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Posts tagged with "apple"

Apple Prepares For Retina Monitors With HiDPI Mode in OS X Lion

Digging through the build of Mac OS X Lion that was seeded to developers yesterday, MacRumors discovered the presence of “HiDPI display modes” which suggests that Apple is planning for the possibility of Mac displays running something similar to a Retina display sometime in the near future.

Developers would, as they have done on the iPhone, provide each UI element in two sizes, one in the size they currently are and then one at twice the resolution. It would work virtually identically to how Apple implemented the Retina display for the iPhone, with the high-resolution displays using the double sized UI elements so that physically the size of the elements would stay the same.

MacRumors gives the example of a 15” MacBook Pro that has a resolution of 1440x900 that could be doubled to 2880x1800 and then use an app’s UI 2X elements and which would leave the application’s UI elements the same physical size, but with much greater detail. Apple had previously dabbled in the notion of creating OS X a resolution independent OS through a number of methods from using vector graphics to providing bitmaps for multiple screen resolutions, but none had previously eventuated.

The HiDPI mode is not turned on by default and must be done so through Lion’s Quartz debug in Xcode.

[Via MacRumors]

Milestones

Today is Thursday, February 24, 2011. Today has been full of Apple news everywhere, especially here at MacStories. Today Federico, Cody, Graham and myself have been chugging hard on rumors, announcements, first looks, previews, etc. You name it, we’ve probably done it. With that said, lets talk about today some more.

Milestones, what are they and what do they mean to us? Well, to MacStories it means forward progress, growth and evolving. We are celebrating 5000 posts as I write this now. It also means birthdays and achievements. Today is Steve Jobs’ 56th birthday and look at what he has accomplished in his lifetime.

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MobileMe Retail Boxes ‘Move To Trash’, Free Version Soon?

Back on February 7, we posted that an Apple initiative was to eliminate their retail box inventory. Today, Apple is notifying resellers that the company is discontinuing the retail box version of MobileMe, moving completely toward digital sales. Existing stock will continue to be sold while supplies last. MobileMe has also been removed from the ‘Configure’ page options when you buy a new Mac.

If you didn’t already know, boxed versions of MobileMe only have an activation code (no DVD) and Apple’s famous promo materials. The main reason they offer a retail box is to have a physical MobileMe product in-store for visibility (and the artwork on the box isn’t too shabby either).

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What Is Thunderbolt?

Thunderbolt technology is what was Intel’s Light Peak. It’s not an Apple technology, but rather the culmination of Intel’s handiwork in combination with Apple’s mini DisplayPort. While Light Peak was developed to work over fiber (literally for light speeds), Thunderbolt is implemented over copper. Despite this, you’re still getting bi-directional (in and out as they say), 10 Gbps connection over a cable, plus a 10 Watt feed so you can power heavy equipment on the go (you don’t get that with USB). For comparison, your current USB 2.0 devices only get 480 Mbps through the cable! With this technology, you can drive multiple inputs including monitors, workstations, and audio equipment without a bird’s nest under your desk.

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FaceTime for Mac Now Available in the Mac App Store, 720p Video Calling

Ahead of the new MacBook Pros, Apple launched the final version of FaceTime for Mac in the Mac App Store today. It’s priced at $0.99. The new version of FaceTime for Mac will allow 720p video calling Mac-to-Mac with supported Intel models that have a FaceTime HD camera – the new MacBook Pros. New MacBook Pro owners will get the app pre-installed, other users will have to buy it from the Mac App Store.

Video calls require a built-in FaceTime camera, an iSight camera (built-in or external), a USB video class (UVC) camera, or a FireWire DV camcorder; and a 128-Kbps upstream and downstream Internet connection. Making HD video calls requires a built-in FaceTime HD camera and a 1-Mbps upstream and downstream Internet connection. Receiving HD video calls requires a supported Intel-based Mac (for a complete list, visit http://support.apple.com/bk/HT4534).

Full description below. Read more

Bodega Update Adds Background Updating

Bodega, the alternative Mac App ‘store’, has been updated to version 1.4 and has a new feature that allows Bodega to update apps in the background. The app has also received extensive feature and performance improvements.

The background updater works as a background daemon that will check once a week for any applications that can be updated. It utilizes the Sparkle update framework, so whilst it may not work for every app, it should work for most. Bodega does not have to be running for the daemon to check and users have the option of ignoring pending updates if they wish.

[Via MacNN]

An Interview With The Designer Of The Apple Logo→

Craig Grannel posted a transcript of his interview with the designer of the original Apple logo, Rob Janoff. Sorry to destroy all the theories about the logo:

What was the thinking behind the colour order of the stripes, and the ‘bite’?

There wasn’t a whole lot of hidden meaning behind the colours. The logo predates the gay-pride flag by about a year, so that wasn’t it—and there also goes the whole Alan Turing myth! The religious myths are just that too—there’s no ‘Eve and Garden of Eden’ and ‘bite from the fruit of knowledge’ symbolism!

I didn’t have much of a formal brief on the logo assignment, other than “don’t make it cute”. But I did know the selling points of the Apple Computer, and one of the biggest was colour capability. To me, that looked like colour bars on a monitor, which became the stripes in the logo. The order of the stripes, I’m sorry to say, had no particular grand plan other than I liked them that way. And, of course, the green stripe would be at the top where the leaf is.

The bite is really about scale and the common experience of biting into an apple. It was a happy accident that ‘byte’ is a computer term.

It’s just an Apple. [via The Brooks Review]

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Apple’s Succession Proposal? Rejected

At Apple’s shareholders meeting today in the company’s Town Hall auditorium, a proposal to reveal Apple’s succession plan was rejected. For many months now, speculation has arisen that Apple should reveal its succession plans for Steve Jobs’ retirement (which, you know, is going to happen eventually) – but the company always refused to give out details, that are likely already in place, fearing repercussions in the management sphere with names of executives to succeed Jobs going public.

Apple COO Tim Cook took the stage today to introduce the board of directors, whose seven members – including Jobs – were reelected.

The most controversial shareholder proposal – that Apple adopt a detailed succession plan – was introduced about 20 minutes later. According to the representative of the Central Laborers’ Pension Fund who introduced it, Proposal No. 5 did not require the company to name names, she said, so management’s fears about the proposal were unfounded.

Apple has a succession plan for when Steve Jobs will leave, but they don’t want anyone to know just yet.

The Daily Set To Head To Android Tablets This Spring

Sources have told AllThingsD that News Corp’s The Daily, which is currently an iPad exclusive daily newspaper, will be heading to Android in the coming three months. Whilst it was always planned for The Daily to head to the Google operating system and propagate onto as many tablets as possible it wasn’t expected to happen at this rapid rate.

The News Corp team got some extensive help from Apple in regards to technical details and was also the pioneering app to use Apple’s new subscription service. The event in which The Daily was launched was not only supposed to include Steve Jobs, but Rupert Murdoch, News Corp CEO said at the event that “we think last year, this year, and next year will belong to the iPad.”

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