It's Labor Day here in the United States, and that means the summer is pretty much over for most of us as kids head back to school and everyone starts looking ahead to the winter holiday season. It's also a relatively quiet day for tech news, but we managed to scrape up a few interesting stories from over the weekend so soak 'em up on this Monday, September 3, 2012.
The New York Times is reporting on how Apple competitors are handling rumors of a September 12 media event which are said to unveil the next iPhone. Fearing a crush of consumers buying the latest handset, these rivals have scheduled their own events this week in the hopes of getting the attention of would-be buyers. On Wednesday, Nokia (along with Windows Phone OS maker Microsoft) and Motorola Mobility will jostle for media attention with announcements of new smartphones, and then on Thursday, Amazon takes the stage, presumably to show off updates to its Kindle lineup. Meanwhile, both Sony and Samsung used last week's IFA show in Berlin to get a jump on whatever Cupertino might have up its sleeve next week. “It seems that the rumor of an Apple announcement is having an effect on competitors’ announcements, unless it’s an amazing coincidence” remarked Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg. “It does make you wonder if Apple has thrown the industry a little bit off balance and taken away a little bit of their confidence." Indeed.
Roxio snuck out a fairly sizable update to Toast Titanium 11 over the weekend, pushing the version number to 11.1. The update adds compatibility with OS X Mountain Lion (including Gatekeeper support), but the application has also now been fully Cocoa-ized, "with hundreds of changes and fixes implemented as a part of this effort." Version 11.1 also adds support for recording to 100GB and 128GB BDXL media while improving web video features. Roxio notes that OS X Mountain Lion users will need to update to 10.8.1 or later in order to publish video to YouTube. The 87.3MB update is now available on MacUpdate but can also be acquired simply by launching an existing install of Toast Titanium 11.
MacRumors has picked up on several reports over the weekend claiming that Hollywood actor Bruce Willis "is said to be considering legal action against technology giant Apple over his desire to leave his digital music collection to his daughters." Apparently, when Willis passes on, Apple's current terms prohibit a transfer of ownership to his family -- or anyone else, for that matter. "If he succeeds, he could benefit not just himself and his family but the millions who have purchased songs from Apple’s iTunes Store," the report notes. "Willis has discovered that, like anyone who has bought music online, he does not actually own the tracks but is instead ‘borrowing’ them under a licence." It's an interesting conundrum for all of us, so we'll be keeping an eye out for where this one goes.
The makers of the TVShows preference pane have finally released version 2.0 on Sunday, adding support for OS X Mountain Lion. That means no more app crashing while adding new shows, and the app is also signed for Gatekeeper. Unfortunately, Notification Center is not yet supported -- the developers are pointing users toward the Bark plugin as a temporary solution, although the upcoming Growl 2 will also do the trick, which is rumored to arrive within two weeks. TVShows 2 allows users to essentially subscribe to Bittorrent feeds for their favorite shows, making it easy to get caught up -- assuming you have no reservations about the legality of downloading such shows through unscrupulous means, that is.
MacRumors is reporting that Apple appears ready to introduce new headphones with the sixth-generation iPhone. According to a video posted to Vietnamese website Tinhte.vn which compares the old headphones to the presumed new model, the earbuds resemble "a horse's head" and "are manufactured at Phax Co. factory in Vietnam." This isn't the first time Tinhte.vn has nabbed pre-release images or video from Apple's product, so don't act surprised if Cupertino trots these onstage on or around the rumored September 12 iPhone event.
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(Image courtesy of MacRumors and Tinhte.vn)
