The new iPad preorders are shipping, while procrastinators are starting the week plotting how they can best get their hands on one come this Friday, March 16 now that Apple’s online store sold through their supply in record time. By all accounts it should be an interesting week, which is already kicking off with a minor Safari update, a Jony Ive interview and Siri facing her first lawsuit. Check out the rest of the day’s news for this manic Monday, March 12, 2012.
Apple’s favorite web browser got a rare Monday update today with the arrival of Safari 5.1.4 for OS X Lion, Snow Leopard and Windows. A seemingly minor update to the version shipped with OS X Lion 10.7.3, the update brings a number of improvements to JavaScript performance, responsiveness while typing into the search field, issues with printing USPS online postage or embedded PDFs, preserving links in PDFs saved from webpages and fixes for gesture zooming within Flash content as well as screen dimming while watching HTML5 video. Perhaps the most promising fix is the one that offers to “improve stability, compatibility and startup time when using extensions,” which has been a frequent headache for us here at MacLife.com. To get Safari 5.1.4, fire up Software Update or hit the link to download directly from Apple’s website.
With Steve Jobs no longer steering the ship creatively at Apple, all eyes have started to turn to Sir Jonathan Ive, the man responsible for the industrial design of Apple’s greatest hits since Jobs returned to breathe new life into the Mac maker. Sir Jonny recently granted a rare interview with The London Evening Standard which is now online, discussing the designer’s Knighthood, his life in London and Silicon Valley, Ive’s “obsession with detail” and how he keeps coming up with all those amazing products. It’s not the most detailed or comprehensive of interviews, but it does offer further insight into how the process works and why Apple is likely still in good hands, even without the late co-founder who frequently takes most of the credit.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Hollywood may be warming to Apple’s iCloud initiative, which got a boost last Wednesday with the announcement that movies are now part of iTunes in the Cloud, allowing iTunes customers to purchase and later re-download to their devices. Unfortunately, the news was tempered with the reality that Twentieth Century Fox and Universal titles aren’t currently part of the iCloud offering due to a contractual obligation with HBO. But that may soon change, with word that HBO is working to loosen this stranglehold for those studios, much in the same way it did already has with Warner Bros. “Fox expects to resolve the issue as soon as within weeks,” the report claims, citing a person familiar with the situation. “Another person familiar with the matter said Universal is near a resolution.” The news will be particularly welcome to owners of DVD or Blu-ray discs with Digital Copy, which happen to be quietly included in the same iTunes in the Cloud package.
If you live in Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas or New York, AT&T has a message for: Skip that Verizon iPad and buy theirs instead. The company issued a press release today touting 12 new cities that will soon get lit up with AT&T 4G LTE -- among them, Cleveland and this news writer’s own home turf of Akron and Canton, Ohio. "AT&T customers in Cleveland can look forward to even faster mobile Internet speeds very soon, on our leading lineup of smartphones and devices," said Larry Evans, vice president and general manager, AT&T Ohio and western Pennsylvania. "We're excited to bring Cleveland all that 4G LTE has to offer. Our teams will be working hard across the city toward our upcoming launch." The full list of cities includes Akron, Canton and Cleveland, Ohio; Naples, Florida; Bloomington, Lafayette and Muncie, Indiana; Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana; St. Louis, Missouri; Bryan-College Station, Texas and Staten Island, New York. The rollout begins in April and continues throughout the summer -- presumably timed with the launch of a new iPhone this fall, we’d say.
According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, not everyone is quite so enamored with Siri as Apple appears to be. The virtual assistant service, launched along with the iPhone 4S back in October, is now the target of a class action lawsuit from New Yorker Frank M. Fazio of Brooklyn, who claims that Siri is far from the perfect assistant shown in Apple’s TV commercials -- so he’s suing to put a stop to Apple’s “misleading and deceptive message” about its potential. Apparently Fazio missed that whole “beta” tag when the service was announced, claiming in his lawsuit: “Siri either did not understand what Plaintiff was asking, or, after a very long wait time, responded with the wrong answer.” Calling Siri “at best, a work-in-progress,” Fazio’s attorneys at Robbins Geller are asking for “unspecified damages” as part of a class action lawsuit filed Monday in Federal court in California.
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tlnjtr
March 13, 2012 at 9:40pm
This guy suing Siri must really need money, or is an idiot.
It's a beta program. It's not a real human being. 90% of things shown in a commercial are fake or overly done for the sake of getting attention.
There's more important things to use our justice system for.
I hope this case gets tossed.
