MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

Drobo has announced pricing for its two Thunderbolt and USB 3.0-capable storage devices, expected later this month. Units will be available for preorder at a number of resellers including Amazon and Drobo's own online store, starting Monday July 23.The Drobo Mini starts at $649 with the Drobo 5D starting at $849. Prices include a Thunderbolt cable and 2-year warranty. These are US prices only, ...

As it has for past versions, Other World Computing has released its aftermarket SSD upgrades for the latest MacBook Air models released last month.Along with minor upgrades to memory and processor configurations, Apple also included a new SSD connector, likely to accommodate the new 500 MBps SSDs that Apple has built in to the new machines. As a result of this new connector, it took OWC a few...

Apple has released an update for the new MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, including the Retina MacBook Pro, just released this past June. The update fixes several issues:About MacBook Air and MacBook Pro Update 1.0This update fixes an issue that can lead to increased CPU power consumption, and it improves compatibility with some USB devices.This update is recommended for all Mac notebooks ...

Back in March, the State of Texas announced that Apple would be pursuing a major expansion of its facilities in Austin, committing to spend over $300 million to add 3,600 more workers at a site adjacent to its current campus dedicated to customer support, sales, and accounting. With the final approval of tax incentives for the project coming in early May, Apple has officially begun moving...

Last year, Apple unveiled a new, streamline Fifth Avenue cube that reduced the number of glass panes from 90 to 15. This year, Apple Retail revamped the SoHo store with an extensive expansion into space once occupied by a United States Post Office.Along with adding more sales space, Apple's architects redesigned the famous glass staircase. Apple first unveiled the glass staircase design at the...

As noted by AllThingsD, former Apple senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet has joined the board of directors at software virtualization company Parallels. Serlet left Apple in March 2011 and was revealed just weeks ago to be working on a new cloud-focused startup called Upthere.Serlet will serve as a non-executive director, bringing to Parallels his distinctive...

The Apple Store Passeig de Gracia is opening soon in Barcelona, Spain. However, instead of the traditional black plywood walls that are generally put in front of store locations under construction, Apple has elected to be a bit more vibrant:In a style honoring Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, Apple has made a Trencadís mosaic with a brilliant multi-colored Apple logo and a number of other...

Despite being located in the largest shopping mall in the United States as measured by leasable square feet, Apple's King of Prussia retail store at the King of Prussia Mall outside of Philadelphia is nothing special by Apple's standards, occupying a fairly small amount of space with just 30 feet of frontage inside the mall. The store is one of the older ones in Apple's chain, having opened in...

Apple has rolled out an update to iPhoto, bringing the photo management software to version 9.3.1. The update fixes a couple minor bugs:What's New in Version 9.3.1- Addresses a problem during the migration of albums from MobileMe Gallery that may cause photos to be moved from their original events into a new event called "From MobileMe"- Fixes an issue that in rare cases could cause iPhoto...

Apple closed the Apple Store SoHo, New York City's first Apple Retail Store, late last year for a renovation and expansion into the space formerly occupied by a United States Post Office.SoHo has grown significantly, gaining sales space for twice as many products, a new theater with extra seating for special events and workshops, NYC's first business-focused Briefing Room, and a much larger...

Roughly three weeks after Tapbots' Mark Jardine teased the existence of a Mac version of the popular iOS Twitter client Tweetbot, the application has now launched to the public. But rather than coming as a final release, Tapbots notes in a blog post that it is initially arriving as a public alpha.We’ve decided to release it as a public alpha to a) motivate us to finish faster, and b) get...

gfxCardStatus allows users to control which graphics card is enabled -- integrated or discrete -- on MacBook Pro models with multiple graphics cards. By more precisely controlling when each graphics card is enabled, users can improve system performance or battery life. gfxCardStatus is a menu bar application for OS X that allows MacBook Pro owners to view which GPU is in use at a glance, and...

Late last year, Robert X. Cringely released his hour-long 1995 interview with Steve Jobs in several theaters in the United States. Roughly ten minutes of that footage was used in the 1996 Triumph of the Nerds documentary, but the remainder had been thought lost until a VHS copy of the footage was discovered just after Jobs' death last year. As noted by Cringely, the interview has now been...

Michael Jurewitz, a member of Apple's developer outreach team, announced today that he is leaving the company to join software developer and consultancy Black Pixel as a director and partner. Jurewitz, familiar to many developers as @jury on Twitter, provided developers with a conduit for feedback and communication with Apple.Writing on his personal website, "Jury" reflected on his seven years ...

The San Jose Mercury News reports that California Governor Jerry Brown's office has approved Apple's "Campus 2" project in Cupertino for a streamlined environmental review process. The new designation will not speed up construction on the project, which is scheduled to begin in early 2013, but will simplify the review process over the coming months."Apple's state-of-the art campus brings at...

Back in March 2011, Apple announced that senior vice president of Mac Software Engineering Bertrand Serlet was leaving the company after over 20 years working with Steve Jobs at NeXT and Apple. Serlet and Apple were quiet about his future plans at the time, noting only that he wished to "focus less on products and more on science". Business Insider now reports that Serlet has been working on...

Apple has issued a minor update to Aperture, its prosumer photo editing and management application. The 3.3.1 update fixes a minor issue that caused a crash in certain situations:What's new• Fixes an issue that in rare cases could cause Aperture to hang or quit unexpectedly when upgrading librariesThe prior update to Aperture enabled users to swap libraries between Aperture and iPhoto with no...

Late June typically marks the time of year in which Apple retail store openings begin to ramp up, and this year appears to be no exception with three grand openings scheduled for this Saturday, June 30. The group of three is Apple's largest batch of openings since seven stores opened in one weekend last September. This week's openings include: - Ridge Hill (Yonkers, New York): The new Ridge...