This update fixes a few graphics issues including:
- Resolves an issue where the system becomes unresponsive while playing back a movie trailer in iMovie. - Resolves an issue where the system becomes unresponsive after waking from sleep when an external display is connected.
This update is recommended for users of all MacBook Air notebooks manufactured in late 2010.
The update weighs in at 368 KB and requires Mac OS X 10.6.4, the standard operating system shipping on the new machines.
Apple also released ProKit 6.0 (SnowLeopard), addressing issues with the user interface package for Apple's professional applications.
This ProKit Update fixes issues with user interface software that is shared by Apple's professional applications. The issues addressed include:
- Improves reliability for browsing iPhoto libraries in Aperture. - Addresses cosmetic issue with appearance of disclosure triangles in Aperture. - Fixes a problem in Logic Pro and MainStage where numeric parameters display incorrect information.
This update is recommended for all users of Final Cut Studio, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Aperture, Final Cut Express, Soundtrack, Logic Studio, Logic Pro, MainStage, WaveBurner and Logic Express.
The update weighs in at 13.5 MB and requires Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It is not a MacBook Air-specific update.
Apple today released Aperture 3.1, bringing compatibility with the new iLife '11 suite as well as a host of bug fixes and improvements.
This update improves overall stability and performance, and addresses compatibility with iLife '11. It also includes a number of specific fixes in the following areas:
- Performance when opening large libraries - Performance when exporting heavily-adjusted images - Importing iPhoto Libraries - Relinking to referenced images after importing an iPhoto Library - Importing photos and videos from iPhone or iPad - Upgrading libraries with images containing Spot & Patch adjustments - Duplicate detection of audio and video files - Face detection on RAW+JPEG pairs - Rendering of thumbnails used in Faces view - Rendering of images scaled to below 100% in Viewer - Image quality on straightened images - Applying Red Eye correction - Rendering thumbnails when reprocessing masters - Searching libraries containing a large number of keywords - Applying photos to GPS track paths - Export of GPS data when using Export Metadata command - Handling of color profiles in Print dialog when using Loupe - Applying and removing slideshow Photo Effects - Slideshows containing video clips - Tethered capture - Library database reliability - Library repair - Updating vaults
The update is recommended for all users of Aperture 3.
Full details are available in the release notes for the update. Aperture 3.1 weighs in at 357.55 MB and requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or Mac OS X 10.6.2 or later.
The most surprising news coming out of today's media event was the revelation that Apple would be launching a Mac App Store for Mac OS X. From the short preview that was given, the Mac App Store appears to be structured similarly to the popular iOS App Store. App sales and upgrades are all managed through the App Store, itself. Like the iOS App Store, Apple splits revenues with the developers in the same 70/30 ratio.
Given the massive success of the iOS App Store, Mac developers are understandably interested, but may run into hurdles with Apple's approval process. Andrew Welch of AmbrosiaSW told Informationweek that many of his company's existing apps would not be allowed in:
"Ambrosia is certainly interested in the idea of a centralized Mac application store," he said in an e-mail. "However the restrictions imposed by Apple on the applications may make it impossible for a number of our applications to be submitted."
Presumably, these apps would include their system utilities such as WireTap, Snapz Pro X and Soundboard.
We've heard that Mac App Store Apps are restricted from installing kernel extensions (kexts) that are frequently used to provide system level functions in these utilities. Apps, as well, must be self contained and avoid use of undocumented APIs.
Developers, of course, aren't required to distribute Mac apps through Apple's App Store. Developers can still distribute their software on their own, but the centralized access and publicity of the App Store model has been well proven on iOS. The Mac App Store also raises additional questions whether or not the so-called "race to the bottom" in prices will be duplicated on the Mac software side as well, and whether or not it will encourage simpler, more casual apps.
Those in attendance at today's media event on Apple's campus had the opportunity to spend some time with the new MacBook Air models, and early hands-on impressions and reviews are beginning to roll in.
Ars Technica calls both the 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch models "incredibly thin and light" and is particularly taken with the smaller version.
Both devices are incredibly thin and light, but the 11.6" version stole the show. The machine is practically netbook-sized (but don't tell Steve Jobs or Tim Cook we said that, as they seem to have a seething hatred for netbooks), but has a full-sized keyboard and almost-full-sized trackpad. The 13.3" model seemed like a monster by comparison, though as a previous MacBook Air owner, I really like the new design.
Several outlets have commented on the snappiness of the new MacBook Airs when waking from sleep, with the machines ready to use nearly instantly upon opening the lid. While not quite instant, a full boot take only about 15 seconds according to Forbes.
The most remarkable feature, however, isn't cosmetic, it's these machine's boot time.
Bootup takes less than 15 seconds, according to my watch. That's a good deal less than the roughly 50 seconds it takes my trusty Windows laptop to come to life.
As Apple notes in a support document, the 30-day standby battery life for the new MacBook Airs is achieved with a new mode that activates after an hour of regular sleep, saving the entire system state to flash memory and turning off hardware systems.
Engadget has also posted a video of an unboxing of the two new MacBook Air models.
Alongside Apple's other announcements today, the company also quietly added a new option to its 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros, allowing customers to configure the machines with a 2.8 GHz Core i7 processor. The upgrade comes as an additional $200 charge on top of the 2.66 GHz Core i7 processor that had been the top-of-the-line offering.
At the close of Apple's Back to the Mac event today, Steve Jobs announced two new MacBook Air models feature 13.3-inch and 11.6-inch displays.
As rumored, the new MacBook Air models do not have traditional hard drives, featuring only flash storage. Both models have Core 2 Duo processors, 2 GB of RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics cards. The new MacBook Air models have unibody chassis like the latest MacBook Pro models, full keyboards, stereo speakers, FaceTime cameras and glass multi-touch trackpads. Both models can have their RAM upgraded to 4GB from Apple's online store.
Battery life is claimed to be 7 hours for wireless web browsing on the 13.3-inch model and 5 hours on the 11.6-inch model, with a standby time of 30 days for both sizes
Both new MacBook Air models have high-resolution LED-backlit displays, with the 13.3 inch-model offering 1440 x 900 pixels and the 11.6-inch model carrying 1366 x 768 pixels.
Pricing begins at $999 for the 11.6-inch MacBook Air with 64 GB of storage and goes up to $1,599 for the 13.3-inch model with 256 GB of storage. Both MacBook Air models are available starting today.
MacBook Air Software Reinstall Drive
With the new MacBook Air lacking an internal optical drive, Apple has included a "Software Reinstall Drive" USB stick carrying a unique Apple design to be used to restore Mac OS X and iLife. iWork is also included on the drive if the machine has been custom-configured to include the software. As it did with the original MacBook Air, Apple is continuing to offer an external MacBook Air Superdrive, now priced at $79. The MacBook Air can also wirelessly take advantage of the optical drive on a nearby Mac or PC for software installation purposes.
As expected, the next version of Mac OS X was previewed at today's Back to the Mac event, showing new features inspired by iOS on the iPad, such as multi-touch gestures, the App Store, app home screens, full-screen apps, auto-saving capabilities, and how apps resume when launched.
Noting that over 7 billion apps have already been downloaded from the App Store, Jobs announced that the Mac will also have its own Mac App Store. It will feature one-click downloads, free and paid apps, and the same 70/30 revenue split currently applied to apps in the iOS App Store. Apps sold will be licensed for use on all the personal Macs a user owns. The new Launchpad in Lion will be a home screen for all applications.
"Lion brings many of the best ideas from iPad back to the Mac, plus some fresh new ones like Mission Control that Mac users will really like," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "Lion has a ton of new features, and we hope the few we had time to preview today will give users a good idea of where we are headed."
The Mac App Store will look similar to the App Store on the iPad, featuring app descriptions, screen shots, and user reviews. The Launch Pad will display all applications on virtual pages, much like the home screen pages on iOS devices, including the ability to organize applications into folders.
In Lion, applications can be viewed in full-screen mode and navigated using multi-touch gestures to switch between open applications. The Dashboard feature will be accessible on a virtual page to the left of the current screen in the same way the search screen is accessible in iOS. A new Expose feature called Mission Control will show all windows for all open apps.
Lion will be released in Summer 2011. The Mac App Store will open in 90 days and developers can submit apps for inclusion beginning in November.
Steve Jobs announced FaceTime video conferencing for the Mac at today's Back to the Mac event. The new feature allows Mac users to communicate via FaceTime with other Macs and other Facetime-capable devices including the iPhone 4 and the 4th-generation iPod touch.
"FaceTime makes video calling to or from mobile devices easy for the first time," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We've sold more than 19 million FaceTime-ready iPhone 4 and iPod touch devices in the past four months, and now those users can make FaceTime calls with tens of millions of Mac users."
A beta release of Facetime for the Mac will be downloadable today from Apple's site at http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/. Jobs noted that there are already more than 19 million Facetime-capable devices in use today.
At today's Back to the Mac media event, Apple announced an update to its iLife software suite. iLife '11 features new versions of iPhoto, iMovie, iWeb, and Garageband and is available today. The iLife suite last saw a major update in early 2009 at Macworld San Francisco.
iPhoto '11 includes new full screen modes to as well as Facebook enhancements that allows users can post directly to Facebook and see comments on photos made by others. Enhancements have been made to emailing photos, which can now be done right within iPhoto '11, and new slideshows effects have been added, including those that use location information included in geo-tagged photos.
New printed products include letterpress cards and new photo book creation features. A new project view in iPhoto '11 shows all current cards and photo books a user is working on.
iMovie '11 features new audio editing and effects, a People Finder feature, new news and sports themes as well as movie trailer templates that include music recorded by a full symphony. iPhoto's face detection technology is used in iMovie '11's People Finder feature to automatically find people in close-up or wide shots.
GarageBand '11 has new features called Flex Time and Groove Matching along with more guitar amps and effects and new guitar and piano lessons. The Groove Matching feature can automatically match the rhythm of different instruments within a song. The Flex Time feature allows users to adjust the timing of specific notes or tracks within a song. The new "How did I play?" feature in the music lessons lessons provide visual feedback during practice and keeps track of practice history and performance.
iLife '11 is included for free with every new Mac, while current iLife '09 owners can upgrade for $49. iLife '11 is available starting today.
Following Apple's live video stream of its September media event to introduce new iPods, iTunes 10, and a revamped Apple TV, many observers have been disappointed that the company does not appear to be offering a similar feed of today's "Back to the Mac" event.
That may be changing at the last minute, however, as several European outlets are reporting that they have received word from their local Apple representatives that the event will in fact be streamed live.
As with the previous event, Apple is using its HTTP Live Streaming technology, limiting the platforms on which the feed will be available.
Apple will broadcast its October 20 event online using Apple's industry-leading HTTP Live Streaming, which is based on open standards. Viewing requires either a Mac running Safari on Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard, an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 3.0 or higher, or an iPad. The live broadcast will begin at 10:00 a.m. PDT on October 20, 2010 at www.apple.com.
Banner at Apple's Cupertino headquarters (Source: setteB.IT)
Apple today is holding its "Back to the Mac" media event, where it is expected to introduce several new and updated products. The event is scheduled to kick off at Apple's corporate headquarters in Cupertino, California at 10:00 AM Pacific Time / 1:00 PM Eastern Time, or just about an hour and half from now.
Just about two hours ago, Apple announced that it will be offering live video streaming of the event to compatible Apple devices. In addition to Apple's video stream, we will be updating this article with coverage as the media event unfolds. We will also be issuing Twitter updates through our @MacRumorsLive account.
Apple's online stores around the world are currently down in advance of the event.
Recent News and Rumors
- A reliable source has just provided us with details on Apple's planned releases for today, including revamped 13.3-inch MacBook Airs at 1.86 GHz or 2.13 GHz and 128 GB or 256 GB of flash memory, iLife '11, and a "K99" product that could be the new 11.6-inch MacBook Air.
MC503LL/A - MBAIR 13.3/1.86/2/128FLASH-USA MC504LL/A -MBAIR 13.3/1.86/2/256FLASH-USA MC505LL/A - K99 BETTER BTR -USA MC506LL/A - K99 BEST BTR-USA MC623Z/A - ILIFE '11 RETAIL -USA MC625Z/A - ILIFE '11 RETAIL FAMILY PACK - USA MC628Z/A - ILIFE '11 MAINT FULFILL - USA MC635Z/A - ILIFE '11 UP TO DATE - USA MC684LL/A - APPLE MACBOOK AIR SUPERDRIVE MC838LL/A - APPLE HDMI TO HDMI CABLE (1.8 M ) MC905LL/A - MBAIR 13.3/2.13/4/256FLASH-USA MC906LL/A - K99 BEST RTL - USA
- Apple's video streaming page for the event is now active, although the stream has not yet begun. - The video stream is now up and running, but currently just showing copyright info.
- Steve Jobs giving brief intro...in this intimate setting, we'll have some of our engineers on stage to share our new products with you. Tim Cook on stage to update on state of the Mac. - Mac install base just shy of 50 million worldwide. Last quarter, Mac grew 27% year-over-year, compared to 11% for overall industry. We've outgrown industry 18 quarters in a row. - NPD says Mac's share of retail sales in the U.S. was 20.7%. - 600,000 registered Mac developers, growing at 30,000 per month. Highlighting Valve and Autodesk as new entrants, Microsoft as continuing partner. - Customer satisfaction surveys continue to show Apple as #1, year after year: ASCI, Consumer Reports, PCWorld, PC Magazine. - Feeding the Mac momentum has been Apple retail. Stores had 75 million visitors last quarter, sold 2.8 million Macs over the last year, 50% of those to customers new to Mac. 318 stores in 11 countries, highlighting Upper West Side store in Manhattan, Paris Opera House, Covent Garden in London, "jaw-dropping" Shanghai store, new Beijing store. Chinese stores are highest traffic of all retail stores. - Jobs back on stage, asking people to silence phones. - Now introducing new iLife. iLife is why some people buy a Mac. We keep improving it every year or two, and we've got a new one today. iLife '11. Same apps, and we'll offer a look at three of them today. - iPhoto '11: New full screen modes ("can live in full-screen mode"), Facebook enhancements, emailing photos, new slideshows, big leap in books (printing over 2 million per year), letterpress cards. - Demo of iPhoto with Phil Schiller. - Showing off full-screen Events, Faces, Places. Toolbar in full-screen mode is very iOS-like. - Demonstrating new automatic slideshows. - Showing Album view. Automatically pulls in photos from Facebook and Flickr accounts. - More slideshow templates being demoed. - Emailing photos: Select photos, click share, select email, and email is automatically created directly within iPhoto. Photos organized in scrapbook-like template. Can reorganize and provide titles. - Info tab offers timeline of activities for a given photo: emails, postings to Facebook/Flickr, as well as comments made on the photos from social networking sites. - Demoing photo book creation with carousel to choose themes. iPhoto pulls information about the photos in an album to create the book: Higher-rated photos will be chosen for larger prints, photos taken at the same time and location will be presented together. But everything is customizable. - Full-screen Project view. Wooden bookshelf like in iBooks to show all iPhoto projects...books, cards, etc. - Letterpress cards. Playing a demo video from in iPhoto. Uses a raised plate to print and also deboss the card. - Jobs back on stage. "This is why we do what we do". Recapping iPhoto highlights. - iMovie '11: "This is a great release." #1 request was for better audio editing. We've responded with something amazing. All-new tools. One-step effects, people finder, news and sports themes, movie trailer creation. - Demo of iMovie with Randy Ubillos - Showing off color-coded audio waveforms, with click-and-drag audio level adjustments, fade-ins, etc. Can select segments and adjust audio. Can apply audio effects...slow down, speed up, etc. - One-step effects. Select a video segment for instant replay at various speed options. Temporary "snapshot" freezing of video with Ken Burns effect in video. Complex editing with just a few clicks. - Creating movie trailers. Can fill in movie name and date, cast members, create studio names, choose from logos, fill in credits. Storyboard tab to show pacing and timing before footage is even added. 15 different trailer styles with original scores with the London Symphony Orchestra. - Face detection pulled from iPhoto into iMovie. Automatically finds group, action and other shots for use in movie trailers. Ubillos pulling individual segments being pulled into the trailer based on tags created by detection technology. - Showing off final product put together in just a few minutes. Can share on Facebook and Vimeo in addition to existing options. Also playing two additional movie trailers as examples. - Jobs back on stage. Recapping iMovie. - GarageBand '11: Flex Time, Groove Matching, new guitar amps and effects, new guitar and piano lessons, "How did I play?" - Xander Soren on stage to demo. - Groove Matching: single click allows users to pick one track as the "Groove Track" and apply the groove to every other instrument track to lock together in a single "human" rhythm. "Kind of like an automatic spell checker for bad rhythm." - Flex Time: Waveform editor can easily stretch or shrink segments. Showing the stretching one guitar chord to match the sustained chords played by others. - Showing new guitar and piano lessons. - "How did I play?": Using a USB keyboard to play along with GarageBand orchestra. Correct notes light up in green, mistakes show in red, timing issues shown in yellow. Percentage-based overall score also shown in real-time. Timeline shows exactly where mistakes were. GarageBand builds a history each time you play to chart improvements. Works with piano and guitar. - Jobs back on stage. Over 5 million people now using GarageBand. - So, that's iLife '11. All this amazing engineering. Free with every new Mac. $49 to upgrade existing versions. Available today. - Next up, FaceTime. Introduced in June with iPhone 4, brought to iPod touch in September. 19 million FaceTime devices sold in four months. Today, announcing FaceTime for the Mac. - No separate buddy list required, just pull from Address Book. Full-screen capable. - Jobs demoing. Uses iMac to call Phil Schiller on an iPhone 4. FaceTime for Mac auto-rotates video feed based on orientation coming from iPhone/iPod touch. - Beta release today. Download from Apple.com
- Now, "the entree for today": Mac OS X. We've had seven major releases in the last decade. We're really happy with Snow Leopard, but we want to take it even further. Preview of Mac OS X Lion. - Philosophy of Lion: "Back to the Mac". We started with Mac OS X, and created iOS from it. Created some new things there, and moved it to the iPad. Now we want to bring some of that back to the Mac. Lion = Mac OS X + iPad. - iPad features we'd like to bring back to the Mac: Multi-touch gestures, App Store, App Home screens, full screen apps, auto save, auto resume when launching. - Multi-touch. We've done lots of research, but multi-touch doesn't work on vertical surfaces. Great demo, but terrible ergonomics. That's why focus on the trackpad, Magic Mouse, and Magic Trackpad for multi-touch. - App Store: Over 7 billion App Store downloads on iOS. We'd like to bring it to the Mac: Mac App Store in Lion. Best place to discover apps...not only place, but best place. One-click downloads, free and paid apps (same 70/30 revenue split), automatic installation, automatic app updates. Apps licensed for use on all personal Macs. - Launchpad: Home screen for Mac App Store apps. - Expose, Full screen apps, Dashboard, and Spaces...four great features on Mac OS X. Wouldn't it be great to unify them all? New feature: Mission Control. View everything running and instantly navigate anywhere. - Craig Federighi to demo. - Demoing Mac App Store. Very similar to existing App Store. "Top" lists, categories, updates, etc. Showing purchase and installation with Pages. Description, screenshots, customer reviews, one-click purchase. App icon flies into Dock, and you're ready to go. - Demoing Launchpad. Full screen grid of all apps. Can organize using drag-and-drop and with iPad-style pages of apps. Also folders just like on iOS. - Full screen apps. Showing a PDF in Preview, sweeps open into facing pages view in full screen. Gestures to move between pages. Multi-touch gesture to move back to desktop, and then back to app. No need to manually leave full-screen mode. - Mission Control: Expose view of open windows, Dock on bottom, etc. App clusters in Expose bring multiple windows from a single app together. Gestures to open up clusters. - Jobs back on stage. Recapping the new features. I wish we had another hour and half to show you more. - Our plan is to release Lion in summer 2011. We feel real good about it. - Talking more about Mac App Store. We think it's going to be really great, and we don't want to wait for Lion, so we're going to put it out on Snow Leopard. Opening within 90 days. Developers can go to our website to learn about it today. Begin accepting app submissions next month. - Reviewing status of the Mac. 33% of revenue, $22 billion business (#110 on Fortune 500 if standalone), 20.7% share of retail sales, retail stores bringing more and more people into the Mac tent. iLife '11 with new iPhoto, iMovie, and GarageBand. FaceTime on Mac. Mac OS X Lion. Mac App Store. - One more thing. - What would happen if a MacBook met an iPad? - Some features we might like to see: instant on, great battery life, amazing standby time, SSD, etc. - This is the result if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up: the new MacBook Air. We think it's the future of notebooks.
- 0.68" at thickest point, 0.11" at thinnest. Weighs 2.9 lbs. Rigid and durable with complete aluminum unibody construction. Full size keyboard and full size glass trackpad. - 13.3" LED display at 1440x900, more than on our 15" MacBook Pro. Core 2 Duo processor with NVIDIA GeForce 320M. FaceTime camera. - No optical drive, no hard drive. Moved to flash storage...we know the benefits: Instant-on, up to 2x faster, more reliable, and 90% smaller and lighter, silent operation. - Battery life: Wireless web tests yield 7 hours, 30 days of standby time. The PC industry's battery tests don't often reflect real-world results. We've developed more stringent tests , and the new MacBook Air still gets 7 hours under the new tests. The old MacBook Air gets only 5 hours by that metric. - Showing the guts: flash memory right on the board, 802.11n Wi-Fi, CPU, GPU, RAM, stereo speakers, battery...just like in leaked prototype. - Now, this 13.3" MacBook Air isn't the whole story, because it has a younger brother too. 11.6 inches, 2.3 lbs., 1366x768 display, more than our MacBook. 5 hours of wireless web battery and 30 days of standby. - Pricing: 11.6-inch/64 GB at $999, 128 GB at $1199. 13-inch/128 GB at $1299, 256 GB at $1599. All with 2 GB of RAM. All available today. - Showing ad for new MacBook Air: "Everything we've learned, has come down to this." - Showing feature video similar to those for iPad and iPhone 4. - Jobs back on stage. We've got a hands-on room set up for you guys to test this out. Thanks for coming.
Some clever exploring of Apple's discussion forum has revealed several new products that are believed to be part of today's announcements. Spidersweb.pl found that by typing in certain category numbers manually, you could find these placeholder categories:
iLife '11 was revealed as well as one simply labeled "Reserved 10 20" which could represent a new iLife application. The MacBook Air appears to have also gotten a new category for unclear reasons. A MacBook Air category already exists.
Update: Apple has now removed the product names from the placeholder pages, replacing them with generic descriptions of "a", "aa", "ab", "ac", and "ad".
Update 2: The noted discussion forums have now been entirely removed from Apple's site.
It seems Apple will not be offering a video feed for this event. We've created this spoiler free page for readers who prefer watching the keynote themselves without knowing the outcome. Apple will likely post a recorded QuickTime stream a few hours after the keynote ends.
You can also subscribe to our notification list which will send out an email when the keynote is posted online. The mailing list will only be used for notifications for these spoiler free announcements and you may unsubscribe at any time.
Notify me of Keynote Stream
Apple can take several hours to post the feed. The mailing list can also take up to a couple of hours to send out all the emails. Be patient. Or keep checking this page. Update: Stream available
Engadget claims to have details from a trusted source that claims to have knowledge of Apple's upcoming MacBook Air announcement.
- 11.6-inch display - 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo - 2 USB Ports, Mini DisplayPort, SD card reader - Trackpad similar to MacBook Pro - Black power key on top right of keyboard
No word on graphics card or SSD storage capacity. A 2.13GHz processor could be the ultra-low voltage processor we previously detailed.
Previously unheard of site RichyRich claims to have some photos of a prototype N92 iPhone. N92 is the iPhone code number that is believed to be Apple's Verizon-compatible CDMA phone. This is from August, 2010:
But I do know that engineering-wise, the wheels are turning on N92, the CDMA variant of the iPhone 4. It's certainly not in production yet, and hasn't reached DVT status (device verification test - like Gray Powell's infamous stolen unit), but it is, a few little birdies claim, at EVT (engineering verification test). That's one step below DVT, which is one step below production.
The small gallery of photos claim to depict a DVT N92 -- which would be a step closer to mass production.
The images are reported to have originated in a Vietnamese repair shop, but no further source is given. The photos aren't particularly revealing, but the design appears identical to the currently shipping iPhone 4.
Aspyr has officially announced that they will be publishing Sid Meier's Civilization V for the Mac this fall.
Developed by Firaxis Games, Sid Meier's Civilization V reinvigorates the classic turn-based strategy genre with an astonishing new engine built from the ground-up for this flagship edition of the Sid Meier's Civilization franchise. Players are introduced to an entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience. Players build and defend their empire on their quest to become the greatest ruler the world has ever known.
The Mac version is expected "this holiday season" though no specific date is given. Specific dates, details on pre-orders and availability are to follow. Notably absent in the press release is any mention of Steam as a distribution method. Aspyr does state they have discounted their existing strategy games on GameAgent by 40% in celebration of the announcement.
With less than 24 hours from Apple's Back to the Mac media event, a few more claims have been trickling in. MacStories claims to have information about some subtle interface changes to Apple's next version of Mac OS X. According to the site, iOS's influence will be apparent in 10.7's window scroll bars:
The first big news is iOS scroll bars and scrolling behavior are coming to OS X. That means you'll have to say goodbye to the current Aqua scroll bars and get ready for a more minimal look. Also, the "rubber band" elastic scrolling iOS is famous for is making its first appearance on the desktop, and we're told it "works really well and feels natural". Basically, it works like the current inertial scrolling, but when you hit the top or bottom of a scroll view it "rubber bands" down like iOS devices do.
MacStories has not been a regular source of Apple-related rumors, so we can't comment on their reliability. Mac OS X visual changes have always been a big topic of discussion and speculation over the years.
Apple's media event kicks off at 10am Pacific on Wednesday, October 20th. We'll provide live Twitter coverage at @MacRumorsLive and stories at @MacRumors. And, of course, continuing coverage on MacRumors.com.
In the wake of Apple CEO Steve Jobs' lengthy comments on Google's Android and other competitors during the company's earnings conference call yesterday, executives from Google and app developer TweetDeck have offered brief public responses disputing Jobs' assertions.
TechCrunch notes that Google's vice president of engineering Andy Rubin, who heads up the Android project, was inspired by Jobs to post his first-ever tweet. Rubin's tweet amounted to defining "open" as the code required to get the Repo tool that serves as a basis for working with Android source code installed and ready for use.
the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/ platform/ manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"
During his comments, Jobs also referred to TweetDeck, developers of a popular Twitter platform who recently launched an Android application, noting that they had to test their application against 100 different versions of Android on 244 different handsets. Jobs contrasted that experience with the tightly-controlled iOS environment, claiming that Android's fragmentation is leading to significant headaches for app developers seeking to ensure compatibility.
TweetDeck CEO Iain Dodsworth quickly responded to Jobs' comments via Twitter, disputing the claim that the burden of testing on Android devices was an onerous one.
Did we at any point say it was a nightmare developing on Android? Errr nope, no we didn't. It wasn't.
Dodsworth followed up with a second tweet noting that the company has only two employees working on the Android version of TweetDeck and citing that as proof that Android fragmentation is essentially a non-issue.
We only have 2 guys developing on Android TweetDeck so that shows how small an issue fragmentation is
Representatives of Research in Motion have apparently yet to speak out on Jobs' claims that the company will be unable to keep pace with Apple as it is forced to move out of its "comfort zone" into a smartphone world where software is driving the innovation.
