(In our best Robin Williams from Good Morning, Vietnam:) Good morning, MacLife.com! That’s right… thanks to your traffic to our weekday evening news recaps, we’re now happy to offer you twice the fun each day, starting right now. You’ll now get 10 bite-sized news stories each weekday -- five in the morning and five in the evening -- so you don’t miss a single interesting bit of tech news! Let’s kick things off with a recap of a few stories that made news since our Tuesday night edition went live, shall we…?
Hands up if you’re still rocking a pre-Thunderbolt Mac from 2010! (Hey, that’s us!) Apple blessed such owners with a little treat on Tuesday night in the form of a trio of EFI firmware updates, all of which bring Lion Internet Recovery onto these older systems. Additionally, the MacBook Air EFI Firmware Update 2.3 “addresses an issue where the system could restart if the power button is pressed immediately after waking from deep sleep” as part of its modest 2.98MB download. If you want the ultimate in internet-based recovery security, head to Apple’s support website and download the 3.02MB iMac EFI Update 1.8 or 3.18MB MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.6, or simply run the Software Update to call up the magic -- assuming your system is eligible in the first place. As always, an EFI firmware update requires a restart or two, so be prepared for that.
Nobody loves The Beatles as much as Apple and its fans do, so it makes total sense that the iTunes maker would celebrate the release of Paul McCartney’s new album with a free live performance streamed right to your software. The best news is that couch potatoes can also view this iTunes Live presentation from the comfort of their living rooms via the Apple TV, where iTunes Live will appear as an option from the Internet menu. “To celebrate the release of Paul McCartney’s latest album, watch a free stream of his exclusive performance at Capitol Studios on February 9 at 7pm (PST) right here,” the former Beatle’s iTunes page announced this week. “Or stream it on your TV using your Apple TV -- just choose iTunes Live from the Internet menu.” Certainly a nice treat from Sir Paul and Apple whether you buy the new album or not -- but as luck would have it, a link to buy Kisses on the Bottom is directly below the iTunes Live information, just a mere $9.99 plus taxes away.
Hey, AT&T and Verizon: You’re not the only U.S. carriers who had a boffo final three months of 2011 where the iPhone was concerned. According to AppleInsider, third-place Sprint sold 1.8 million of Apple’s coveted handsets after finally landing the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 in October, breaking the company’s one-day sales records. The iPhone also helped Sprint catapult into the company’s best quarterly results in six years, with 720,000 iPhones sold to brand new customers alone. Of course, those numbers pale in comparison to AT&T’s 7.6 million and Verizon’s 4.2 million activations during the same period, but it’s an otherwise bright spot in Sprint’s overall quarterly results, with a net loss of $1.3 billion. (Ouch!)
Traditional newspapers continue to find interesting ways to bring their content to mobile devices. Take, for instance, The Washington Post, who recently released a new app for the iPhone which brings their Facebook-connected Washington Post Social Reader into the palm of your hand. “See what your friends are reading and share the articles you're reading -- instantly,” the app description reads. “The Washington Post Social Reader you love on Facebook is now at your fingertips. Read news from sources like The Washington Post, Slate, The Daily Beast, SB Nation, Mashable, Wetpaint and more -- with your friends. Articles you and your friends read are shared on Washington Post Social Reader and on Facebook.” The 0.9MB app is absolutely free, but does require a Facebook login to function; it’s compatible with the iPhone 3GS and up, iPod touch third generation and up as well as any iPad (though it’s not a universal app) running iOS 4.0 or later.
The folks over at MacStories.net did some interesting prognostication on Tuesday, looking ahead to what Apple might do with at least one software offering for the forthcoming iPad 3. Given that the original iPad was released alongside iWork and the iPad 2 introduced iMovie and GarageBand to the tablet, Gabe Glick theorizes that photography will be a primary focus for the rumored higher-resolution display of the next iPad -- which could see Aperture making the leap from the Mac to iOS. It’s an interesting argument and we tend to agree with most of the points made by the author, but it’s more likely that Apple will introduce iPhoto to the iPad, given its consumer-based roots. After all, Apple didn’t bring its high-end Final Cut Pro or Logic Pro offerings down to iOS -- at least not yet -- so as exciting as the prospect of Aperture on the iPad might be, we’ll cast our vote for iPhoto instead. But either way, we’re looking forward to it...
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