MacRumors

Adobe's John Nack writes about the future plans for Adobe Photoshop CS4 and CS5, revealing that Adobe Photoshop CS4 will include 64-Bit support, but for Windows only. The Mac version of CS4 will remain at 32-Bit. The reason for the discrepancy, however, is not due to a lack of interest or support from Adobe, but for more practical reasons.

First off, Nack admits that the 64-bit version of Photoshop will see modest speed increases (8-12%) but the biggest advantage will be for those using massive images (a 3.375 gigapixel image is given as an example). With these massive sizes and with enough RAM (32GB given as example), you can see substantial (10x) improvements.

Adobe expects that Mac users will have to wait until CS5 before getting full 64-bit support. The reason for this delay is due to Apple's abrupt dropping of Carbon 64-bit support:

At the WWDC show last June, however, Adobe & other developers learned that Apple had decided to stop their Carbon 64 efforts. This means that 64-bit Mac apps need to be written to use Cocoa (as Lightroom is) instead of Carbon. This means that we'll need to rewrite large parts of Photoshop and its plug-ins (potentially affecting over a million lines of code) to move it from Carbon to Cocoa.

Nack reports that they started working on the transition immediately after the announcement but due to the scope of the transition are unable to deliver it by CS4. He also tries to dispel the notion that Cocoa alone will produce a higher quality product than Carbon:

Most Mac users don't know Cocoa from Ovaltine, and nor should they: it's just an implementation detail, not a measure of quality. I think Brent Simmons, creator of wonderful Cocoa apps like NetNewsWire, put it most elegantly: "Finder + Cocoa = Finder." That is, rewriting one's app in Cocoa doesn't somehow automatically improve its speed, usability, or feature set.

Arstechnica reports on an internal email from Apple congratulating employees that Apple is now the #1 Music Retailer in the U.S., surpassing Wal-Mart for the first time.

The iTunes Store leads the pack with 19 percent, Wal-Mart (which includes the brick-and-mortar stores as well as its online properties) is second with 15 percent, and Best Buy is third with 13 percent. Amazon is a distant fourth at 6 percent, trailed by the likes of Borders, Circuit City, and Barnes & Noble. Rhapsody is in the tenth slot with 1 percent.

This comes quickly after a February announcement from Apple that they had surpassed Best Buy to become the #2 music retailer, also based on the NPD MusicWatch Survey.

While there's been some question about the discrepancy of the two data points, it seems possible that the February annoucement was based on December data (Christmas sales are specifically mentioned), while this new data is from January sales.

Apple has posted updates to three of their applications tonight:

iTunes 7.6.2

Rent and download your favorite movies with iTunes on your computer or directly to your living room on Apple TV. Enjoy rented movies in sizes up to 720p HD with surround sound on your Apple TV and sizes up to DVD-quality on your computer. Transfer your rented movies from iTunes to your iPod or iPhone and enjoy them on the go.

Also, purchase and download your favorite TV shows, music, and more directly on your Apple TV. Effortlessly transfer purchases made on Apple TV back to your computer with iTunes.

iTunes 7.6.2 provides bug fixes to improve stability and performance.

QuickTime 7.4.5

QuickTime 7.4.5 includes fixes that enhance reliability, improve compatibility with third-party applications, and address security issues. This release is recommended for all QuickTime 7 users.

For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.

Front Row 2.1.3

This Front Row update provides for bug fixes and improved iTunes compatibility.

iPhone speculation has remained at an all-time high this week. Reports of iPhone shortages has generated analyst speculation that the iPhone could be sooner than expected... despite June expectations.

While we don't put too much value in this idle speculation, Gizmodo reports on a revealing comment from AT&T's Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega from a lunch at CTIA 2008. Ralph de la Vega said that he expected all of their smart integrated devices to be 3G within the next couple of months.

When asked about the iPhone specifically, he responded with "Let me repeat what I said: I think that you're going to see our integrated devices be 3G devices in the not-too-distant future, and I mean months. That should be clear enough."

Our iPhone Buyer's Guide recommendation stands: buy only if you absolutely need it; updates are coming.

Yoga featuring Judy Greer

Yoga - features Judy Greer as a Yoga instructor frustrated with Vista.

Breakthrough - brings back the Counselor who points out that PC's issues comes from having different vendors responsible for the hardware and software, while Macs all come from one vendor (Apple).

Apple has also continued its custom web ads, which have run on many prominent web sites.

Apple announced today that they have started selling television shows in Germany via iTunes. Shows from ProSieben, Sat.1, ZDF Enterprises, Brainpool and US broadcasters ABC Studios and MTV Networks are now available on the iTunes Store in Germany.

"iTunes is the world's most popular online music and TV store with over four billion songs and 125 million TV episodes sold," said Eddy Cue, Apples vice president of iTunes. "We're off to a great start with over 35 TV shows available on the iTunes Store in Germany."

Shows are priced at 1.99 euro and 2.49 euro per episode and are available immediately.

Hot on the heels of the 9D10 seed, Apple appears to be working aggressively on the next version of Mac OS X with a new developer release (9D11) only days after the first.

Apple has detailed 19 more fixes in the latest seed and has asked developers to focus testing on a broad range of features including AirPort, Dashboard, Back To My Mac, Automator, iCal, Printing, Time Machine and many others.

The rapid development release is curious at this early stage of seeding. Typically, Apple starts frequent seeding to developers when preparing for final release. As of build 9D11, there are no known issues -- suggesting Apple may be targeting a quick release. Apple last updated Mac OS X to version 10.5.2 in February.

MacRumors does not participate in April Fools news stories. All stories posted today are real.

A recent survey of nearly 2000 professionals and students have named Apple has the most inspiring brand and one that respondents could not live without.

The results come in the wake of another poll of about 12,000 U.S. business decision-makers which indicate that Microsoft has dropped from the number 12 ranking of most powerful U.S. company brands in 2004, down to number 59 this past year. Further underscoring the trend, Microsoft previously ranked #1 in a similar brand survey in 1996. The fall in rank reflects a drop in the following ratings: overall reputation, perception of management, and investment potential

Though the survey gives no specifics about the nature of the decline, CEO of CoreBrand speculates that Vista's poor reception as well as Apple's "Get a Mac" television ads may have both contributed to the decline.

MacRumors does not participate in April Fools news stories. All stories posted today are real.

Pipar Jaffray's Gene Munster claims that Apple is working on keyboard-less "full multi-touch Macs". According to the analyst, Apple "is already testing full multi-touch Macs, but the software requirements will likely lead to a launch timeframe of 2010", as reported by Appleinsider.

Munster expects Apple to advance their technology to include "complete MacBook touch with touchscreen keypad features".

Many of these concepts have already been publicly revealed through a series of patent applications from Apple. The most promising detailed advanced multi-touch processing, allowing the user to use a variety of natural gestures. More recently, patent drawings have revealed that Apple has already designed Mac OS X control panel software to customize these gestures:

So, it's clear that Apple is working on these products, though Munster claims to have specific knowledge from "component suppliers" confirming ongoing testing.

MacRumors does not participate in April Fools news stories. All stories posted today are real.

Today is April 1, 2008 and represents April Fools' Day -- so readers should be wary of hoaxes and claims at both news and rumor sites today. Today also represents Apple's 32nd anniversary. Apple was founded on April 1st, 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

While we avoid tainting our news stories with April Fools jokes, we've posted hidden April Fools' pages in the past:

2007. MacRumored - MacRumors circa early 1990s
2006. MacRumors Page 3 - Mac News and Rumors You Can't Believe

April Fools around the web:

- Youtube is Rick Rolling their Featured Videos.
- Gmail Custom Time
- gDay with MATE

MacRumors readers should reload their pages if there are design inconsistencies with our page today.

MacRumors does not participate in April Fools news stories. All stories posted today are real.

A MacBook Air running an up to date installation of Mac OS 10.5 Leopard was the first laptop to fall in last week's CanSecWest PWN2OWN contest, casting the spotlight once again on the Mac's security.

The contest pitted a MacBook Air against a Vista laptop and a Ubuntu Linux laptop, all fully patched. While all 3 laptops did not fall the first day which only allowed attacks against the base OS for a prize of $20,000 (+laptop), the MacBook Air reportedly took only 2 minutes to fall on day 2 when conference rules were relaxed to include all OS-bundled software for a prize of $10,000 (+ laptop).

While details of the exploit are under non-disclosure while Apple works on the issue, the attack was levied against Safari, after the user was directed to a specially crafted website (as allowed by the rules). The exploit has been reported to be an overflow bug in Webkit.

The remaining two laptops survived the rest of the second day, but the Vista laptop fell the following day when Adobe Flash player was installed as the rules were further relaxed to allow for attack of popular 3rd party applications. The Linux laptop was not exploited.

While Apple is aware of and working on the vulnerability, a recent study has claimed that Apple's response time to such 0-day vulnerability patches lags significantly behind that of Microsoft.

The study, conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, analyzed 658 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and 738 affecting Apple, all of which were high and medium risk according to the National Vulnerability Database.

"Apple was below 20 [unpatched vulnerabilities at disclosure] consistently before 2005," [said researcher Stefan Frei]. "Since then, they are very often above. So if you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple." [...]

"We think that Apple had fewer vulnerabilities early on, and they were just surprised or not as ready or not as attentive," Frei said. "It looks like Microsoft had good relationships earlier with the security community."

Over the past few years, Microsoft has tried to cultivate a closer relationship with the security community in order to encourage researchers to give it a heads-up about software problems. Apple, however, doesn't appear to have that same sort of engagement yet, and, "based on our findings, this is hurting them," Frei said.

A spot-check of security firm Secunia's statistics show that 6% of 113 bugs found in Apple's Mac OS X operating system from 2003 to 2008 remain unpatched.

There's been so much talk about the possibility of the "3G" iPhone, it can be hard to keep up with all the rumors. First of all, "3G" technology promises broadband-like speeds over wireless cellular networks. At present, the iPhone only offers 2.5G (EDGE) speeds, which means your web pages and email download at relatively slower speeds.

It's been no secret that the iPhone will eventually adopt 3G technology. When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in January 2007, he specifically said (video clip) that Apple plans on making "3G phones and all sorts of amazing things in the future". The major issue that prevented Apple from incorporating 3G into the first iPhone was excessive power consumption from 3G chipsets:

We cared a lot about battery life and we cared a lot about physical size. Down the road, I'm sure some of those tradeoffs will become more favorable towards 3G but as of now we think we made a pretty good doggone decision.

Some newly announced 3G chipsets promise to address these power issues and AT&T's CEO has even said outright that the 3G iPhone is coming in 2008.

When is it coming?

The earliest evidence of the 3G iPhone came from Goldman Sachs Analysts who predicted that the iPhone would see two updates in 2008. The first minor update was predicted to be a Flash memory upgrade in the 1st half of the year. This came true in February with the release of the 16GB iPhone.

The second revision was described as "major" and was predicted to include 3G, possibly a different look, and arrive in the 2nd half of 2008. A number of reports this week appears to confirm this prediction. Hon Hai has reportedly won the contract to build Apple's next iPhone and Bank of America sources suggest that the 3G iPhone will begin limited production in May with a ramp up in June. Spanish paper Cinco Dias suggests that the 3G iPhone could debut in the Spanish market as early as May.

Finally, there was news this week that Apple has acquired trademark rights to use the name "iPhone" in Japan -- a country that interestingly has a 3G network but no EDGE network.

What do I do now?

A June release for the next iPhone falls conveniently close to Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference which takes place from June 9-13th this year. It's possible that Apple will replace the existing iPhone with the 3G version, but it's also conceivable that the 3G version will be a high-end model, leaving the existing 2.5G iPhone in place at a cheaper price point.

Due to the mounting evidence for the 3G iPhone, we've updated our Buyers Guide to recommend against buying an iPhone at this time unless you absolutely need it. Obviously, individual circumstances may vary, but if you are an average consumer looking for the best value for the money, we recommend waiting, but understand the new version could still be (at least) 3 months off.