MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

In addition to today's seeding of the iOS 5 golden master version for developers and several associated releases, Apple also seeded the golden master 11C73 build of OS X 10.7.2 on the Mac side of the developer community. OS X 10.7.2 includes the required components for iCloud, which will be going live to the public on October 12th alongside iOS 5. The release will also include a number of...

During his keynote address to announce the next generation iPhone, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company has sold more than 6 million copies of Lion since it launched in July. "This is 80% more than Snow Leopard." "For another metric, we measure adoption. If you look at Windows 7, it took them about 20 weeks to reach 10% of their base. It took Lion 2 weeks." Lion is available for $2...

Mac OS X notification service Growl has been completely rewritten to comply with Apple's App Store guidelines and has been released on the Mac App Store. MacStories reports on the new app: Growl 1.3 comes in a new app form that has a menubar icon to activate/pause notifications, and a new Preferences window to see notification history, supported apps, configure themes, and more. History can...

A number of Apple's MobileMe services appear to have been down for several hours now, and Apple's system status page indicates that the company is experiencing issues with MobileMe Mail, me.com web apps, and Find My iPhone. Occasional downtime for MobileMe is not terribly unusual, but today's issues appear to be more widespread than usual and lasting a fairly significant period of time....

Apple is continuing its war on boxes. In July, Apple ended physical distribution to Apple Retail Stores and resellers of a number of software titles that it sells digitally on the Mac App Store. Now, ZDNet reports the company is discontinuing physical boxed software to educational resellers too: Apple confirmed today that, with limited exception, they will cease to ship boxed software to campus...

Grove makes a number of bamboo cases for iPhones and iPads. Now the company is introducing super-thin (.035") bamboo plates that attach to the back of unibody MacBooks of nearly any shape and size (11", 13", 15", 17"). Grove also offers laser cutouts of a wide variety of shapes that are placed directly behind the glowing Apple logo, allowing users to personalize their laptops even further....

EA, which owns the hugely popular FIFA soccer video game franchise, has brought the game to the Mac for the first time with FIFA 2012, as noted by The Loop. The game is available via digital download for $39.99 on Gametree Mac. For the first time ever, the best-selling FIFA Soccer franchise is being made available on the Mac with FIFA Soccer 12! Chosen Best Sports Game by E3 Game Critics,...

Apple will be holding its Q4 2011 Financial Results on Tuesday, October 18th, 2011. The results will be released after the close of Tuesday's trading at approximately 4:30 PM Eastern / 1:30 PM Pacific. Apple's conference call discussing the results will follow at 2:00 PM Pacific and will be available via a live audio webcast. MacRumors will provide running coverage of the conference call...

As expected, the new IFC Mall Apple Store in Hong Kong opened to long lines this weekend. NeonPunch provides this video showing the opening of the store: Meanwhile, IFO Apple Store has posted an extensive Flickr gallery of the...

This video shows off a 15" MacBook Pro connected to two 27" Thunderbolt Displays daisy chained to each other. Apple has just started shipping Thunderbolt displays to customers and released a document indicating how they could be used with the present Thunderbolt enabled Macs. The MacBook Pros can drive two Thunderbolt displays, though the 13" model can't drive it's own built-in...

Apple opened the new Hong Kong retail store to the press, providing the first look inside the massive new two level store. NeonPunch provided this video walkthrough (and photo gallery), and reports that Apple has hired over 300 employees to work at the store. The new store is also complete with a spiral glass staircase in the center. Meanwhile, MICGadget reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook ...

LaCie's first Thunderbolt hard drives are finally available, more than 6 months after Apple put its first Thunderbolt-enabled Macs on sale. The Apple Online Store is offering 1TB and 2TB Little Big Disks for $399.95 and $499.95 respectively, both shipping in 1-2 weeks. 9to5Mac reports that these drives are already available at some Apple Retail Stores. In June, LaCie promised SSD drives...

Apple yesterday released a pair of Thunderbolt updates, improving stability of the company's new Apple Thunderbolt Display and bringing compatibility with the display and other Thunderbolt-related improvements to machines running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. - Thunderbolt Display Firmware Update (923 KB):This update improves the stability of the Apple Thunderbolt Display. The updater...

Apple is making a strong push to open more retail stores as it heads into the final weekend of its fiscal year and makes preparations for the launch of the iPhone 5. In addition to the high-profile openings scheduled for Hong Kong and Shanghai that were disclosed earlier this week, Apple is opening five other new retail stores this weekend. Apple's New Haven, Connecticut retail store ...

In 1996, just before Steve Jobs returned to Apple and made it the business-school case-study success story it is today, the biggest thing in Jobs' life was Pixar, which had recently launched Toy Story. He also had NeXT, which wasn't the world-changing computer company Jobs wished it would be. Jobs appeared on PBS' Wall $treet Week program with Louis Rukeyser who first asked him about Pixar and ...

Now that early customers have started receiving their Thunderbolt Displays, Apple's availability of the product has improved from an estimated 2-3 week delivery to only 3-5 days on Apple's online store. The Thunderbolt Display offers Apple notebook owners a combined monitor and hub through the Thunderbolt cable. The Thunderbolt display offers Firewire, USB, Ethernet, and an additional...

Belkin is offering half-off everything on Belkin.com for today, Friday, only. No minimum purchase required, just use coupon code "FB50" when you check out. However, it seems that Belkin's website is getting crushed under the weight of the deal and is responding only sporadically. Belkin sells a wide variety of accessories, from wireless routers to iPad stands and bluetooth keyboards -- and iP...

Other World Computing, which offers many customization and upgrade options for Macs, today released an SSD upgrade for 2011 MacBook Airs that takes advantage of the MBA's SATA Revision 3.0 abilities and offers 6 Gigabits of potential throughput. The factory SSD from Apple only supports SATA Revision 2.0, which maxes out at 3 Gbps, half the speed of Revision 3.0. The new OWC Mercury Aura Pro...