MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

Last week, we noted that Apple was preparing to open its first retail stores in Sweden, with a store in the Täby Centrum shopping mall outside of Stockholm being rumored to be the first to open with a September 15 debut. Apple has now officially confirmed that opening date by posting a dedicated page for the store advertising the 10:00 AM opening on Saturday, September 15. Sweden will...

Nuance -- the company behind Siri's speech recognition -- has unveiled version 3 of its Dragon Dictate speech recognition software. The software will be available via Digital Download on September 13 with the physical box shipping on September 24.Dragon Dictate 3 increases accuracy, speed, control of third-party applications, and support for transcription from digital voice recordings -- a...

Apple has released an update to iMovie, fixing a minor bug and bringing the app to version 9.0.8. The update weighs in at 1.08GB and is available via Apple's support website. About iMovie 9.0.8 Addresses an issue related to third-party QuickTime components that could prevent iMovie from openingThe Mac App Store version of iMovie has yet to be updated, but presumably will soon be bumped to...

Apple has released an update to Java, bringing the standard OS X Java installation to parity with Oracle's latest release of Java SE 6.About Java for OS X 2012-005Java for OS X 2012-005 delivers improved security, reliability, and compatibility by updating Java SE 6 to 1.6.0_35.Java for OS X 2012-005 is available for OS X Lion and Mountain Lion.Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 10 is available...

Following their appointments to Apple's senior executive team, Craig Federighi and Dan Riccio have each been granted 75,000 restricted stock units by Apple. The grants, which were revealed in filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission covering Federighi and Riccio, are worth roughly $50 million apiece at today's stock price, although they do not convert into actual shares for some...

Last week, we noted that Apogee was apparently preparing to launch a new desktop audio interface for Mac known as "Quartet", expanding upon its popular Duet 2 portable device for professional audio recording. The report included an image of the Quartet that had been prematurely posted by Apogee, but further details on the device remained unknown. Apogee has now officially introduced the...

The free, open-source image editor GIMP is now available for OS X as a native application. It is available for download from Gimp.org.GIMP is a popular and fairly powerful free image editor from the linux world that is basically like a freeware version of Photoshop, complete with many of the tools used for photo retouching and image manipulation that you’d expect. It’s a great free PS...

Apogee Electronics has long been one of the most highly-regarded manufacturers of professional audio equipment for Mac users, with the company's Duet 2 portable recording interface being one of its key products. The Duet 2 features dual inputs and an OLED display to help users make studio quality recordings in a wide variety of settings. Apogee is now teasing an announcement for September 4 ...

Apple today seeded a new version of OS X Lio 10.7.5 to developers for testing. The new version, Build 11G45, arrives less than two weeks after the previous seed, and the build increment of nine suggests that Apple has been continuing to make a number of tweaks to the update in preparation for a public launch. Apple continues to list no known issues with the update and is asking developers...

Following the introduction of new Twitter API guidelines -- the rules by which third-party Twitter clients must abide -- Tweetbot has decided to end the pre-release testing program of TweetBot for Mac.The public Alpha program began more than a month ago to help Tweetbot get feedback on the Mac Twitter client as the developers moved towards final release.One of the API changes relates to how...

Philipp Seibel of eightloops let us know that his company was working on a fresh new take on the OS X email client. There has been a bit of a resurgence in the interest of alternative Mail clients since the launch and acquisition of Sparrow, which has left some customers abandoned. Eightloops' new client is called Unibox and borrows a lot of organization and interface cues from chat...

Some ten weeks after the launch of the 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, Apple is just now catching up with demand, as evidenced by shipping estimates for new orders in many countries' Apple Online Stores moving to "in stock" status for standard configurations. The major exception to this status is in the Americas, where estimates have moved to 2-4 business days. These new estimates are improvements...

Apple today seeded a developer build of Safari 6.0.1 for OS X Lion for testing, giving developers a chance to test out the next minor standalone update to Apple's Internet browser. Safari 6.0.1 is included in the OS X 10.8.2 developer build seeded yesterday, but Apple will also be releasing the update for users still running OS X Lion. The Safari update comes on top of larger developer...

Following yesterday's news that testing of OS X 10.8.2 was imminent, Apple today pushed out the first developer build of the update. The testing begins just as Apple is making OS X 10.8.1 available to the public. The first developer build of OS X 10.8.2 arrives as Build 12C31a in the form of a 641.83 MB combo update, and Apple is asking testers to focus on Messages, Facebook, Game Center,...

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that a former Apple employee who was fired last December has filed suit against the company, claiming that Steve Jobs had promised him lifetime job security. The employee, Wayne Goodrich, served as the executive producer for Apple's public presentations and says that he was a confidant of Jobs. Goodrich says that he oversaw the production of a number of important...

The Moscow News reports (via 9to5Mac) that Apple is apparently making preparations to begin direct sales of its products in Russia, with retail stores perhaps set to follow in the future.Apple has registered a company Apple Rus and assigned Vitaly Morozko, the corporation’s local legal advisor, as its director general, Kommersant reported. In spring 2011, when Apple top managers travelled to ...

Apple has seeded a new beta of OS X 10.8.1 to developers, exactly a week after the first build came out, according to 9to5Mac. The release has a build number of 12B17 and Apple reports no known issues, but asks developers to focus on a wide variety of areas for their testing. The delta update -- where only items that have changed are downloaded -- weighs in at 43.27MB. According to 9to5Mac...

Apple has released a new beta build of OS X Lion 10.7.5 to developers. The new beta has a build number of 11G36. Apple reports that it has no issues, but asks developers to examine graphics performance and quality, as well as image and media importing, editing or viewing. A previous build of 10.7.5 was released on July...