MacRumors' Mac Blog: Mac Apps, News and Rumors

One reader points us to a comment post that links to a number of photos from a Chinese website which appear to depict the new iPod nano. The photos look convincing enough to represent a photos of a true object, however, a number of details make us believe this is simply an iPod clone and not the future iPod Nano. The photos depict a widescreen Nano as rumored, but have no Apple logo, no iPod...

Gawker publishes (via SetteB.IT) what appears to be a draft of Steve Jobs' obituary that was accidentally released to the newswire yesterday. Gawker explains that pre-writing obituaries is relatively common: But news organizations routinely prepare obituaries in advance, even for the healthy. And if Bloomberg readers had seen the internal story slug, "testjobs," their jitters might have abated....

Alibaba has a few more images of cases for the rumored 2nd generation iPod Touch and 4th generation iPod nano. Images link to the individual product...

Electronista reports on a few more comments made by Kevin Rose during this week's Twit podcast. Coloring in details left out of his controversial blog entry, Rose alleges early on in the episode that the new devices and their companion jukebox software should be unveiled on September 9th, or just two weeks from...

An ad image purporting to be a leaked ad for an upcoming MacBook Pro has been circulating. The image is a mockup made by one of our forum members and not a real...

Update: This is believed to be fake. A number of Apple rumor sites, including MacRumors, have received an anonymous tip purporting to describe details of a "Late September Apple Event". The source describes MobileMe upgrades that will allow the iPhone and iPod touch to access a user's iDisk storage, as well as the introduction of "iTunes Unlimited", a yearly subscription model for digital...

The Apple Store University Park Village will open to the public on Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. CDT. The new store is in Fort Worth, Texas and represents the 15th Apple Store in Texas but the first in Fort Worth. More information at Apple's retail site....

Apple has started televising three new 'Get a Mac' ads which have been posted to their site. - Pizza Box - PC tries to attract college students with free Pizza - Throne - Mac explains switching from PC to Mac is easy by bringing your PC to an Apple Store - Calming Teas - PC has a new line of calming teas for frustrated Vista users Update: Apple has posted a fourth new ad to its site,...

Adobe has announced its intention to drop PowerPC support from After Effects CS4. By focusing on Intel Macs, we save a huge amount of engineering and testing time. This means that we will be able to complete more features for a larger group of customers and deliver the best release possible. Plus, some CS4 technology is so new that it never existed on PowerPC Macs. Adobe believes that by removing ...

CBS5 has video from a fire that broke out at the Valley Green 6 building on Apple campus in Cupertino, California. No injuries were reported. One reader provides this Google map which pinpoints the building (above the "B"...

Microsoft today issued updates for both Office 2008 and Office 2004. The updates provide improvements to "stability and performance" and "address vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of a computer's memory by using malicious code." Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.2 Update weighs in at 159.6 MB and addresses security vulnerabilities and AppleScript reliability...

Expreview clams that Intel will be officially announcing that the Nehalem processors will be known as the "Core i7" on August 11th. Nehalem is Intel's next generation processor that is expected to launch in Q4...

We've heard multiple reports that affected individuals who have asked for some form of compensation from Apple's customer service have been offered a free year of service. Apple's MobileMe email outage affected approximately 1% of .Mac/MobileMe customers and involved some loss of email data surrounding the...

Businessweek's Cliff Edwards speculates that Apple may introduce a touch-screen iPod nano in time for the holidays. He bases this prediction on analyst expectations and other recent whispers, but also reports that he saw a similar device in the wild: Out in the wild the other day in San Francisco, I saw a guy whip out and change his music on a black touch-screen device that looked suspiciously...

U.K. Apple customers may want to wait until Monday to buy a new Mac or iPod. According to one source, Apple is said to be launching the U.K. version of their Back to School promo which typically offers customers a free iPod with purchase of a new Mac. We haven't yet gotten additional confirmation on this, however. Apple's U.S. version of the promotion is presently offering students and...

Arstechnica is refuting recent claims that Apple may be considering dropping Intel chipsets for those made by competitors AMD or VIA or perhaps their own custom chipset. In a mix of speculation and rumor, Ars believes that Apple will stick with Intel chipsets due to upcoming Intel-unique technologies such as Nehalem and its upcoming QuickPath interconnect and Larrabee, a forthcoming...

Brand Channel has compiled a list of "product placement" awards for movies. Apple, of course, has seen a huge rise in placements over the past 7 years. When looking back between 2001-2003, Apple appeared in about 20% of all number one films. This percentage increased to 45% in 2005-2006 and is up to 50% in 2008. They acknowledge that ...

Continuing a recent trend of releasing third-party printer driver updates via Software Update, Apple today released Lexmark Printer Driver 1.1. The update requires OS X 10.5.3 or later and weighs in at 71 MB. About Lexmark Printer Driver 1.1 The Lexmark Printer Driver Update includes the latest drivers for printers you have used on your system. This update is available via Software Update...