Apple releases Thunderbolt Cable and RAID Systems

Apple has updated two of their six Macs to include Thunderbolt Connectivity. But there weren’t any cables or devices to use Thunderbolt with. So Today Apple has release a Thunderbolt Cable for $49 on their Website. Using the Thunderbolt Cable you can use the new 2011 iMac as an external Display with a 2011 MacBook Pro.

Along with the Thunderbolt Cable they are selling 4 RAID systems form Promise Pegasus. RAID is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, which is a fast and secure system to store information by distributing data between different Disk Drives. There are 4 choices to choose from; a 4x1TB for $999, 4x2TB for $1499, 6x1TB for $1499, & 6x2TB for $1999. Starting at 1 Grand and going all the way to 2 Grand these RAID Systems are pretty expensive and cost almost as much as the iMac and MacBook Pro.

-MacMusings

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Apple ups Time Capsule to 3TB

Apple sells three solutions to have a wireless network at home; the Airport Express, Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule. Time Capsule is an Airport Extreme with storage that will back-up your Mac using Time Machine. Apple used to sell a 1TB and 2TB Time Capsules. Now they have 2TB at $299 and 3TB at $499. There were rumors that Airport Extreme and Time Capsule were getting a major update, but after this it doesn’t seem so.

At the price of $299 and $299 the Time Capsule is pretty expensive. What would be cheaper to do is to buy an Airport Extreme and an External Hard Drive of your choice. the plug the Hard Drive into the Airport Extreme and it will work exactly like the Time Capsule. And the Hard Drive is accessible to all computers using that Wi-Fi network. You get all of this for a WAY cheaper price, but you lose the instant plug-and-play of the Time Capsule.

-MacMusings

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Evernote Peek

Evernote is known for it’s amazing note-taking application on the Mac and iOS Devices. Now they have come up with this new Application for the iPad 2 called Evernote Peek. The Smart Cover was Apple’s cover accessory for the iPad 2. One interesting feature of the Smart Cover working with the iPad was that when you opened the cover, the screen would automatically on and would off when you closed it. So with Evernote Peek you load questions into the App, then you close the Smart Cover. To start you open the first flap of the Smart Cover to reveal the question. You answer it then you open the second flap to see if your answer was correct. Then you close it so it can pick another questions. That’s how it works. It’s so amazingly simple yet it’s the first Application that uses the Smart Cover.

 

 

 

 

-MacMusings

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Ron Johnson; Apple Retail Chief leaves for J.C. Penney

Today It was announced that Ron Johnson will be leaving Apple to join as the President and Future CEO of J.C. Penney. MR. Johnson is the man behind Apple’s amazing Apple Retail Stores. Every day around 200,000 people visit Apples Stores each day around the world. In the last 10 years Apple Apple has opened 323 Stores Internationally. After Apple had opened its Stores, its revenue and market share has steadily risen. Anybody can just walk inside the Apple Stores and use any product they want with no limitations, that the way the stores are set up make them extremely inviting. And it’s Customer Service is number one of any Tech Company. There was a Survey that said that People that didn’t even buy anything were still completely satisfied with Apple. So overall Ron has done a really great job in creating the Apple Retail Store. His hob at Apple is done. But somebody needs to replace his job so an Apple Spokesperson told AllThingsD that they are actively searching. Ron’s dream was always to be the CEO of a Company which I don’t think he will be at Apple. So I say good luck to him and his Work at J.C. Penney.

-MacMusings

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Wrap-Up of WWDC

WWDC 2011 is already over!

There was many interesting things at this WWDC, especially the Steve Jobs‘ Keynote. We found out about new Lion features, when it was going to be released, and it’s low price of $29.99. We were demoed iOS 5 and it’s amazing new capabilities by Scott Forstall. And finally iCloud was shown to us and all of it’s amazing new abilities, and the amazing price of Free!!! Overall I think this WWDC was only a little exciting that we learned about iOS 5 and iCloud.

But there were disappointments as well. First, if you aren’t an Apple Developer you can’t get any of these products until July or Fall. Second, there was no usual iPhone Hardware release.So for Consumers there’s nothing to do until July, and if you’re only an iPhone user till Fall. Rumors are that Apple will release the iPhone in their September-Music event along with new iPod’s, iOS 5, and iCloud. Hopefully that event will be more exciting. But that’s all we have for now.

-MacMusings

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iTunes Match

Apple on Monday announced iCloud this Monday which let’s you keep your media in sync between your devices. But what if you have songs that were not bought on the iTunes Store? How will they be uploaded to iCloud? Apple has come out with a product called iTunes Match. What this does is, is it tries to match your songs with the 18 Million Songs on iTunes. And if it’s found iTunes will automatically upload the song to iCloud at 256 Kbps quality, even if your original song was of lower quality. However if your song is not in iTunes it let’s you upload that song to iCloud. Apple will release this service in Fall along with iCloud and iOS 5. But unlike iCloud iTunes Match will cost $25 Annually.

I wonder if Apple will let you upload your songs to iCloud even with out iTunes Match because from my entire iTunes Library only one song was bought from iTunes.

-MacMusings

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Steve Jobs reveals plans for new HQ Building to the Cupertino City Council’s

On June 7th during a City Council Meeting Mr. Jobs unveiled the company’s plans to construct a new building. Over the last five years Apple has acquired land that was previously owned by Hewlett-Packard. Apple plans to clear the whole are and make 1 Circular Building that can house up to 12,000 Employees. That’s a lot of people in one building. It’s going to be 4 stories high and completely curved. Mr. Jobs says that every single piece of glass used for this building is curved. He mentioned that they are using their experience from building Retail Stores to build this new campus. Apple is going to turn the area from 20% landscape to 80% landscape. The are currently has 3,700 trees and they are going to make that 6,000. They are going to have an underground parking under the main building and a parking structure as well. Apple will have their own Auditorium so they don’t have to go to San Francisco every time they are going to have a presentation. Also Apple will have an Energy Center to create their own energy. Usually companies will get their energy from the grid and have an energy center for backup but Apple is doing the opposite the grid is their backup. Next to the Auditorium will be a Fitness Center and an R&D Facility.

Click this link to view the video.

I thinks Apple’s design idea is great. But you know what would’ve been better? If they made it in the shape of an Apple Symbol And make it big enough to view from Space. Also it’s inspiring to see Mr. Jobs passions for Apple. Even though he is on Sick Leave and he could’ve easily asked anybody else to give the presentation, he him self went to give the Presentation.

-MacMusings

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Apple Design Award Winners for 2011

On Tuesday, the second day of WWDC Apple announced the Design Awards. Last year Apple’s focus seemed to be a lot on iOS so much that they didn’t even give out Awards for Mac Applications. But this year they are back-on track and are giving three awards in 4 Categories. the winners get a MacBook Air, an iPad 2, and an iPod Touch. And the winners are…

Mac:

• Capo by SuperMegaUltraGroovy
• Pixelmator by Pixelmator
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth by 11 Bit Studios

iPad:

• Our Choice by Push Pop Press
• Osmos by Hemisphere Games
• Djay by Algoriddim 

iPhone:

• Infinity Blade by Chair Entertainment
• Cut the Rope by Chillingo
• Golfscape GPS Rangefinder by Shotzoom

Student:

• Pulse News Reader by Alphonso Labs
• Pennant by Vargatron
• Grades 2 by Tapity

Great Job to all the winners. They are also lucky to get free advertising from the Media that give free coverage on these apps.

-MacMusings

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iCloud, the successor to MobileMe

At WWDC 2011 Steve Jobs showed to the world what iCloud was. He began with saying how 10yrs. ago people realized that the computer would become a “personal hub”, it would be where you would keep all your media. So before to get photos, music, videos, etc on your devices they had to be synced wit your Mac. But nowadays every the devices hold all types of media, and it was hard to make sure that all your devices had the media you wanted when you wanted it. So now the Mac is also going to become a device and the “personal hub” will be moved to the cloud. And Apple’s cloud will be iCloud and it will store information and push information to all your devices to maintain in sync. And it will happen seamlessly without you having to do anything. So for example you download a song on your iPad it will automatically download on your Mac, PC or any other iOS device for free. Then Steve jokes,”Why should I believe them? They’re the ones that brought me MobileMe.” Because MobileMe wasn’t much of a success. But MobileMe had three major apps Contacts, Calender, and Mail. And now Apple has rewritten those Apps from the ground up for iCloud.

Contacts: Now when a contact is made on an iPhone, the contact is pushed to the Cloud and then to the other devices. So every device attached to your Apple ID will have their contacts synced automatically.

Calenders: Same for Calenders, you make a new event or update an event on one device it is pushed to all your other devices automatically. You can even share calenders between devices.

Mail: And again you messages, inbox, folders, settings, are all synced between all your accounts at your me.com email account.

App Store: On all your devices you can view a purchase history, even if the app is not installed on your current device. But since all those Apps are synced to the cloud, you tab a button that will let you download that App onto your device from the cloud for free.

iBooks: Like the App Store you can view your purchase history, and it is all saved on the cloud so your books will automatically download to all your devices for free.

Wireless Backup: Once a day iCloud will automatically back up your device. it backs up everything including settings, music, photos, apps, books, and other information. So if you have to restore your device or you get a new one, the backup will automatically sync the device.

Documents in the Cloud:  When you use iWork on one of your devices and create a document, the document is sent to iCloud and then pushed to all your other devices. So this works with Keynote, Pages, and Numbers. And also developers get API’s to put this system into their apps for iCloud integration. And this works with Macs and PCs.

 

 

Photo Stream: So you can take a Photo on your iPhone and then be able to watch on your iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, PC, and Apple TV.. Also if you import photos on to one device it will be sent directly to all your other devices. To sync with a Mac it will send the photos to iPhoto and for PC with the Pictures Folder. And to save storage space Photo Stream it will only store the 1,000 most recent photos and for only 30 Days in the iCloud Server. To keep a photo permanently all you have to do is save it to an Album.

 

iTunes in the Cloud: So same as before buy a song, podcast, movie, tv show on one device and the purchase history is saved in the iCloud. So go to any other device and tap to download the same media for free onto that device straight from iCloud. Or as an option you can have it automatically download all purchased content on all of your devices.

 

So those are all the Apps that are a part of iCloud. iCloud is the next generation of iCloud. and MobileMe was $99 annually. But iCloud will be Free! All these amazing services Free from Apple. Their is a Developer Preview available today. And for the rest of us it will ship along with iOS in the Fall. And that’s iCloud from Apple. I think it’s really great that Apple has been able to make all these amazing features and let customers have it for free. So good on Apple.-MacMusings

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Scott Forstall previews iOS 5 at WWDC ’11

Scott Forstall SVP of iPhone Software started out by giving out a few numbers.

• 200 Million iOS Devices sold
• 25 Millions iPads in 14 Months
• 15 Billions Songs sold in iTunes
• 130 Million books downloaded from the iBooks Store
• 425,000 Apps on the App Store
• 90,000 Specific iPad Apps
• 14 Billion Downloads from the App Store
• 2.5 Billion Dollars paid to App Developers
• 225 Million Accounts
• More than 100 Billion Push Notifications Sent
• 64% of Mobile Web Browsing is done on iOS

Then he moves on to the future of iOS; iOS 5. Scott says there are more than 1500 API’s for Developers and more than 200 User Features. Like for Lion Scott will only go through 10 major features of iOS 5.

Notifications: Notification Center; Swipe down from the top to view the Notifications Center and all your notifications. Also at the top of Notification Center is is Stocks and Weather. I guess that’s Apple’s answer to mobile widgets. anyway so while you’re in an App a small animation will pop-up at the top of the phone to inform you of a notification, but you can ignore it and continue using your app, it will slowly fade away. Also on the lock screen there is an improved list to view all your new notifications. All you have to do is slide your finger on the notification and it takes you directly to the app the notification came from.

Newsstand: There is a place in the App Store dedicated to Magazines and Newspapers. So when you download something from that section it will download in an App on the homepage called the Newsstand. The UI for Newsstand looks almost exactly like the iBooks App. Also for Newsstand it has background downloads, that automatically download the latest issue of the mag or newspaper.

Twitter: you can sign into Twitter directly in the Settings App, once, and you” always be signed in. You won’t have type in your log in information every time you want to go to Twitter. Now you instantly tweet directly form the Camera, Photos, Safari, YouTube, Maps and more. You can also optionally add your location if you want people to know where you are. I don’t know why you would tell people that, but that’s up t the person’s choice. you can use Twitter to get a person’s picture and twitter username to add to your account.

Safari: In Safari itself there are many new features. First is reader, which takes the article you’re reading, takes everything on the web page off it, and makes it look like just one article that is fit for the iOS device. It even automatically will change the font to fit the display. Also when in reader you can email the whole article instead of just the link, unlike before. Next feature is Reading List which let’s you save an article for reading later, and it automatically syncs with all your other devices with Safari. Then comes Tabbed Browsing just like it is on Desktop Safari.

Reminders: Stores lists of things, can attach dates and locations to you reminders. One crazy awesome features is adding locations to reminders. So for example you have to message your friend once you get a restaurant. As Mr. Forstall said, it will set up a “Geo-Fence” around that area, so when you get inside that “geo-fence” it will give you a reminder to message your friend. I think that’s really cool, and by WWDC’s crowd’s reaction I think they liked it too. Also reminders will sync with iCal and Microsoft Outlook.

Camera: Now on the lock screen you can instantly access the photos app to take pictures. But since this feature is usable without typing your pass-code, you will not be able access previous photos. And instead of tapping the screen to take a picture you can push the volume up-button. Optionally you can add lines for better use of the rule-of-thirds. and you can pinch-to-zoom here also. And by keeping your finger over an are you can place an Auto Exposure/Auto Focus Lock. And now you can edit your photos directly on the iPhone! You can crop, rotate, and remove red-eye.And the amazing one-tap to enhance feature from iPhoto is now on the iPhone.

Mail: Now you can have Rich-Text Formatting, ability to change indents, drag addresses between the address fields, flag messages, and you can search the contents of your message. Also the Keyboard for the iPad can be split and moved for better thumb typing, and this is an all iOS feature.

PC Free: Now when you open up your new iOS device you don’t have to connect to iTunes, instead you’ll be prompted with a “Welcome” display and a quick set-up. Also Software Updates are over the air. Whooooo!!! Also there will be delta updates so it will only download the changes and not the whole OS.

Game-Center: You can add Profile Photos, you can directly compare achievement points, can view friends of friends, and can get friend and game recommendations. All in just Game Center. Also you can download games straight from Game Center. And there is support for turn-based games like Words with Friends.

iMessage: Now there will be a messaging service for all iOS devices. So now you can message on the iPad and iPod touch. Some cool features in iMessage include the ability to see if the recipient has received or read the message. You will also be indicated if the other person is typing. And your messages will be synced between all your iOS devices. Also it is usable over Wi-Fi and 3G.

Now you can sync wireless with iTunes over Wi-Fi. And there will be a developer seed today. For the rest of us who are not part of the Developer Program will get iOS 5 this fall. iOS 5 will be compatible with all iPads, the iPhone 3GS and 4, and the 3rd and 4th iPod Touch.

This a major new update for iOS and will surely attract more users as soon as it comes out.

-MacMusings

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