With a week to go before Amazon holds a media event, the e-tailer has announced its best-selling Kindle Fire is now sold out -- which certainly sounds more like "we stopped making them because a new model is coming" to us. While that seven-inch slate was quite nice a year ago, Google's Nexus 7 has pretty much made many of us forget all about the Kindle Fire, so Amazon is going to have to pull a real rabbit out of its hat to wow us once again. In the meantime, let's get caught up with the day's news for this Thursday, August 30, 2012.
Reuters is reporting that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Larry Page have been holding a series of "behind-the-scenes conversations about a range of intellectual property matters." According to sources in their inner circle, the two executive spoke by phone last week, presumably ahead of Friday's courtroom defeat for Google partner Samsung. Another source claims a new meeting was scheduled for this Friday but "delayed for reason that were unclear," but additional meetings will be held in the coming weeks. The move would certainly fit with Cook's own comments about wanting to settle patent issues outside of the courtroom, but we're a bit skeptical any such talks are actually taking place.
There are still plenty of Mac apps yet to be updated for the MacBook Pro with Retina Display's high-resolution screen, and Adobe's Creative Suite 6 is definitely among them. But that will be changing this fall, as the company has officially announced Retina Display (i.e., HiDPI) support will be arriving in the next few months for a number of the company's key Creative Suite 6 and Creative Cloud software. The free updates will include Dreamweaver, Edge Animate, Illustrator, Lightroom, Photoshop Touch for iPad, Prelude, Premiere Pro, SpeedGrade and yes, Photoshop, which was demoed during the introduction of the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display back in June. According to the company's Photoshop.com Blog, Photoshop Elements "will not fully support HiDPI displays in the immediate future," but the team is hard at work determining what they need to do to make that happen.
Amazon issued a press release this morning to boast about selling out of the Kindle Fire, its number one best-selling product ever. Claiming the seven-inch tablet has already captured 22 percent of the U.S. tablet market, the news seems curiously timed considering the e-tailer is holding a media event next Thursday, which seems quite certain to debut a new Kindle Fire (and maybe a few other surprises). "Kindle Fire is sold out, but we have an exciting roadmap ahead," CEO Jeff Bezos says. "We will continue to offer our customers the best hardware, the best prices, the best customer service, the best cross-platform interoperability, and the best content ecosystem.” That won't do you much good if you want to buy a Kindle Fire now, however...
The gang over at Plex offered up a trio of blog posts on Wednesday to roll out a pair of new features. First up is a new version of the Plex Media Server 0.9.6.8 with a variety of bug fixes as well as support for the new features: A subscription-based PlexPass offering, and a new web-based Plex client which requires the same. PlexPass is a $3.99 per month subscription which will give early access to new features for its members as well as premium features yet to come, plus a private forum which will give "extra love" to subscribers. The first such premium feature for PlexPass members is a shiny new web client, which allows users to access their library from any web browser, which the company calls "the most powerful Plex client around." They also note that it's not quite finished yet, but remark that "it's close enough that we wanted to share it with our PlexPass members." Head over to your myPlex website to add a membership and get first crack at checking it out!
The Smurfs are back, and this time iStoryTime has dropped them into a new universal app called The Smurfs Hide & Seek with Brainy, a $2.99 app released today which offers "ideal entertainment for all clever seekers who like a tough ride." With 12 fun-packed screens and more than 280 hidden objects, The Smurfs Hide & Seek with Brainy enhances your search with a narrator and atmospheric sound effects and the whole shebang is optimized for the third-generation iPad's Retina Display. You'll need a device capable of running iOS 4.3 or later and the app is now available from the App Store.
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