Articles for June 2011

We've just received word from our source in the San Francisco Bay Area that Apple is planning to release Mac OS X 10.7 Lion on Wednesday, July 6th at 9:00 am Pacific Time.

One particular item of interest about this news is that with OS X Lion being an online-release-only, Apple can wait until the 11th hour to release new OS. They don't have to first lock it down, then press it onto DVDs, then box it, then ship to their hundreds of stores and through distribution in order to meet a certain publicly announced launch date. With an online release, Apple just needs to upload the final release to their servers and then make it available.

Apple will hold their 3Q11 conference call at 2:00pm PT/5:00pm ET on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. 

Whether or not you have interest in Apple's financial results or have never listened to a quarterly financial conference call, we highly recommend you give this Apple financial call a listen. Tim Cook and Peter Oppenheimer will chair the call, and many things can be learned from listening to their tight-lipped commentary via the questions they choose to answer. Sometimes what they don't say is almost as revealing in what they do.

The latest numbers by Charlie Wolf of Needham & Associates indicates that Android's market share is flattening out, and/or perhaps poised to fall over the coming quarters, due to increased competition from the likes of Apple and other forthcoming competition.  Wolf's assertions also fall in line with NPD's latest market share reports, adding further fuel to the fire that Android is getting the squeeze. 

Today, Google's Andy Rubin Tweeted that Android is seeing an average of 500,000 activations per day. First of all, what exactly does Google consider an activation? Is an Android activation an LG refrigerator with Android built-in for touch-screen control? Is an Android activation millions of China Mobile smart phones that have a core Android OS in them, but everything else Google stripped out of them?

First there was the Pony Express, then the telegraph and then the telephone. As time marches on man seems to find a better, cheaper and quicker way to communicate.

It is no different in the 21st Century. Today we have rss feeds, twitter, facebook, e-mail and the beloved "mobile phone" But wait, there's more. Mobile phones have now morphed into mini computers with Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Mobile 7 platforms. In this new war of the mobile device, it appears Microsoft is bringing up the rear with no real chance of catching Apple or Google. Microsoft has lot's of money to stay in the game, but if things stay the same, they are the odds on favorite to being the big looser. And that's exactly why Microsoft may have purchase Skype.

From the days of ThinkSecret or macOSrumors, to today's AppleInsider or MacRumors, Apple Inc. has always had a great rumor mill following, and quite often where there has been smoke we have seen fire. The constant drumbeat of rumors surrounding the MacBook air is nearly off the charts - or so it would seem.

Virtually every day brings forth a new MacBook air rumor. But many sites are conducting mere re-broadcasts of original information, making it appear as fresh information. Thus, we wanted to go back to the sources of these rumors and build a comprehensive list of original sources.

According to a report by All Things D, Apple's iPhone is now the best selling smartphone for Verizon and AT&T.

To that we say a big, collective, DUH! Add in the revelation that T-Mobile (a non-authorized iPhone carrier) now admits they have over one million unlocked iPhones on their network!

While Apple has been enjoying a financial boom during this down economy (selling more Macs, more iPhones and more iPads) it seems like living in an alternate universe when talking about Research In Motion.

If it wasn't bad enough that RIM's revenue fell more than 12% for Q1 (ending May 28th) or that the Playbook has been a major dud (how's that QNX operating system working out for ya?), it looks like now even the rats are abandoning ship.

Today Apple made good on their June promise by making Final Cut Pro X (FCP X) available for download. Apple delivered a sneak peak of FCP X back in April, but the company was very mum about Final Cut's complimentary applications, and gave little indication if they would be included in some form of FCP Studio suite, sold separately, or removed from Apple's lineup altogether.

Apple has answered the questions in full today. Motion 5 and Compressor are sold separately via the Mac App Store for $49.99 each. Own a Mac, spend $100 and you have two professional tools at your fingertips. Amazing. Final Cut Pro X is also available via the Mac App Store for $299.99.

According to Apple Insider, Apple won't be shipping any new Macs until Mac OS X Lion is available. The rationale is that "Apple management is so pumped up over the advantages presented by its forthcoming Mac OS X Lion operating system that the company has been holding back the release of at least one new Mac refresh until the software is finalized". In addition, Computer World reported that Apple has announced all new Macs purchased after June 6, 2011 will receive a free OS X Lion upgrade.

The reason we must wait for new hardware — the spin goes — is because Apple is so excited about Lion its holding back hardware releases, we think there may be more of a practical side to this decision.

With Guy #2 on assignment, Mark & Werner carry on without by providing a quick and witty analysis of the post-WWDC world we find ourselves in.

This podcast is brief and weighs in at just over 30 minutes — just the right length for a quick work out, mid-day nap, reading a chapter in a Vince Flynn novel or half of a Miami VIce episode. Start listening >

There are many good applications for digital painting on the Mac and Pixelmator and Photoshop are just two of them. Both offer the core tools needed for digital painting. Digital painting used in many areas like 3D surfacing, story boarding, concept art, and matte painting.

In this, my fifth and final comparison between Photoshop and Pixelmator, I will compare Photoshop and Pixelmator for digital painters and see if an other applications might be better suited. I will also give my conclusions on comparing Pixelmator to Photoshop.

Most professionals in the print industry use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. Each application servers a different purpose. Pixelmator was not designed to compete with them, but that does not mean it can’t be used for print use.

Print work takes on many different forms and Pixelmator can easily fit into many workflows. Does Pixelmator have all the tools required for print work? Let’s look and see.

If you own Apple (AAPL) stock or are considering doing so, but are not sure when's a good time to get in, this video is a must-see. Michael Holland isn't flashy, nor does he bring anything revolutionary to the table, but his sticking point is AAPL valuation is incredibly low and it can't stay there forever.

AAPL closed the market Wednesday at $326.75 with a intraday market cap of only $302.16b. AAPL is also carrying a forward looking P/E ratio of only 11. These figures for AAPL are starting to become a fixture to the stock, and they are absurdly low. What is Apple going to bring to the earnings table next quarter? There are some sparks out in the analyst world that suggest it will be another above and beyond quarter, but will another strong quarter push Apple's stock price north or leave it in purgatory?

Photographers have a different set of features that they require in their main application. Adobe tried to support this with Adobe Bridge in Photoshop and although some like it, most find it very slow and difficult to use. To answer the needs of digital photographers, Adobe, Apple and others stepped up to create an application dedicated to photography. Applications like iPhoto, Aperture and Lightroom have become the digital hub for photographers.

iPhoto has a very limited set of editing tools and is mainly used to organized photos. Aperture and Lightroom, on the other hand, have many more powerful tools to quickly edit and manage photos. When it comes time to really manipulate a photo, these applications don’t have the tools that Photoshop and Pixelmator have. This article will mainly compare image editing and manipulation tasks in Pixelmator and Photoshop.

Pixelmator already provides a great editor for those who edit and create images for web graphics. It has a powerful set of core tools for creating layouts, user interface elements, and can easily manipulate pictures for web use. Pixelmator’s interface and tools are easier to learn and use for users who don’t spend all day in an image editor.

Pixelmator 2.0, which is due out this summer adds many nice tools to really improve the workflow for graphics creators. Some of the more notable new features include: vector drawing, a pixel editing tool, and a new type tool. Now, lets take a look at both the current and new version compared with Adobe Photoshop for graphics creators.

Pixelmator is an image editing application made only for the Mac OS. It was first released back in 2007 and has gone through many updates in the past 4 years. At the beginning of June, the team at Pixelmator announced their upgrade to version 2.0. This new upgrade is due this summer and adds many features that their customers had been asking for like vectors tools, dodge and Burn tools, and an improved text tool.

Pixelmator has a strong set of core tools for image editing. There is a natural tendency to compare it with the 800 pound gorilla of image editing, Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop has many more tools and filters than Pixelmator, but it is also ten times the price. Are there tasks where Pixelmator is better than Photoshop? In this 5 part series, I will examine many tasks Photoshop is currently used in and see if a software application that is one tenth the price can replace Photoshop.

Apple is very good at making hardware. They are also very good at making software that runs on that hardware. But what they are really good at is creating an eco-system that uses their hardware and software to solve a much larger problem.

What made Apple's lead in digital music sales and then the creation of an entire new industry — podcasting — so successful was this self-sustaining eco-system. For cool hardware Apple gave us the iPod; for cool software iTunes (desktop version); but it was the iTunes Music Store was the linchpin that made it so other companies couldn't just make cheaper hardware and/or software to compete on par with Apple. Sure one could buy a Samsung MP3 player and purchase music from Amazon, but the integration was always second-rate. Nothing ever just worked like the iPod, iTunes and the iTunes music store.

With the the demise of the XServe and the abnormal delay since the last Mac Mini refresh (12 months — the average has been eight), many continue to wonder where Apple is with replacements for both products. 

While there is a Mac Mini Server running Snow Leopard, what if Apple were to take the next step and create a Mac Mini Pro Server?

A long time ago I had the opportunity to accompany a friend to an Alcohol Anonymous meeting. It was a very sobering experience (pun intended). The building was old and the room looked like a beat up classroom. Light from outside peeked through the curtain drawn windows and smoke filled the air (this was way before any indoor smoking laws had hit the books).

I learned a lot that day. I learned that if not careful, anyone can slip into addictive, self-destructive behaviors. I learned the power of a support group and accountability. I also learned most of the people in the room were seemingly addicted to something else in place of alcohol. The smoke filled room was one clue. Another was "Bill" who needed to go from one support group to the next in order to stay sober. You may be asking, what does this all this have to do with Apple?

With Apple's announcement of OS X Lion, iOS 5 and iCloud, Ballmer and the Redmond collective must be picking themselves off the floor trying to figure out what just happened.

Alas, not all is lost for Microsoft — if they follow my simple advise. Well, thinking about that again, the chance Microsoft might listen to reason instead of the Windows/Office juggernaut is slim to none —and slim left town!

Amazon’s MP3 Music Store has been around since January 2008. It was the first store to go DRM free across all music, as Apple made the move a year later. It has provided an alternative to Apple’s iTunes for purchasing music online.

Apple still provides the easiest and fastest way to purchase music. Their one click to download and be done process is as easy as it can get. For Apple users, does Amazon provide a good alternative to the iTunes music purchasing experience?

Typically we don't make a big deal about posting our podcasts, but this is the WWDC, so we are making an exception. Available in the upper right of our site, so go for it as you have time. 

The show was, well, pretty hot. Speaking of hot, you can listen to brothers (guy #1 and guy #3) go after it a bit regarding privacy and iCloud. All your privacy belongs to us...

Holy covered banners Batman! We had thought Apple raised all their banners this past Friday, but have been proven wrong. It appears Werner Reschke (Guy #3), was correct in his guess that Apple may put up covered banners Sunday night. Nice call Werner. You can see more original T-GAAP WWDC banner photos here.

We are not sure what this banner holds under it's black veil, but here are three of our best guesses:

Amazon announced a new service that provides 5GB of free data storage, called Cloud Drive last March. Any music files that are stored in the Cloud Drive, can be streamed via a media player on their Web site.

Amazon has created an Android music player for their service, but not for the iPhone. A review of this service can be found from Kevin C. Tofel at Gigaom and Andy Ihnatko. This service might be nice for Android users, but does it providing anything for Apple users?

Apple changed the way users purchased Mac applications when they created the Mac App Store at the beginning of the year. Even though it still does not have all the biggest software titles for the Mac, it still is the first place to look for new applications. Can anyone else compete with it?

Amazon is set to find out by creating their own app store for the Mac called Mac Software Downloads. Is there enough room for two stores and can they compete? Lets take a look at the Amazon store experience and see how it compares with the Mac App Store.

Our team is on the streets in San Francisco making sure nothing goes unnoticed as WWDC 2011 takes shape. 

When it comes to smartphones, they've delivered us a lot of mobile computing goodness. But nothing great in technology-land seems to come along without a catch. In the cell phone world, the unsavory lining to success is radiation.

EWG (Environmental Working Group) has served up a plethora of appliance and smartphone test results as it relates to radiation. What this means to the user, that's debatable, but anyone can find articles and test results to support just about any position on the topic. At this point, an overarching rule of thumb is cell phone radiation is not good for the body, but how much can the human body take is another question. Looking specifically at smartphones, EWG tested 83 products, and out of the bunch Motorola came away the loser. As for Apple?...

Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) is coming up on June 6. Products that are showcased at WWDC give developers who are going to the conference a chance learn how to incorporate them into their applications. Usually, Apple has come out with iPhone hardware about this time of year, so developers can add the new hardware features to their applications.

This year, Apple has not shown off the new iOS version yet, so don’t expect new hardware. This would mark a change in Apple’s annual iPhone update cycle. With the iPhone hardware rumored to be delayed until this fall, what is Steve Jobs going to announce during this keynote at WWDC?