It’s the final Friday in April, and our news recap has a couple of deals, Java news, a Mac App Store milestone and new rumblings of that Apple HDTV that so many of us want to prop up in our living rooms later this year along with the Christmas trimmings. We’ll be back with one last April recap on Monday, so for now read all about the five things making news on this Friday, April 27, 2012.
It’s been fairly quiet in the last couple of months when it comes to rumors of Apple’s mythical HDTV, but Reuters is stirring the mill today with word that Cupertino is negotiating with EPIX to include the streaming service in their hardware -- which apparently includes “a long-anticipated TV,” sources claim. EPIX is backed by three Hollywood studios -- Lions Gate, MGM and Paramount -- and is paid $200 million per year for streaming rights to its titles by Netflix. Not so coincidentally, that deal lapses in September, which is the same timeframe many pundits predict Apple could unveil their television, assuming one actually exists.
Java on Mac OS X is becoming something of a thorn in everyone’s side lately as the gateway for malware trojans, so Oracle is taking things into their own hands. According to Ars Technica, the company released Java SE 7 Update 4 this week, which “finally gives Mac owners the means to receive critical Java security patches at the same time they’re available for users of Windows and Linux operating systems.” By comparison, Apple’s own updates would frequently lag behind Oracle’s own, particularly after Cupertino ditched their own Java Virtual Machine in 2010. For users of OS X Lion and beyond, Java can be installed and updated on its own without waiting for Apple to get up to speed. Head to the Oracle website and grab your own copy, should you want to remain current!
The kindly folks at Elgato gave us a heads up about a new product in their lineup: The Elgato Thunderbolt Cable. Now, we realize a cable isn’t usually a very newsworthy item, but keep in mind that Apple is the only one who currently offers such a beast. Elgato’s 1.6-foot offering will be available on May 4 for $59.95 each, which perfectly matches the company’s Thunderbolt SSD portable drive. But how does a free cable sound? We thought so. Until May 6, Elgato is throwing in a free Thunderbolt cable with every portable SSD drive purchased through the Elgato Online Store. Now that’s a pretty newsworthy item, we’d say...
MacRumors is reporting that Apple’s Mac App Store has quietly hit a milestone ahead of this final weekend in April, with sister website AppShopper now indexing 10,339 apps on its virtual shelves. While that pales in comparison to the far beefier iOS App Store (currently at 600,000 titles and counting), keep in mind that the Mac App Store only opened its doors for business back in January, 2011. Since then, Apple has moved all of its own software onto the platform, including heavyweight titles such as Final Cut Pro X and even the entire Mac operating system with OS X Lion. Apple has hailed the Mac App Store as “the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world” after passing 100 million downloads at the end of last year.
Speaking of the Mac App Store, we gave Snapheal quite a nice review not too long ago, and with good reason: It enables common folks to do superheroic tasks like remove unwanted objects from photos without sinking big bucks into software like Adobe Photoshop. If you think that $19.99 is still too much dough, developer MacPhun, LLC is having a sale on the Mac App Store this weekend only, where Snapheal can be found for a mere $9.99. Now that’s two great deals in the same news recap, so don’t go saying we’ve never done anything for you before…
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