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Final Cut Pro X Coming Out Next Week?

According to Japanese blog Macotakara, Apple may start selling the new version of Final Cut Pro, dubbed Final Cut Pro X, in the Mac App Store next week. Originally unveiled at the NAB in Las Vegas back in April, the company already announced that FCP X would be released in the digital store at the lower price point of $299 – without making any mention of additional apps previously included in the Final Cut Pro suite, such as Color or Motion. Apple said Final Cut Pro X would come out “in June”, but didn’t specify any release date.

Apple has announced to release Final Cut Pro X in this June via Mac App Store in price of $299 in NAV Supermeet, event for Final Cut users, at April 2011. And then Apple seems to start to sell Final Cut Pro X from next week as they told.

Macotakara also claims that the first Thunderbolt-enabled accessories will be available next week, with Final Cut Pro X likely capable of taking advantage of the new technology with high-speed data transfers and daisy-chaining.

From Apple’s original announcement of Final Cut Pro X:

Basing on live updates coming from attendees at NAB 2011, Final Cut Pro X has been built from scratch, and it’s entirely 64-bit. It’s based on technologies like Cocoa, Core Animation, Open CL, Grand Central Dispatch and it focuses on image quality. It features a resolution independent timeline up to 4K for scalable rendering — in fact, it appears the old render dialog is gone entirely as the app uses the available CPU to keep files always rendered. FCP X allows you to edit while you’re importing thanks to its new engine, and it’s also got automatic media and people detection on import, as well as image stabilization.

Apple is promoting the new FCP X as a complete and total rebuild.

Thunderbolt products have been announced by several third-party makers so far, with the most recent demoes at Computex 2011 showing the speedy side of the I/O technology. Apple’s recent update to the Mac line included MacBook Pros and iMacs receiving Sandy Bridge and Thunderbolt upgrades, thus making for more powerful machines better suited for video editing at higher configurations. Similarly, the Mac Pro is also rumored to be getting an update soon to implement faster processors and Thunderbolt ports – the 27-inch iMac, for instance, comes with two Thunderbolt ports to enable complex daisy-chaining and external monitor mirroring.

In the past weeks, several screenshots have surfaced online showcasing parts of FCP X’s interface and features. Macotakara is a usual reliable source of Apple information and product leaks, though details are scarce on this Mac App Store release. [via AppleInsider]

VP Of Retail Ron Johnson Leaving Apple for J.C. Penney

The Wall Street Journal reports Apple’s VP of Retail Ron Johnson is leaving the company to become J.C. Penny president and, eventually, chief executive officer. Johnson joined Apple in 2000 and greatly contributed to the realization and success of Apple’s retail division across the world, becoming the public face for the company when it came down to talk about retail stores and, in the most recent years, the popularity of iOS devices in the Apple Stores. The WSJ says a public announcement hasn’t been made yet, but should happen later today.

J.C. Penney Co. is tapping Ron Johnson, head of Apple Inc.’s iconic retail stores, as its new president and eventual chief executive, people familiar with the situation said.

The company is expected to announce Mr. Johnson’s appointment later today. Mr. Johnson will become CEO in the next few months, succeeding long-time leader Myron “Mike” Ullman. He joined Apple from Target Corp., where he was vice president of merchandising for stores.

More information about Johnson’s career are available from Apple’s PR bio:

Ron Johnson joined Apple as senior vice president in January 2000. Reporting directly to the CEO, Johnson leads Apple’s retail strategy and is responsible for its overall execution and performance. Under Ron’s leadership, Apple has opened over 300 stores to date. Johnson has over 20 years of experience in retail and merchandising as well as a strong track record for delivering consistent year over year growth for billion-dollar companies.

Before Apple, Johnson held various management positions at Target, another US-based retail chain, contributing to the expansion of Target stores playing a key role in marketing and branding for the company. If true, The Wall Street Journal’s report seems to suggest Johnson is going to back to his roots to lead a massive retail distribution chain across the United States – becoming CEO is undoubtedly a big step forward from Senior VP of Retail at Apple.

Update: J.C. Penney has just confirmed the news – Ron Johnson will become CEO starting November 1, 2011, and invest $50 million in the company:

Myron E. (Mike) Ullman, III, chairman and chief executive officer of J. C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE: JCP), today announced that Ron Johnson, an innovative and highly regarded retail executive, has been named the Company’s next chief executive officer, succeeding Mr. Ullman in that role. Mr. Johnson will assume the CEO position on Nov. 1, 2011, and report to Mr. Ullman, who will become executive chairman. Mr. Johnson will also join the Company’s Board of Directors, effective Aug. 1, 2011.

Mr. Johnson said, “I’ve always dreamed of leading a major retail company as CEO, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to help J. C. Penney re-imagine what I believe to be the single greatest opportunity in American retailing today, the Department Store. I have tremendous confidence in J. C. Penney’s future and look forward to working with Mike Ullman, the Executive Board and the Company’s 150,000 associates to transform the way America shops.

Update #2: In a comment to All Things Digital, Apple says they’re “actively recruiting” for Johnson’s replacement in retail:

Apple confirmed his departure in a brief comment to AllThingsD. “Ron is excited about this opportunity and we hope it goes well for him,” a spokesperson said. “We’ve got a great retail team in place and are actively recruiting for his replacement.

Below, Apple’s popular iPad: Year One video featuring Ron Johnson talking about the iPad’s retail success. Read more

Musicon Lets You Add Albums To Your Home Screen

In the weeks leading to Apple’s WWDC announcements, there was one possible feature of iOS 5 that was making the rounds of the Internet, meeting many people’s expectations for the new OS: the possibility to create shortcuts for anything on a device’s Home screen would have been an interesting option to, say, let users create a WiFi icon to quickly access Network settings without opening the dedicated app. Playing around with the concept of aliases and app-specific shortcuts, the theories surrounding iOS 5 pointed at Apple building such a functionality to reduce the time spent tapping and scrolling around. That, of course, didn’t happen, but it hasn’t stopped third-party developers from releasing their own solutions that take on this idea of “creating Home screen shortcuts”.

Musicon, a new iPhone app by developer Fabian Kreiser, enables you to create Home screen icons for music albums you have synced on your device or, if you’re rocking the latest iCloud features, bought on your computer and automatically pushed to your iPhone. Musicon works like this: it scans your music library (the one from iPod.app, or Music.app if you’re already on iOS 5) and fetches albums and album artworks. If music is playing from the native iOS app, a “Now Playing” button lets you control it – this app isn’t meant to be a music controller on its own, unlike Kreiser’s other iPhone app On Stage. In fact, if you have On Stage (which we reviewed here) installed on your device the app won’t show any advertisement.

Once you’ve found an album you like, select it, and hit the big “Install Webclip” button. The app will already display a preview of the icon that you’ll end up with in the Home screen in the upper section of the screen. As you hit the button, Musicon does its thing to create a shortcut: it takes you to the developer’s website to install a webclip on your device. That’s right, these shortcuts are nothing but links to a webpage that somehow takes you to Musicon after you tap on the icon. Music will start playing in the native iPod app, and Musicon will come in foreground with the playback control UI. Not the most elegant solution if you ask me, but it works and the Home screen icons shine on the Retina Display.

Musicon is free, but I wish I could pay to remove advertising without having to keep On Stage installed. The idea is pretty nice and I can see why some people would want to save a couple of albums for quick access on a daily basis – if you’re one of them, get Musicon here and start creating your own shortcuts.

Apple: Samsung “The Copyist” Is Attempting To Harass Us

There’s been some news on the Apple vs. Samsung patent battle today with some recent Apple filings coming to light where Apple alleges that Samsung is “attempt[ing] to harass” them and that Samsung’s demands are not made in good faith – even going so far as to label Samsung as “the copyist” in the documents. It comes after Samsung requested Apple to hand over the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 (or the most recent prototype) to Samsung’s lawyers, which itself was a response to Apple’s request for several Samsung products that hadn’t yet been released (although they were announced).

Samsung’s Motion to Compel is an improper attempt to harass Apple by demanding production of extremely sensitive trade secrets that have no relevance to Apple’s likelihood of success on its infringement claims or to a preliminary injunction motion.

This Friday (1:30 PM Pacific Time) Apple and Samsung will meet with their judge for the purpose of discussing Samsung’s request for expedited delivery (Samsung gaining access to the next generation iPhone and iPad). Apple’s recent filings are in preparation for this court session. FOSS Patents has given the filings a good look over and found some highlights.

As many had expected, Apple’s lawyers make the note that Samsung is asking for much more than what Apple asked given that the Samsung products, although unreleased, had been fully revealed and were available for pre-order. By contrast the next generation iPhone and iPad do not officially exist – in fact it notes in its filings that “Apple is widely recognised as one of the most secretive companies in the world”.

It also tackles the idea that whilst Samsung’s law firm may not leak the details of the iPhone 5 and iPad 3, it could use their knowledge of them to form future patent infringement theories for other companies it represents – which includes other major Android device makers including Samsung, Motorola and HTC.

It also puts the argument that since no future iPhone or iPad products are included in Apple’s complaint of Samsung products, there isn’t reason to show them. It also dismisses Samsung’s suggestion that future design changes “could indicate that Apple is not as consistent as it claims, and consequently Apple’s related rights could be weaker”. Be sure to head over to FOSS Patents if you want a more thorough review of the recent filing and if you want to remind yourself of what the lawsuit is about, be sure to head over to read This Is My Next’s excellent analysis.

[Via FOSS Patents]

Mr. Reader Gets A Great Update with Evernote, Send2Mac, Terminology Support

There’s no doubt Mr. Reader is becoming one of the most powerful and integrated RSS apps for the iPad. Ever since I reviewed version 1.0 back in April, the developer went back to work to implement several features that are making Mr. Reader a Google Reader client that’s not limited at fetching and marking items as read from a native interface. Rather, Mr. Reader shipped with a good selection of external services to send your favorite articles to, but version 1.1 added support to create tasks in OmniFocus and integration with third-party iOS browsers like iCab. Whereas most feed readers want to provide a good reading experience but don’t focus on letting you get those feeds out of the closed Google Reader experience, Mr. Reader aims at filling the gap between online services / apps and RSS.

Version 1.2, released yesterday and available now at $3.99 in the App Store, takes the whole concept of getting articles out of the app a step further. With Evernote, Send2Mac and Terminology support, you’ll be able to save articles as notes in your Evernote account, send webpages to your desktop browser in the background thanks to the great Send2Mac service (which already works on Lion), or get definitions of words you don’t know if Agile Tortoise’s app is installed on your iPad. Unlike Instapaper, definitions are not provided in a popover inside the application (at least on iOS 5): when you select a word and hit the Terminology button, you’ll be brought directly to Terminology with the selected word at the top of the list and a popup at the bottom saying that you opened that word from Mr. Reader.

Evernote support is really simple, and I like it: the app will create a blank note with just the title and URL section saved from Mr. Reader. As for Send2Mac, it works perfectly but it only allows you to configure one computer – I’d love to add both my MacBook Pro and iMac to Mr. Reader.

There’s a lot more in Mr. Reader 1.2 though. Tapping on an article will let you open all feeds from the original source; you can send articles to Readability, if you’re a fan of the service; a new theme, Sydney, has been added and others have been refined; the annoying modal sync window has been changed to an unobtrusive spinning indicator that doesn’t overlay the feed list. Alongside dozens of other bug fixes and improvements, Mr. Reader now remembers your preferred view for each feed automatically.

At $3.99 and with updates coming out every few weeks to make the app more stable and integrated, I’m excited to see Mr. Reader taking on Reeder as the most powerful (yet elegant) iPad RSS reader. While looking forward to iOS 5 and (perhaps) iCloud integration, you can get the app here.

Some Early Signs Of iCloud Web Apps Found

Details of iCloud, particularly over any potential web apps, have remained murky at best since Steve Jobs introduced the service at WWDC last week. Yesterday Joshua Topolsky of This Is My Next obtained what seemed to be a confirmation that web apps would not be offered with iCloud as they were with MobileMe:

Let’s be clear about what happens when iCloud goes live – according to what was described on stage at the event, and what I’ve confirmed with Apple PR –the service will effectively replace the current web offerings of MobileMe. That means that when the cutoff date of June 30, 2012 comes around for users, the web-based email client, calendar, contacts app, and other components of the web suite will cease to exist.

This drew a sceptical response from many, a post by John Gruber is representative of that scepticism, and today MacRumors seems to have found that Apple is actually porting iCloud to at least some of the MobileMe web apps. One of their readers sent themselves a Calendar invitation in iOS 5 and received a link to the iCloud.com domain. The above image illustrates what was linked to – and identical page to the current MobileMe invitations system (visually at least) except that was on the iCloud.com domain and had some iCloud branding at the bottom of the page.

It seems reasonable that Apple is working on at least some level of web support for the iCloud components but as usual they won’t confirm anything that they aren’t ready to talk about. If you wanted some more convincing of the reader’s screenshot jump over to this iCloud.com link and see for yourself.

[Via MacRumors]

Update: Well-sourced Apple journalist Jim Dalrymple at The Loop says iCloud will have a web interface, with Apple saving some interesting tidbits for iCloud’s public launch this Fall:

As for Josh’s Apple PR confirmation. The only thing I can think of is that there was some kind of misunderstanding. Daring Fireball’s John Gruber says Topolsky is making a “bad assumption.” That sounds about right to me.

Of this, I am sure — Apple will have a Web-based interface for iCloud. In fact, I expect an even cooler interface than the latest updates we saw with MobileMe calendar and email.

 

Apple To Offer $100 iTunes Credit Instead Of An iPod For Back To School Promotion?

Apple’s ‘Back to School’ promotion is scheduled to start up again sometime very soon and if reports from today come true, the promotion could be a bit different to years past. 9to5 Mac is reporting that when a student purchases a MacBook this year, they will receive a $100 worth of iTunes credit rather than what has previously been an iPod Touch in recent years.

Launching three months before the September iPod event Apple seems to have every year, the ‘Back to School’ promotion was largely viewed as one way of clearing out iPod inventory ahead of the refresh in September. Previous rumors of this year’s promotion suggested that Apple was set to offer $200 off the price of an iPad.  As always, regardless of the bonus offered during the promotion, students get an education discount on the cost of any Mac they purchase.

[Via 9to5 Mac]

Report: New MacBook Air In Late June

Rumored to be getting an update this week as part numbers surfaced online suggested Apple was planning to release new products on Wednesday, the much anticipated new MacBook Air models were replaced by unlocked iPhones today, but sources believe they’re still on track for a late June release with 380,000 - 400,000 initial shipments. As reported by Reuters quoting the Economic Daily newspaper, Apple is expected to sell new MacBook Air units in late June, with shipments of the old line and new models reaching 460,000 units this month.

As supplies dwindle worldwide and the new Airs are increasingly rumored to be refreshed in June or July, little is known about the actual specifications of the new machines. It seems fairly obvious that Apple would implement Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt technology as seen in the latest MacBook Pro and iMac updates, but there are no details on the CPUs Apple would go for in the Airs. A report from May indicated Intel was working on new ULV (ultra-low voltage) processors that would be a perfect fit for the Air, but sources haven’t corroborated the rumor since then.

It is believed, however, that the MacBook Air is becoming Apple’s crown jewel when it comes to promoting the Mac, and so the new Air would require a significant spec bump to be able to run OS X Lion smoothly.

Apple Settles With Nokia Over Patent Dispute


Nokia today announced that they have reached a settlement with Apple over a complex web of patent disputes between the companies that have been keeping both companies (and the courts) busy since 2009. The settlement involves a one-time payment as well as on-going royalties to be paid to Nokia by Apple – the size of the fee and royalties is undisclosed, as is the length of the agreement.

We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees,” said Stephen Elop, president and chief executive officer of Nokia. “This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market. - Nokia Press Release

As FOSS Patents relays, the settlement of this dispute will free up precious resources for both companies – Apple in particular will need them whilst it battles three of the big Android device makers; Motorola, HTC and Samsung. The win for Nokia against Apple will be somewhat of a precedent for future potential patent battles, particularly given the veracity with which Apple had displayed in attempting to ‘win’ this lawsuit. In particular, it is very likely that Nokia will soon go after Android device makers and it is questionable whether they would fare any better than Apple did.

The price isn’t disclosed but FOSS Patents gives a brief opinion how sizeable it could be:

Theoretically, it could be a symbolic amount, but that’s very unlikely. I’m sure Nokia had to go down from its maximum demands because otherwise there wouldn’t have been a settlement. But the deal structure is very telling: a combination of a payment for past infringement as well as running royalties is a clear indication that there’s serious money in this for Nokia.

Updated: Could Nokia be earning €8/$11.50 for each iPhone sold? Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents thinks it is ‘plausible’ - in which case Nokia would be raking in something like $200m from today’s settlement.

[Via FOSS Patents, Picture via Engadget]