MacRumors

Just a little more than a week after seeding OS X 10.5.7 Build 9J22 to developers, Apple has distributed a new version, Build 9J27, for testing. World of Apple reports on the release and republishes the seed notes, which reveal ten changes since the last release and ask developers to focus their testing efforts on over twenty wide-ranging focus areas.

Changes since the last developer seed include fixes for several issues with preference panes, MobileMe and iCal syncing, partitioning, and Time Capsule and FileVault backups.

With the latest seed of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Apple has made dramatic changes to QuickTime Player in both interface and features. Changes to the interface has gotten the most attention with a description posted by AppleInsider. The new QuickTime X playback window appears to be minimalistic with all user-interface pieces fading away, leaving just the video displayed:

The only window-based interface element in the QuickTime X Player is reportedly the title bar, which is reminiscent of the iPhone's semi-transparent black glass interface while also adopting hues from the video frames playing beneath it. However, this too fades away and disappears with the new overlay controls so videos appear to float on the screen with nothing more than a deep shadow surrounding all four sides.

While AppleInsider posts "mock ups" of the interface, Swedish site Feber.se appears to have posted a believable screenshot of the new player.

Apple's additional changes to QuickTime Player to "focus on playback" raise the possibility of the return of QuickTime Pro as a separate application. In previous seeds, it had been noted that QuickTime Pro features had been enabled by default in QuickTime Player. With this latest revamp, however, many of the "Pro" encoding features seem to be in transition, and introducing a the more simplistic "ability to export video clips in a variety of sizes to your iTunes library .... or publish them through a MobileMe account".

David Zeiler of The Baltimore Sun points out that the event schedule for the Moscone Center in San Francisco is listing a "Corporate Meeting" running from June 6th through June 12th in Moscone West and speculates that this event is Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2009.

While Apple has historically varied the dates of WWDC from as early as May to as late as August, WWDC has been held on the second full work week of June each of the past two years. Several days ago, MacDailyNews pointed to a similar "Corporate Meeting" scheduled for May 16th through May 22nd and speculated that it may represent WWDC, but that event is no longer appearing on the Moscone Center's calendar.

Zeiler speculates that Mac OS X Snow Leopard will be released at WWDC. This would certainly not be a surprise, as Apple announced at last year's WWDC that Snow Leopard would ship in "about a year".

As additional evidence for a Snow Leopard release at that time, Zeiler points to several listings on Amazon.com for Snow Leopard-related books scheduled for release from mid-June through July. In our experience, however, neither Amazon nor publishers have any particular advance notice about software release dates, and the publication dates for their related books are merely based on "best guesses".

Apple has seeded a new version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, termed Build 10A286, to developers. World of Apple republishes the seed notes, which highlight three significant changes in the new build: a new QuickTime user interface, Cocoa-based Finder features, and Safari 4 beta as the default browser.

QuickTime Player
The new QuickTime Player has a new minimal UI and is focused on playback.

Finder
Finder includes a new Cocoa Desktop, Info Window and Contextual Menu

Safari
Safari 4 beta is included in the seed as the default browser.

World of Apple also notes that developers are being encouraged to run the new build in 64-bit mode, signaling a "major shift" in that direction.

Snow Leopard is due for release sometime in 2009, and Apple has been making steady progress on the new operating system, as demonstrated by consistent releases of new builds to developers. Apple has said that they are focusing on quality and performance in Snow Leopard rather than introducing significant numbers of new features.

Apple today released Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station (802.11n) Firmware 7.4.1, bringing bug fixes and security enhancements to the just-released models, as well as older 802.11n-capable AirPort Extreme Base Station, AirPort Express, and Time Capsule models.

Notably, the update also enables remote access to attached drives for both previous AirPort Extreme Base Station 802.11n models as well as the first-generation Time Capsule. (The dual-band broadcast support and guest networking features also added to the newly-released models require hardware modifications, and are thus not available for older models.) Apple's support document provides additional details on the release.

For AirPort Extreme (Early 2009) and Time Capsule (Early 2009) that ship with firmware 7.4, the firmware 7.4.1 update:

- Resolves an issue in which a client computer may be disconnected when waking from sleep
- Addresses an issue in which redirecting SMTP port services may disable IP-layer networking
- Improves the reliability of Back to My Mac-based disk sharing
- Includes recent AirPort security updates

For AirPort Extreme with 802.11n (Fast Ethernet), AirPort Extreme with 802.11n (Gigabit Ethernet), AirPort Express with 802.11n, and original Time Capsule models, the firmware 7.4.1 update:

- Enables remote administration and remote access to compatible USB connected drives via Back to My Mac (except on AirPort Express)
- Improves reliability when backing up to a Time Capsule via Time Machine
- Includes recent AirPort security updates

The security enhancements included with the update are detailed in a separate support document.

The firmware update is currently available via the AirPort Utility setup and management application. Users should be sure to update to the recently-released AirPort Utility 5.4.1 before attempting to update their base station's firmware.

The release of the new Mac Pro on Tuesday marked the first use of Intel's Nehalem processor in Apple's products. As in the past, Intel has allowed Apple to get early access to their newest processors ahead of the competition. These Nehalem Xeon processors used in the high end Mac Pros have not even been officially announced by Intel yet.

Apple details the technical improvements of these new Nehalem processors on their product pages for the Mac Pro. While the descriptions and benchmarks are primarily marketing materials, they do offer simple explanations of some of the new technologies found in Nehalem. Some highlights include:

- Single die 64-bit architecture with fast access to cache data
- Integrated memory controller with significantly more memory bandwidth
- Turbo Boost: "If youre using an application that doesnt need every core, Turbo Boost shuts off the idle cores while simultaneously increasing the speed of the active ones, up to 3.33GHz on a 2.93GHz Mac Pro."

While Apple's tests show large improvements in memory bandwidth and floating point performance, many customers are awaiting 3rd party benchmarks to make a final purchasing decision. Notably, however, specific tasks or applications could see significantly higher performance boosts with Nehalem than might otherwise be expected.

An x264 developer has reported that Nehalem SSE changes are extremely beneficial to x264 performance and "have led to an enormous overall performance increase[s]" over Penryn processors. As this processor support trickles out, it should speed up the time to encode H.264 video substantially.

Meanwhile, VMWare customers may also see significant improvements in running VMWare Fusion on the new Nehalem Mac Pros. According to a forum post by VMWare's Ben Gertzfield, VMWare 2.02 already supports a new feature called "Extended Page Tables" which should result in "a pretty significant performance boost on the new Nehalem CPUs when running Fusion virtual machines."

This is a huge benefit to virtualization software: without EPT, a big chunk of the heavy lifting that a virtual machine has to do is emulating the "map virtual memory address X to physical memory address Y" work that a traditional MMU does.

The first of the Nehalem Mac Pros are expected to ship early next week.

Engadget has posted an unboxing gallery of the new iMac. Externally, there is not much different in the new machine with the exception the removal of the FireWire 400 port and addition of a mini DisplayPort. The new iMac does come with the keypad-less keyboard (pictured above). MacRumors readers who are waiting on delivery of their new iMacs are congregating in this thread.

Meanwhile iFixit has disassembled the iMac completely and provided their usual detailed gallery.

Primate Labs has already posted some benchmarks of the new iMacs and Mac minis. Unsurprisingly they found that processor speed has not improved significantly between the older and the new models:

Processor performance hasnt increased substantially in the latest hardware; the performance increase seems to scale with processor speed. This isnt surprising, since neither the iMac nor the Mac mini moved to a new processor architecture.

Geekbench, however, only measures processor and memory performance and does not measure graphics card performance. The main improvement in these models was a move to an NVIDIA-based architecture with improved integrated graphics. This should improve graphics benchmarks and will also provide additional benefits when Snow Leopard is released.

Amazon has released a free application that delivers Kindle book-reading to the iPhone:

Kindle for iPhone allows Apple iPhone and iPod touch owners to read Kindle books using a simple, easy-to-use interface. You can shop for hundreds of thousands of books at www.amazon.com/kindlestore, and wirelessly transfer the books to your iPhone or iPod touch. Enjoy Amazons low prices on Kindle books, including New York Times Best Sellers and most new releases for $9.99, unless marked otherwise.

Features include:

- Buy a Kindle book from your Mac, PC, or iPhone using a Web browser and wirelessly transfer the books to your iPhone
- Read first chapters of any book for free before you buy
- Download the Kindle books you already own for free -- they are automatically backed up on Amazon.com
- Adjust the text size, add bookmarks, and view the annotations you created on your Kindle device

The iPhone client will also allow you to seamlessly switch back and forth between your Kindle device and Kindle for iPhone while keeping bookmarks and reading location synced between the devices. The Kindle is Amazon's electronic book reader that was recently updated to version 2. Amazon had promised that Kindle content would become available for mobile phones which had led to speculation that they might support the iPhone.

App Store Link: Kindle for iPhone, Free (U.S. Only)

MacMiniColo.net has posted a series of unboxing and disassembly photos of the new Mac Mini just released today. The above photo, of course, is the same shot that was leaked just yesterday. The retail box image of the Mini curiously only has 9 vents while the actual product has 10. Still, all the pre-release product shots and video turned out to be quite accurate. Aside from the different ports in the back, the new Mac Mini is nearly identical to the previous model:

The outside of the Mac mini's casing seems nearly identical. It has the same aluminum siding and the white plastic top. I guess I can't prove it, but having handled several hundred of the last generation Mac minis, the aluminum feels different. Perhaps it was manufactured differently.

In place of the standard NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics card used on the new Mac Pro released this morning, Apple is offering a $200 option to upgrade to the ATI Radeon HD 4870. In addition, Apple is apparently planning to make the ATI card available as a standalone product compatible with both the new Mac Pro and the previous generation of Mac Pro released in January 2008. The standalone card is listed as "currently unavailable", and no price is given.

Of some interest is the fact that the standalone Radeon HD 4870 requires a minimum of OS X 10.5.7, which has not yet been released, although versions of it have been seeded to developers. No release date for the 10.5.7 update is known, and the standalone ATI card's lack of an availability date at this time provides no additional information on the timeline for the next version of OS X Leopard.

The Radeon HD 4870 had been promised as "coming soon" for the Mac Pro last August, a promise that is finally being fulfilled.

Apple has in the past made newer graphics cards available for previous-generation Mac Pro products, with the NVIDIA 8800 GT card that had been an upgrade option on the Early 2008 Mac Pro being made available as an upgrade kit for the "1st Generation" Mac Pro, which had been released in August 2006.

Update: The U.S. Apple Store now lists the Radeon HD 4870 as shipping in 5-7 weeks at a price of $349. They have also updated the system requirements to say that the card requires OS X 10.5.6 or later.

As we noted earlier today, Apple has updated their AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule offerings. A few of the new features are worth highlighting:

Simultaneous dual-band support - Operates simultaneously on both 5 GHz (802.11n) and 2.4 GHz (802.11b/g) frequencies to allow all wireless products to connect on the best available band. On previous models, users wishing to permit 802.11b/g devices such as many older Macs or the iPhone or iPod touch to connect to their access point were required to run in "mixed mode" at 2.4 GHz, negating some of the peformance benefits of 802.11n-enabled devices running on 5 GHz networks.

Guest networking - Creates a secondary network to allow family and visitors to connect to the Internet, while keeping the primary network with attached printers, drives, and other devices secured. The secondary network can be configured with a different password from the primary network or can have no password at all.

Access files on a networked drive from anywhere - Allows MobileMe subscribers to register their AirPort Extreme Base Station or Time Capsule with their MobileMe account, providing them access to their files from anywhere via the Internet. Drives will appear in the Finder sidebar like any other attached drive, acting just like a personal file server with remote access.

While news of the new iMacs, Mac minis and Mac Pros were the big announcements today from Apple, the company has also tweaked a few of their other products.

Apple has quietly increased the processor speed of their mid-range 15" MacBook Pro from 2.53GHz to 2.66GHz and the top-of-the-line model from 2.8GHz to 2.93GHz.. The change is unlikely to be noticed in day to day operation but is a distinct modification from the original release. They have also begun offering 256GB SSD upgrade options for the 13" aluminum MacBook and 15" MacBook Pro as well.

Meanwhile, forum user MacGeekDC noticed that Apple now offers a wired keyboard without the numeric keypad. This option is now available for $49.

Apple today introduced the new Mac Pro using Intel "Nehalem" Xeon processors and a next-generation system architecture. The new Mac Pro starts at $2,499 and features "the latest graphics technology and an updated interior that makes expansion even easier than before."

"The new Mac Pro is a significant upgrade and starts at $300 less than before," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "The Mac Pro features an advanced system architecture, new faster processors and our best-ever graphics options to deliver a faster, more powerful system that our professional customers are going to love."

The new Mac Pro includes Intel Xeon processors running at speeds up to 2.93 GHz and an integrated memory controller with three channels of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC memory. Apple claims that this delivers up to 2.4 times the memory bandwidth while cutting memory latency up to 40 percent. Every Mac Pro also comes standard with the NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB of GDDR3 memory. An optional ATI Radeon HD 4870 is available for more performance. The new Mac Pro also comes with both a Mini DisplayPort and a DVI port to support the 24-inch Apple LED Cinema Display, the 30-inch Apple Cinema HD Display, or other DVI based displays.

Mac Pro

- $2499. One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 3500 Processor. 3GB of RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD.
- $3299. Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5500 Processor. 6GB of RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD.

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MacMall is offering $100 rebates on some of the new Mac Pros

Apple today announced updates to its iMac and Mac mini desktop lines, including a 24-inch iMac and a Mac mini with new NVIDIA integrated graphics. For the same $1,499 price as the previous generation 20-inch iMac, the new 24-inch iMac delivers a 30 percent larger display, twice the memory and twice the storage. Apple also claims up to five times better graphics performance in the new Mac mini with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics..

"Our flagship 24-inch iMac with twice the memory and twice the storage is now available for just $1,499," said Tim Cook, Apple's COO. "The Mac mini is not only our most affordable Mac, it's also the world's most energy efficient desktop computer."

iMac

- $1199. 20-inch 2.66 GHz iMac. 2GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Integrated graphics. 320GB HD. Mini Display Port
- $1499. 24-inch 2.66 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M Integrated graphics. 640GB HD. Mini Display Port
- $1799. 24-inch 2.93 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 120. 640GB HD. Mini Display Port
- $2199. 24-inch 3.06 GHz iMac. 4GB RAM. NVIDIA GeForce GT 130. 1TB HD. Mini Display Port

Mac Mini

- $599. 2.0GHz Mac mini. 1GB 1066 MHz DDR SDRAM, GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, 120GB HD, 8x SuperDrive, Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI, 5 USB Ports, One FireWire 800 Port
- $799. 2.0GHz Mac mini. 2GB 1066 MHz DDR SDRAM, GeForce 9400M integrated graphics, 320GB HD, 8x SuperDrive, Mini DisplayPort and mini-DVI, 5 USB Ports, One FireWire 800 Port

Apple also updated the AirPort Extreme Base Station and Time Capsule, which are now offering simultaneous 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz dual-band networking "for optimal performance, range and compatibility." The new models also offer the ability to set up a secondary Internet-only Wi-Fi network to allow family and friends to access the Internet without giving them the password to the primary network or allowing them access to networked drives and other peripherals. Finally, Time Capsule offers MobileMe members the ability to access files on their device's hard drive over the Internet from anywhere.

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MacMall is offering $25-$100 rebates on new Mac minis and iMacs.