Apple This

Apple’s MacBook Air laptops have become super popular due to their ultra-slim design. They are super light and easy to transport, which makes them perfect for traveling on business or for students who need to have their computer wherever they go. According to new reports from Digitimes, Apple could be launching brand new MacBook Air models that are even lighter and more slim than they have ever been before. These new models could be released as soon as the end of the year or some time in 2015.

Actually, the Digitimes report doesn’t really specify if the slimmed down new models will be the MacBook Air specifically, but that seems to be what makes the most sense. It could be a slimmed down version of the MacBook Pro, but then there wouldn’t be much of a reason for the MacBook Air. There is a strong possibility that both models will get a fresh redesign though and that they could both be slimmed down a bit. The same website has also reported that the current 13.3-inch version of the MacBook Pro will be retired by the end of the year.

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Both of these flagship laptops have gotten little changes this year already. Nothing major was updated, but they did both get a CPU boost along with a nice drop in price. It seems like it might be a little bit hard for Apple to shave even more bulk off of the MacBook Air. At the same time, they will probably never slim down the MacBook pro to the same size as the MacBook Air. The two laptops are different and have different selling points, they wouldn’t dare drop one from their line of products or go out of their way to make them basically the same.

Either way, these new reports are very interesting. Hopefully we will be hearing some more news on this by the end of the year, or even see the new product in person by then.

Back in June Apple announced that it sold 4.4 million Macs during the month, the most ever for that quarter of the year. In addition to that, the company also announced that those figures also showed a year-over-year growth rate that the rest of the industry hasn’t seen since 2010. Apple sold 18% more Macs in the quarter than the same quarter the previous year with revenue from the oldest line of Macs contributing 15% of the company’s $37.4 billion in total sales.

According to a statement from Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil, “I was pleasantly surprised by the Mac numbers. The rumors of the death of the personal computer are, of course, highly exaggerated.” When Chief of Research and Head of U.S. Business for Kantar WorldPanel Comtech Carolina Milanesi was asked for her reaction, she stated, “No, I’m not surprised by the Mac numbers. The PC business is almost all mid- and low-end, and that’s not where Apple plays, so they’ll continue to outperform.”

The sales of Apple’s Macs came in significantly higher than the predictions of nearly every single Wall Street analyst polled by Fortune. Apple beat the 3.9 million average of nearly three-dozen analysts by 12% . None of the 34 financial experts surveyed by Fortune had placed a bet higher than what Apple had recorded. “We had a record June quarter for the Mac, and demand has been very strong for our portables in particular,” stated CEO of Apple Time Cook.

In addition to that, Apple’s CFO Luca Maestri praised the fact that Apple was able to beat the PC industry average in 32 of the last 33 quarters. The one quarter in the last eight years that Apple failed to match or beat the average was Q4 od 2012, which was caused by a production fiasco which left the company without iMacs to sell for several months.

Research firm IDC stated that global PC shipments for the June quarter, with a majority of them running Windows OS, fell to 2% with Gartner noting that the shipments fell flat compared to last year. Gartner’s Van Baker believes the increase in sales was caused by the MacBook Air, the company’s thinnest and lightest notebook. Baker stated, “The MacBook Air is still a very strong product and people like it a lot. It puts them in a good position for continued growth.”

Gotheil and Baker both believe that Apple benefited from the minor bounce back in the overall PC business from the previous quarter, though for different reasons. Gotheil believes that users with aging PCs running Windows (likely ones bought around 2008-2009) picked a Mac as a replacement/upgrade whereas Barker believes there is a different reason for the spike.

“Some of these Macs, I think, went to people who had bought a tablet thinking that it would be a replacement PC,” said Baker. “But then those consumers said, ‘Tablets are nice and I like tablets, but a notebook is still a better idea.’ In the developed economies, that’s a dynamic that is operating.”

In addition to that, all three analysts noted that one potential reason for the increase in sales was the price drop that Apple instituted for the MacBook Air line back in April. Apple decreased prices of all four stock model MacBook Airs by $100 and, for the first time, offered a sub-$900 Air, selling the 11″ 128GB Air for $899 to consumers and $849 to college students and parents of students. Gotheil added, “The MacBook Air is a more attractive choice with those price cuts, and it’s a pretty robust notebook.”

Rumors have been circulating recently of Apple revamping a lot of its hardware, namely with the iMac and MacBook devices. These rumors aren’t surprising due to the fact that Apple is pretty consistent in its timeframe of upgrades, so much so that you can practically set your watch by it. But one interesting bit of information that is making its rounds is the fact that Apple could be looking into boosting the processor speed of the next version of iMacs.

As far as looks go, the iMac has stayed pretty consistent since its last redesign in 2012, instead focusing on minor upgrades in processing power that have benefited the device a good deal. It is still up in the air as to when exactly Apple may do a physical redesign again to the already impressively slim all-in-one but a lot of users are keeping their fingers crossed for other enhancements, most notably a higher screen resolution thanks to a Retina display.

However, French blog site MacGeneration recently debuted a report that suggests that Apple is planning on refreshing the iMac lineup as early as next week with speed upgrades. MacGenerations talked about all four iterations of the iMac and the potential upgrades that could be coming to each one.

The $1,499 21.5″ 2.9 GHz iMac could see CPU speeds increase 0.1 GHz to 3.0 while the Turbo Boost feature, which manages individual cores of the processor automatically for increased efficiency in both power and performance, would increase to 3.7 GHz from 3.6. The $1,299 21.5″ 2.7 GHz iMac wouldn’t receive any upgrades at all, at least as far as MacGenerations is concerned.

The $1,799 27″ 3.2 GHz iMac would see processing speeds increase 0.1 GHz as well to 3.3 accompanied with the Turbo Speed increase from 3.6 GHz to 3.7 GHz. The final version of iMac, the $1,999 27″ 3.4 GHz model, would also see a 0.1 GHz increase to 3.5 with the Turbo Speed performance increasing from 3.8 GHz to 3.9 GHz.

However, all of these speed increases are for the basic models. For a small price increase users are already able to increase both processing speed and Turbo Boost when configuring their device. If these reports hold true then it appears as if some Apple fans will be disappointed as no Retina display has been announced for any of the iMac variations.

Rumors of Apple bringing the Retina display to the iMac have been circulating for some time now. Apple released a 5120 x 2880 wallpaper image a year ago that hinted at the Retina display was coming to the iMac as well as Apple’s external models. The MacBook Pro lineup has had Retina displays for quite awhile now, as has the iPhone and iPad, but Apple has yet to bring it to the iMac or the MacBook Air, which is frustrating potential customers.

There is one solitary clue, however, that alludes to this year being the year of the Retina iMac. Code has been discovered in the beta of Apple’s recently-announced OS X 10.10 Yosemite operating system that points to higher-resolution settings for an unknown computer that could very well be the iMac.

Unfortunately for us that is all purely speculative hearsay and nothing has been set in stone. Not everyone is in favor of the iMac getting the Retina display, however. Customers seem to be a little divided on the topic with some thinking that a Retina display on the iMac is awesome while others believe it to be a bit too much. What about you? Are you eager to see the iMac come out with a beautiful Retina display?

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It’s hard to hear the name “Apple” and then place the word next to the term “affordable”. This isn’t to bash on Apple, but as the old adage goes, “you get what you pay for”, right? Apple provides excellent products, usually all are very high-end. However, with high-end products come high-end prices. The iMac and even the Macbook aren’t considered the most affordable of tech devices, but they are always seen as some of the best tech you can get your hands on. You would think that with all of the competitors out there offering lower costs, and most succeeding at emulating what Apple can do, they would try to compete themselves and offer lower prices on some of their tech. Well thankfully, that looks to be in some of Apple’s plans this year.

Apple’s product road map for the year of 2014 has pointed out some interesting things. First and foremost in a new ultra slim 12″ Macbook Air. The map revealed more on the iWatch, and new sizes in iPhones, but more so revealed a new low cost iMac as well.

The new Macbook Air seems to be the thing that most everyone is concerned with, in terms of new laptops coming out later this year. The new Air is expects to do away with the two different sizes which its predecessor had. The new Air is rumored to be 12″ instead of offering an 11″ or 13″ model this time around. According to Ming Chi Kuo, a KGI Securities representative who is quite psychic when it comes to Apple rumors, the 12″ model is thought to be a fusion of the two previous Air models. The 12″ model will still offer the portability of the 11″ model while maintaining the efficiency and productivity of the 13″ model as well. Kuo has also predicted that the new Air model will be host to an ultra high definition display as well. It’s rumored that it will, in fact, be a retina display model to match that of the Retina Macbook Pro model. Yet another rumor of the new Macbook Air is that it will actually (somehow) be thinner and lighter than the preceding model was/is. It seems next to impossible to make this happen, but there are a few speculated specs that show how this could be possible.

As with any laptop, there are a few things that must be included within the casing to make it work. However, there is one thing that you may think would be needed in a high end laptop that the new Air will not include: a fan. This will no doubt make the laptop slimmer, but hopefully the notebook will be able to retain high power output without needing to be cooled down by a fan. There is said to also be a buttonless trackpad. The trackpad will now be responsive to pressure instead of the clicking of buttons.

Kuo again talked of the lower cost iMac expected to come out later this year. Obviously no one knows how “low-priced” it will be, but on the roadmap for Apple, it looks to come out halfway through the second quarter of 2014. The new iMac has been lowered in cost to compete with other companies that offer lower prices (funny how I mentioned that same thing at the beginning of this article). The new Macbook Air, however, isn’t expected to be out until late, possibly the end of this year.

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A global shortage of traditional, spinning hard disk drives (HDDs) has, coincidentally, come at a time when Apple’s flash-based solid-state MacBook Air is one of Apple’s most popular products. The large success of the redesigned netbook has come with “fortuitous timing” in the face of HDD shortages according to Evercore analyst Rob Chira. Chira believes that Apple is largely insulated from the ongoing component constraints that were caused by flooding in Thailand.

The MacBook Air only features NAND flash for storage, primarily relying on solid-state hard drives as opposed to the more traditional spinning hard disks. NAND memory has been completely unaffected by the floods in Thailand, events that have since put over 600,000 people out of work.

In addition to his previous statement, Chira also believes that the ongoing hard-drive shortage will create an influx of MacBook Air copycat Windows-based devices also using solid-state drives in 2012. Specifically, Chira sees PC makers gravitating towards Intel’s ultrabook design specification, which aims to capitalize on the popularity of Apple’s thin-and-light MacBook Air concept.

However, Chira expects Apple to counter this by refreshing its Air lineup in the first half of 2012 and also believes that Apple’s hoard of money will also allow it to leverage “some unique NAND engineering/supply vs. vanilla (solid-state drives).”

Recent rumors have also hinted at the possibility of Apple adding a 15″ model to its MacBook Air lineup in the early parts of 2012 and that the company is supposedly looking to expand its lineup as the ultraportable notebooks now represent 28% of Apple’s notebook shipments.

As far as Chira is concerned, Apple is in a strong position concerning Macs featuring traditional hard drives as well. He believes that Apple was the fastest hardware maker to react with hard-drive suppliers, putting the company in an advantageous position in the chain of supply.

This opinion also comes a matter of days after AppleInsider reported that build-to-order iMacs with 2TB hard drives had an estimated shipping time of 5 to 7 weeks. The shortage of high-capacity drives for Apple’s all-in-one machine could also be the first sign that the company is indeed being hit by the global shortage as well.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, recently expressed concern about the hard drive shortage during his company’s quarterly earnings conference back in October. While Cook was “certain” there would be an industry-wide shortage of hard-disk drives, Cook said he was “not sure” at the time of exactly how the situation would affect Apple.

Source: Apple Insider – Apple’s MacBook Air has ‘fortuitous timing’ in face of hard drive shortage

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Apple recently released some firmware updates on Wednesday for the latest Mac Mini and MacBook Pro model computers. This firmware update was released to address issues with Lion Internet Recovery as well as Thunderbolt connectivity on both the Mac Mini and MacBook Pro.

Just like the most recent MacBook Air update, which took place on Monday, EFI Firmware Update 1.3, which is for mid-2011 Mac Mini models, offers increased stability enhancements for Lion Internet Recovery as well as an issue fix involving Apple Thunderbolt Display compatibility and performance in Thunderbolt Target Disk Mode.

The MacBook Pro’s patch, known as EFI Firmware Update 2.2, provides similar fixes. However, unlike the MacBook Air, the MacBook Pro doesn’t ship with Internet Recovery. The good news is that this update appears to enable the use of Internet Recovery on the device. Internet Recovery allows you to get support and re-install Lion via the internet without a physical Lion Recovery partition in the event of a hard drive crash.

If you want to update your MacBook Pro or Mac Mini computer, all you have to do is download the firmware update from Apple’s support website. After you do that, you will want to have your MacBook Pro or Mac Mini connected to a power source. Your computer will then reboot to a gray screen in order to install the update. You will then be able to track the progress using a status bar at the bottom of the screen.

Source: Computer World – Apple provides firmware updates for MacBook Pros, Mac minis

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Not long after its release, Apple has already issued the first maintenance update to OS X Lion. The update, known as OS X Lion 10.7.1, is available now via Software Update and Apple’s download pages though you should be prompted by your Apple computer to update the next time you turn it on.

According to Apple, “The 10.7.1 update is recommended for all users running OS X Lion and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability and compatibility of your Mac.” Fixes to OS X Lion found in 10.7.1 include:

• Addresses an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari.
• Resolves an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio ouput.
• Improves the reliability of WiFi connections.
• Resolves an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion.

All the information on the OS X Lion update 10.7.1 can be found on the website http://support.apple.com/vb/HT4764 so you should head on over there if you have any questions or you want more information about the update itself.

In addition to that, Apple has also released a separate version of 10.7.1 that is specific to the most recent MacBook Air and Mac Mini. This update included the same features as the original 10.7.1 update but also adds specific fixes only designed for these devices. These new fixes include:

• Resolves an issue where MacBook Air may boot up when MagSafe Adapter is attached.
• Resolves an issue causing intermittent display flickering on MacBook Air.
• Resolves an issue that causes the SD card slot in Mac Mini to run at reduced speed with SD and SDHC media.

To top it all off, Apple has also released a separate OS X Lion Update 10.7.1 (Server) update for any system with Lion Server components installed. This fix improves the reliability of the Apple File Service. In addition to that, a unique OS X Lion 10.7.1 Update for Mac Mini 2011 (Server) update, including all of the OS X Lion 10.7.1, Lion Server and specific Mac Mini changes has also been released.

Source: Mac Rumors – Apple Releases OS X 10.7.1 with Fixes for Video in Safari, Audio Out, Wi-Fi and more

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Sales of Apple’s new Thunderbolt MacBook Air have resulted in some locations running out due to increasingly high demand. This seems to be due, in part, to consumers being quick to embrace the refreshed thin and light notebook.

Recent reports from multiple analysts have indicated that the new MacBook Air has seen a very strong demand in the U.S. Demand has been so high that analysts have reported stock-outages of certain models in different locations.

According to analyst Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities, “Overall, we sense a bit more of a preference for the higher-end 11-inch models but the 13-inch also seems to be popular. Netting this out, the MacBook Air has truly redefined the laptop computing market, in our view, and we expect this momentum to continue.”

Many of Apple’s own resellers do not have the MacBook Air in stock, which is just further evidence of the high demand. These new MacBook Airs, with the second generation Sandy Bridge processors and new high-speed Thunderbolt port, were released last month. Like older models, these new ones start at $999, however, the discontinuation of the white MacBook makes the 11.6-inch MacBook Air the only sub-$1,000 notebook.

White attributed a lot of the MacBook Air’s success to the timing of its release. He also noted that this device will keep Apple in the minds of consumers even without a new iPhone available at the moment. White also believes that Apple will have the best technical back-to-school lineup this season and for the holidays. “In our view, successful Apple launches are key in driving the halo effect that drives incremental demand for other Apple products.”

Even though the new MacBook Air has found immediate success, White expects adoption of the new Thunderbolt connector to take more time. The $49 price tag of the Thunderbolt connector cable combined with the lack of available accessories seem to be barriers to the adoption of the technology at the present time. However, White expects that to change over time.

Source: Apple Insider – Strong sales of Apple’s new Thunderbolt MacBook Airs result in stock-outs

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