I flew in this afternoon, and Longofest should be arriving tonight, and we'll be making our keynote preparations tomorrow. The keynote kicks off on Tuesday along with the opening of the Expo floor, so real coverage will begin then.
Appleinsider posts a series of photos from the Moscone Center in San Francisco, the site of the 2008 Macworld San Francisco. The banners read :
Macworld San Francisco kicks off with Steve Jobs' keynote on Tuesday, January 15th.
ElectricPig.tv claims (via 9to5) they have an "extremely senior source" at Sling Media who says that an iPhone/iPod Touch version of their SlingPlayer client software is coming.
Sling Media sells the SlingBox which allows you to stream video from your home television over the internet to any supported device (Mac, PC, Mobile Phone). A native SlingPlayer port would bring that functionality to the iPhone. Sling Media, however, is said to be worried that EDGE might not be fast enough to support their streaming media.
This rumor might have been dismissed, if not for the fact that MacRumors has also heard that SlingMedia is indeed one of the lucky developers to get an early copy of the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK). Apple has reportedly seeded select developers with early versions of the iPhone SDK to ready some applications for the initial launch. The iPhone SDK is officially expected to be released in February 2008.
With Macworld Expo around the corner, we have heard that Apple will show new iPhone software at Macworld, though this could just mean the 1.1.3 firmware that was previously leaked.
MacRumors is hosting a casual gathering for readers at ThirstyBear on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 from 6pm to 9pm.
No age restrictions. It is literally down the street from the Moscone center. So after a day of drooling at the new MacBook Nano/Mini/Thin, come talk about it. arn, WildCowboy and longofest will be there. Come say hi.
If you are planning or considering coming, please answer the poll.
Multimedia designer, Phil Lu, has created some mockups of an iPhone application that he calls "QuickOrder":
Engadget posts a video of Elantech's multitouch trackpad called "Multi-fingers Smartpad". The prototype is demoed here, and shows the pinch/reverse-pinch zoom as well as rotation.
Apple is rumored to be introducing a multi-touch track pad at Macworld Expo.
Apple will kick off the 2008 Macworld San Francisco on January 15th 2008 with a keynote speech from Steve Jobs. News sites across the web will cover every announcement in detail, while Apple's site will be updated with any new products announced.
The keynote takes places on January 15th, 2008 at 9AM Pacific time and will be covered live at MacRumorsLive.com
Some readers prefer watching the keynote themselves without knowing the outcome. Unfortunately, there is no live video feed for the keynote. Instead, Apple posts a recorded Quicktime stream (usually) a few hours after the keynote completes.
For those individuals, we've posted this news story which will be updated with the link to the MWSF 2008 Keynote speech once it becomes available from Apple. No other news stories or announcements will be displayed alongside this story.
[Update] Apple has posted the Keynote Stream to their streaming servers, although it is not yet available via apple.com itself. Copy and paste the following URL into the "Open URL..." option within Quicktime Player:
rtsp://a2047.v1412b.c1412.g.vq.akamaistream.net/5/2047/1412/1_h264_350/1a1a1ae555c531960166df4dbc3095c327960d7be756b71b49aa1576e344addb3ead1a497aaedf11/972345688g_1_350.mov
Adobe announced that Adobe Photoshop Elements 6.0 for Mac will become available in the second quarter of 2008. Adobe plans to show off the latest version of Elements at Macworld Expo next week.
"We're excited to showcase a brand new version of Photoshop Elements at Macworld," said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. "In this release, we've focused on going beyond the basics to make everyday and advanced tasks even easier to achieve. Photoshop Elements 6 for Macintosh allows people to organize and find photos quickly, unleash powerful editing tricks without any heavy lifting, and creatively share photos that give them all the bragging rights."
Adobe details the new features on their website, including a number of video demos:
- Create a Group Shot from multiple photos
- Make easy selections
- Use curves adjustments
Version 6.0 of Elements finally brings the Mac version of Elements in par with the Windows version. Adobe had previously skipped realeasing Elements 5.0 for the Mac. Version 6 also introduces Intel Mac support (Universal Binary) and will be available for $89.99.
Earlier this week, a third party package named "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep" became available via Installer.app. ModMyiPhone.com was first to identify it as malicious, and F-Secure later confirmed the low-risk threat.
The trojan installation package contains false application installation information that causes legitimate third party applications to be removed if the trojan is uninstalled from the iPhone.
The package was quickly removed from distribution after identification of malicious characteristics. Additionally, F-Secure states that the author was an "11-year-old kid playing with XML files." F-Secure warns that a more experienced coder could have done more damage.
Security will be one of the top concerns of Apple's upcoming SDK, as Steve Jobs had alluded to Nokia's system of digitally signing applications.
Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than "totally open," we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhones amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.
PrimateLabs provides some early Geekbench 2 benchmarks on the just-released 8-Core "Harpertown" Mac Pro at 2.8GHz compared to the old 8-Core "Clovertown" 3.0GHz Mac Pro.
Despite the slower clock speed, the new "Hapertown" Mac Pro outperformed the older "Clovertown" Mac Pro in Integer, Memory and Stream performance, reflecting its faster memory (800MHz vs 667MHz) and bus (1600MHz vs 1333MHz). The new Mac Pro, however, did lag behind in floating point performance, compared to the older higher-clock speed model.
Apple introduced the new Mac Pro earlier this week.
Wired magazine has a particularly revealing article which details some of the history of the iPhone project within Apple and its unique effect on the wireless industry. With the introduction of the iPhone, manufacturers are racing to produce more phones that appeal directly to consumers rather than to carriers.
Wired manages to get some previously unknown details about the origins of the iPhone project. It began back in 2002, soon after the iPod, when Jobs realized that the convergence of mobile phones and music players would force Apple to get into the mobile phone business.
Apple originally partnered with Motorola which resulted in the ill-fated ROKR iTunes phone, which appeared to be doomed from the start:
Jobs likely knew he had a dud on his hands; consumers, for their part, hated it. The ROKR -- which couldn't download music directly and held only 100 songs -- quickly came to represent everything that was wrong with the US wireless industry, the spawn of a mess of conflicting interests for whom the consumer was an afterthought.
In February 2005, Jobs secretly met with Cingular executives, including Stan Sigman. Jobs presented a three-part message to the execs:
- Apple had the technology to build something truly revolutionary, "light-years ahead of anything else."
- Apple was prepared to consider an exclusive arrangement to get that deal done.
- But Apple was also prepared to buy wireless minutes wholesale and become a de facto carrier itself.
Despite the promises, the iPhone project was a major challenge for Apple, requiring over $150 million in development costs. Apple also took extraordinary measures to keep the project secret, with hardware and software teams completely separated, with only 30 people having seen the full device by the time it debuted at Macworld 2007. The decision to use a modified Mac OS X wasn't immediately obvious, and Apple engineers had even seriously considered using Linux.
Other interesting notes from the article:
- The iPhone's codename was P2, short for Purple 2. Purple 1 was an abandoned iPod phone project.
- Apple engineers had spent a year working on touchscreen technology for a Tablet PC. (no other details available in the article)
MacUser's Cyrus Farivar has compiled a list of places to eat around the Moscone centre for the Macworld Expo visitors.
The download (.zip) is formatted in iPod notes format for installation on your iPod.
To install: Download the .zip file and unstuff it. Plug your iPod into your Mac. When it mounts, find the Notes folder. Drag the MacworldEats folder into the Notes folder.
To use:: Go to your iPods main menu, select Extras-->Notes-->MacworldEats. Entries are organized by cuisine, by location, and by name.
Alternatively, you can browse the notes on your Macs.
The 2008 Hess Events List has been posted which details the parties and meetings at Macworld San Francisco 2008 this year.
We're still in the final stages of working out our own MacRumors.com meetup which looks like it will take places on Tuesday, January 15th (keynote day). Details to be announced when we are able to.
Anandtech offers a direct comparison between the existing Merom processors that currently power the MacBook Pro line, and the just-released Mobile Penryn processors. Apple is rumored to be working on MacBook Pro revisions as early as Macworld Expo next week that use these new Intel processors.
Anandtech was able to provide a direct comparison between the two processors:
Intel sent us two Dell Latitude D630 notebooks, identically configured, with one variable: the CPU. In one D630, we had a Core 2 Duo T7800, which is a Merom based chip running at 2.6GHz with an 800MHz FSB and a 4MB L2 cache. The other D630 came equipped with a new 45nm Core 2 Duo T9500, also running at 2.6GHz/800MHz but with a larger 6MB L2 cache.
With just the processor change alone, the new Penryn laptop offered 5-10% more battery life on their benchmarks. Meanwhile, the new processor saw 1 - 8% speed boosts on common tasks, and up to 40% improvements in applications that support the SSE4 instruction set.
Apple's MacBook Pro is currently available with Merom chips at 2.2GHz, 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz speeds. The last major revision of the MacBook Pro was in June of 2007.
Parallels announced a beta of their new Server application which is the first virtualization solution to run multiple copies of Mac OS X Server v10.5 Leopard on a single Apple computer.
Parallels Server can be installed using the Parallels lightweight hypervisor, in which virtual machines run in tandem with a primary operating system, or "bare metal, in which virtual machines run independently and are not dependent on a host operating system to function properly.
The advantages to administrators is the ability to run a combination of different "guest" operating systems in various virtual machines. These "sandboxed" virtual machines can be used to easily test software and configurations, without affecting a full production server.
We've previously explored this topic, realizing that the ability to run virtualized Mac OS X would make it very easy to run Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware.
When questioned about the possibility of using Parallels Server to run Mac OS X Server on a PC, Parallels' Director of Corporate Communications told us that that they have not enabled this functionality in the Windows and Linux versions of their product. The reason behind this limitation is that such behavior would violate Apple's end user license agreement (EULA) for Mac OS X, and Parallels wished to continue their good relationship with Apple.
Bloomberg reports that Warner Brothers, Paramount, Walt Disney Co., Lions Gate Entertainment Corp, and Fox will begin renting movies through Apple's iTunes Store in an announcement scheduled for January 15th at Macworld.
Bloomberg states that both new releases and older titles will rent for $3.99 for 24 hours, consistent with recent rumors. Fox was the first studio to have signed onto the iTunes rental deal.
Steve Jobs is expected to make these announcements at his keynote address at Macworld San Francisco 2008. MacRumors.com will provide live keynote coverage with web, sms, and iPhone-compatible updates.
Apple announced today that it would be standardizing iTunes music pricing in Europe. As a result, it will lower prices it charges for music in its UK iTunes store to match the pricing across the rest of Europe.
Apple currently charges more for downloads in the UK due to the higher wholesale prices in the UK. Apple states that it "will reconsider its continuing relationship in the UK with any record label that does not lower its wholesale prices in the UK to the pan-European level within six months."
The change comes after European Union regulators had begun investigating iTunes pricing practices after complaints had been filed in 2004. The pricing move is intended to equalize the market across Europe.
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