Numerous Owners Reporting 2011 MacBook Pro Crashes Whilst Under Load

By Graham Spencer

A considerable number of owners of the new 15” and 17” 2011 MacBook Pro’s have reported both on the Apple Discussion board and also on the MacRumors forum that their new machines are locking up and freezing when under an extensive load. For example this post by ‘brandonlive02’ is representative of what many are complaining about;

I have a 15” 2011 MacBook Pro with a 128 SSD. It has repeatedly frozen in the week I’ve had it - often at random points while using StarCraft II and also while trying to access Time Machine. When it freezes, sound continues and I can still move the cursor (which is sometimes the spinning ball and sometimes the regular cursor) but the computer is completely unresponsive – force quit does not work nor does anything else - have to do a hard reboot.

The issue is believed to be fairly widespread with one user reproducing it on three separate machines and another who reportedly managed to reproduce it on every new MacBook Pro at their local Apple store. This wiki outlines the various methods one can use to re-create the crash if they wish to check if their MacBook has this issue.

No complete fix has been found and the cause is still unknown but the wiki page suggests one fix of using some software to only use the integrated graphics chip of the MacBook Pro. A post in the MacRumors thread suggests that Apple is aware of the issue and that they believe it to be a firmware or driver related problem rather than a hardware issue, but this has yet to be confirmed and Apple have not issued any public statement.

[Via MacRumors]

iPad 2 Launch in Czech Republic Delayed By One Month, Could Apple Be Delaying International Launch?

By Graham Spencer

As 9to5 Mac learned from a Czech reader, the Czech Republic Apple wesbsite is now displaying the launch date of the iPad 2 as “V prodeji od 25 dubna” which translates to “Available from April 25” as opposed to the previously publicized launch date of March 25 for the Czech Republic.

At this point no other country that was on the keynote list of first international countries to receive the iPad 2 has had the launch delayed (apart from Japan). At this point the one month delay for the Czech Republic could be as simple as some delay in regulatory approval in that country for the iPad 2 or perhaps the first sign that Apple is delaying the international launch or scaling back the number of countries recieving the first round of iPad 2’s.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

NFC Technology In iPhones Could Also Enable Remote Computing

By Graham Spencer

According to a source of Cult of Mac, Apple is planning to use Near Field Communication (NFC) not just as a method for retail payment services but also to turn an iPhone into a pseudo-ID tag for remote login. According to Cult of Mac:

…when a NFC-equipped iPhone is paired with a guest machine, part of the user’s profile includes the apps they’ve purchased through the Mac App Store. The icons for their apps appear on the remote Mac, but aren’t downloaded, our source said.

Once the guest machine is logged into; users would be able to open any of their apps, which would download on demand, although presumably only those from the Mac App Store. Documents too could be accessed and synced using MobileMe from anywhere using this remote login system and once a user leaves, the Mac would wipe any documents and applications.

As MacRumors points out, it is similar to the once promised feature of ‘Home on iPod’ that would have allowed OS X Panther users to sync their Home directory on to an iPod for easy document storage regardless of where you were. Cult of Mac claims that this new feature is currently being developed in OS X Lion but their source stresses that it isn’t guaranteed to become public.

[Via Cult of Mac]

Market Share Research Reveals That The Swiss Love Their Macs

By Graham Spencer

The Pingdom blog did a little statistical research using Statcounter to figure out which countries had the highest percentage of Macs and found that Switzerland topped that list with 17.61% market share. Meanwhile Luxembourg, USA, and Iceland were also countries with high Mac market share, all above 15%.

The UK was notably missing from the top 10 whilst as a region, Asia only had an average of 1.61% of market share – a very low figure, but one Apple is likely trying to increase with a recent push into that market with its retail stores. As for the region with the lowest Mac market share, Asia comes close but it is in fact South America, which has only 1.08% market share of Macs.

[Via TUAW]

AT&T Cracking Down On Unauthorised Tethering

By Graham Spencer

Update: In the email AT&T do explicitly sate that if users do not contact AT&T or stop tethering, they will “automatically enroll you into DataPro 4GB after March 27, 2011”, if the user stops then no change will occur. It would seem that to be automatically upgrading/changing users contract plans, AT&T should have a fairly fool-proof method of checking which users are tethering compared to those just using large amounts of data.

Numerous AT&T users who use MyWi, a jailbreak tweak that allows you to enable tethering without a subscription, yesterday began receiving text messages and emails from AT&T reminding the users that to use your phone for tethering requires a subscription to an AT&T tethering plan.

The notices for most began with a text message that said:

AT&T Free Msg: Did you know tethering your Smartphone to a computer requires a tethering plan? Pls call 888-860-6789 for details or visit att.com/dataplans.

Following this text message many users also received an email (included after the break) which told the user that to “take advantage of [tethering], we require that in addition to a data plan, you also have a tethering plan.” The email also said if the user wishes to continue tethering to sign up to a tethering plan – but did not specify any consequences for continuing to use MyWi without purchasing such a plan.

At this point it is unclear how AT&T knows which users to issue the notices, the presumption is that the notices are going out to any user that uses a large amount of data (some are saying more than 10GB) and are not subscribed to a tethering plan.

Report Finds Mac App Store Is Dominated By Paid Apps

By Graham Spencer

According to a market research report by Distimo, Apple’s Mac App Store is adding applications at a less frequent rate than the iOS App Store and a much larger of those in the Mac App Store are paid apps. The report tracked data from a variety of ‘app stores ‘ from the iOS App Store, Android Market, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and more as well as the Mac App Store – which was the only ‘app store’ for computers it tracked.

As the above graph demonstrates, the Mac App Store is very small in comparison to the other App Stores surveyed at this point in time, however more interestingly is that a whopping 88% of apps in the Mac App Store are paid apps, leaving only a slither of 12% being free. Prices are also on average much higher with the average selling price of a paid app in the top 300 applications being $11.21 on the Mac App Store whilst only being $4.19 for the iPad and $1.57 on the iPhone/iPod Touch App Store.

Steve Jobs Offers Support To Apple Employees Affected By Disasters In Japan

By Graham Spencer

According to a letter forwarded to Chihouban.com and MacRumors, Steve Jobs has sent an email to all Apple employees regarding the continuing disasters in Japan and wishing the best for those affected. This follows the Red Cross donations set up in iTunes and the story of the Apple store in Japan going out of its way to support people.

To Our Team in Japan,

We have all been following the unfolding disaster in Japan. Our hearts go out to you and your families, as well as all of your countrymen who have been touched by this tragedy.

If you need time or resources to visit or care for your families, please see HR and we will help you. If you are aware of any supplies that are needed, please also tell HR and we will do what we can to arrange delivery.

Again, our hearts go out to you during this unimaginable crisis.
Please stay safe.
Steve and the entire Executive Team

[Via MacRumors, InterfaceLIFT]

2011 MacBook Pro Users Having Issues With iTunes Home Sharing

By Graham Spencer

A support thread in Apple’s Discussion forums is abuzz with 2011 MacBook Pro owners having issues with iTunes Home Sharing. The users are having issues connecting to certain iOS devices as well as having devices disconnect and display error messages.

The user who started the discussion thread; ‘themacbear’, reported that his new 17 inch MacBook Pro initially seemed to work fine using Home Sharing with his Apple TV. However later on in the day “…although the Apple TV could see the name of my iTunes library, it wouldn’t connect to it, or sometimes, would report that “There are no movies in this library”. I tried every solution I could think of, but no dice.” He went to an Apple Store, which managed to replicate the issue on a different MacBook Pro, but couldn’t resolve the problem and consequently gave ‘themacbear’ a full refund. Others too have contacted Apple through their retail stores and via phone support but so far there is no fix for the problem.

Apple recently beefed up its Home Sharing features with iOS 4.3 and iTunes 10.2 and it could be that the issues these users are facing are related to these updates. Furthermore there are also some users with older Mac’s also having similar issues, although this seems to be a more isolated group of users.

[Via AppleInsider]

New “If You Don’t Have An iPhone” Ads Feature Apple’s Three E-Commerce Stores

By Graham Spencer

Apple has today added three new adverts for the iPhone to their website and YouTube which have the general theme of “If you don’t have an iPhone” and what you miss out on. The three specific features that the ad’s highlight are the App Store, iPod + iTunes and iBooks which highlight Apple’s strong integration between the iPhone and their three e-commerce stores.

Jump the break to watch the three 30 second ad’s which also all finish with the “Yup, if you don’t have an iPhone, well, you don’t have an iPhone.” phrase - which in typical Apple style is a little self-congratulatory (which you either like or dislike).