A Backup Dream: WD My Book Studio Edition II Goes 6 TB, Time Machine-ready

I’m a proud owner of a WD My Book 750 GB edition with FireWire 800 – a trusted system when it comes to storing my media and using a second partition for Time Machine – but I guess I’ll be making the switch to the newly announced My Book Studio Edition II pretty soon. Western Digital has, in fact, revealed this new My Book product that goes straight to 6 TB of storage in RAID, has a quad interface, and it’s compatible with Mac and Windows. The best part? Western Digital touts the model as “Mac-ready” with HFS filesystem out of the box and full Time Machine compatibility.

The My Book Studio Edition II comes with the usual FireWire 400, FireWire 800, eSATA and USB 2.0 connections – no, there’s no Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 here. Still, you should get pretty decent transfer times with FireWire 800 – I truly recommend you consider FireWire for your next Time Machine or SuperDuper backups.

The My Book Studio Edition II can be yours for “just” $550. You could get a new iPad for that price, I know, but if you’re serious about backups and external media storage (hello, iTunes) you should consider this. Press release below. [via Gizmodo] Read more

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

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

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

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).

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Mondo Solitaire: Deliciously Beautiful Solitaire For Mac

There isn’t too much you can say about solitaire on its own. It’s the card game your coworker plays instead of writing formulas for Excel spreadsheets on Windows, but that doesn’t mean we can’t turn solitaire into something more than a time waster. Proof of concept: Mondo Solitaire from Ambrosia Software is solitaire done right. You aren’t just playing the same game of Klondike over and over - instead you’re offered over 300 variants of solitaire madness to choose from. If you include the beautiful game board that looks like it should bundled with Apple’s own Game Center, then you have yourself one premium handful of card games.

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WordPress for iOS Updated, Quashes Bugs and Improves UI

The WordPress iPhone and iPad app just got updated to version 2.7 and it’s a big bug-quashing update that supposedly fixes 117 bugs to vastly improve performance and reduce crashes.

UI has also been retooled with the ‘Post Editor’ interface improved to “make it easier to write and edit posts and pages” with quick access to edit post settings, view attachments and add media. Finally multiple attatchments can be added simultaneously, you can use the “pull down to refresh” feature to quickly update comments, posts and page lists and email and URLs left in comments are now able to be clicked on.

[Via WordPress Blog]

Beware The 200 Scalpers Outside New York’s 5th Ave. Store

If you’re still trying to get your hands on an iPad 2, you might want to avoid the 5th Avenue Apple Store in New York for now. The New York Post has a piece today on the issues with “scalpers” waiting outside the Apple Store for iPad 2 stock to become available again, and buy a large amount of units to sell later at a higher price in Asian grey markets and the United States as well. Apparently almost 200 of these Asian scalpers have been spotted around the 5th Ave. location, and they’re well organized with “leaders” telling them how many iPads to buy, which models, at which rate. These “leaders” were seen handing out $100 bills to the scalpers as if it was normal to get hundreds of iPads and put them in large bags to ship to China right away.

Prices for these iPad 2s range from $1700 to a whopping $2000 – you could get 4 iPads WiFi 16 GB for that price.

An Apple worker inside the store said he didn’t like what was going on – but he couldn’t do much about it.

“Listen, we all know what’s going on here. I find it sad and disgusting,” the worker said. “These people are preventing ordinary folks from getting their hands on an iPad.

The problems with scalpers and grey market isn’t new to Apple product launches. When the iPhone 4 went on sale last summer in the US and, later, in Europe, we saw the same thing happen with hundreds of people waiting in line outside the Apple Store just to buy devices to sell right away at a higher price, or export all the way back to mainland China.

The situation looks very bad this week as iPad 2s are nowhere to be seen, not even online, and these people are preventing regular, non-scalper customers from legitimately purchasing an iPad 2. Until Apple solves its problems with stock and availability, or releases the device in more countries as promised, we’re going to hear more and more stories like this.

We Have Five Copies Of Zen Viewer HD For iPad Up For Grabs

File managers on the iPad need not be boring nor unintuitive. Zen Viewer HD for iPad wrangles documents and media into a stylish file viewer that plays back audio, movies, pictures, PDFs, and gives you the ability to organize documents. You also have the cloud at your fingertips, thanks to Dropbox, Box.net, and MobileMe integration so you can pull files from just about anywhere. Record audio on the fly, manage files and folders (easily get files into Zen Viewer HD by drag & drop while in Manage Mode), and compress & decompress files to save storage space on your iPad. If you want to carry your Windows or Mac files around with you, Zen Viewer shouldn’t disappoint. Currently on sale for $2.99 in the App Store (with some additional artist themes costing $.99 in app), who says managing files shouldn’t be both easy and beautiful? Your new iPad should have a proper system in place for handling all of the documents stored on your home system, so we’re giving away five copies past the break.

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Microphone In iPad 2 WiFi Offers Better Quality Than 3G Model

If you’ve recently bought an iPad 2 WiFi + 3G (good luck finding one now with a 4-5 weeks wait on the Apple Store) and your friends have told you they can’t really hear you on FaceTime, that might be a problem with the microphone in your 3G model. According to iLounge, the iPad 2 WiFi offers clearer microphone quality as the microphone has been placed in the top metal housing, whilst it sits in the plastic antenna band on the iPad WiFi + 3G.

Perhaps due to this change in materials, the Wi-Fi model offers markedly cleaner audio than that of the 3G, which sounds slightly muffled and echo-prone as a result. Curiously, we found the GSM 3G model’s audio to be slightly preferable to that of the CDMA model, which seemed to suffer the issues more severely.

The iPad 2 saw a change in size and shape of the microphone, and iLounge reports the differences in sonic qualities can be clearly spotted in apps like FaceTime with the iPad’s screen facing the user. If you have a 3G iPad 2 and you’ve spotted these differences, too, please let us know in the comments below.

[image via]