TheMacFeed

Apparently the rest of the TMF staff is incapable of posting all but two of the 93 news stories from the past couple days. So… here we go.

A day after Apple announced its Q3 financial results, Microsoft did the same and at least for now, they are Redwood is ahead. Apple has promoted Jeff Williams to Senior Vice President of Operations with a focus on Quality Control. Apple’s huge data center in Charlie’s secondary backyard should be ready by the end of the year. iSuppli believes that by 2011, Apple will be the second largest purchaser of semi-conductors. Apple was announced #2 in something this week: software instability. This might have something to do with the recent Safari Auto-Fill vulnerability. Apple updated Snow Leopard Server. Apple released yet another Xcode 4 preview to developers.

Turns out Steve isn’t done mocking other smartphones, the next victim: Nokia N97 Mini. About a week after Apple’s press conference, Apple launched the iPhone 4 Case Program App. Apple also began refunding purchases for those who have already acquired Bumpers. Shockingly, there were some hiccups.

AT&T’s dropped call rate has dropped from 1.44 per hundred calls to something along the lines of 0.91 (This link will download a .PDF) Other relevant AT&T news? They activated 3.2 million iPhones this last quarter. Apple could help add a couple more pretty soon. In other news, our friends at Verizon said that Apple changed their mind about something, too bad it wasn’t antenna placement. Chitaka Research is reporting that half of iOS devices are running iOS 4.

In patent news, Apple has filed for patents regarding a mono playback option on the iPod. There were also some ramblings on some small products. AppleInsider continued to promote the illogical idea of an ad-based OS.

iMac shortages seem on the brink and that comes in the wake of Mac Pro supply problems. The blogs are caught up in some idea that because someone posted the publish date a French helpbook for iLife 2010 as September 23, 2010. Here’s my take:

1. If it gets released in September, it will be 2011
2. There’s no actual evidence from Apple that it will be out then
3. Anyone could have posted that book
4. This is a load of crap

My favorite Microsoft blogger bought an Apple product, apparently she likes it.

For the second consecutive time, the news is late. We’ll just blame it on Valentine’s Day or that hole in the Daytona track that held up the NASCAR race. There oddly was not a whole lot of news, despite the fact the largest Apple convention was going on. 9 to 5 Mac claims that vendors at the show were at least busy, even if there was little news. Softpedia claims that Mac OS X 10.6.3 should be coming any time now… Our (least) favorite person, John Gruber, told CNN’s Apple 2.0 what Apple’s ten largest problems were. Being Baron’s “most respected” is probably not one of them. While Canada is trying to host the Olympics in Vancouver/Whistler, Quebec City is getting an Apple Store. CNET took to mocking Apple over the lack of Core i5 in notebooks. Ars Technica discusses the uncertainty of the new Outlook for Mac. But don’t worry, only four people love Office for Mac 2008 Business Edition. Anyone want to make it five?

Someone (else) got around to offering insurance for the iPhone. Boy Genius Reports is reporting that RIM is making a “big” announcement on Tuesday. Not only can we add Wired’s Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson (not the Denver Nugget’s Birdman) to the list of people that love the iPad, but Wired is coming to the iPad by summer.

The Apple Investor posted an article we liked (you can find it here) – you want to talk about shameless plugs… Well for starters, we think you should check out our giveaways, particularly this one.

The much anticipated newest OS from Apple, Snow Leopard, ships August 28th according to a press release published this morning by Yahoo!™ Finance. Pricing has been set (for those who are already using OS X 10.5 Leopard) at $29 for an individual license, $49 for a family pack, and $9.99 if you’re eligible for the up-to-date program.

Of course, rumors surrounding the style of the box have proven to be quite true, with the image of a snow leopard appearing as the new box art from apple.

Over the past couple days numerous reports and indications have led to conclusions that Apple is going to release Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard before the announced September release. History has shown that Apple traditional waits until the latest possible date they can to release a product. A couple of historical examples in recent memory provide evidence to this: Apple’s late summer MMS announcement, the release of Mac OSX Leopard 10.5.

Despite history and logic, many seem to be speculating that we will see a Snow Leopard release this week. People cite examples such as the accidental release of a copy of Snow Leopard to a Japanese Mac Mini purchaser. This seems to be an accident and a controlled accident, yet one that is rather strange. It would seem as if a disc just fell down the assembly line into a box of a Mac Mini? The more logical explanation seems to be that Apple’s assembly lines are already preparing new computers with Snow Leopard. This has two implications:
A. Snow Leopard has clearly gone “Gold Master”
B. There will be no Mac Mini update around the Snow Leopard release

The more convincing argument is the updating of the shipping status for the UK customers that partook in Apple’s Up-To-Date program. Earlier this week the online Apple Store updated UK order to show shipping “no later then August 28.” The reason why this is convincing is that it does not seem this was an error, as the status has remained the same, despite being reported by numerous news outlets including TheMacFeed. However, the rest of the world’s orders seem to show still the September shipping date.

If we are go to see a release this week, we will see Apple announce it sometime in the next 48 hours. Apple’s production line has recently been backed-up and a significant amount of online orders have been affected, so Apple might just delay the UK orders until the rest of the worldwide release. It is safe to say that Snow Leopard has been Gold-Mastered, but it seems unlikely that we would see a release this week without word from Apple real soon. Apple’s track record shows little desire to release products early and it would seem odd that they would announce September and the break that commitment, even to be early. If they do, it will definitely revolutionize the way we as the Apple media/blogosphere have to cover Cupertino’s actions, as it would completely shatter the reputation that Infinite Loop currently has.

According to the UK Online Store…the world is going mad. Apple is apparently preparing to ship Mac OSX 10.6 before the September release date to folks over the pond. Whether this is an error or not remains to be seen, but as of right now, we think the world is coming to an end.

Link

To quote one of the all time great rock songs, Snow Leopard is “up around the bend.”  Over the next few weeks we will assemble a full F.A.Q. regarding Snow Leopard and its launch. Today we will post the most basic and pertinent information regarding purchasing a Mac and/or Snow Leopard currently.

1. What is it?

Snow Leopard is the newest version of OSX. Rather then trying to reinvent the wheel, similar to the iPhone 3GS, Apple improved the current generation. Snow Leopard is lighter and smaller then its predecessor Leopard 10.5. While there are few visual changes or new applications, the internals have been massively made over to increase speed.

2. How much is it?

Snow Leopard is $9.95 if you have purchased a computer after June 8th, if you have Leopard then the upgrade is $29.

3. When is it going to be released?

No one really knows the exact date, but sometime in September, probably late and probably on a Friday if history tells us anything.

4. Should I Upgrade?

Probably. If you have Leopard already installed, most definitely. Snow Leopard’s goal is to decrease the operating system’s footprint, so everything will perform faster. If you don’t have Leopard it depends, if you are planning on getting a new computer anytime soon, probably not.

5. So is now the time to buy a Mac?

If you are a student and looking to capitalize on the iPod deal, yes. There are no updates that are going to be seen before October at a minimum and those would be minor. The more likely scenario for updates would be sometime in January or February.

Apple Released Snow Leopard Build 10A402, while it’s unknown what exactly it entails, it does raise the question of whether this will be the final update of Snow Leopard before the release in the fall. The most obvious thing we noticed was the massive size of the update at 1.31 GB. 9to5Mac reports that this is the largest thing that has ever hit Software Updater. While the file size is large, the actual description is rather small, “This Snow Leopard Developer Preview Update is recommended for all users running the Snow Leopard Developer Preview Build 10A394 or later. This update includes general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility, and security.”

TheMacFeed will have plenty more coverage of the Snow Leopard release as well as a guide before the September release date. Just one note, if you were wondering how much an upgrade will cost for a computer purchased this summer, all purchases after June 8th can be upgraded for $9.95, whereas current Leopard users pay $29.

Edit: MacRumors is reporting that there are numerous visual tweaks and other enhancements in this build, most notably that Apple has begun to use a charcoal background on contextual menus, similar to what was expected to be the overall UI before Snow Leopard’s progress was updated earlier this year. In addition buttons on the finder pane have moved from blue to gray. Quicktime was upgraded to version 10.0, battery life for notebooks has increased, Exposé has been fixed to run correctly when using multiple monitors and users are reporting an overall improvement of the system in terms of both responsiveness and speed.