MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

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...

Earlier this year, we noted that users of Apple's current MacBook Pro attempting to install third-party 6.0 Gb/s SATA 3.0 solid-state drives had been experiencing performance issues apparently related to interference issues between cables inside the chassis. The issue was said to primarily affect 17-inch models of the MacBook Pro. While Other World Computing (OWC) had developed a cable...

Skype today announced the release of a new Skype 5.4 for Mac beta, offering integration with Facebook to allow users to chat with Facebook friends and view and interact with their Facebook news feeds right in the Skype application.Just like in our Windows client, you will now be able to IM and connect with your Facebook friends without leaving Skype. You will also be able to read and update...

We've received multiple contacts that individuals have started receiving ship notices for their Thunderbolt Displays this morning. Scott from New Zealand offers up the above ship notice and expects delivery by tomorrow morning. Forum readers have been organizing in this forum thread while waiting for deliveries. We'd previously reported that Apple had begun shipping demo units to stores...

Earlier this week, Apple released an EFI firmware update for the company's current MacBook Air models, addressing issues with Lion Recovery over the Internet and several Thunderbolt-related issues including compatibility with the forthcoming Apple Thunderbolt Display. Apple has now followed up that release with a pair of new firmware updates today bringing the same fixes to the current MacBook...

Microsoft today released a series of updates for users of its Office for Mac productivity suites, bringing security, performance, and stability improvements to Office 2011, 2008, and 2004, as well as a pair of ancillary updates. - Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 14.1.3 Update (112.0 MB): Improvements include security fixes and a number of improvements for PowerPoint, Excel, Word, and Outlook,...

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is coming to the Mac this winter, according to Feral Interactive, a publishing company dedicated to bringing game titles to the Mac: It’s just emerged from the Feral laboratories that the Mac has been wheeled into the operating theatre for an extreme gaming enhancement with Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the critically-acclaimed prequel to the legendary Deus Ex....

Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs is getting longer. As noticed by Setteb.it, the Steve Jobs hardcover now weighs in at 656 pages, up from 448 pages. Presumably at least some of this increased length is related to the inclusion of stories about Jobs' resignation from Apple, Inc. last month. We confirmed the page number change with publisher Simon & Schuster's publicity department, ...

Business Insider files this report under "gossip", but says that it has heard from a pair of second-hand sources that Apple bid up to $800 million for file storage and sharing service Dropbox, but Dropbox passed on the deal to remain independent. The company has since raised a new round of funding at a $4 billion valuation.Enterprise software-as-a-service company Citrix and Apple took a long...

As first tipped by The Loop late yesterday, Adobe today revealed in a broad press release on its video technologies that its video content creation tools have seen sales increase by 45% on the Mac side this year. Adobe cites switchers from Apple's much-maligned Final Cut Pro X as the primary driver for the growth.Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Production Premium software has taken the industry by...

The Loop reports that Apple's iTunes U education portal has topped 600 million downloads since its official launch four years ago. The milestone reveals a significant acceleration in activity, with the service having passed 300 million downloads just a year ago.According to Apple, iTunes U has had more than 600 million downloads since it first launched in 2007. What’s even more impressive is ...

For users who need a bit more expansion for their Thunderbolt equipped Macs, Magma has introduced the ExpressBox 3T. The 3T is an expansion chassis with three PCIe slots for "outside-the-box" expansion. The 3T can be used to connect PCIe cards for video capture, audio processing, data storage or whatever other needs a user may have. It works with any Thunderbolt equipped Mac and daisy-chains ...

Traders who expect stocks to go down, also known as bears, seem to be moving out of positions in Apple. Bloomberg notes that prices of puts, or bearish bets on Apple shares, have dropped to a one-year low in the wake of Steve Jobs' resignation. Instead of increasing equity swings, Apple shares are almost unchanged since Aug. 24 when Jobs, who turned the company into the world’s biggest by...

Fortune Magazine's Adam Lashinsky is writing an unauthorized book about Apple titled Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired -- and Secretive -- Company Really Works. The book is an expansion of an in-depth article Lashinsky wrote earlier this year. That article included a number of inside stories, including an oft-quoted tale of Steve Jobs colorfully asking his MobileMe team why the...