No-one really likes when their Mac’s fan decides to emulate a jet engine after you’ve been watching YouTube for a while because Flash has been running. It is particularly frustrating when you know that YouTube has been rolling out an experimental HTML5 video player that could work perfectly in Safari. Thankfully a new Safari plug-in, FlashtoHTML5, forces Safari to use that HTML5 YouTube whenever available (which is most of the time).

The plug-in from Juris Vervuurt will automatically choose the maximum video resolution available, up to 4K, although this can be manually changed. There are three minor caveats with FlashtoHTML5: this plug-in only works for Safari,  not all YouTube videos yet support the HTML5 version and subtitles and captions do not work in the HTML5 version. You can download FlashtoHTML5 for free.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

A report in DigiTimes today claims to reveal new estimates of iPhone production for the rest of 2011. In their report, DigiTimes says that Apple has increased the number of orders for iPhones from 50 million units to 56 million units – roughly a 12% increase. Furthermore, they note that iPhone 5 production would represent roughly 26 million units for the rest of this year.

Looking more closely at iPhone 5 orders, DigiTimes says that Apple has revised down their third quarter (July, August and September) orders from 7 million units o 5.5-6 million units. The fourth quarter (October, November and December), however, has seen an increase in orders from 14 million to 20 million units. Production of the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 would also alter between the third and fourth quarters, reducing from 20 million units to just 8 million units in the fourth quarter.

Continued production of the iPhone 4 in the fourth quarter would suggest that Apple is interested in following its recent trend of making the ‘old’ iPhone a cheaper option for those looking to purchase an iPhone. If these suggested forecast figures become reality, it would mean that Apple produces, and likely sells, 95 million iPhones (any generation) over the course of the 2011 calendar year.

[Via DigiTimes, Image via MacRumors]

Don’t want to spend an extra $400 for the server model just for the ability to add a second hard drive? No problem! iFixit is offering a sweet kit that adds a second hard drive to the base model — it includes the the mounting screws, drive ribbon, and all of the tools you need to upgrade your Mac Mini. The kit is only $69.95 on iFixit, and gives you the ability to install any aftermarket SSD or HDD you want to the machine with an easy modification (if you’re going SSD, I recommend OWC). They’ve got all of the instructions you need to make the change, and have provided all the details in a recent blog post.

[via iFixit]

Like Matthew Humphries over at Geek.com, I was a big Firefox user back in the day. Before I had any care in the world about what a Mac was and before Google Chrome was in the pipeline, your three options were Opera, Firefox, and I.E. Firefox was great — I used it at home, loaded a portable version on a thumb drive so I could bypass the firewall at my high-school (yay proxy settings), and found it much more stable than Internet Explorer at the time. While I’ll occasionally return to Firefox, Chrome and Safari have dominated my work life, and unfortunately I’ve move on after slow browsing sessions and not wanting to deal with the memory hog Firefox has been (even after the quick turnaround in updates). Mozilla wants to change this perception however, and have started a project called MemShrink to deal with the runaway memory issues present in Firefox. According to Humphries,

Mozilla knows this problem exists and aims to fix it. By the time we see Firefox 7 available for download it will use as much as 50% less memory than any version that has gone before, as well as having those problematic memory leaks fixed.

Posting on his personal blog, Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote has stated that Firefox 7 will be noticeably faster. You will be able to leave it running overnight without issue, and closing tabs will free up memory.

Mozilla wants to do three things: improve speed, stability, and perception. Perception is important — while you don’t want to mask problem areas, making the user feel more engaged (instead of stalling) would be a terrific boon in usability. My problem with Firefox is that it feels like I’m always waiting for a webpage to load or for something to happen — maybe it’s slight and not as significant as I’m making it sound, but compared to Chrome (where everything loads as soon as I start typing), the difference is noticeable. Firefox 7 is slated for a 2011 release, so it shouldn’t be too long before we have a solid build in our hands. I’m looking forward to a faster and leaner Firefox.

[Mozilla Blog: Nicholas Nethercote via Geek.com]

What comes in linen and shows off really pretty graphs for your website? We’re talking about Zoltan Hosszu’s GAget of course, a Dashboard widget you might actually be interested in downloading. Not only is the website beautiful, but the widget is super handy as well. Right on your Dashboard, you can get analytics that feels like it was designed by Apple themselves with the fit and finish of OS X Lion while presenting lots of useful information like the day’s page views, your unique visitors compared to total visitors, new visitors to the site, your bounce rate, and a handy graph which can show you how well you’re doing today compared to the last two weeks. We need more Dashboard widgets like this — GAget is terrific in design, and the developer put in a lot of love for an area of OS X that many don’t pay enough attention to. If you’re a web developer or a website owner and want to be able to glance at your website statistics, I totally recommend installing this (it supports multiple profiles too). And as always, you can donate to the developer if you find this free extension to your Dashboard super useful (there’s a PayPal button at the bottom of the page).

You can download the GAget at http://www.zoltanhosszu.com/gaget/, and you can follow the developer on Twitter at @zoltanhosszu.

Last month a flurry of reports suggested that Apple might release a new model of the iPad that would be targeted at ‘Pro’ users and featuring a Retina display – many dubbed it the iPad HD. That suggestion (or at least the schedule) seems less reliable today with Taiwan Economic News citing sources within the chipmaking industry that claim the A6 processor won’t be available until at least the second quarter of next year with trials of the A6 only just beginning in earnest now.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), the world’s largest semiconductor foundry by market shares now, has allegedly started trial production of the A6 processor in cooperation with Apple Inc., with the production design to be taped out in the first quarter of next year and scheduled to be publicly unveiled in the second quarter at the earliest, according to industry sources

As previous reports have noted, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) is producing the A6 chip, which would be the central component of the iPad ‘Pro’. The chip is said to be extremely-low powered whilst far exceeding the processing capabilities of the A4 and A5 chips because of a new 28-nanometer process and 3D stacking technologies. Darrell Etherington of GigaOm explains that this differs from the previous layered designs because “the 3D stacking tech will allow layers to be integrated vertically and horizontally into one single circuit”.

[Via GigaOm]

For months there has been discussion of a Fall media event for Apple to reveal the iPhone 5 and according to a report by Kodawarisan Apple has scheduled the event for Wednesday, September 7th. The date falls in line with previous years in which the traditional iPod event was held on September 1st in 2010 and September 9th in 2009 and 2008.

MacRumors clarified with Kodawarisan that the September 7th date was not a “product of guesswork, but came from a source in the know”. They also note that Kodawarisan has had a long history of rumors (nearly a decade) but had recently been pretty quiet – with the last “sucessful” rumor arising in 2009 in whcih they correctly predicted the Mac Mini launch date.

If this date does come true and the event includes the announcement of the iPhone 5, it would differ from reports earlier this month in which AllThingsD claimed an “October surprise” for the iPhone 5 launch.

[Via MacRumors]

Boing Boing’s Maggie Koerth-Baker made a great comparison today between the actual Andromeda Galaxy (which is 2.5 million years away from Earth), and the Andromeda Galaxy representation that ships as the default wallpaper in OS X Lion. Thanks to a reader of the site (David Kaplan, assistant professor of physics at the University of Milwaukee), a GIF shows a comparison between what’s actually in the sky and what Apple shows you — Apple’s representation has of course been photoshopped. With the removal of stars and galaxies, the professor points out that one of Andromeda’s big satellites (M110 for those keeping track) is completely missing.

Apple has once again altered the Universe according to their whim. They moved/removed many stars, and got rid of a whole galaxy. This is M110, which is one of M31′s [Andromeda's] satellites. The other big satellite, M32, is still there.

Okay, it is purposely done for the sake of art and keeping things pretty, but what I like about Boing Boing’s piece is that it actually gets people to see and learn about one of our galaxies. And normally I wouldn’t plug apps in a post like this, but this would be a good time to check out the Andromeda Galaxy via Qwiki (it’s an audio link). Cool right? See the side by side by comparison at Boing Boing.

If you still haven’t upgraded to Lion, Apple is continuing to improve how you migrate information from Leopard onto the new OS. In an update posted this afternoon, Apple cites the following changes.

This update addresses an issue with the Migration Assistant application in Mac OS X Leopard that prevents transfer of your personal data, settings, and compatible applications from a Mac running Mac OS X Leopard to a new Mac running Mac OS X Lion.

What’s the issue? The Next Web pinpoints that the updated Migration Assistant will warn users that their Rosetta based applications (designed for older generation macs PowerPC Macs) won’t be available on Lion, which culled Rosetta support in the transition to support 64-bit Intel applications. Rosetta apps, no longer available in Lion, will have to be updated (or you’ll need to find alternatives) for the apps to work. It’s a small change, but one that should help make aware that the applications you rely on may be broken.

Download the Migration Assistant Update for OS X Leopard.

[via The Next Web]

After MacRumors showed off Apple’s plans yesterday for the Fifth Avenue Apple retail store (renovating the cube with 15 long pieces of glass), Apple has given Gothamist a render of the final design. While we expected the landmark to be striking with its new design, we didn’t expect it to be this striking. Never underestimate the removal of 75 panes of glass.

[Gothamist via Minimal Mac]

Just after we reported on Samsung’s injunction in the European Union, FOSS Patents has dug up some hidden information pertaining to Apple’s patent battle (currently over 40+ patents are in dispute) with Motorola. In Apple’s complaint against Samsung, Apple details that prior to (or simultaneously) filing for the preliminary injunction against Samsung, Apple filed a similar complaint against the design of the Motorola Xoom. The passage uncovered by Florian Mueller doesn’t explicitly state whether Apple filed for a preliminary injunction against Motorola, although he assumes the complaint would be EU-wide.

A preliminary injunction, however, has been obtained by Apple against another company named JAY-tech for a tablet (the operating system was unspecified, but Mueller assumes it was Android).

Apple’s dispute with Motorola began in October 2010, but so far it was not known that it has also branched out to Europe — just like Apple’s disputes with Samsung and HTC. In the U.S., an ITC hearing was due later this month on Motorola’s complaint against Apple, but due to the retirement of Chief Administrative Law Judge Paul Luckern it was postponed.

Apple might not be able to file a preliminary injunction against Motorola in this case as the German courts frown upon cases where the rights holder has been aware of the infringement for a long time (over a month for example). The Xoom, released in the Spring, would have been on Apple’s radar long enough for them to be unable to seek a preliminary injunction since there’s no sense of “urgency”.

[FOSS Patents via The Next Web]

Just about everyone is talking about the iPhone 5, and while I remain skeptical of most rumors, I have to give MacRumors some props for commissioning CiccareseDesign to create a mockup based on a leak of the phone’s design specifications. Before we dig into the MacRumors’ render, I’m going to put my thoughts on the table (might as well at this point — all the cool kids are doing it). We don’t talk about these iPhone 5 rumors too often.

When This Is My Next published a crude mockup of the iPhone 5, Joshua Topolsky introduced his take on a tapered design — that the next iPhone would have a shape similar to the MacBook Air with a fat top which tapers down to a smaller edge at the bottom of the phone. But I think the tapered design means this: that the next iPhone is going to follow the iPod touch 4th gen’s design in that the buttons are going to be hidden underneath the display along the curved edges. Apple re-used the iPod touch’s 4th generation design with the iPad 2, and I see them continuing this design ethos with iPhone. When you look at the front of the phone, I do think Apple only wants you to see the display. Apple wants the lines of the phone to be very clean. I also agree with the idea that Apple will move away from the glass backing since it’s fragile and easily cracks when dropped — Apple doesn’t want damaged phones in the press or in Flickr photos online.

MacRumors’ “take-it-to-the-max” mockup of the iPhone 5 is interesting simply because it matches my idea of what Apple will do with the next iPhone. It nicely takes most of the rumors we’ve heard about for the last months and wraps it one nice package that looks believeable: you’ve got your oval home button (which could very well be a gesture area for flicking between apps as suggested by Gruber on The Talk Show), your edge-to-edge display (although MacRumors shows a 4″ display — I think it’ll be smaller), and tapered edges which hide the volume buttons underneath the glass of the phone.

The final dimensions of the new design are calculated to be: 4.33″ x 2.36″ and .27″ thickness at the top and .21″ at the bottom In comparison, the iPhone 4 dimensions are: 4.5″ x 2.31″ x .37″. So the new design is actually shorter than the existing iPhone 4, but slightly wider and thinner.

I think MacRumors’ mockup captures the idea that the next iPhone will be thin, a little wider, and more comfortable in the hand. The phone can’t be too thin — battery technology is still going to be a concern with iOS 5 between the Notification Center and new uses for location based data. We’re at point now with these rumors where we’ve gotten the general idea of what the iPhone will look like, and a lot of sites have shifted focus to release dates instead of speculating on features. Federico and I have been very careful not to spew a lot of these rumors onto the site (they’re not interesting enough most of the time), but MacRumors took a lot of these bits and pieces and actually did something very cool with it.

My concern — as always with rumors — is that it sets us up for a lot of false hope. “Man this iPhone looks so good I hope it looks just like this!” Then when the iPhone comes out, people are disappointed when a site’s mockup doesn’t turn out to be the real thing that they wanted. My suggestion is to look at the MacRumors’ mockup as the summary (but not the conclusion) of where we are with rumors and speculation on the iPhone. They’re confident that their rendering is very close to the final product, but I think seeing the final product will ultimately be more impressive.

[via MacRumors]