MacRumors

Taiwanese company Photofast has announced the first 3rd party SSD storage upgrade kit for the new MacBook Air. (via Engadget) The new MacBook Air is the first Apple laptop to use a special SSD card rather than a traditional hard drive enclosure. While the new SSD storage card allows Apple to further reduce the size of the MacBook Air's enclosure, upgrade parts are less readily available. Photofast is the first of likely many vendors who will fill this void.

Photofast plans on offering 64GB / 128GB / 256GB SSD aftermarket upgrades based on the SandForce controller. This gives 11.6" MacBook Air owners the option of upgrading to a maximum of 256GB -- a configuration not available from Apple. The upgrade promises speeds of 250MB/s for sequential reads and writes, a notable increase from Apple's offerings which bench around 150-160MB/s for the same metric. Overall performance improvements are said to be in the 30% range. In a particularly elegant twist, Photofast will allow you to convert your MacBook Air's existing SSD card into a USB storage device. This storage device then allows you to transfer your existing data over to your Mac.

Unfortunately, no pricing or availability has been announced, but we expect we'll see similar products from other companies in the near future.

It seems Steve Jobs had good reason for his angry reaction to Microsoft's acquisition of game developer Bungie in 2000. It wasn't just because Microsoft had managed to swipe up a prominent Mac developer. Apparently, Apple had also been working to acquire Bungie at that time. Develop cites an ex-Bungie employee about what might have been.

His account of the circumstances was that Phil Schiller - Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing - then had a meeting with Steve Jobs to discuss if the Macintosh manufacturer should proceed with acquiring Bungie.

"Schiller asked Steve, who said no," Deniz tells Develop. "[But] after a week, Steve said yes. Schiller calls Bungie, but Bungie had already consummated the deal with Microsoft".

It's interesting to speculate how events would have played out if Apple had managed to acquire Bungie at the time. Halo, of course, became a massive success and has been the Xbox's flagship title since its launch.

Apple today announced that it has launched a Chinese version of its online store, bringing direct sales of Apple's full product lineup, as well as a broad array of third-party accessories, to the site.

"We are thrilled to open our newest online store in China," said Tim Cook, Apple's COO. "With personalized engraving, configure-to-order options and free shipping on everything, the Apple Store is a great destination for our customers in China."

The company also announced the launch of a Chinese language version of its popular App Store, offering its catalog of iOS application in Simplified Chinese with localized app features and charts.

Reuters reports that Apple has once again delayed availability of the white iPhone 4, pushing the launch out to next spring.

Apple Inc said on Tuesday that it would delay release of the white iPhone yet again, this time until next spring.

The company has had a difficult time making the white model of the iPhone 4. It released the black version of the smartphone in June.

In a statement, an Apple spokeswoman apologized for disappointing its customers but declined to offer any additional information on the reasons for the continued delays.

"We're sorry to disappoint customers waiting for the white iPhone again," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said. When asked why the white phone would again be delayed, Muller declined to comment.

Introduced alongside the black iPhone 4 at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in early June, the white model was soon pushed back to a late July launch. As that date approached, Apple again delayed the launch until "later this year", seemingly giving the company plenty of time to work out issues with production of the white model, although the company apparently continues to struggle with the white models.

The reasons for the ongoing delays have not yet been confirmed by Apple beyond the device proving to be "more challenging to manufacture than expected". Rumors, however, have pointed to issues with color matching between the device's body and home button or light from the screen's backlight leaking around and through the less opaque white painted surfaces.

TechCrunch reports that Apple and Swedish music streaming service Spotify have been engaging in very early-stage discussions about a possible acquisition by Apple. Discussions have apparently yet to progress beyond the feeling-out stage, however, with no firm offers on the table at this time.

"Apple, Inc. (AAPL) in negotiations to acquire Spotify," read the tip that came in yesterday via email from an anonymous source. Most tips are just outright false, but we dug into this one a little bit.

Here's what we heard - Apple and Spotify are in on again, off again discussions about an acquisition, but at best it's very early in the process. No firm price has been offered, no term sheet tabled. Still, it's interesting that the two are talking.

As recently as earlier this month, Apple had been rumored to be trying to torpedo Spotify's much-delayed U.S. launch by working to convince record labels that Spotify's business model would be a losing proposition for all involved in the digital music industry. The report was quickly followed by renewed claims of Apple developing its own music subscription service.

Today's report also interestingly notes that Spotify and Google nearly agreed on a $1 billion acquisition deal, but that agreement fell apart over Spotify's demands for an $800 million "walk away fee" that would be paid by Google if the deal fell through after signing and Google's demands that all of Spotify's existing deals with record labels be carried over to the Google-owned Spotify, a provision that was not present in Spotify's deals with the labels.

Spotify would not be the first company to be an acquisition target for both Apple and Google. Apple had reportedly considered purchasing mobile advertising firm AdMob late last year before Google swept in with its own offer. Apple quickly responded by snatching music streaming firm Lala Media away from Google before picking up Quattro Wireless as its second-choice ad firm that it converted to support the company's new iAd platform.

Apple's growing war chest of over $50 billion has been the source of increasing speculation regarding potential acquisitions, with Apple CEO Steve Jobs noting during the company's earnings conference call last week that Apple believes one or more strategic opportunities will present themselves, and the company will be well-positioned financially to take advantage of those opportunities.

Update: According to CNET, Spotify has denied that any such discussions with Apple have taken place.

Spotify's spokesman Jim Butcher said acquisitions discussions with Apple have never taken place.

"We wouldn't normally comment on this kind of speculation, but we wanted to make it clear that we have absolutely no intention of selling Spotify," he said.

Develop offers an interesting teaser from its forthcoming interview with former vice president of game publishing at Microsoft Ed Fries, who notes that he was personally tasked with appeasing Apple CEO Steve Jobs after Microsoft acquired game developer Bungie Studios in 2000. Bungie had been a prominent game developer for the Mac platform, but Microsoft's acquisition enabled it to scoop up Bungie's Halo project and turn it into an Xbox exclusive.

"As soon as we announced we bought Bungie, Steve Jobs called," Fries said.

"He was mad at [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer and phoned him up and was angry because we'd just bought the premier Mac game developer and made them an Xbox developer."

Fries goes on to note that Microsoft and Apple reached a deal that saw Microsoft help port a handful of PC games to the Mac platform. As part of the deal, Fries appeared on-stage with Jobs at Macworld New York in 2000 in order to reassure Mac users about the partnership between Microsoft/Bungie and Apple.

"Anyway, we did this deal with Apple where we'd port some PC games to the Macintosh and help Peter Tamte create this company to do it, and I had to go to a Mac developer conference and get on stage and talk about this whole new partnership. It was a pretty strange time."

Despite the promises of continued cooperation, Halo for Mac was ultimately delayed until December 2003. Fries left Microsoft in 2004, and Microsoft spun off Bungie in 2007 with Microsoft retaining the rights to the Halo franchise, although the two companies have continued to collaborate on Halo projects.

Our sister site TouchArcade is following the story of iDOS, a new emulator application that appeared in the App Store earlier today which allows users to run DOS and even Windows 3.0 on their iOS devices.

Late last night iDOS was released. Based on DOSbox, an open source DOS emulator, iDOS is a universal app that has PC keyboard support, mouse support, multiple screen modes, and more.

While the full capabilities of the emulator are still being discovered, the $0.99 application already boasts an impressive set of features. It is unclear whether Apple's approval of iDOS was in line with the company's broadened guidelines and whether it will continue to be offered in the App Store as news of its capabilities begins to spread.

iDOS is compatible with iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, and requires iOS 3.1.2 or later.

Update: Apple appears to have pulled iDOS from the App Store.

Yesterday, we noted some early benchmarks for Apple's newly-revamped MacBook Air models, comparing performance of the new machines to earlier generations of the MacBook Air, the current 13-inch MacBook Pro, and the iPad. The Geekbench benchmarks included in the report, however, only tested processor and memory performance, omitting any benefit that might be gained from the graphics hardware and flash storage used in the new models.

Macworld has now published a more thorough set of benchmarks, offering a somewhat more real-world assessment of overall performance using its Speedmark 6.5 benchmarking suite and examining all four standard configurations of the new MacBook Air. Among the most interesting observations made in the study is that the new 13-inch MacBook Air actually slightly outperforms the current-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro, a machine that offers a significantly faster 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo processor as compared to the MacBook Air's 1.86 GHz version. This comes despite the MacBook Air with its standard 2 GB of RAM being tested against the MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM.

The report also points to the significant improvement for the new 13-inch MacBook Air over the previous-generation models, particularly on processor-intensive tasks despite the older models offering equal or faster processors. Macworld attributes this difference to processor throttling imposed by Apple on the earlier models to deal with heat issues, something the company appears to have solved in the new models to allow the processors to run at closer to their full capacity.

When first released in 2008, the MacBook Air suffered from issues with heat, and Apple's approach to fixing the problem was to slow down the processor when things started to heat up, usually during processor intensive tasks. So even though you might have a 1.86GHz processor in your MacBook Air, it might be running much slower at times when you could really use the faster speed.

Looking at our benchmark results, it appears that these latest MacBook Air models (even with processor speeds that are slower than their predecessors) are running closer to their specified speeds, and therefore outperforming the "faster" processors that they replace.

Apple's 11-inch MacBook Air of course does not match the 13-inch model's performance in most areas, due to its slower 1.4 GHz processor, and of course neither machine is able to challenge the 15" MacBook Pro running a higher-end Core i5 processor, but the new 13-inch MacBook Air at least seems to be a worthy competitor to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, as well as the MacBook.

An iOS 4.1 bug discovered in our forums late last week has been gaining significant attention for its ability to allow users to bypass the built-in passcode protection on the iPhone to view contacts, call histories, and voicemail. While the bug does not permit full access to the iPhone's functions, as the home and lock buttons remain mostly non-functional, users have also reported being able to activate music functions and voice control while in this mode.

The passcode bypass is performed by attempting to place an Emergency Call to a non-emergency number (such as "###") and quickly hitting the lock button on the top of the iPhone after placing the call. The iPhone immediately opens up to the Phone application, offering full access to contacts and other phone-related information.

It is unclear whether the issue exists in developer builds of iOS 4.2 currently being distributed by Apple, as some users have reported that they have been able to replicate it under iOS 4.2 while others claim that they can not. Complicating the assessment is a lack of information from these sources regarding which builds of iOS 4.2 they are running.

Update: Wired received a statement from an Apple spokeswoman, who noted that the bug will be fixed in iOS 4.2 next month.

An Apple spokeswoman contacted Wired.com with a response regarding the security flaw: "We're aware of this issue and we will deliver a fix to customers as part of the iOS 4.2 software update in November."

Microsoft today announced that Office for Mac 2011 is now officially available, offering consumers a number of new features in the company's flagship productivity suite.

According to Wilfrid, three-quarters of all Mac users have Office installed on their machines. "That's the vast majority of Mac customers counting on Microsoft for a critical piece of their computing needs," he says. "Mac users need Office because it helps them work with the Windows world."

Wilfrid is proud of that statistic, which he says highlights the importance of the relationship between the two companies. Today the relationship takes another step forward as Microsoft releases Office for Mac 2011, the company's productivity software suite tailored for the Mac operating system. Mac users can now install the latest versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and, for the first time, Outlook. Office 2011 is available in 13 languages around the world, and by November the suite will be available in more than 45 countries.

Microsoft's Office for Mac site offers a tour of the new suite, as well as highlights of the changes included. One of the most significant changes is the replacement of Entourage with Outlook for managing email, calendars, and contacts. Outlook is included with Home & Business versions of Office 2011.

With today's launch, Amazon is offering significant discounts on Office for Mac 2011 packages:

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 - Single License ($109.99)
- Office Mac Home and Student 2011 - Family Pack (3 Licenses) ($129.99)

- Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 - 1 Pack ($174.99)
- Office Mac Home and Business 2011 - 2 License Pack ($239.99)

Note: Purchases through these links financially benefit this site.

Update: Apple has also sent an email to customers on its mailing lists informing them of the Office 2011 launch:

Apple today updated its Apple Store application for iOS devices, adding several new features including location awareness to allow users to check in for appointments at their local Apple retail store.

What's new
- Add engraving and gift wrapping to select purchases from the Apple Online Store
- Reserve products for pickup at an Apple Retail Store
- Check in for Apple Retail Store appointments and call up quick help within stores (iOS 4 required)
- Add Apple Retail Store appointments directly to iCal
- View your upcoming Apple Retail Store activity on a map
- Ability to recognize you when you arrive to an Apple Retail Store and offer you a personalized set of services (iOS 4 required)

The in-store location integration was detailed at the last minute by MacStories, which revealed that Apple has rolled out a pair of applications for its retail store employees called Concierge and Scout. The new applications allow employees to check in on the queue of customers holding appointments and assist managers with deploying staff throughout each store.

The report, which includes a number of screenshots, also describes the process by which a customer arriving at an Apple retail store receives a notification of an upcoming appointment, offers to check in the customer, and displays a photo of the employee assigned to assist the customer to aid in recognition.

In addition to location-awareness, the revised Apple Store application offers support for the newly-launched iPad engraving (as well as iPod engraving) and holiday gift wrapping.

As Boy Genius Report notes, the updated application also now allows users the option of reserving a white iPhone 4 at select retail store locations. It is unclear whether their appearance is imminent, but Apple has stated that it expects them to be available by the end of the year and appears to gearing up to support their availability.

Update: The option to reserve a white iPhone 4 is no longer accessible through the Apple Store application.

Reuters reports that Sony Corp's stock rose nearly 3 percent on Tuesday due to reports of a possible Apple acquisition of Sony. Speculation about Apple making a major acquisition has been in full force since Apple's latest financial results revealed a cash stockpile of $51 billion. Steve Jobs also hinted that he anticipates using the cash for strategic opportunities in the future:

"We strongly believe that one or more very strategic opportunities may come along, that we can take, that we're in a unique position to take advantage of because of our strong cash position"

Those comments, of course, resulted in analysts generating a long list of potential acquisition targets for Apple including EA, Netflix, Disney, Facebook, Adobe and even Sony. As far as we can tell, there has been no credible source pinpointing any actual intentions from Apple surrounding these companies.

As Apple's cash position grows, there will certainly be more speculation about possible large acquisition targets. One analyst even projects that at their current revenue growth rate, they will hit nearly $90 billion in cash reserves by 2012.

Back in July, a rumor surfaced claiming that Apple would begin offering engraving on the iPad, much as it does with its iPod line. The rumor claimed that the offer could be set to launch as part of the holiday shopping season push.

Right on time, Apple has just launched free iPad engraving, allowing customers to add up to two lines of custom text to the rear of any iPad ordered through the company's online store. The engraving option bumps the shipping estimate from "within 24 hours" to "1-3 business days", but allows gift givers an easy way to personalize their gifts.

The iPad is also part of Apple's holiday gift wrap program, allowing customers to have their iPad orders packaged in custom gift boxes for an additional $5.00.

Apple has accelerated Mac OS X 10.6.5 developer builds with build 10H563 being delivered only 4 days since the last one (10H562). The build number was incremented a single digit and incorporates no known issues.

The previous build included a new Combo updater suggesting they are preparing for release. Apple has previously been seeding Mac OS X 10.6.5 builds as quickly as one-week intervals. This latest release 4 day turnaround suggests development is winding down.

10.6.5 could represent the last point upgrade to Snow Leopard as Apple has already announced Mac OS X 10.7 Lion for delivery in Summer 2011.

As reported earlier this month, Microsoft has released software allowing Mac users to synchronize media with a Windows Phone 7 device. Microsoft had held a media event earlier this month to officially unveil its Windows Phone 7 operating system along with several handsets to be available over the next few months through a number of carriers.

Now available from the Windows Download Center, the application requires Mac OS 10.5 Leopard or higher and provides the following functionality:

Windows Phone 7 Connector lets your syncronize your favorite music, videos, photos and podcasts from iTunes and iPhoto to your Windows Phone 7, so you can take your media with you wherever you go.

Though no mention is made in the description for the beta Connector application, it's unlikely that any DRM-protected content purchased from the iTunes Store can be synchronized to a Windows Phone 7 device.