Just because Apple blessed us with a Retina Display-enhanced MacBook Pro this month, that doesn't mean every Mac is going to get them right away. That's the word on the street for this lazy Friday in late June, with a week left to go before the clock turns to July and we begin the wait for OS X Mountain Lion. In the meantime, take in some tech news for this fine Friday, June 22, 2012.
It's been quite a week for Apple retail employees, with reports surfacing of pay raises, the company's new discount program and now this: According to 9to5Mac, Apple Genius Bar and Creatives have been given access to a near-final build of OS X Mountain Lion as part of the AppleSeed testing program in an effort to put the software through its paces and squash any remaining bugs ahead of the release next month. It's a great move for Apple, who will no doubt again have plenty of customers with slow internet connections at home bringing their Macs into the store to download the operating system update, much as they did last year with OS X Lion -- and now staff members will be ready and waiting with hours of use already under their belts.
Now that the MacBook Pro with Retina Display has ushered in a new era of high definition for Mac users, the floodgates should soon open and send forth a wave of Retina-enabled apps. One of them will be Flying Meat's Acorn image editor, which developer Gus Mueller is currently "Retinafying" with version 3.3, introducing what he calls Retina Canvas. "A Retina Canvas is when one pixel equals one physical dot on your hardware display, even though all the other UI elements in Acorn are redrawn @2x," Mueller explains on his blog. "Acorn 3.3 will detect and make the necessary adjustments for display and input so that it looks freakin' awesome on your Retina MBP. And Acorn 3.3 already looking pretty rad." Indeed, the developer already has a beta build of Acorn 3.3 that Retina Display users can download and get acquainted with -- and that's likely just the beginning.
If Microsoft is counting on its new Surface tablet to throw a monkey wrench into Apple's domination of the market with the iPad, they might have to try just a bit harder. Bloomberg is reporting that the initial launch of Surface may be limited to only Wi-Fi based models, rather than adding 3G/4G radios for cellular data access. The move is viewed as a method for keeping costs down at first, but at least one analyst believes limiting the device right out the gate may dampen some of its appeal, especially with business users. “The way that Microsoft is positioning this product -- that it’s highly mobile but also has the functionality of a notebook -- that customer might be more interested in working from any location and not being bound by Wi-Fi,” said Ben Bajarin with Creative Strategies. Of course, Microsoft has bigger hurdles to climb before Surface arrives, since the company has not announced pricing or complete specs, let alone when the device will actually start shipping.
Ever wonder how much electricity it takes to charge your iPad? Especially in homes with more than one such tablet, such information might be nice to know when it comes time to receiving the electric bill each month. According to the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), consumers needn't worry -- the costs are negligible. "Consumers who fully charge their iPad tablet every other day can expect to pay $1.36 for the electricity needed annually to power the device," the research group revealed on Thursday. "The analysis shows that each model of the iPad consumes less than 12kWh of electricity over the course of a year, based on a full charge every other day. By comparison, a plasma 42” television consumes 358kWh of electricity a year." Of course, heavy users who charge more frequently might find it costs them a bit more, but clearly the electric companies are making some bank from the iPad as well, especially with more than 67 million tablets sold worldwide to date.
Now that the MacBook Pro with Retina Display is almost two weeks old, it only makes sense that Mac users would look ahead to when the screen technology might make the leap to the desktop -- as in, the iMac and Mac Pro. Instapaper developer Marco Arment decided to write up some educated guesses on that very subject today, but no sooner than posted on his blog than a little bird whispered in his ear to thumb down the possibility -- at least for this year. "I’ve now heard from multiple sources that while an iMac update is indeed coming this fall, it will not have Retina displays," Arment notes in an update to his post. "Oops. Can’t win ‘em all." Still makes for a fascinating read, even if the reality is a little later than we'd like...
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chirpity
June 24, 2012 at 9:57am
It seems like it would be fairly expensive to create a retina 27" iMac screen?
