So here’s a curious thing: Head over to the Apple Online Store and stare at the main page for a moment or two. Notice anything different from yesterday? (Go ahead, look again… we’ll wait.) If you answered “no ‘new’ banner on the Mac Pro,” pat yourself on the back! Apparently Apple felt the heat from Mac Pro fans who were not amused by the not-so-new “refresh” and subsequently removed the “New” designation accordingly. But that’s not all we have for you today -- read on to find out everything else making news for this Tuesday, June 12, 2012.
Barely a day old, and already splayed open for all the world to see! The geniuses at iFixit already have tools in hand and are hard at work tearing down of those new mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Air models introduced at yesterday’s WWDC keynote. To their surprise, the teardown actually revealed some new stuff, including a tweaked SSD form factor with a new SandForce SATA-III flash controller chip. The good news is that it looks like Air owners will be able to remove and upgrade this storage once third-party components are made available. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the RAM. “We highly recommend anyone purchasing an Air upgrade to 8 GB at purchase time, because it won't be possible after the fact,” iFixit’s Kyle Wiens told MacLife.com. Overall, the unit gets a four out of 10 on the repair scale, which means the 13-inch MacBook Air is considered difficult to service. What we’re really looking forward to is a teardown of the new MacBook Pro with Retina Display, which iFixit promises to do “the moment we get our hands on one.”
It only took them a year or more, but Amazon today pushed out a new iOS app as part of its stable: Amazon Cloud Player, a free app that lets users of its cloud storage locker stream or download their MP3 and AAC music tracks. Unfortunately, the app is intended for iPhone and iPod touch users, although it does work just fine on the iPad as well (just not natively). Cloud lovers can create or edit playlists from within the app and all in all, it’s a pretty nice way to tap into your 5GB of free storage there. Amazon Cloud Player is now available from the App Store and works with all devices running iOS 4.3 or later. Now, where’s that Amazon Instant Video player app, guys…?
As noted by TidBITS earlier today, the Thunderbolt Software Update 1.2 which Apple released yesterday appears to be causing a variety of problems for Mac users, ranging from a failure to boot, kernel panics and “unexpected error” messages. Fortunately, there’s a fix, but it’s not ideal: Simply reinstall OS X Lion. A number of reports also claim that reinstalling the Mac OS X 10.7.4 Combo Update can get things working again as well, but you’ll see another Mac with either FireWire or Thunderbolt-powered Target Drive Mode to make it work. Ironically, the sole intention of the Thunderbolt update is to add support for the company’s new Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter, so no one is quite sure what the problem could be.
In what may be the briefest statement in corporate history, TomTom has confirmed the early rumors around Apple’s forthcoming Maps refresh for iOS 6. “TomTom (AEX:TOM2) has signed a global agreement with Apple for maps and related information,” the press release reads. “No further details of the agreement will be provided.” Like, literally -- that’s the entire press release! If we had to venture a guess, we’d say some company based in Cupertino that’s named after a fruit has a gag order in place, presumably to direct all the oohs and aahs in their own direction, maybe.
Apple wasted no time pushing out updates to Aperture, iPhoto, Final Cut Pro X, Motion and Compressor yesterday, adding support for the company’s new MacBook Pro with Retina Display. But what about iMovie? Ah, we’re glad you asked. Guess the Apple elves must have had their hands full yesterday, because iMovie 9.0.6 got pushed out earlier today instead. The 1.26GB update is available from either the Mac App Store or Software Update (depending on where you purchased it from), and in addition to all that retinal excitement, the update also adds language support for Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian. Hmmm, that’s a lot of downloading for so little, but… what can you do?
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(Image courtesy of iFixit)
