more uphill climb with heavy new competition from from Google, Amazon, and Apple, plus there are existing music services from Rhapsody and the aforementioned Pandora. In fact, Apple has been rumored to have made efforts to prevent Spotify from being able to launch in the U.S.

Spotify plans to charge around $10 per month for its premium service, and allows users to stream millions of songs they don't own.

The company, founded in Sweden but based in London, raised $100 million from Digital Sky Technologies, Accel and Kleiner Perkins, all heavy hitters in the venture game. DST is a major investor in Facebook, which might help the two companies to make a deal. Spotify and Facebook are working on a "significant integration" according to All Things D's Peter Kafka, though that isn't tied to the U.S. launch. Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a known Spotify fan.

Spotify has a decent war-chest, plus proven success and buzz from its European operations. If it can ink a deal with Warner, it might actually, finally, launch on this side of the pond.

Earlier this week, we noted that Apple had filed a response to Samsung's patent countersuit, calling a recent motion by Samsung to gain access to unreleased iOS hardware an "attempt to harass" and irrelevant to the case at hand. The filing came just ahead ahead of a deadline for Samsung to share its unreleased hardware with Apple.

Apple yesterday made another move in the chess match, amending its complaint against Samsung to strengthen the language and to include a number of new Samsung models, including some of those set to be turned over to Apple today, as infringing products.

Many of the changes are designed to portray Samsung's alleged infringement as an incredibly outrageous act of copying. The original complaint already accused Samsung of "slavishly copying" Apple's designs. The amended one stresses that Samsung "has been even bolder" than other competitors emulating Apple's products and has created "products that blatantly imitate the appearance of Apple's products to capitalize on Apple's success."

In addition to the original 15 Samsung models cited in Apple's lawsuit, the following models have been added: Droid Charge, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Ace, Galaxy Prevail, Galaxy S (i9000), Gravity, Infuse 4G, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, Sidekick, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Galaxy S II. Apple has also tweaked some of the patent claims included in the lawsuit, removing a few assertions and adding other patents to the mix.

Apple's dispute with Samsung is being closely watched for a number of reasons, including Samsung's recent strong growth with the Android platform, Samsung's role as a prominent supplier for components of Apple's iOS devices, and the vociferousness of Apple's claims of outright copying by Samsung accompanied by numerous side-by-side comparisons in support of the claims.

The New York Times reports that Facebook is finally set to release a free iPad app "in coming weeks", remedying a curious omission for the social networking service that touts over 600 million users worldwide.

People briefed on Facebook's plans say that in coming weeks the company plans to introduce a free iPad application that has been carefully designed and optimized for the tablet.

The app has been in production at Facebook for almost a year, going through several design iterations, and is now in the final stages of testing, according to these people, who declined to be named because they were discussing confidential product plans.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who along with other company executives noted last November that the company was still been trying to decide how best to handle the iPad, is said to have been "heavily involved" in the app's development.

People who have seen the application said it has a slick design that has been tailored for the iPad and its touchscreen interface. Facebook developers and designers have also overhauled the Facebook Chat and Facebook Groups features for the application. And the app will go beyond the features available on the Facebook Web site by allowing users to shoot and upload photos and videos directly from the iPad’s built-in cameras.

Facebook's iPad app comes just as TechCrunch reports that the company is preparing to launch a new HTML5-based mobile platform codenamed "Project Spartan" that would take on iOS on its home turf by running within the mobile Safari browser.

As of right now, there are believed to be 80 or so outside developers working with Facebook on Project Spartan. These teams are working on apps for the platform that range from games to news-reading apps. Some of the names should be familiar: Zynga and Huffington Post (owned by our parent AOL), for example. The goal is to have these apps ready to roll in the next few weeks for a formal unveiling shortly thereafter.

Facebook's vision for Project Spartan reportedly includes integration of its Facebook Credits payment system that would allow developers to offer paid apps and in app purchases directly through the web-based platform.

Earlier in the week it was reported that PowerPC-emulation software Rosetta will be killed off in OS X Lion. This is of particular concern to users of older apps like Quicken 2007 (which is still for sale) which some users favor because the current version of Quicken Essentials for Mac is missing numerous features that the 2007 version had.

Aaron Patzer, VP/GM of Intuit's Personal Finance Group spoke with The Mac Observer about the intricacies of Intuit's codebase.

Mr. Patzer explained that the PowerPC codebase for Quicken For Mac 2007 was started decades ago and has many intricacies -- including its own custom-built database engine -- that are very much PowerPC specific. Simply porting this code over to Intel is not possible and would require a significant amount of work. So much so that Intuit decided to focus those resources on developing an entirely new application, Quicken Essentials for Mac.

But what of Rosetta and Quicken 2007 and OS X Lion? Intuit is reportedly working with Apple to embed the necessary parts of Rosetta in Quicken 2007 to get it to run on Lion.

The project has been underway for the past few months, with Intuit working to possibly embed specific Rosetta libraries into Quicken For Mac 2007 to get it to run. This, too, is not a simple project and may never come to fruition.

It's a massive project and may never work, but they are working on it. We should know more by the end of the summer.

iTunes Match was Steve Jobs' "One More Thing at WWDC this year. It allows users to get the same backup and "download anywhere" benefits from legitimate iTunes purchases as well as any other music they might have, regardless of where it was acquired. Or, as All Things Digital's Peter Kafka put it:

Apple will take the songs you've stolen, and turn them into legit files, with big music's blessing.

Big music might have agreed to Apple's pirate amnesty scheme, but little music may not fall in line quite so quietly.

Rob Sevier, owner of Chicago-based Numero Group -- a tiny record label that specializes in old Soul music -- thinks iTunes Match is a raw deal. In a chat with Ars Technica's Chris Foresman, Sevier explained the effect of piracy on a small record label like Numero.

[M]any of Numero's releases sell in the range of about 10,000 copies total, including physical and digital formats. Yet, the label has found copies of tracks from its albums on sharing sites such as MediaFire or RapidShare with download counts that far exceed sales numbers.

"People will rip your album and upload them, and you can see how many people are downloading it," Sevier explained. "And in some cases people are downloading our stuff like 80,000 times or more. We have seen, on average, anything from 10 to 20 times more downloads than legitimate sales."

"There's no way that we're not going to see matching that exceeds what we're selling legitimately," Sevier said.

This is nothing new. Six years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Grokster and StreamCast "induced users to violate copyrights and chose not to take the simple steps available to prevent it." The Economist, writing about the case in 2005, noted "the challenge for content providers is to use new technology to create value for customers, and to make those who use content illegally feel bad about it."

If, as Sevier claims, Match is bad for the artist and the record company, then it must be good for the consumer. Sevier, for one, thinks so:

[iTunes Match is] brilliant. I will definitely use the free version since I'll be able to access all of the stuff I've bought from iTunes and not have to permanently store it all on my computer.

But clearly some of the big record execs like it too. Labels hope iTunes Match will supply them with three important things: Some amount of revenue for pirated music is better than nothing; labels will get more feedback about the types of music that consumers are listening to; and, they hope, iTunes Match will get customers into the habit of paying for music again -- at least in a subscription form.