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Leaked Apple Document Confirms MacBook Air Issues, Software Update Coming

Looks like BGR has managed to find a good source amongst Apple Geniuses: according to a new leaked internal document, Apple has acknowledged the MacBook Air bugs we talked about two days ago.

Apple hasn’t publicly addressed the issues yet, and the document clearly says the information are not to be disclosed externally. The document mentions the display flickering issues many users have experienced, together with colors fading to light after waking from sleep. The suggested solution? Close the lid, wait 10 seconds and open the computer again.

Apple also confirms an upcoming software update will fix the issues.

Interface Artist Builds A Real OS X Home Icon

Some things in life are so cool, geeky – let me just say it, awesome – that you’ve got to see them with your own eyes to believe. I’ve always been attracted by the “digital becomes real” experiments (there’s this video on Vimeo about Facebook, Twitter and OS X created with cardboard I can’t find anymore), and what “interface artist” Johannes P Osterhoff has come up with is just too cool to not end up here in the late night geek coverage of MacStories.

He basically took the standard OS X home icon, created a wooden version and carried it around on his shoulders. I know, insane. He’s the same guy that painted images using Aqua graphical elements and created actual shields out of the UI of Windows Vista.

Please, go check out his post about the “project” here.

Plex Comes To Jailbroken Apple TV

If you own an Apple TV and you’ve managed to jailbreak it, then you must be happy about this: you can install Plex on it. As noted by 9to5mac, you can turn your tiny black Apple box in a dedicated Plex device, with the media server running, say, on your home Mac. Plex is a great looking and full-featured media center for OS X which recently released a great iOS companion app.

Instructions from the developer of the hack are available here, and require some manual hacking.

Facebook iPhone App Getting Updated with New Groups, Improved Places Tagging

At the mobile event at Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the iPhone app – the app that, in his own words, it’s being used on the vast majority of iPhones –is getting an update with the new Groups interface they launched a few weeks ago, improved tagging in Places and easier photo attaching in check-ins.

The app update still isn’t live in iTunes, it’ll probably will be later today. Other new features Facebook is announcing today are single sign-on for mobile apps, new location APIs and a Deals platform.

[image via TechCrunch]

Apple Posts Support Document About Daylight Saving Time Bug on iOS 4.1

As noted by MacRumors, earlier today Apple posted a new support document detailing the issues experienced by many users with the Clock app on iOS 4.1 after the switch to DST. It happened in New Zealand back in October and Europe earlier this week, but Apple still hasn’t released a firmware update to address the issue.

It’s very likely that iOS 4.2 –now in Gold Master version, final release really around the corner – will put an end to this annoying bug.

From the support document:

In some regions, shortly before or after the daylight saving time (DST) change, repeating alarms created in the Clock app may work incorrectly.

To resolve this behavior for existing alarms, set the repeat interval to Never. You will need to reset these alarms for each day you need them.

After November 7th, 2010, you can set your alarms to repeat again.

Sneak Peek: Discourse, Beautiful Dictionary App for iPhone

A few days ago I stumbled upon the preview page of Discourse, an upcoming iPhone app developed by Emilio Peláez (the developer of Notified, available in Cydia) and designed by Mathieu White which, according to the website, aims at being a unique and fresh dictionary app for iPhone. Can a dictionary app be unique? – I asked on Twitter. What could a developer ever do to make sure his take on digital dictionaries – a rather boring subject, one might think – feels fresh and innovative?

I got into Discourse’s beta group and Emilio was kind enough to let me talk about the app on MacStories. I’ve been running the app on my iPhone since last night and, admittedly, they’re building something that feels fresh, beautiful and, to an extent, unique. Here’s a sneak peek. Read more

Project Sword Renamed “Infinity Blade”, Coming This Holiday

Remember Project Sword by Epic Games? Yes, that impressive tech demo we saw at Apple’s last music event on stage, the one that made our jaws drop due to that stunning graphics, light effects and animations. The same day, we were also able to download a demo of the demo, called “Epic Citadel” and based on the same graphic engine (the Unreal Engine 3 for mobile devices) but limited to a single town without any people and / or enemies.

Today Epic Games announced the final title of the game, which is now dubbed “Infinity Blade” and will be available on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch this holiday season. Infinity Blade will feature both a single player and a multiplayer mode based on Game Center, RPG elements, even better graphics than before and free updates with new features in the next months.

The developers worked hard for 4 months on the development of Infinity Blade and, hopefully, we’ll enjoy the great results of the Unreal Engine 3 together with an equally great gameplay in a few weeks.

Check out the press release, screenshots and the old demo video of Project Sword below. Read more

Apple Preparing To Increase The Length of iTunes Previews to 90 Seconds

According to Symphonic Distribution (via MacRumors) Apple has sent notifications out to music labels to communicate that they’re getting ready to extend iTunes Music previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds for songs that are at least 2 minutes and 30 seconds long.

We have just received the notification from Apple that this will be happening soon and are very excited to report the news as we firmly believe this is a decision that will show an increase of sales for our partners. Below is an excerpt from the email we have received.

As you can see in the screenshot above, by continuing to offer music on the iTunes Store labels agree to the new terms. Previews for songs shorter than 2 minutes and 30 seconds won’t change to the new 90 second clip format.

CNET posted a rumor claiming that iTunes previews were set to change to 90 seconds two days before Apple’s music event in September.

Mac OS X Dock Built Using CSS3

We featured cool CSS experiments before: iOS icons in CSS, a Kinetic type video, a 3D rotating molecules demo that works great on the iPad earlier today.

Web developer and interface designer Michael Hüneburg, rebuilt the standard OS X dock using CSS3 animation and including reflections, bounce effects, labels. He also used some additional icons inspired to the popular iTunes 10 one. Check out the experiment here.

This is a quick CSS3 experiment trying to replicate the Dock of OS X, complete with labels, animations, reflections and indicators. It uses CSS transitions for the magnification effect and the :target pseudo-class and CSS animations for the bouncing effect.

The CSS-based dock works great on Webkit desktop browsers, but you won’t able to get the magnification effect on iOS due to the obvious lack of mouseover events.