Apple Thoughts - News & Reviews on all things Apple

"Last week, Apple released Aperture 3, a major new version that offers "over 200 new features," according to the company's Aperture page. Before you rush to upgrade, though, you might want to check out Apple's Support site. Apple has already posted more than two dozen Knowledge Base articles citing various problems that you may confront with Aperture 3."

You can find more about the upgrade at Apple's Aperture page, and if you are curious as to the reported problems you can scan through the list here from the support pages. Two of the major topics are Memory Leaks and Aperture not showing up in the Media Library. You can also get troubleshooting tips from Apple at this page.

"Aperture 3 popped its head up and over the parapet this morning, with Apple introducing its newly announced pro photography protege as, "the next major release" of the application, bestowed with an impressive 200 added features at the same $199 price."

If you want to give it a try, you can test it out with the free trial version from Apple, which is fully functional for 30 days. After that, it costs $199.00 USD (or $99.00 USD for those upgrading).

"Head on over to Getfirefox.com, Firefox fans. Version 3.6 of your favorite browser is now ready."

Mac beta was available last October, but now you can get the full-fledged version here. I am stuck in a Safari rut, I still like it and haven't really played around with other browsers but in the past I always used Firefox. I may have to just get this and give it a trial run. 

Until January 28th 2010, current Bento 1 and 2 owners can upgrade to Bento 3 for a $20.00 USD discount.

Pretty good deal if you already own Bento 1 or 2, you can upgrade for $29.00 for a single user, or if you have require a family license its $79.00 USD. But act fast, it expires 1/28/10.

"AT&T today announced completion of a software upgrade at 3G cell sites nationwide that prepares the nation's fastest 3G network for even faster speeds. The deployment of High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) 7.2 technology across 3G cell sites is the first of multiple initiatives in AT&T's network enhancement strategy designed to provide customers with the best possible mobile broadband experience, both today and well into the future."

The work to upgrade the backbone to support a "theoretical" peak speed of 7.2 megabits per second will continue through 2011. However, if you are in one of the six cities they are currently working on (Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles and Miami) you should see benefits soon. For the rest of us, they expect most of it to be done by the end of 2010, finishing up by the end of 2011. 

"Parallels announced Wednesday that Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is now available. The latest release of the virtualization solution allows users to run Windows, Linux, and other operating systems on their Intel-based Macs. Parallels Desktop 5 works in both Leopard and Snow Leopard."

They have added 70 new features to this version of Parallels, one of which is the Crystal view mode as seen above in the screen shot. This gives it a more "Mac-like" appearance when working with Windows. It also supports "pinch" and "swipe" for many of the applications. Upgrading will cost you $50.00 USD while new purchases will set you back $80.00 USD. If you purchased your current version of Parallels after October 1st, you qualify for a free upgrade so if you didn't purchase online from Parallels (they will send you a key if you did), head on over to the Parallels upgrade site to get your upgrade key.

"Attention AT&T customers in Boulder, Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, Loveland, and along the Front Range...Christmas (Hanuka and/or Kwanza) has come early for you this year thanks to AT&T's new and improved 850 Mhz Spectrum roll-out across Colorado!"

I wish they would do this in my neck of the woods, I'm tired of Edge and only getting 3G when I venture into the "Big City." According to the press release "As a result of this upgrade, local customers should experience better 3G wireless connectivity, performance and enhanced in-building wireless coverage. The enhancement also increases network capacity, and is intended to support ever-growing demand for 3G mobile broadband service."

"A serious data-loss bug is affecting a small percentage of users who have upgraded to Snow Leopard and use guest accounts. Though Apple says the bug is "rare," it is working on a solution."

This was creeping up in reports in September, and what has happened isn't too much fun. If you update from Leopard and your guest account is enabled, then you run the risk of your home directory being wiped clean. Apple says they are aware of the problem and are working on a fix. No real fix other than making sure you don't have your guest accounts enabled when you upgrade, and to make sure you have a back up of all your data before you do the upgrade. You do have a back up line ready don't you?

"In what's turning out to be a busy few weeks for the team at Bare Bones, their information manager app Yojimbo has just been bumped up to 2.0. The new version is a 20 dollar upgrade for owners of older versions, is Snow Leopard compatible, and has this spectacular new icon."

If you bought your copy of Yojimbo after January 1 20009, you are in luck as you get a free upgrade. I'm not so lucky since I've had my copy since February of 2008, but I've get lots of use out of Yojimbo (I use it everyday and it's one of my favorite programs) so I'll gladly pay the upgrade fee of $20.00 USD. The only thing I'm not happy about is the icon. I loved the old one, which was a ninja type dude doing a high kick with the background of a red sun. Oh well, progress.

"Aperture, Apple's pro-level photo editing/management software, has been updated to 2.1.4."

This upgrade, available vis the software update feature, is rather large at 213 MB. It addresses a duplicate import problem, JPEG compression issue and a problem with rendering dust jackets incorrectly when using the Stock Book theme. I haven't used Aperture so I'm not familiar with the bugs, so if you use Aperture and this fixes the problems you've been having, let us know!

"After a couple of weeks of waiting in the iTunes app store approval queue, the 3rd major update of the popular Facebook for iPhone application has been released. Joe Hewitt, the developer of the app, has been working on it for quite some time and submitted it for review on 8/16."

If you use the Facebook App, you definitely want to upgrade to 3.0. A couple of the improvements were improvements to the news feed with direct link to the comments section, you can "like" posts now, you can RSVP to events and you can create/upload photos to albums. It is also much cleaner in design, or at least it seems that way to me. I couldn't get the App Store application on my iPhone to recognize that there was an update, so I just downloaded it manually and it worked fine. Some have been reporting not seeing it in the App Store or only seeing version 2.5. It is suggested that you delete your app and then download it again to fix that problem. Once you do, let us know what you think!

"Mac OS X Snow Leopard arrives Friday and will cost $29 for those who already use Mac OS X Leopard. However, there are some deals out there."

Not only some deals, but some great news for Tiger users on Intel machines. According to Lifehacker, this isn't just an upgrade, its the entire OS so if you have Tiger you can still upgrade to Snow Leopard without buying the box set that is being sold on Amazon.com for example. But if you do have Leopard, you can get some deals. If you purchased a Mac from Apple after June 8th, you are eligible for the Up-To-Date program that will get you your copy of Snow Leopard for just $9.95 USD. You can check out if your Mac purchase is eligible here. Otherwise, Amazon.com is offering the program for $25.00 USD, and has some package deals on bundles with iLife and iWork.

"The world's most advanced operating system. Finely tuned. Upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard for just $29.00."

The speculation is over. August 28th Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be released to all of us looking for an upgrade, and at $29.00 USD, it isn't all that much so I'm likely to do it. You can get a list of all the refinements at the Snow Leopard "What's New" page.

In a related story, Piper Jaffray expects Apple to sell about 5 million copies of this software.

"A "significant" upgrade to Final Cut Studio was announced by Apple Thursday, with more than 100 new features and new versions of Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color and Compressor."

Sounds like quite an upgrade, and if you are upgrading, it will set you back $299.00 USD. To buy full version, it will cost you $999.00 USD, a $300 discount from it's previous price. An upgrade such as this deserves full explanation, and Apple does just that on the Final Cut "What's New" page.

"Nearly half of all iPhone users have already jumped at the opportunity to enhance the functionality of their handsets by installing the free iPhone Software 3.0 update, but the same can't be said for iPod touch users, who -- deterred by a $10 upgrade charge -- are adopting the new software at a snail's pace."

I'm not sure what happened last year, but I think more iPod Touch owners upgraded from 1.0 to 2.0. Is $10.00 US too much for an upgrade from 2.0 to 3.0? I've spent that on an application that I don't use that often so if it is something that I use everyday it doesn't seem too expensive. But maybe that is the point. I use my iPhone every day for texting, email, etc. but do the iPod Touch owners use their devices as much? Maybe this isn't that big of an upgrade for the iPod Touch owners because it really doesn't add enough functionality in the way they use their device versus the functionality it provides to the iPhone user? Any iPod Touch owners out there that haven't upgraded want to weigh in on this? If you haven't upgraded, why not?

"During its presentation at WWDC Monday, Apple highlighted new pricing for the iPhone 3G and the upcoming iPhone 3G S model but didn't explain that existing iPhone 3G customers will have to pay a $200 premium to upgrade to the latest model if they want one right away."

This has caused quite a ruckus all over the net. Differing opinions are being thrown out there, ranging from "too bad, you knew what you were getting into when you agreed to the 2-year contract" to "AT&T is gouging us!" I won't go to the gouging extreme, since they will supposedly allow you to upgrade at the 18-month mark, however the last time I upgraded it was at the one year mark so I'm a little perturbed at 18-months to be honest. I really want to test out the video of this new iPhone but I haven't decided yet if it is worth the $200.00 USD premium, what do you think?

If you are curious if you qualify for the upgrade, head on over to Apple, and they can tell you when you will be eligible, just don't break the screen when your information pops up!

"The public version of Safari 4 came out Monday amid all the iPhone noise at WWDC, and Apple confirmed what those who played around with the beta version already knew: Safari is now a serious browser for serious Windows users, and its position on Macs has been bolstered."

Finally released from the beta realm, Safari 4.0 came out Monday. I've been messing around with it for a month or so, and like it for the most part. The biggest change from the beta is that the tabs on top are now gone, Apple opted for the original look and placed the tabs under the bookmarks bar. Another change is that if a crash happens because of a plug-in like Flash, only that section of the page will cease to function. They have also brought back the "stop" button, which I missed in the beta version. I'm going to download this later today to see how it performs, anyone else going to give this new version a try?

"After the most number of rumours I've ever seen about any Apple product, Apple finally showed up at WWDC with a new iPhone that looks exactly the same as the previous one. The iPhone 3G S, where the S stands for Speed. Perhaps it's not all that bad as there are some more features under the hood, and new software features enabled by this new speed."

I don't think anyone was surprised by the announcement of the new iPhone 3G S after the plethora of stories that were in the mix in the months leading up to WWDC '09. Now that it has been officially announced, just what do you get for your money? Speaking of money, lets start with pricing.

Thankfully they bumped up the storage in the new iPhone 3G S to 16GB and 32GB, so for $199.00 USD you get 16GB and if you want to go a bit higher, they have the 32GB version for $299.00 USD. The older version of the iPhone 3G 8GB is now $99.00, that is if you can find one in stock. Read more...

"Apple's upgrade strategy helps their users and the company in a bunch of different ways. It lets users buy iPhones with some confidence, knowing that they're not going to get left behind next year. It lets developers aim at the latest platform, without having to worry about supporting the older versions of the iPhone OS. And it keeps users with Apple because they don't enter a new buying cycle, thinking of new choices and potentially churning off to the latest new thing."

Sagan brings up an excellent point. RIM and Microsoft, two of the biggest direct competitors in the Smartphone arena, just can't get more than a point-release out to customers. If you throw in Nokia, you rarely see any groundbreaking upgrades to a phone OS that doesn't require the purchase of new hardware.

He also hits the nail on the head when he says that it makes customers more confident in the product knowing they won't be left behind if an upgrade comes down the pipeline. That's one of the reasons I so love my iPhone; unlike they myriad other smartphones I've owned, it's still just as useful as the day I got it because of an upgrade to the OS.

A free upgrade to the OS.

"If you own one of the new unibody/Late 2008 MacBook Pros or one released November 2007 or later you can use up to 6GB of RAM – the most on a portable Mac. The new MacBook Pros have two slots and the 2GB model ship with a 1GB SO-DIMM in each. The 6GB upgrade requires replacing the two 1GB modules with one 4GB SO-DIMM (the expensive one) and one 2GB module (~$30)."

Now that I'm using virtualization for work-related stuff a lot more often, this might be a move I make. I can give 2 GB to the virtual machine in Parallels and still have the four that my MBP came with from the factory. Hmmmm...