MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

The Santa Fe Opera yesterday announced a new opera coming from composer Mason Bates and librettist Mark Campbell in 2017, set to detail the complicated personal and professional life of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs (via LA Times). Titled "The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs," the opera is planned to include characters not only from Jobs' work life, but his personal life as well, including his father,...

The Svalt D is a MacBook dock with a unique feature - a built in cooling fan that's designed to keep a MacBook's temperature down when used in clamshell mode with an external monitor. Keeping the MacBook cool helps prevent processor throttling due to the high temperatures a MacBook is subjected to when in clamshell mode. We went hands-on with the Svalt D to test the claims that it reduces...

Construction workers in Cupertino are making slow but steady progress on Apple's spaceship-shaped second campus, according to a new aerial video shot by drone pilot Duncan Sinfield and shared with MacRumors. Shot just this morning, Sinfield's video offers an updated look at the current state of construction. The foundation of the ring-shaped building has been completed for several months now,...

As Back to School approaches, we may see major retailers dropping the prices on Macs and tablets in an effort to draw people into stores. This week, there are no standout deals on iPads or iPhones, but there are a few Macs that are available for reasonable prices, including the 27-inch 3.3GHz Retina iMac, available for $1,799, the lowest price we've seen on that machine yet. Last week, Apple...

Apple has offices located around the Bay Area, in Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and San Jose, but for the first time, the company is planning to expand into San Francisco. According to the San Francisco Business Times, Apple has leased 76,000 square feet of office space in the popular South of Market neighborhood (SoMa) in San Francisco. Many startups and major tech companies are located...

Apple is planning to build a visitor's center on its new "spaceship" campus, which will include a rooftop observation deck that overlooks the main building, a cafe, and a 10,114 square-foot store where visitors will be able to "view and purchase the newest Apple products." Click for larger The structure, like many of Apple's retail stores, will be made of glass with a carbon fiber roof and...

Apple has released a FaceTime Camera Driver Update for all 2015 MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro notebooks that improves FaceTime camera compatibility with Windows. Apple recommends that all Boot Camp users install the software update (1.4MB) from the Apple Support website. The software update was released for the following notebooks: - MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015) - MacBook...

Danny Boyle's upcoming Steve Jobs film has been selected as the Centerpiece of the 53rd New York Film Festival, which takes place from September 25 through October 11. The announcement was made by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which hosts the NYFF each year. Steve Jobs will be screened for audiences at the festival on October 3, about a week before the movie gets a wide release on...

Apple will join twelve other companies from across the country today at the White House in support of the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, which aims to tackle climate change head-on thanks to the backing of partners like Apple. The new pledge will cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through the year 2030, "an amount equivalent to taking all the cars in the United States off...

Apple today released MacBook Pro Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0 for the 2015 MacBook Pro, which fixes a storage firmware issue that could cause data corruption in rare cases. Apple recommends that all customers who have a mid-2015 MacBook Pro download and install the update. It can be acquired from the Mac App Store on affected machines or directly from Apple's support site. The...

During today's third quarter earnings call, Apple CEO Tim Cook highlighted App Store sales, noting that the iOS and Mac App Stores saw their best quarter ever, with a 24 percent growth in revenue. The number of transacting customers also grew by 19 percent. The services category, which includes the App Store, iTunes, Apple Pay, AppleCare, and other licensing/service fees, generated a record $5 ...

Apple is planning to open a new retail location in New South Wales, Australia on Saturday, July 25 at 10:00 a.m. local time, according to the company's list of retail stores. The store is located at the Westfield Miranda shopping centre in Miranda, a suburb of Sydney. It is not clear where the Apple Store will be located within the mall, but the development spans four stories and has more than ...

For our latest video review, we went hands-on with the Juiceboxx, a MacBook accessory that originated on Kickstarter. Many of us MacBook owners have suffered from a frayed MacBook charger cord, which is a condition that the Juiceboxx aims to prevent. The Juiceboxx is a small plastic cover that wraps around the bottom of a MacBook charger, with a portion that extends out over the spot where the ...

It's the middle of summer and we're in between holidays, so deals this week are not super impressive, unless you're looking for an older MacBook Air or Retina MacBook Pro. There are some acceptable discounts on the iPad Air 2, but not as good as we've seen in the past, and there are also a few models of the iMac available at reasonable prices. This week, we've teamed up with GameAgent to offer ...

Apple's fourth retail store in Hong Kong, located on Canton Road in the upscale shopping area of Tsim Sha Tsui, will have its grand opening on Thursday, July 30 at 9:00 AM local time, according to a new store listing on Apple's website. The store, at 100 Canton Road in southern Kowloon, will be open Monday through Sunday between 10:00 AM and 10:00 PM. The new Canton Road location will be one ...

Apple today released a new firmware update for late-2012 Mac mini models to fix a problem that could prevent a USB keyboard from being recognized after the Mac wakes from sleep.This update is recommended for Mac mini (late 2012) models. This update addresses an issue that may prevent a USB keyboard from being recognized after the system wakes from sleep.Apple recommends all late-2012 Mac mini...

Outside of a one-month hiatus in January 2015, Apple has offered a wide range of songs through its weekly "Free on iTunes" program since April 2004, but for the last two weeks, the company has released no free tracks. The last free iTunes release was on June 30, 2015, as tracked by MacRumors forum volunteers, coinciding with the launch of Apple Music in over 100 countries. Apple has since...

For this week's giveaway, we've teamed up with Think Tank Photo to give away an Urban Approach 15 Mirrorless Backpack that's designed to hold an iPad, a laptop, camera gear, and tons more. Think Tank Photo is actually a site that specializes in photography gear, so this is a giveaway oriented at those of you who need to lug around a camera, a MacBook, and all the relevant accessories. Think...