Thursday, December 18, 2008

Schiller to Demo Snow Leopard at Macworld?

The Guardian claims that Apple and its partners have been privately dropping hints to developers that Mac OS X Snow Leopard will ship earlier than expected and suggests that Phil Schiller will show it off at Macworld.

The article also recaps the advantages of both Grand Central and OpenCL which will be introduced with the new operating system:

The first technology, Grand Central, is designed to make better use of the Intel processors that sit inside the current range of Macs. The other, OpenCL, could have a more dramatic effect on performance for some programs as it will tap into the power of graphics processors (GPUs) that now goes to waste.

Despite the early showing, actual delivery of the software is not expected for at least a couple of months later. This timeframe would still bring it into the 1st Quarter 2009 timeframe that was previously suggested by Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies.
All credits and information was found by macrumors.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Apple Broadens App Store Acceptance, Approves 'Pull My Finger'

One of the major criticisms of the App Store has been a seemingly arbitrary rejection policy on the part of Apple. Air-o-Matic was one of the developers rejected by Apple for the reason of "limited utility" for his humor app "Pull My Finger". Sam of Air-o-Matic contacted us to let us know that Apple has now accepted "Pull My Finger" into the App Store [link, $0.99].

Sam apparently got a call from Apple about his app:

[Apple] told me that they are going to start approving a whole new "genre" of apps, and that Pull My Finger will be the first to be accepted in this genre. As of now Pull My Finger is available in the app store.

The very kind Apple Team Member told me that they didn't want to reject it originally, but that they were sorting out how this "genre" of apps were going to be handled. She told me they'd be lifting the restriction on them, and more apps will follow that may have been previously not allowed.

The App now appears in the App Store but without any special designation. Coincidentally, Apple also recently allowed in a game called Amateur Surgeon which was rated for ages 17+.
All credits and information was found by macrumors.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Apple Offering Free Licensing of Mini DisplayPort Spec

Arstechnica points to Apple's mini Display Port license which is available as a "no fee" license to interested parties. Apple introduced the Mini Display port with its new notebooks and 24" LED Cinema Display in October.

This licensing news adds some clarity to the debate about whether or not the Mini DisplayPort was a proprietary solution from Apple alone. The no fee license should allow 3rd party manufacturers to integrate the port into their own products and also to develop additional useful adapters. For example, Apple currently doesn't offer the appropriate adapter to allow customers to connect older Macs to their new 24" Apple LED Cinema Display.

Apple has said that they will be integrating the Mini Display port into all future products.

All credits and information was found by macrumors.