MacRumors

Adobe announced that public betas of the CS4 version of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth are now available at Adobe labs. While the downloads are publicly available, only existing CS3 owners will be able to use the beta software beyond an initial 48 hour window.

The Dreamweaver beta for Web design and development, the Fireworks beta for prototyping, and the Soundbooth beta for audio creating and editing, demonstrate the direction that Adobe Creative Suite is taking with features and technologies that will simplify and streamline design and development workflows across all media. The betas also offer users the opportunity to give Adobe feedback for further product development.

Adobe lists the new features included in each beta on their respective pages: Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4, Soundbooth CS4.

When Apple announced the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in March, they also announced the creation of a $100 million dollar "iFund" by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. BusinessWeek reports on the first two companies that have been chosen to receive funding out of over 1700 submissions.

Pelago's Whrrl application ties the iPhone's mapping capabilities to help find out restaurants and services in your area:

Say you're lost in Las Vegas and need a restaurant recommendation. With iPhone in hand, you can scan the locations of nearby restaurants, just Italian restaurants, or just those recommended by foodie friends. Or you could search for the highest-rated bars or kid-friendly activities recommended by friends from your social network. There's going to be a "what's going on around me right now" button, says Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy. "You're always one button away from that immediate context."

The other application to receive funding is iControl, a home automation application that would allow you to remotely control devices in your house (such as lighting, air conditioning, etc..) through your iPhone.

Kleiner Perkins has reportedly extended one more offer to another company and has 10 others they are seriously considering. Though no agreements have been put in place, Pelago is optimistic that they could be featured by Apple either at the WWDC keynote or even as a bundled application with the iPhone.

For the past two months, Apple developers have been testing the next version of Mac OS X Leopard. The latest Mac OS X 10.5.3 test version (build 9D34) was seeded just last week and only adds one kernel performance fix and contains no remaining "known" issues. Meanwhile, Apple's seed note list of the over 200 bug fixes since Mac OS X 10.5.2 has been posted by apcmag.

Once complete, the final Mac OS X 10.5.3 update will become available as a free update to existing Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) users via Software Update. No target date is set, but testing has been ongoing for two months and Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) is just around the corner (June 9th).

Samsung announced that they will begin delivering a 256GB solid state drive (SSD) later this year. The drive uses a standard SATA II interface, making it compatible with existing Macs. Besides becoming the largest Solid State Drive on the market, Samsung promises remarkable read and write performance:

With a sequential read speed of 200 megabytes per second (MB/s) and sequential write speed of 160MB/s, Samsungs MLC-based 2.5-inch 256GB SSD is about 2.4 times faster than a typical HDD.

The drive will begin sampling in September, with mass production "by year end". Samsung will deliver the drive in 2.5" and 1.8" versions, though we are uncertain if the 1.8" version will be thin enough to fit in the MacBook Air.

Apple first introduced the use of a SSD in their products with the $999 SSD upgrade for MacBook Air. The price to performance benefit of the current SSDs has been somewhat disappointing, though there does appear to be a small battery life advantage. As the economics of solid state drives continue to improve, we are likely to see them being introduced into future Apple laptops. Unfortunately, Samsung has not yet announced the pricing of their 256GB drive, which will likely remain a very expensive option.

Image from SMH.com.au

The sign reads "Drop in soon. Apple Store, Sydney". Located at 77 King Street, the three story building is expected to have about 1335 square meters of floor space. While no official launch date has been announced, rumors point to June 19th at 6pm as the opening date. According to SMH, this is the first Apple Store to be located in the southern hemisphere. Two other Apple Stores are expected to follow: one in Melbourne, and another in Sydney.

A recently published patent application discovered by MacRumors reveals that Apple is investigating the use of solar power in versions of their mobile devices -- both handheld devices and portable computers. Integrating solar power into a mobile device holds the enormous potential of extending battery life significantly. However, successfully integrating solar panels into these small devices is not without its challenges.

The major issues described are the limited area available to solar panels, durability, and the "wasting" of space on a portable device. It is due to these problems that solar power has not found its way into mobile devices, not just from Apple, but from all manufacturers.

The most interesting technique described by Apple, however, is the integration of the solar panels behind the actual LCD screen of a portable device. The solar panel would absorb ambient light that passes through the LCD screen of the device. This could eliminate any additional footprint typically required by the solar panels. If successfully implemented, Apple's iPhone, iPod and laptops, could require no outward changes in design to add solar power.

Apple's not the only one exploring this technology as an old (2001) Motorola patent describes the same technique. While several limitations to the technique were described at that time, the issues may have been better addressed in recent years.

TG Daily reports that the next version of Adobe's Photoshop application will take advantage of video card graphics processing units (GPUs) to provide a dramatic improvement in performance.

So, what can you do with general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) acceleration in Photoshop? We saw the presenter playing with a 2 GB, 442 megapixel image like it was a 5 megapixel image on an 8-core Skulltrail system. Changes made through image zoom and through a new rotate canvas tool were applied almost instantly. Another impressive feature was the import of a 3D model into Photoshop, adding text and paint on a 3D surface and having that surface directly rendered with the 3D models' reflection map.

These features are expected to be introduced in Adobe's next version of Creative Suite (CS4) which is expected in October of this year. GPU acceleration has been used in many aspects of Mac OS X's Core Animation and Core Image.

Update: Adobe Photoshop Project Manager John Nack, who gave the presentation cited in the TG Daily article, says that many of their claims are baseless. Regarding their claim of an October 1st release date for the next Photoshop release, Nack says that they "pulled a date apparently out of thin air." He also says that the technology he demonstrated has not been promised to appear in any particular future version of Photoshop.

Update 2: TGDaily responds to Nack's accusations and maintains the reporting of the events was essentially accurate.

Jason O'Grady revives rumors of a tablet Mac in his 'The Apple Core' blog today with claims that the long-rumored Mac Tablet would finally be arriving later this year.

Specifically, he believes that Apple will announce a 12" or 13" tablet "in the fall" of this year. The Mac Tablet will reportedly run full Mac OS X, have a slot loading Superdrive, an 'iPhone-type' GPS chip and an Intel Core Duo processor.

O'Grady believes September or October as the most likely months for the launch of the device and claims that his source "has been reliable in the past". While this rumor may overlap with earlier rumors of an Apple PDA, they appear to detail different features. The earlier PDA rumors suggested more of a larger iPhone rather than a tablet-ized Mac as O'Grady suggests.

Images from an Apple Patent from 2005

Apple's hotly anticipated 3G iPhone may be en route to the US according to analysis by ImportGenius.com.

Since mid-March, Apple Inc. and its logistics partners have imported 188 ocean containers of a product type never before declared on its shipping manifests. [...] On March 19 Quanta delivered 20 ocean containers of merchandise, described on the Bills of Lading as "electric computers," to Apple, Inc. Neither Apple, Quanta, nor any other company has ever used this product description for any shipments to the U.S. [...] Over the last few months shipments of "desktop computers" and other devices did not fall off, indicating that these "electric computers" represent a new product for the company rather than a simple renaming for their Customs declarations.

The site speculates that the term "electric computers" refers to the new iPhone. While this may be, there have also been rumors of a new device that may see a WWDC launch.

Interestingly one of the shipments of the "electric computers" reportedly weighed in at 7140 kg for 504 units. This would mean each unit weighs approximately 14 kg or 30 lbs, although it is unclear whether the shipping container weight itself is included. It would also be surprising if the 3G iPhone would have been completed and shipping as early as March.

ImportGenius is a web application that allows businesses to search international trade records, according to CrunchBase.

The companys database contains every shipment entering the United States, allowing busineses to access contact information for each of their competitors overseas suppliers, or each of their overseas suppliers U.S. customers. Access to the database is sold as a monthly subscription.

ImportGenius.com is new to the Apple rumor scene, and the reliability of their information is unknown at this time.

At this point, it seems obvious that the next version of the iPhone will support 3G technology, allowing for faster download speeds than the current iPhone EDGE network. Specifically, the 3G-capable iPhone will reportedly support a protocol known as HSPA. AT&T just announced that they will be completing their HSPA deployment by June, in time for the rumored 3G iPhone launch.

HSPA comes in a variety of speeds, however, and AT&T's implementation is said to offer 1.4 Mbps (~175KB/s) download and 800Kbps (100KB/s) upload speeds when complete. A newer version of HSPA called Evolved HSPA, however, promises download speeds of 42 Mbps (~5250KB/s).

Channelnews.com.au claims that the new iPhone will indeed be able to support these network speeds on Australia's Telstra network. According to a senior executive of Telstra:

We know what is coming we have seen the new device and it will be available on our network as soon as it is launched in the USA. By Xmas this phone will be capable of 42mbs which will make it faster than a lot of broadband offerings and the fastest iPhone on any network in the world

Apple is rumored to launch the 3G-capable iPhone on June 9th at the Worldwide Developer Conference.

Apple has continued to add new features to their upcoming iPhone 2.0 firmware release. The latest version seeded to Enterprise customers has a added geo-tagging to the Camera application, according to AppleInsider.

Essentially, geo-tagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to media files such as latitude and longitude coordinates -- or even names of places -- so that those files can later be referenced, searched, and grouped based on their origin.

This functionality appears to fall under a broader "Location Services" preference that can be turned on or off.

The use of location in mobile phone applications is a growing trend. iPhone developers are already working on location-based social networks and even a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) set in the real world.

There are circulating claims that the 'Enable 3G' setting screenshot in the latest iPhone 2.0 Beta was faked.

Asking whether or not this screenshot is fake is like asking if a perfect digital replica of a photo is fake. The story remains the same regardless of the answer. As mentioned in the original story, the exact wording and text from the screenshot appears in Apple's iPhone 2.0 firmware:

AT&T announced today that they will complete their deployment of HSUPA (3G upload) technology in the six remaining markets across AT&T's entire 3G (third-generation) wireless broadband network.

This will complement its deployment of its HSDPA (3G download) network, making AT&T the only U.S. carrier to have fully deployed HSPA (up and down) technology on its 3G network. AT&T's 3G network is available in more than 275 markets and will expand to nearly 350 markets by year's end.

With the new addition of HSUPA technology, AT&T 3G users can enjoy uplink speeds between 500 and 800 Kbps. The technology is available in all but the few remaining AT&T 3G markets and will be included in all future deployments. The new upload speeds complement AT&T's 3G download capabilities, which currently offer up to 1.4 Mbps across all markets for customers who have capable devices, such as AT&T's LaptopConnect wireless modems.

The timing of the rollout conveniently coincides with the rumored 3G-capable iPhone launch, though fast upload speeds, which is the technology described in this press release is less critical for the current version of the iPhone. In the future, as applications are deployed on the iPhone, uploading larger files, such as video, or even video chat from the iPhone could become more common. Regardless, the "completion" of their 3G network in time for a June iPhone rollout remains interesting.

U.S. customers can use this map to determine if they have 3G coverage in their area. A list of cities is also provided.

Economic Daily News reports (via Engadget) that Apple will start using LED backlit screens in all of their MacBooks in 2009.

Steve Jobs had previously announced the intended transition to the environmentally friendly LED screens, but left no exact time-table for the switch. LED displays were first introduced into the Mac line with the 15" MacBook Pro in June 2007. Advantages of the first Macbook Pro LED screens included:

- extended battery life
- instantly at full brightness, no warm up necessary
- same brightness and color range as previous screens.

The LED screen has since made its way into the 17" MacBook Pro as a $100 upgrade and the MacBook Air as a standard part. In fact, the MacBook Air's LED display has been noted to be particularly bright compared to the rest of Apple's laptops. Meanwhile, even though the next MacBook revision is expected in the 3rd quarter of this year, MacBook customers may have to wait until 2009 for LED screens.