Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

Lawsuits notwithstanding, earlier this week Samsung took a few shots at Apple, with a tone that could only be described as defensively whiny, conjuring up images of a certain Star Wars character (must I mention Mark Hamill?...). Samsung appears to be in very vulnerable in the TV space, as Product Manager Chris "Skywalker" Moseley stated at their Prague forum:

Those of us who have followed Apple for three decades have been a spoiled lot. In the 80's we were introduced to the Apple II and then to the Macintosh. The Mac was an unbelievable computer that propelled us 50 years into the future compared to DOS and unix counterparts. 

Last week Sony announced three new back-illuminated stacked CMOS image sensors. In simple terms, Sony announced better camera capability for smartphones and mobile devices, but they're likely to cost the competition much more than Apple, whle lagging behind in overall speed.

I recently had lunch with a friend who had purchased a Kindle Fire for his wife. "She's always on the iPhone, surfing or on FaceBook, so I got her a Kindle Fire." he said. His statement was somewhat shocking, but on the surface of things, his decision made a lot of sense to me, in that a larger screen device just made more sense. But I questioned why he didn't go iPad? He had thought of going iPad, but the iPad is $500, just so his wife can surf around and check FaceBook? "The Kindle was just $200 bucks..." he said, so he went for the Fire.

Netflix has been a huge streaming success story and has been the chief rival to Apple's so-called hobby, Apple TV. But everything may be about to change. According to Barrons report, Verizon is setting its sites on acquiring Netflix or perhaps even Coinstar (which owns the DVD RedBox rental kiosk business). Verizon acquiring either would be a boon for Apple, as the takeover would likely occur in the timeframe Apple launches its own HDTV with integrated offerings.

Analysts have been coming out of Cupertino lately, ratcheting up their iPhone sales figures. The Street predicts roughly 29 million iPhones will be sold for the quarter, while AT&T's CEO recently commented on seeing a record number of iPhone sales for the December quarter being highly likely.

With the dust settling on Final Cut Pro X, with both its detractors and supporters alike, a recent report shed some light that 64-bit Final Cut Pro 8 was ready to roll, but the decision was made to leave it on the cutting room floor and break ties with traditional editing solutions and deliver a new direction. Apple's goal in Final Cut X was clear: Jobs philosophy to skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now, would rule the day.

A recent article by CIO.com titled, "Apple in the Enterprise: Breaking Microsoft's Grip", makes the keen observation that Microsoft is starting to lose their dominant grip in the corporate space. Apple's iPhone and iPad are breaching corporations the same way that Research In Motions Blackberry's did — through the Sales & Marketing Door. iPad's and iPhone's work well on most corporate networks, so it's been difficult for the IT department to prohibit the use of iOS devices within sales and marketing groups. The result has been an explosion of Apple's iOS devices being used in Microsoft's seemingly impenetrable fortress: corporate environments.

Note: This list is inspired by two great forces: David Letterman and Napoleon Dynamite

10. All of your product names all begin with "Microsoft".
9. Your company also builds fantastic refrigerators.
8. Napoleon Dynamite thinks your products have skills.

Bloomberg recently created a buzz about a forthcoming Apple HDTV, in conjunction with Sharp Electronics. But this is not where the immediate attention should be focused. Our information points towards a Tuesday, January 25 Apple's Special Event from Apple.

Adobe customers could previously upgrade their Creative Suite from three versions back. So customers could upgrade to Create Suite(CS) 5, from CS 4, CS 3, and CS 2. Many customers either can't afford or don't want to spend the extra cash to upgrade every version. These customers usually upgrade CS every other or every third update. That will all change with Creative Suite 6.

Photoshop is the most feature rich photo editor on any platform, but that does not mean it is always the best tool for every job. Just recently the developers of Pixelmator released version 2.0 of their photo editing application. The question this article will attempt to answer is "Can one use Pixelmator instead of Photoshop?" not whether Pixelmator is better than Photoshop.

Despite its lower price, Pixelmator does have a number of advantages over Photoshop and those include:

When Steve Jobs re-joined Apple in 1997, he drew a grid on a white board that looked something like this

Analysts are an interesting breed. They are paid to give their opinion on what the future will hold for a particular company or industry. However, often times they don't know what they are talking about or don't know their subject matter well enough to get it right. Think of an analyst like the local TV weatherperson. They may know about the weather and how high pressure relates to low pressure, but with all their knowledge, they keep their job as long as they're entertaining, not whether the forecasts are completely accurate.

Start the countdown, because the next TV you are likely to buy, or want to buy, is going to be made by Apple. And it isn't just because this TV has some elegant design and brilliant looking screen, it'll be because the interface and content that comes right out of the box, and the way in which you control it, is going to blow you away.

Jobs Says So
The question isn't if, it's just a matter of when Apple's holistic television solution will arrive. Steve Jobs said as much in his autobiography, and his "I finally cracked it" comment and additional color on the topic, may be the only time during Jobs reign at Apple that he leaked a single grain of data about a forthcoming product. Don't think this is Jobs throwing in the towel or not caring because he was leaving us. On the contrary, this is perfect Steve Jobs start-the-hype stuff. It's all about the mystery and creating a pent-up demand for something we don't know we even want – yet. Jobs delivered a glimpse into Pandora's box, but since he's gone, we can't dig deeper, and since it didn't officially come from Apple don't count on Cook and company rapping eloquently about this any time soon.

I've been an advocate of Macs since my first introduction to a Mac Plus in dorm room back in 1986. Ever since then I've never seen the reason behind PeeCees — whether MS DOS or Windows. DOS was just plain ugly. I shutter to think if Apple hadn't brought us the Mac, then we'd probably all be running MS DOS version 31 — and would it ever be blazin' quick to see a directory! And then there is Windows. In my mind Windows has always just been a Mac user interface knock-off. Sure Windows improved on some items, but its essence is still a second rate knock-off. Let's not even get started with security woes or viruses (or is that viri?) that plague the PC world.

Yesterday I took some photos with my iPhone 4. When I got back to the office I plugged the iPhone into the USB connector and watched as my iPhone synced with iTunes and iPhoto...  or so I thought.

Adobe created the PDF document format back in 1993. Apple adopted it as an operating system standard format for Mac OS X. Since then, PDF has become the multi-platform standard for storing and sharing documents on any device, and Apple's Preview application is arguably the best basic PDF viewer and editor on the Mac.

The shock of Wall Street not seeing the terminology "iPhone 5" on Apple's latest iPhone offering sent the stock careening in Tuesday's trading, down as much as $17 a share to $357.32 before bouncing back in late day trading.

Punditslooking for link-bait notwithstanding, the fears of some analysts and investors seem to be turning a corner today, from emotionally disappointed, to looking at the facts – Apple has put together a world-wide iPhone lineup that attacks every pricing segment head on with iOS devices:

In the 60's, after President Kennedy's assassination, Simon & Garfunkel brought us the Sound of Silence. That tone can be sensed again this week in for the form of Fire, that has all but gone out. Amazon's gushing moment came from their new line of Kindle's launched this past Wednesday. But since Friday, the absence of any enthusiasm and chatter about the devices, specifically the Kindle Fire, has been deafening. 

We T-GAAP-ers really appreciated your open letter of advertisement yesterday, showcasing the Samsung Galaxy S II and HTC Amaze. Errrrrt! We really appreciated your open letter, explaining why T-Mobile is having difficulties in obtaining the iPhone and what you are doing to ensure T-Mobile customers can order one as soon as possible, as it is clearly the smartphone of choice.

The Mac App Store (MAS) lacked most of the valuable software when Apple first debuted it last January. At that time it was a poor place for users to find new software. Most of the apps on the MAS were of low quality, except for Apple's.

That has all changed in the past ten months, as more and more of the top developers are either moving completely to the MAS or are selling on both the MAS and in the tradition way. Pixelmator was the first major software to test the waters and it grossed over one million dollars. That's simply too much money for other developers to pass up.

Among the myriad of iPhone 5 mock-ups and spy-shots seen floating around the internet, coupled with a nearly daily dose of DigiTimes reports of component purchases here and there, when we boil it all down what are we left with? What kind of hardware will the iPhone 5 most likely sport?

Autumn has finally arrived in North America. While that means the college football seasons begins as well as school starts as well as cooler morning air bringing a change to the leaves, we Apple aficionados also know that means October is just around the corner.

October means a couple of things. First, a new fiscal year for Apple. We'll get to hear 4th quarter results and annual results in mid-October. This let's us know whether Apple is on track or has slipped somewhere. Second, it usually means new products of one sort or another.

This is the big one. The photo we've all been waiting for: A shot taken from an iPhone 5 camera!... Or is it? That's one question that has everyone sifting through pixels today. And while this photo may very well be a snapshot taken with an iPhone 5 prototype, the real genius is in Apple's marketing machine. The photo and it's associated data wasn't an accident, it was intentional.

With this singular image, Apple's put the entire smartphone industry on notice, and has the entire tech community in an absolute buzz over the image. But any engineer with an iPhone 5 prototype in-hand (working with the camera no less) knows exactly what data is tagged to photos, and what will be revealed through that data. At least for this round, there was no need to leak timely information to Apple's favorite journalist Yukari Iwatani Kane of the Wall Street Journal. This time, Apple found a clever way to begin it's pre–launch viral marketing campaign – a single photo. Brilliant.

First of all, I trust everyone had a Happy Labor Day. If you don't know why most don't work on the first Monday of September, it's worth a click and a quick read to learn.

Now, back to the subject at hand, how Apple finishes 2011 strong. FIrst of all don't expect much for the month of September in the form of product launches. September is the last month in Apple's fiscal caledar and historically Apple (like most other businesses) wait until the new quarter or new year to make such new product shipments. Whether Apple announces new product, such as the iPhone 5 in September, that's another matter. But for actual shipping product, October is going to be a very busy month.

Ruko, a former property of Netflix, recently released a second version of their streaming media player. The new player now allows users to play some games on the TV.

While the new set-top box features looks interesting, the shape of the case looks very familiar. Why did Roku redesign their case to make it look like one of their competitor's cases?

If recent reports are to be believed, a new Apple TV will arrive this fall. Information coming from many of these reports cites TV Execs, which have proven to be anything but reliable in the past. The fall timeframe makes little sense for Apple to deliver an all-new Apple TV and Apple HDTV lineup when considering iOS 5, iCloud, iPhones and perhaps new iPads will arrive during a jam-packed season of fall releases. But where there is smoke there is often fire, and while fall makes little sense, our information points to a January Special Event from Apple.

 The new MacBook Airs are fast and light, but they currently come with a few software bugs. We have already talked about one of them here at T-GAAP, but there are more.

Many of these bugs are minor annoyances that should be solved in the next update to Apple's operating system, Lion, but there is one bug that needs more than just an operating system update.

On January 9, 2007 when Steve Jobs strolled onto the MacWorld stage and unveiled the first iPhone, he wrapped up the presentation by stating the iPhone had over 200 patents, and that Apple planned to vigorously defend their Intellectual Property (IP).

No kidding.

Outside of the “i” nomenclature which Apple tags virtually every product, Apple is not a company that subscribes to any form of dogma. Adopting smaller 3.5" floppy drives, pushing USB ports over serial, or flipping an entire video industry on its head with a new software philsopy — it makes no difference. There are simply no sacred cows at Apple, and that's what keeps Apple relevant, inventive, and leaves the rest of the industry playing constant catch up.

Will Apple continue its path to reveal an iPhone 5 that delivers monumental hardware changes over previous versions? iOS and iCloud are so closely integrated, virtually all functionally will run wirelessly once the latest software rollout arrives in September. iTunes, photos, backup, syncing, apps, iOS updates, it's all wireless. The only item remaining requiring phycial connectivity is power. But even connection for power appears on its way out.

Come with me for a moment into my world. One of the hats I wear is being a salesman, and along with that, making presentations. Sometimes those presentations happen in the familiar surroundings of our office. This is where I have “home court advantage” — where everything is comfortable: I use our projector, access our wi-fi network, control the mood with our lighting,... everything is pretty much under my control.

However, that is not the case when I'm at a customer site. I have to show up early to see if I'll use my projector or someone else's. I need to find a wi-fi connection and then whether I can access it. FInally I can't  run through the presentation in case someone else is in the room watching — it'll ruin any “surprise” I've put together. Presenting at a client's site can be a big pain. I've also noticed many companies now have HDTV's in their conference rooms. This is where Apple could really take a giant leap forward and make AppleTV a salesman’s best friend.

Mark your calendar. Today is the day Verizon ends unlimited data plans, putting a nail in the coffin of all-things all-the-time mobile. Eventually all carriers will follow this model as they are all addicted to charge-per-minute plans, so why not charge per bit downloaded, so their thinking goes.

Governing minutes or data, it is the way pipe providers, and unlimited plans are completely counter to their business soul. But ending unlimited plans on AT&T, and now Verizon, it's an Omen of things to come from every data provider, mobile or not. The capping of data is rapidly extending into homes via cable and fiber internet providers. This shouldn't shock anyone. All of these players were spawned from the world of telecommunications, thus the game is the same across the board. How they can extract every cent from our wallets will seemingly never end. However, there is one white knight that has the cash and cajones to change the game – Apple.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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!

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:

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?

Is it June already? Well not quite, but certainly close enough to really start sinking our teeth into what we will find at the WWDC in 2011.

Having personally attended several Mac trade-shows back in the day (not any recently since Apple has canceled such events), the anticipation for Steve or "JobsCo" to reveal something new is no different this time around. Matter of fact one can argue the stakes are even higher with so many more irons in the fire.

I've been a Photoshop user since 1992 starting with Photoshop 2 (that's "2" not "CS2"). I worked in technical support for a color printer manufacturer and we needed to use and learn Photoshop because our customers were using it to print to our printers. Sometimes customers would send their files so we could troubleshoot them and figure out why they weren't printing the way the customer expected. This type of troubleshooting required research, working with Adobe and a lot of trial and error. With all that experimenting I became pretty adept at using Photoshop. Over time there were other titles that came and went, like CorelDraw and Painter, but nothing ever seemed to hold a candle to Photoshop, but then I encountered a game changer.

For those looking into virtualization software, here is a succinct review of Parallels Desktop 6, with a splash VMware Fusion thrown in for good measure. In business there are still instances where Windows is required for OS X users. Many accounting packages and financial desktop-based software solutions are still tied to Windows-only versions.

Times are changing rapidly, but for Mac business users it isn't quite a 100% Windows-free world (not yet at least). To get us Mac users through the slog that is Windoze, apple.it-enquirer delivers a solid review. Who is this article written by? Good question. It only credits "Admin" but it is likely written by the site's publisher Erik Vlietinck. The quick verdict is that Parallels 6 Desktop is outpacing VMware Fusion in many user friendly areas. Games, boot time and file swapping between OS environments, Parallels is winning the war. 

Whack! No, that wasn't Apple's Steve Jobs laying some open letter smack down on Adobe. This time the hammer on Flash comes from some former Apple engineering employees (according to 9to5mac.com). HTML5 is claimed to be converted on-the-fly from Flash, with no need for additional coding requirements via a new product called HYPE 1.0.

Conversion of Flash to HTML5 is a wonderful thing, but I wouldn't call this a Flash killer (at least not yet). The product allows for the lazy use of Flash to continue as a baseline authoring tool, being converted upon output for iOS and other HTML5-loving devices. But at some point the question will become (if it hasn't already) "Why can't I just design in an HTML5 authoring tool from the get-go, instead of designing in Flash and converting?"

HP's VP of European operations, Eric Cador, has claimed that HP will be better than number one in the tablet market. "We call it number one plus," said Cador.

Now that HP has thrown their skin in the game, this may mark the time I need to come back with a comprehensive article on why every tablet out there that's trying to be "iPad plus" absolutely stink. Cador also called Apple an expensive island, regurgitating a dated stereotype of the 90's (AKA Microsoft's diatribe against Apple).

I had built my presentation in keynote, hooked up the projector just to make sure all was working with my newly acquired MacBook Air. I hit play in Keynote and then grabbed my Apple remote to begin forwarding slides... but nothing was happening.

“What’s going on here?” I thought. Maybe I had a remote with a dead battery so I grabbed another and tried again. Still nothing. To my horror, I quickly learned the newer MacBook Air's no longer have an infrared sensor. The sensor had been replaced with a second USB port. Zoiks! I had a presentation in 2 hours. What was I to do? No way I was going to look like a PeeCee idiot and walk up to my laptop and click the arrow keys every time I needed something to happen.

Reuters is reporting that Apple isn't satisfied with the size of current SIM cards and is pushing for a smaller standard for the iPad and other iOS devices. The information comes to Reuters from an Orange executive. 

Orange is one of the UK's major carriers along with T-Mobile and O2. Any validity to this? Who knows, as Reuters is an odd rumor source, and this is not typical for them. This could simply be an Orange executive with loose lips sinking ships.

Based on BGR's claims, it appears Apple will actually be revealing pre-announcement information to a select group of Apple retail staff 12 – 24 hours ahead of a major announcement. This would be a first for Apple, and a bold move from the Cupertino machine. But this may be an Apple litmus test, and if successful may lay the groundwork for how future product launches roll out.

It appears Apple corporate does not trust their retail employees (smart move), in that BRG's source claims the 10-15 employees that will be pulling an all-night-er in the stores, must not only sign an NDA, but also lock their cell phones in the managerial office.

Final Cut Pro X (FCPX) is coming next next month, yet Apple is still completely mum as to additional abilities and feature sets since it's sneak peak at NAB's Supermeet. As a result, resources and information beyond the presentation are difficult to find.

"Stay Tuned" says Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. Stayed tuned for what? A tablet. But before diving into that topic, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. No one in the tech industry is better positioned to take on Apple in the mobile computing space than Amazon – no one.

I've been a MacBook Pro owner since the Titanium PowerBook G4 days (think 2002). I remember making the jump from a G4 Gray Blue Tower to the portable, sleek and "less powerful" but "more portable" PowerBook G4. It was a scary leap. What if I couldn't run Photoshop or InDesign fast enough? What about other general tasks? Nothing drives me nuts more than to see my computer struggling to keep up with me (and I'm not that fast!). But when the PowerBook G4 arrived it was, in Steve Job's words, "magical"! It was so cool, so sleek, so portable. I didn't have to sit at my desk. I could work on the couch or at the kitchen table or take my work with me when I traveled. All was well until...

Microsoft's latest pursuit is yet another sign that Apple is tearing them up. The company from Redmond is rumored to be in pursuit of buying out (or heavily investing in) Skype. If you are a user of Skype you may have noticed their latest updates are pretty much deplorable with regard to user interface, and their video quality typically stinks when compared to Tango or Apple's Facetime.

Based on Microsoft's track record, I can only assume they will purchase Skype, repurpose it for "Windows Phone 7 Extreme Plus Home Edition" and market it as: Windows PeopleTime – The Windows you love, now with video chat... Please.

Cnet's Scott Stein comes up with five creative areas where he'd like to see Thunderbolt deployed. Scott has some creative – and some not so creative – ideas:

• External Storage
• Monitors
• Cameras
• External GPUs
• iPhones, iPads and iPods

Hmmmm... We take a quick look at each area to see what makes sense.

Back in March we covered Apple's aggressive Thunderbolt plans, and how we believed every Mac would be gaining Thunderbolt by the end of 2011. With the recently updated iMac and MacBook pro lines receiving Thunderbolt updates, nearly half of Apple's Mac fleet has now made the transition to the new technology.

The next Mac on the update roadmap is the Mac mini. But regardless of which Mac is next, Thunderbolt is an absolute game changer, and here's why:

No, this isn't a new column that will come out every Tuesday. It's just that the last few days has seen a heavy does of rumors, so to aid in keeping you up-to-speed with the things that are – or are not – going to happen.

Check it out:

Tomorrow I'll be delivering one of a two-part series in which I will attempt to dissect Henry Blodget's analysis of Android vs iOS, and how he couldn't be more off base. Not to be cruel, but Henry thinks he's sliding into home plate with this one, when he's not even playing on the field. Really.

Henry's position on this topic, whether from a financial or viable business position are so indefensible, it took a while to decipher whether he was actually serious. Was this just another Paul Thurott link bait article, or did Henry really think he'd struck gold with this one? Sadly, I think it's the latter, which means I'm putting in the midnight oil to give Henry – and hopefully tens of thousands more – pause to reflect and think about how this isn't the PC war of decades past, rather, it's the new world of post PC devices, and how the twixt of these twain couldn't be further apart. 

Lack of Security within mobile OSes isn't anything new. Developers have seen the gaping holes for quite some time an the public is just starting to become aware. Back on April 5th the WSJ did some pretty impressive research on Pandora's invasive practices within the Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems, and both seem to be unable in stop applications from taking what they want out of the phone (at least for now).

With the latest iOS is tracking you story making national headlines, the general consumer seems to be catching on that their devices are peeking in on what they are doing, or at least they think they are (and their apps are likely doing even more privacy damage). The whole buzz around this privacy issue is eerily similar to that of "antenna-gate" and it's best Apple get in front of this as they did with the iPhone 4's attenuation story. It is critical Apple blows holes in mis-information and rumor before it becomes an assumed fact the Apple is stealing your every move from iOS devices.

Apple's OS X 10.7, AKA OS X Lion, is coming to Apple's WWDC (world-wide developers conference) this June. From the sneak peak Apple gave us a few months back, it looks as if many people are going to love it. But dare we say, some people might not understand Apple's name Lion is only the program name. Apple's talking about system software, not real lions. Evidently not everyone is catching onto this and full-on embracing, well, lions...

Whatever you do, don't try this at home, the Zoo, or local savannah...

It was back in June 2007 that Steve Jobs and EA Sports CEO John Riccitiello, proudly co-announced that popular EA game titles would be coming to Mac OS X. Madden 2008, Tiger Woods Golf and more would soon find their way on store shelves and run native on Mac OS X.

It was a great moment for the Mac platform, but as it turned out it was short lived. Mac gamers got one version of these games — and then silence. What happened? Where are the Mac OS X Games? I mean the popular ones?!

This past February we talked about Final Cut Pro 8's forthcoming release and set of capabilities. The new name, Final Cut Pro X (FCP X), turned out to be different than anticipated, but the changes within the application went well beyond the surprise "X". The latest version of FCP was a bold move by Apple, which – before the official launch – was what Larry Jordan described as "jaw dropping".

But FCP X may have left us with more questions than answers. What exactly is FCP X? Who is its target audience? Will FCP 7 live on? What about the rest of the suite? Along the way to the sneak-peek, Apple gave us some clues with their pro direction.

The MacBook Pro 15-inch has a 16% larger screen and is 24% heavier than its smaller MacBook Pro 13-inch sibling. This extra weight makes it difficult to carry around by its palm rests while open, which is significant as a majority of users don't leave their computers on the desk anymore. While the 15-inch is twice as fast in Geekbench scores, most users will not notice the difference unless performing CPU intensive tasks.

The 13-inch is the perfect size for most users. It has just the right amount of screen real-estate while maintaining its true portable nature. Mac OS 10.7 full screen mode, which will be coming out this summer, will help maximize its screen. Apple offers three different 13-inch MacBooks for different customers: MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air.

 The Powerbook 100 series were the first laptops that Apple produced and they had 9-inch screens. For the next 10 years, the computer industry kept developing larger and larger screens for laptop computers. In 2003, 12 years after the first PowerBook, Apple introduced the 17-inch PowerBook. While the 17-inch may have been popular in the graphics and desktop replacement sections of the market, the majority of the users found them to be too big. Users soon found that the 13-15-inch displays worked the best for most users.

Last year, Apple released a major update to the MacBook Air line. They have become a huge success by taking 25 percent of the total Macs sold the the following quarter. The MacBook Air is neither the fastest MacBook, the cheapest MacBook, nor the biggest. So why has the MacBook Air become a major success?

Unless you're slightly crazy, there's no questioning Apple's dominance in the tablet market. In fact, a year after the iPad's original launch, competition is still scarce. PC and cell phone manufacturers alike are struggling to nip Apple's iPad heels. Can these hardware makers find a market for their tablets and truly compete with Apple, or is iPod history repeating itself?

Presently, there are several issues blocking Android-based tablets success in the marketplace:

In business there are times when opportunity knocks and you had better be ready to answer the door. Is your hair combed, your shirt tucked in, does your breath smell good? Because on the other side is royalty, and it's called "opportunity".

Google had such a knock on their door in 2009 when Apple decided to enter into a third year of exclusively with AT&T. On the other hand, Google was working with several handset makers across the other three major US carriers delivering the Android OS. While Android wasn't yet mature and its feature set somewhat lacking, Mr. Opportunity knocking at Google's door. But did Google answer?

On Thursday TechCrunch's Devin Coldewey reported that Best Buy would no longer be receiving shipments of iPad 2's due to the Best Buy withholding iPad 2's for sale after they had reached an internal day's sales quota.

TechCrunch claims the news comes from a tipster within the Best Buy chain who is highly likely to be delivering accurate information. Coldewey was told that Apple COO Timothy Cook is working to revolve this issue. Cook's involvement would indicate this is not an isolated innocent by a single Best Buy store, but a practice implemented on large scale. Yet the question remains, “Why do this?“ It seems counterintuitive to withhold sales, but there are two reasons Best Buy would implement such a policy.

Google announced a new video codec in May 2010, called WebM. This format uses Ogg Theora audio and VP8 video codecs. Google received VP8 when they purchased On2 for $106 million back in August of 2009. WebM is designed to take on the H.264 video codec that has become the digital video standard. Google says WebM is an open and free format.

Since Google does not make any money on WebM, Why have they created it? Google makes money by selling advertising. In Google's eyes, users are the product and advertisers are the customers. The more users Google has, the more they can sell to their advertising customers, and the more money Google makes. Google creates free products and services to bring in more users. 

It was a sad day for most Mac OS X Server admins when Apple announced they were discontinuing the XServe line because as Steve Jobs said, "They just aren't selling well." No replacement was offered, save for a beefed up Mac Pro and the Mac Mini server option. While both of these may work for some organizations, a real server solution was now missing from Apple's line-up.

Or is it?

Apple hit the airwaves during the NCAA Final Four basketball tournament to air their first advertisement for the iPad 2. There are no more fast interchanges between scenes, or conceptual shots of the iPad. This time around, Apple brings an intimate view of the iPad. The ad delivers tight shots showing off Garageband, and many others content creating-like apps.

The ad begins with the statement "Technology is not enough." The voiceover is performed by Peter Coyote who also performed the voiceover for the original iPad's debut ad. The theme is dead center of Apple's overarching mission: to remove technology and let the user become immersed in experience.

Apple released their new processor for the coming year's iOS products when they debuted it in the iPad 2. This new processor is called the A5, and it is based on the ARM Cortex A9 reference processor. The A5 is a dual-core system-on-a-chip (SoC) running at a variable speed of 800Mhz to 1Ghz. This variable speed allows it to save more power when not performing major tasks.

The processor costs Apple more to produce their own chip than to buy an off the shelf ARM processor. Some estimate the difference to be around 50% more, but the extra cost gives Apple the ability to make a better chip by modifying the reference design to suit their needs. Apple will be able to reduce this cost over time by putting the A5 into every iOS device like the iPhone, iPod Touch, and AppleTV. The performance gains are well worth it and gives Apple a major advantage in the mobile market space. While we don't know what Apple plans for next year's A6, we do know ARM's plans for future ARM processors.

How does the newly released iPad 2 compare with the first iPad and base model MacBook Air? Apple claims it is twice as fast as the first iPad, but does real world testing support this? Testing performance is a difficult task, as it varies depending on what task is being performed. One computer can be faster at editing video and slower at playing games than another. Apple's overall control o the iPad also makes it more difficult to fully test.

Geekbench has put together a comprehensive set of benchmarks to test a computer's performance. It is available on a wide range of platforms including Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and the iOS. While the tests are not perfect, it is one of the best measuring sticks when comparing two computing devices. Time to look at some comparisons.

iPad 3 has been rumored by Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber and MG Siegler of Tech Crunch as possibly landing this fall, but recent information suggests to T-GAAP that iPad 3 will not be arriving this year.

Any delay in launching the iPad 3 is not due to parts availability or the lack of retina display production, it is because of iPad 2's tremendous holding power in the market. iPad 2 is besting Apple's highest world-wide demand expectations, and therefore may not trigger a speedy iPad 3 launch.

October 2010 came roaring in like a Lion — well, for Mac OS X fans that is. Once again Steve Jobs took center stage for a Keynote presentation that focused on the Mac. He and his executive team announced and demoed a few upcoming features in Lion, Mac OS X 10.7.

Alongside of the software hoopla Steve also introduced an update to the MacBook Air. Faster, better memory, better storage, better display, better battery life and more affordable. However, there was one line during his keynote that still rattles in my brain — like a tune you hear in the grocery store and then can't get out of your head. Steve said this is "...the new MacBook Air… we think it is the future of notebooks."

This past Thursday, RIM's co-CEO Jim Balsillie spun his best story, explaining why RIM would be able to compete in what he called the "Superphone" market space. Balsille also tried to clarify why the RIM's financials were not in line with Wall Street expectations, presenting a rosy picture in just a few quarters from now.

Unfortunately for Mr. Balsillie, renaming smartphones as "Superphones" won't change the Blackberry makers problems. RIM's margins are shrinking, and the physical keyboard market is limited. Making matters worse, RIM's efforts to counter the iPhone with their touch-screen Storm lineup has been a complete failure. RIM's best days are behind them. To make this perfectly clear, 2011 is the beginning of the end for RIM.

Apple's rollout of iOS 4.3 a few weeks ago seemed like a ho-hum, second-fiddle announcement compared to the launch of iPad 2. While we all welcome updates to operating system software — well, those updates that improve our lives — iOS 4.3 was pretty much a yawner...

...until I started using Personal Hotspots.

Last week I set out on a mission to purchase a Motorola XOOM tablet, in an effort to compare it to Apple's iPad 2. We Three Guys were going to put the XOOM through its paces and deliver test results. We were ready to do live side-by-side video app and browsing comparisons between the two devices. Unfortunately, after five days of line squatting and Apple Store stakeouts for an iPad 2, we are still without an iPad 2. In contrast, finding a XOOM took little to no effort, there are plenty in stock at any Verizon or Costco location.

That said, finding a Xoom and purchasing one is a completely different story. The strings attached to buying a Xoom makes doing your taxes seem like fun. We'll spare you the test results of just the XOOM (after all, there are plenty of benchmarks out there showing the iPad to be vastly superior), and simply let you know the pain you'll be in for if you decide to buy a Xoom.

The Mac Pro was last updated in July of 2010. Most recently, at the end of March, the MacBook Pro received a new high-speed data port called Thunderbolt. This new data port really benefit professionals who need fast data transfers, such as video editors.

Current Mac Pros will not be able to add the Thunderbolt data port because it needs a new motherboard. Intel will not be offering a PCIe adapter card for current and older computers either, so when will Apple add the Thunderbolt port and refresh the Mac Pro? Lets take a look at the current hardware and past updates.

Since Chrome's first stable release, it has become the third most poplar browser on the Mac. Because Chrome has rapidly grown in popularity, it is time to compare it with the default browser, Safari.

Both browsers use the same Webkit rendering engine, but does Chrome offer features compelling enough to switch? Time to find out.

It has been nine days since iPad 2 rolled out into stores across the U.S. Apple, Best Buy, Target, Walmart and some Sam's clubs all had iPad 2 on it's Friday night debut. But since the iPad 2 launch, the supply chain hasn't been filled, it's been all but depleted, and it's more than just about demand — somethings wrong.

For the ninth day, lines across America continue. Thousands of people are still spending tens of thousands of hours gathering during their much needed REM sleep time for a shot at finally being able to purchase the magical product. But instead of Apple being able to deliver a higher volume of iPads and time moves forward, it appears Apple's manufacturing capability is diminishing.

To-date, iOS devices have seen modest updates, but recent rumblings suggest iOS 5.0 will be a major release integrating a host of new Apple technologies.

Apple has become methodical — if not predictable — in delivering recent updates to both hardware and software. With the exception of the original iPhone launch, each major iOS update has been released only a few days before revamped iPhone hardware. Claims that Apple will deliver an iOS 5 update this spring appear to be erroneous guesswork at best.

The iPhone and iPod touch have proved to be stiff competition for Sony and other hand-held game console makers. While standard handheld game consoles are supposed to be better at gaming, the iPod touch and iPhone can do so much more than just games. This has led to a majority of non-hardcore gamers switching to the iPod Touch or iPhone. The iPad is adding to this trend for those who want a bigger screen.

With the launch of the iPad 2, Apple added the ability to mirror the iPad's screen on a TV with a HDMI output option, which allows the iPad to compete with traditional game consoles. iPad games can now be viewed on a HDTV at 1080p, instead of looking over someone's shoulder. This changes the iPad from a personal gaming device to becoming the social gaming console.

Piper Jaffray delivered some interesting survey results over the weekend. The analyst firm conducted a poll from people standing in line to purchase the iPad 2 during Friday's launch event. While many are focusing on how many people the survey claimed were new to the iPad (roughly 70%), there is another statistic that reveals Apple's true genius — the number of people buying higher memory configurations.

Apple has an entry-level $499 iPad, but it's not model that's selling in the majority, at least not this time around. There was rumor as to whether Apple would bump the base model iPad to 32GB and scale north from there. This seemed plausible considering Peter Oppenheimer's remarks during last quarters financial conference call, claiming margins on iPads were very strong. Many companies, if having the chance, would have jumped at including more storage in order to win the specifications game, but not Apple.

Earlier this week we prominently posted that we would be bringing you our Apple iPad 2 vs Motorola Xoom with side-by-side testing report. Unfortunately, we Three Guys and a Podcast took a bit of advice from our "good friend" Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. 

The advice he gave all of us? Gene explained we shouldn't expect any long lines for the iPad 2, as it was available at many retailers verses last year. Perhaps Gene missed the fact that the original iPad was available for pre-order, while iPad 2 was available for pre-order for less than 24 hours before retail launch.

Google's Android OS fragmenting into a death spiral may be overblown at times, but it certainly won't be overstated in the tablet arena - assuming of course, one of these years PC hardware vendors will be able to compete with Apple's iPad and its pricing.

Android's appearance in the tablet market is currently minimal, but as PC vendors are forced to get in the game due to shrinking netbook and notebook sales, Google is going to witness Pandora breaking out of her box, with no quick fix on how to remedy the situation. The issue I am speaking of is one that is (or soon will be) staring every Android tablet developer squarely in the face — Android's complete lack of attention to hardware vendor's screen resolution, aspect ratio and pixel density. Mind you, this is no trivial problem.

The search engine Apple uses for the Mac is called Spotlight. It is a good search engine, but it is on the slow side and does not include any power user features. If you are looking for something more, look no further than LaunchBar by Objective Development. Once installed, it is accessible by using the spotlight or user definable shortcut.

LaunchBar is significantly faster at bringing up search results than Spotlight. It also has an extensive list of options to customize the search index. This allows users to specify which folders or file types to be included or excluded from LaunchBar's search. Customizing the search index is another way to speed up and improve the search results.

Apple refreshed their Macbook Pro line-up at the end of January 2011.  The big news out of this update was an announcement of a new data port called Thunderbolt and the move to Intel's Sandy Bridge micro-architecture.  Apple also switched from Nvidia's integrated graphics processors (IGP) and discreet graphics processors to Intel's IGP and AMD's (formally ATI) discreet graphics processors.  With this move, Apple changed the Macbook Pro 13" graphics chip to the Intel HD Graphics 3000.  Intel's Sandy Bridge main processor is a big upgrade from the previous version, a Core 2 Duo, but is the graphics processor an upgrade or a downgrade?

Intel has been known in the past for producing very poor graphics processors.  This lack of a good graphics processor from Intel is the main reason why most decent desktop and laptop computers come with a discreet processor.  Nvidia built a graphics processor into the supporting chipset for the Intel x86 main processors, which was used in the previous MacBook Pros.  Nvidia's IGP performance was substantially better than anything Intel came out with and provided a huge upgrade in performance.

It was January 2010, and front and center at CES was Steve Ballmer who "demoed" for us three (he really only used one) "slate" products running Windows 7. Well, "demo" is really an generous description. Ballmer picked the slate up, did a few things with it and then put it back on the shelf next to the other two "slates". We were told that 2010 would be a year full of slate product introductions — and it was going to be exciting!

Ballmer got his prediction half correct. On January 27, Apple launched the iPad — a real tablet that ran a sophisticated OS and it began shipping in mass in April. If you had an iPhone or iPod Touch, you knew how to use the iPad right out of the box: download software, sync with your computer and everything else. Even better your iPhone/iPod Touch software could be used on the iPad. Developers also were in luck as they didn't need to do much to adjust their apps for the iPad either.

Intel's Light Peak technology (also known as Thunderbolt) was first introduced on Apple's MacBook Pro line-up last month. Thunderbolt is set to race across the Mac platform, spreading across Apple's entire lineup by the end of 2011.

The next Mac product to include Thunderbolt is the Mac Mini — via a product update due this month. Following the Mac Mini will be updates to the iMac and Mac Pro towers. That said, both systems update timelines have varied greatly in the past few years. What is not known is how many Thunderbolt ports each system will receive.

Yesterday the Nielsen Company reported that for the months of November 2010 to January 2011 Google's Android operating system’s market share has pulled ahead of Apple and RIM with 29% of the smartphone sales in the U.S.

As with most things, when you look behind the curtain there is more than meets the eye — and in this case we don't find a happy, content Android family, but one fighting for its smartphone life.

The two leading browsers on the Mac are Apple's own Safari and the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. There are other browsers available for the Mac, including Google's own Chrome, but this test will be between the two market leaders.

During the testing period, Firefox 4 beta 11 and Safari 5.0.3 were used. Although Firefox 4 is still in beta, it is already better than Firefox 3, which Safari clearly beat in past competitions. This test examined eight key areas for browser performance and usability. Now it is time to compare these two browsers.

The iPad 2 launched today with great fanfare and a solid, if not modest, hardware update. Apple's hardware team showed us how they can industrial engineer like no one else, delivering a razor thin iPad 2 — which is even thinner than the iPhone 4. The iPad 2 shows us Apple's hardware prowess, but a few major pieces were missing amongst the mix.

The iPad 2 sports the same resolution screen as iPad 1, humble camera specs, and ho-hum software updates — for now. The big reveal in hardware and software looks to be on the horizon, arriving in the in iPad 3.

The clock struck midnight and February 10, 2011 was born, but apparently no lines materialized at Verizon retailers. Why?

We heard a lot of hoopla surrounding the supposed "event everyone has been waiting for." Verizon made a special commercial with clocks just about to strike midnight and people in anticipation of being able to get an iPhone on the Verizon network. Jon Stewart was exuberant, claiming "a spring in my step... a certain twinkle in my eye" about the iPhone Verizon announcement. Apple even made the "Twins" commercial showing an iPhone on an AT&T and Verizon network simultaneously. So where are all the Verizon iPhone customers?

Adobe released version 10.2 of their Flash Player plugin at the beginning of the month. This latest version adds preliminary support for Stage Video, which is supposed to reduce CPU usage during video playback. In order for Adobe to improve the Flash Player, they need to improve battery life by reducing CPU usage during flash playback. Heavy CPU usage may not be a major factor on desktop computers, but it is on anything using a battery, as it drains the battery quickly. Is this new version any better on the Mac?

Looking at CPU usage will be the way to determine if Adobe Flash has improved or not. The best way to test this new version is to compare it with older versions of the Flash Player and similar sites running HTML5. This test was conducted with Adobe's Flash Player 10.0, 10.1, and 10.2. An Aluminum 24" iMac with 4GB of memory, 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo, and running Mac OS X 10.6.6 was used as the test platform. Safari version 5.0.3 and Firefox version 4.0b11 were both used to conduct this test.

If you're like me, you have an iPhone and you like it. I started with an iPhone 3G back in the day and recently upgraded to the iPhone 4. It's a great phone. It's a great mobile device. It's just great.

Each weekday I spend anywhere from 60-90 minutes in my car driving to and from the office. I have a handy Kenningston cradle that holds my iPhone 4 front and center while I drive. I use the Jawbone ICON (Thinker) to take incoming calls. It's a driver's perfect world... almost. What can cause frustration is an incoming text message or the "bing" of an incoming e-mail. Currently there is no good way to process and respond to a text message or read an e-mail while speeding along at 60+ mph. There are some that can use one hand to drive and one hand to navigate their iPhone. While I might be able to do that, I'm not willing to press my luck by taking my eyes off the road for more than a second, let alone read while driving.

Apple's announcement to end production and sales of XServes on January 31, 2011 was a sad day for many Apple IT professionals. To read about the frustration it brings to the Mac community you need to look no further than Apple's own discussion forum on the topic.

One person in the forum said, "This is so unlike Apple, pulling the rug out on us - it's more like a MS move, sounds like they're slipping." Another lamented, "This is horrible news for any ACN out there. We fight tooth and nail to convince business and enterprise that Apple is a valid contender. How OSX Server is "real UNIX' and how Apple servers are more cost effective for licensing and support... To then have to sheepishly explain we have no rack-mounted option, no hot-swap drives or redundant power, no LOM, no actual 'server' - it's embarrassing and destroys Apple's presence in the server room." So this begs the question, does Apple need to be in the Server market? Yes.

The Macintosh operating system comes with it's own screen capture tool called Grab. It's flaws will be very visible if used for any length of time. One of those flaws is the fact is it only saves images in a TIFF file format. Since TIFFs are big and rarely used, every screen grab requires at least a two step process. One step is to capture your screen and the second is to convert the file in another format like JPEG. There is a better way.

LittleSnapper by Realmac software is a must for any screen grabbing user with many advanced features. It makes Apple's Grab look like a high school project. Lets take look at some of the key features of Little Snapper now:

Despite our earlier report of Final Cut Studio and the MacBook Pro arriving in April (notwithstanding Sandybridge taking a slight “detour” to market), there is no indication that FCP has been thrown off its pace, and it is rapidly approaching its launch — with one of its largest updates ever.

The MacBook Pro may very well join the launch, shipping in late April/early May. We continue to hear the new MacBook Pro will arrive with higher resolutions screens, increased battery life, a thin chassis that follows the format of the MacBook Air — and no optical drive. One 15" legacy MacBook Pro model will remain, gaining internal updates only, for those believing they require an onboard optical drive.