World of Apple

Apple.pro the site that brought us spy shots of the rumoured upcoming MacBook has also posted a video of what looks very much like a MacBook Air.

The video which shows very little displays a notebook with a MacBook label with a very large trackpad and an aluminium enclosure.

Apple is holding a media event on Tuesday October 14 and is expected to release brand new MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

View the video below.

(more…)

Apple has today released the seventh security update of calendar 2008 which fixes numerous security issues including one introduced by the Mac OS X 10.5.5 update.

The security update which is available for both Mac OS X Leopard and Tiger fixes holes in ColorSync, Finder, general Mac OS X networking, PSNormalizer, QuickLook, root certificates, Script Editor and much more.

More details available here.

• Security Update 2008-007 Client (Leopard)
• Security Update 2008-007 Client (Intel)
• Security Update 2008-007 Client (PPC)
• Security Update 2008-007 Server (Leopard)
• Security Update 2008-007 Server (Universal)
• Security Update 2008-007 Server (PPC)

The invite delivered to the media reads “The spotlight turns to notebooks”.

Apple will host the event at its Town Hall location on October 14 at 10.00am.

Apple is expected to deliver redesigned MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Apple has launched a set of iPhone developer tech talks that will be available on select dates across the globe.

Apple technology evangelists and engineers will soon be traveling the globe bringing iPhone development expertise to a city near you. Learn about the tools and technologies you’ll use to create great iPhone applications, then work with the experts to optimize your code, refine your user interface, and apply the knowledge you gain from the sessions to enhance the capabilities of your iPhone application.

The 12-hour sessions will focus on Objective-C, interface design, game development, maximising iPhone performance, submitting apps to the app store and much more.

The talks will be available in the following cities on the following dates:

North America

• Oct 22 San Francisco(FULL)
• Oct 24 Los Angeles
• Nov 03 Austin
• Nov 05 Chicago
• Dec 02 New York(FULL)
• Dec 04 Toronto
• Dec 09 Seattle

Europe

• Oct 22 Paris
• Oct 24 Munich
• Nov 03 Amsterdam
• Nov 07 London
• Nov 10 Berlin
• Nov 11 Madrid
• Nov 14 Copenhagen
• Nov 17 Zurich
• Nov 19 Rome
• Dec 08 Stockholm

India

• Nov 24 Bangalore
• Nov 27 Delhi

Asia Pacific

• Oct 30 Tokyo
• Nov 04 Singapore
• Nov 10 Hong Kong
• Nov 19 Sydney
• Nov 21 Melbourne

Yesterday an image that looked much like the rumoured new MacBook Pro began circulating the internet. Today it appears that three images of the MacBook case have been leaked.

Apple.Pro has posted several photos that show a similar style case to the one seen yesterday but clearly smaller due to the lack of speaker grills to the left and right of the keyboard.

The images are consistent with rumours that the more consumer focused MacBook will shift to a aluminium case and be similar in design to the MacBook Air.

It was rumoured over the weekend that Apple would be using a new manufacturing method to create an enclosure from a single aluminium brick. The photo shows that this is the case and also fortifies rumours that Apple will introduce a chicklet keyboard onto the MacBook Pro.

Yesterday was exactly seven days before the rumoured Special Event which will reportedly lead to a brand new MacBook and potentially updated MacBook Pros.

As many sources had pointed towards October 14 as the date then it looked certain that Apple would indeed be using the second Tuesday in October as the stage to show off its new range of notebooks. Typically Apple would send out press invites to such an event exactly seven days prior to the event, but October 7 passed with no word from Apple PR.

Looking back at similar events it seems that Apple is not as keen to host a special event purely for new Mac releases, in fact in the past three years Apple hasn’t held any kind of unscheduled special event for a notebook.

Some may say that as this update doesn’t appear to be a mere speedbump but a major update to the enclosure that Apple would want to show off the new design at an event but lets cast our minds back to May 2006. In January of that year Apple released its first computers with Intel processors, one of them was the MacBook Pro, largely unchanged from its PowerBook predecessor. The consumer range of iBooks was left stranded with the PowerPC processor until Apple quietly swapped it out for brand new black and white MacBooks on May 16, no event, no fuss, just a press release.

Based on this past experience World of Apple remains confident that Apple will release brand new MacBooks and MacBook Pros next Tuesday but without any kind of hoo-ha.

Apple 2.0 offers a breakdown of a research project by MacObserver forum members.

Member “Tommo_UK” kicked off the project by asking purchasers of an iPhone 3G to post the IMEI number, date of purchase and part of the serial number.

The IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) is a unique 15 digit number that is assigned to each individual mobile phone sold, the forum member’s plan was to collect enough IMEI numbers to decipher how many units Apple was selling.

His numbers are presented in a public spreadsheet show that Apple has reached 9.2 million manufactured iPhone 3Gs, added to the 2.4 million first generation iPhones sold earlier this year it takes Apple pass its self-assigned target of selling 10 million iPhones in calendar 2008.

It should be noted that all figures are manufacturing estimates and many of the iPhones could still be in retail channels and will not count as sales.

Image courtesy of Mac Rumors

But Mac Rumors notes that the latest beta includes:

• Support for emoji icons (pictured)
• Support for Google street view
• Ability to turn off keyboard auto-correct

After several weeks of speculation about what exactly a product known as the “brick” could be, 9to5Mac.com has put an end to the speculation.

According to the rumour site the “brick” refers to the manufacturing process that Apple is employing to build the new MacBooks. Previously Apple outsourced the manufacturing to plants such as Foxconn in China but the company has reportedly spent years building its own manufacturing process that uses lasers and jets of to cut out a MacBook shell from a “brick” of aluminium.

9to5Mac goes onto speculate that such a manufacturing process will give Apple significant advantages over its competition including:

• Carving out of aluminum eliminates the need to bend the metal and create weak spots or microfolds and rifts.
• There are no seams in the final product, so it is smooth.
• Screws aren’t needed to tie the products together.
• The shell is one piece of metal so it is super light, super strong and super cheap.
• You can be a whole lot more creative with the design if you don’t have to machine it.

Finally 9to5Mac reminds us that Apple CFO Peter Oppeinheimer recently stated during a conference call that Apple will continue to release innovative products that “Apple’s competitors won’t be able to match”.