MacRumors

VR-Zone reports (via Hardmac) that Intel has begun production of its new "Z68" chipset for Sandy Bridge-based processors, with availability set for May. Most notably in light of rumors regarding the new MacBook Pro that failed to materialize, the Z68 chipset will support Intel's Rapid Storage Technology SSD caching.

Interestingly, Intel has also started production of their Z68 chipset this week along with other Cougar Point SKUs like H61 and Q65. All of them are based on the new B3 stepping therefore the SATA port 2-5 issue is fixed before they hit the market. Judging from the specs, it seems Intel has catered Z68 specially for enthusiasts which allows better processor overclocking, discrete graphics support and SSD caching capability.

SSD caching marries a conventional hard drive to a relatively small solid-state drive (SSD), with the most frequently-accessed data automatically placed on the SSD for fast access while the two drives appear to users simply as a single drive. The functionality serves to bring users much of the speed benefit of SSDs but with the storage capacity and lower cost of traditional hard drives.

Several rumors in the days leading up to last week's MacBook Pro refresh claimed that the updated models would offer a dedicated SSD to host the operating system and other essential files. The claims did not, however, come to fruition.

Update: To be clear, the Z68 chipset is for desktop implementations.

Apple is holding its iPad media event in just a couple of days. The rumors to date have been relatively modest for the iPad upgrade. The general consensus seems to be that the new iPad will be thinner, faster, and with improved (but not Retina display).

If the latest Chinese iPad parts are to believed from iFixyouri/9to5, then Apple may be considering creating a white iPad 2 as well. The shown bezel does include a hole for a front-facing camera that is a widely expected feature of the iPad 2. The white coloring, however, has been a big issue for Apple with the iPhone 4. While they originally announced a white iPhone 4, they have yet to deliver it to customers. Rumors have suggested that Apple has had problems with the white paint process for the iPhone 4, so it's not clear if the materials or issues would be the same for the next iPad.

Apple's iPad-focused media event takes place on Wednesday, March 2nd in San Francisco. There are typically last minute rumors and leaks in the days leading into the final event. iPad 2 availability is expected shortly after the announcement, though we've heard no word of shipments targeted for Wednesday, so same day availability seems unlikely.

The Sunday Times reports that Apple designer Jonathan Ive and the Apple's board of directors are at an impasse about his future. The British designer is said to want to spend more time in the UK while Apple's board seems unwilling to allow that. The report comes by way of The Daily Mail and Cult of Mac as the original article appears to behind The Sunday Times' paywall.

Ive has reportedly been tied to Apple for the past three years based on a "golden handcuffs" deal from 2008. That deal is reportedly due now and will net the designer 18 million. The completion of this deal seemed to open these negotiations with even the possibility of his leaving the company. Ive reportedly has proposed to commute from Somerset, but Apple's board seems unwilling.

A friend of the family told The Sunday Times: 'Unfortunately he is just too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them.'

Jonathan Ive has long been credited for being the principal designer for many of Apple's iconic products. Ive joined Apple in 1992 and has been responsible for the design of the unibody MacBook Pro, iPod, iPhone and iPad. His name was even thrown around as a possible successor to Steve Jobs in 2007.

Starting in Mac OS X Lion, we've learned that Apple has started utilizing WebKit2 in their Safari web browser. The advanced version of Apple's Webkit engine was first announced in April of 2010. WebKit2 is described as a new API layer for WebKit that offers both speed and security improvements:

WebKit2 is a new API layer for WebKit designed from the ground up to support a split process model, where the web content (JavaScript, HTML, layout, etc) lives in a separate process from the application UI. This model is very similar to what Google Chrome offers, with the major difference being that we have built the process split model directly into the framework, allowing other clients of WebKit to use it.

For the end user, the result should be a faster and more stable browsing experience. If a webpage crashes or hangs, only that single tab is affected rather than the whole browser. Subjective reports from early end users have indicated that the new Safari seems to run smoother.

Google's Chrome browser introduced a similar sandboxing model when it was introduced.

As developers delve into the early build of Mac OS X Lion 10.7, a large number of smaller features are being revealed. One discussion thread seems to be compiling these findings. There seems to be a lot of nice new features being described. A couple of particular interest include:

- PowerPC (Rosetta) emulation is no longer offered. That means if you have any PowerPC applications they won't be able to run in Mac OS X Lion. You can determine if you are still running PowerPC applications by going into Applications -> Utilities -> System Profiler -> Applications and viewing "By Kind". This will show you which applications you have that are running under PowerPC. Rosetta had already become an optional install in Snow Leopard, and it appears Apple will be removing support for it entirely in Lion.

- QuickTime Player finally re-incorporates some features from QuickTime Pro. New features cited include Copy/Paste, Insert Clip, Crop Video, Rotate Video, Resize, Trim, More Export options.

- TUAW points to a video walk through of Lion from Ian Bauters that gives an overview:

Other highlights from the growing discussion thread details many smaller updates and features that users have found in Mac OS X Lion. An abbreviated list includes:

- Preview is a powerhouse app, you can even sign your document just by holding a piece of paper up to the camera with your signature (it saves it for you!) (screenshot)
- There's animations for everything, slick simple transitions that remind you of the polish of the iphone. Stuff that makes it easier to understand what your OS is doing with visuals
- You can turn the lights back (open application indicator) on in the dock (screenshot)
- iChat supports Yahoo Messenger Video and Voice chat
- Address Book also with "classic" view
- Much More

We've compiled a couple of more notes of interest on the Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.

- Classic Mail: While Apple is pushing the new iPad-inspired Mac OS X Lion Mail application, we've learned that Apple also offers a "Classic Layout" checkbox in the Mail settings which reverts the interface back to the familiar Mail interface.

- Finder: AppleInsider posts this video which shows Lion in action (embedded above). It demonstrates new Finder features including:

- Overlay Scrollbars
- Window Resizing from any edge/corner
- Enhanced Finder Source list
- Enhanced Quick View
- Zoom button behavior

Apple launched the developer preview of Mac OS X Lion on Thursday. The public release is expected this summer. We've opened a Mac OS X Lion forum for questions and discussion about Apple's new operating system.

The front bezel of what is claimed to be an "iPhone 5" part has reportedly been posted to by iDealsChina. The image was first discovered by 9to5Mac. iDealsChina writes:

China's 1st iPhone 5 photo has surfaced! From this photo it seems that the screen size will be larger than iPhone 4. There has been a lot of specualtion about a larger screen and maybe this will be one of the upgrades we will see when iPhone 5 is released this summer.

The screen could match up with claims that the iPhone 5 will have a larger 4 inch screen as well as a "edge to edge" screen which we mean to interpret as a smaller bezel (border). It's hard to tell for sure without a comparison with the current iPhone 4 next to it.

iDealsChina was one of the sources of the early (2008) iPhone Nano rumors based on some early cases from accessory makers. They had previously posted moldings for the then-unreleased iPhone 3G cases which turned out to be accurate. The iPhone 5 is rumored to be launching this summer.

With Apple having released updated MacBook Pros yesterday, here is a look back at the some of the rumors that preceded the launch along with an assessment of their accuracy.

Winners:

- As long ago as last December, CNET reported that Apple would move even its smaller notebooks to Intel's Sandy Bridge platform, necessitating the use of Intel integrated graphics on the machines unable to utilize a discrete GPU for space reasons. Apple did just that with Sandy Bridge and with the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 serving as the sole graphics processor on the 13-inch model. The report also claimed that Apple would tap AMD for the graphics in the company's larger MacBook Pro, displacing NVIDIA as the GPU provider for the line, another development that did in fact occur in the update.

- Last Friday, a pair of Italian blogs, iSpazio and Slide to Mac, pinpointed Apple order numbers for the new machines, with one of them accurately claiming a release on Thursday or Friday of this week. Later that day, we confirmed that the launch would in fact take place on Thursday, Feburary 24th.

- On Sunday, CNET reported that Apple was expected to introduce a "new high-speed connection technology", referring to Intel's Light Peak standard, in the "near future". Light Peak did in fact make its debut in the new MacBook Pros under the name "Thunderbolt". Later that day, AppleInsider accurately reported that shipments were en route to resellers, with delivery set for early in the week. Best Buy also slipped its placeholder information into public-facing inventory lists.

- On Wednesday of this week, 24 hours before official launch, fscklog and Mac4Ever posted photos of specs from the box of the new entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro, as well as shots of the machine itself. The sources of these shots were obviously resellers who had received Apple's shipments of the new machines and opened the packages early.

Losers:

- In early February, a Best Buy inventory screenshot appeared showing a new Apple notebook with a dummy SKU and an in-stock date of March 11th, but the update actually occurred more than two weeks ahead of that date. The evidence continues to suggest that Best Buy's inventory databases are an inaccurate source of information until shipments are actually en route to stores, as the company appears to use placeholders that are simply based on circulating rumors and guesses up until that point.

- Danish blogger Kenneth Lund claimed earlier this month that a reseller had informed him of a March 1st date for MacBook Pros.

- An Intel ad published earlier this month sparked significant speculation that the notebook pictured was a leaked next-generation MacBook Pro. But as we noted at the time, the picture was simply a generic mockup and not related to any revamped MacBook Pro design.

- On Monday of this week, BGR reported that the new MacBook Pros would offer larger trackpads, a small SSD boot drive for system files, and reduced weight compared to the previous generation. None of the claims came true.

- On Tuesday, French site MacGeneration offered a list of claimed specs for the revamped MacBook Pro (repeating the hybrid SSD claim), with essentially none of these claims coming true with the exception of the "new technology" that had already been widely rumored to be coming as Light Peak/Thunderbolt.

Mixed Bag:

- In mid-December, DigiTimes predicted that Apple would update the MacBook Pro and iMac in the first half of 2011. While certainly not a stretch given that the previous update had occurred in April 2010, Apple did indeed easily meet this prediction for the MacBook Pro. The report claimed that Apple would launch "at least four" upgraded MacBook Pros, and the company did in fact introduce five standard configurations yesterday. The report also claimed, however, that the new MacBook Pros would ship with Mac OS X Lion. In addition, the report claimed that there would be a "slight change in chassis design", but the new MacBook Pros are for all intents and purposes identical to the previous generation.

The Wall Street Journal reports on an interview with Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead, who claims that short lines for the public launch of the Verizon iPhone were the result of an intentional effort to push sales to online distribution and to stagger availability, not due to poor sales.

Verizon first offered pre-orders of the phone to existing customers on Feb. 3, and then began selling it in stores one week later. Mr. Mead said the company staggered the launch of the Apple Inc. device in phases so that customers would have a smooth purchasing experience. "It was a conscious decision to spread the launch over three phases," said Mr. Mead.

Mr. Mead said more than 60% of iPhone sales occurred online. That heavy activity online contributed to short lines on launch day, which were noted by many news outlets. "If we had not done online, you would have seen a much different flow in the pictures," he said. In a few days, the company will double the number of stores that sell the iPhone, going from 4,000 to 8,000.

Mead declined, however, to announce specific sales figures for the Verizon iPhone, choosing to wait for the company's next earnings release to share numbers.

Mead also reported that Verizon expects Apple to offer devices compatible with the carrier's new 4G LTE network, although he declined to offer information on which product lines they might be and when they might be released.

"You'll see more coming from Apple on LTE," he said. "They understand the value proposition of LTE and I feel very confident that they are going to be a part of it."

The interview comes just as Consumer Reports announces that the Verizon iPhone possesses an antenna issue similar to that found on the original iPhone 4, although the strength of Verizon's network makes the issue less noticeable to users.

With the first developer preview of Mac OS X Lion having been out for over 24 hours now, some additional points of interest are surfacing from those who have had a chance to look through the build. Among the interesting observations:

- Apple has added support for a separate recovery partition, hiding away utilities needed for repair and troubleshooting right on the user's hard drive. The new system will allow users to boot to the recovery partition without the need for an operating system disc. The move, along with the shift to Mac App Store distribution for the developer preview, signal a reduced reliance on DVDs that may become important if other notebooks follow the MacBook Air's lead and see their internal optical drives removed entirely.

- As noted by MacGeneration [Google translation], Apple has added TRIM support in this initial developer build of Mac OS X Lion. TRIM support provides for optimization of solid-state drives by cleaning up unused blocks of data and preparing them for rewriting, preventing slowdowns that would otherwise occur over time as garbage data accumulates.

- Mac OS X Lion requires a minimum of an Intel Core 2 Duo, leaving out compatibility for Apple's earliest Intel-based machines offering Core Solo or Core Duo processors.

- CNET notes that Apple has apparently invited a number of security researchers to test out Mac OS X Lion, a move that seems to signal a more open relationship with those who are trying to find security vulnerabilities in Apple's software.

Influential ratings-and-reviews magazine Consumer Reports made headlines last July when it declined to recommend the iPhone to consumers due to antenna issues that could result in loss of signal. The publication has held strong on its non-recommendation, arguing that Apple's temporary free case over was insufficient to address the issue.

Consumer Reports is back at it again, this time hitting the Verizon iPhone for essentially the exact same reason it knocked on the original iPhone 4.

The Verizon iPhone 4 has a problem that could cause the phone to drop calls, or be unable to place calls, in weak signal conditions, Consumer Reports engineers have found in lab tests.

The problem is similar to the one we confirmed in July with the AT&T version of Apple's newest smart phone. It can occur when you hold either version of the phone in a specific but quite natural way in which a gap in the phone's external casing is covered. The phone performs superbly in most other respects, and using the iPhone 4 with a case can alleviate the problem.

According to tests conducted by Consumer Reports, simply placing a finger on the gap at the lower left side of the Verizon iPhone causes signal to drop over a period of 15 seconds, resulting in calls being dropped in areas of low signal. As a result, the publication is similarly declining to recommend the Verizon iPhone despite lower reports of users experiencing the signal issues, potentially due to the strength of Verizon's network.

But given our findings, we believe the possibility exists for individual users to experience the problem since low signal conditions are unavoidable when using any cell-phone network.

For that reason, we are not including the Verizon iPhone 4 in our list of recommended smart phones, despite its high ranking in our Ratings.

Consumer Reports was unable to generate similar issues with a variety of other phones on Verizon's network, including the Samsung Fascinate, Motorola Droid 2 Global, HTC Droid Incredible, LG Ally, and Motorola Droid X, thus isolating the issue as unique to Apple's current iPhone designs.

Financial Times reports that Apple has "clarified" with music labels its intent for a cloud-based music storage service, positioning the service as a way to back up existing collections and move music to Apple devices rather than as any sort of subscription streaming service.

Apple, which rocked digital music services such as Pandora, Rdio and MOG last week by announcing plans to keep 30 per cent of all revenues from subscriptions taken out through its App Store, has clarified its plans for using remote storage, known as the cloud, according to several music industry executives.

More than a year after buying Lala, a cloud-based digital music service, Apple is now looking to use the cloud mainly to allow users of its iTunes store to back up their collections and access them from any Apple device.

One person with knowledge of Apple's plans said the company did not want to undermine the market that it dominates for paid downloads, likening its plans for the cloud to "insurance".

It is not entirely clear from the article exactly how users would "access" their cloud-hosted music from Apple devices. Apple has been presumed to be preparing to allow users to simply host their collections in the cloud and then stream tracks to their Internet-connected devices on an as-needed basis, eliminating the need for managing and syncing libraries across machines and reducing onboard storage requirements. The report's emphasis on the "insurance" aspect, however, makes Apple's plans sound more like a backup service than a streaming service, although we would assume Apple is still working to convince record labels to permit streaming rather than forcing users to employ a "re-download" mechanism.

In a post taking Engadget to task for trying to position its revised claims for the second-generation iPad as an actual change in Apple's plans, Daring Fireball's John Gruber uses a footnote to quietly report that he has heard from second-hand sources that Apple may be looking to use a carbon fiber body on the device.

I could publish things I'm only half-sure about, like the iPad 2 switching from aluminum to a lightweight high-strength carbon fiber body, but I don't, because I'm only half-sure and I've only heard about it from second-hand sources who themselves are unsure about it. And even if I were to off-handedly mention such speculation, I'd do so in a footnote and take pains to emphasize the uncertain nature of the information and the second-hand status of the sources thereof. What I would never do is take a flyer and report uncertain speculation as a fact, and, if it wound up not panning out, chalk it up to Apple having changed things at the last moment rather than the report being flat-out wrong all along.

Claims and speculation regarding a shift to carbon fiber shells for Apple's devices are not new, with a 2008 report suggesting that Apple was investigating the possibility of shifting the MacBook Air to a carbon fiber body, and a patent application surfacing a few months later revealing that Apple was at least interested in the possibility. More recently, iLounge reported earlier this month that prototype second-generation iPads with carbon fiber shells had been spotted but that it was unclear whether they would make it into production models.

Gruber has a strong record when it comes to Apple product rumors, but his careful wording in this case obviously suggests that the report should be taken with a healthy amount of skepticism unless or until new information surfaces.

Yesterday, Apple and Intel introduced a new cabling system called Thunderbolt into the new MacBook Pros. As with any new technology, there are a lot of new questions and issues that are raised. Tested.com offers a good overview of the new technology, and Macworld offers a good Frequently Asked Questions about Thunderbolt. We've compiled some of the more interesting notes here.

- First, this Engadget video shows Thunderbolt in action on one of the new MacBook Pros, and does a good job showing the advantages of the faster bandwidth.

- CNet's live coverage reveals that there are no plans to offer Thunderbolt PCIe cards. In fact, Intel says that you will need a new computer/motherboard to get Thunderbolt. That means Mac Pro owners won't be able to add it on to their systems.

10:25 a.m. (Dong Ngo) : There won't be TB PCIe cards it seems. You'll need a new computer.
10:34 a.m. (Dong Ngo) : There won't be add-in TB adapters, you'll need a new computer/motherboard that supports TB.

- CrunchGear notes that while Apple doesn't have an exclusive on Thunderbolt, they have a head start:

At their press release, held shortly after Apples update when live, Intel noted that the developer kit for the interface would be provided to other computer manufacturers this spring, and that they didnt expect OEMs to ship with Thunderbolt until 2012.

- Engadget reports that Thunderbolt will be both backwards and forwards-compatible when it gets the new optical cabling:

...the port you'll find in new MacBook Pros and storage devices can actually take an optical cable when those are cost-effective enough to roll out, because Intel will eventually bake the optical transceivers into the cables themselves.

- Many have noted the new MacBook Pros have shorter battery life specs than last year's MacBook Pros. TechCrunch notes that Apple has been using a different testing protocol to report battery life:

Apple has begun using a new method of battery life testing. And they feel its much more accurate in real world scenarios. Specifically they call this the Wireless Web protocol testing.

We won't know until reviewers start testing them with identical benchmarks how much shorter the new MacBook Pro battery life actually is (if at all) as compared to the previous generation.

iFixit's teardown of the new MacBook Pro shows the same battery capacity between last year's and this year's 15" model. So any differences will be a product of the new CPU/GPUs.