Verizon CFO on iPhone deal

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 12:10:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

The CFO of Verizon, John Killian, has refused to comment one way or another on ongoing rumors of iPh...

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TuneUp´s iTunes plug-in gets facelift +
Apple shelves

post from MacLifer: The best apple mac computer hardware and software posts from around the web on 21 May 2009 12:02:00 PM. © MacLifer: The best apple mac computer hardware and software posts from around the web

Post Author: Tiffany

May 19th, 2009 – San Francisco – TuneUp Media, makers of the popular TuneUp plug-in for iTunes, announced today the product is now available at Apple.com and in Apple retail stores worldwide. Over 250 Apple stores will now sell a retail-packaged version of TuneUp for $29.95. Additionally, both the retail and online versions of TuneUp now include numerous user interface enhancements and feature improvements.

TuneUp was designed by and for music lovers to provide vital features for iTunes, iPod, or iPhone users to get the most out of their music collections. The product’s foundation is a powerful “clean” function that takes an "audio fingerprint" of mislabeled tracks in a user's library, and automatically fills in the missing information using Gracenote®'s Global Media Database of more than 100 million songs. This feature fixes commonly mislabeled music information such as “Track_01”, “Unknown Artist” as well as spelling variations such as “The Rolling Stones vs. The Stones vs. Rolling Stones,The”.

Since launching the product in the summer of 2008, TuneUp has amassed over 200,000 registered users in over 150 countries, and cleaned more than 125 million songs. Stats like these enabled TuneUp to become the #1 most downloaded iTunes software from CNET's popular site, Download.com.

“We're absolutely thrilled to be bringing TuneUp to Apple’s retail customers,” said Gabe Adiv, founder and CEO of TuneUp. “Apple consumers clearly love music and the many ways Apple allows them to enjoy it. As such, we’re confident they'll also enjoy TuneUp’s features which will allow them to get the absolute most out of their music collections.”

Already, Apple consumers have purchased more than 170 million iPods (and 17 million iPhones) to carry their music with them. However, one third of the average person’s music collection is missing song information like track title, artist, album, genre, year, etc. as well as album cover art.

In addition to correcting track information, TuneUp delivers missing album cover art for a user's collection, vastly improving the iTunes/iPhone/iPod "cover flow" navigation experience. The unique design as a “plug-in” makes all of its features possible within a sidebar that complements iTunes’ look and feel.

TuneUp further enhances the music playback experience by providing valuable contextual content from the Web. The application automatically displays upcoming local concerts for every artist in a user’s music collection, and fetches related YouTube videos, Google news and Wikipedia bios based on the song playing in iTunes.

A full-featured, free version of TuneUp is available online with 100 song “cleans” and 50 album

covers. “TuneUp Gold” provides unlimited song “cleans” and album covers and can be purchased for a

one-time fee of $29.95 or for an annual subscription of $19.95.

Useful links:

TuneUp -- http://www.tuneupmedia.com

Download -- http://www.tuneupmedia.com/download

Images/Video -- http://www.tuneupmedia.com/press

TuneUp Reactions -- http://www.tuneupmedia.com/love/

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_gets_facelift___Apple_shelves.html

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NVIDIA Ion Price and Plans

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 12:00:00 PM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Accusations that Intel has forced prices upwards on netbooks based on NVIDIA's Ion platform gained m...

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Softpress launches new website built with Freeway
and ExpressionEngine

post from prMac on 21 May 2009 11:54:00 AM. © prMac

Softpress is pleased to announce the launch of their new company website. Built with templates created by our award-winning Freeway 5 Pro, the majority of the backend built upon ExpressionEngine, the excellent content management system from EllisLab. Famous for its ease-of-use and clean standards-compliant code generation, Freeway is the tool of choice for professionals and home Mac users who prefer to focus on design, not on coding.

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Adobe adopts patch cycle

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 11:15:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Adobe will be adopting a quarterly patch cycle, at least with regard to Reader and Acrobat, explains...

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Saqqarah, Global Impact

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 11:10:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Equilibrio ($2) is a ball rolling game that is gravity based and requires players to tilt their iPho...

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PlayCreek releases StoneLoops! for iPhone - Back
to the Prehistoric Era

post from prMac on 21 May 2009 11:07:00 AM. © prMac

PlayCreek LLC launches an iPhone/iPod Touch version of the Codeminion's successful dynamic casual puzzler - StoneLoops! of Jurassica. StoneLoops! is a casual arcade puzzler packed with dozens of colorful levels, fast action, and explosive game play. Breathing fresh air into the genre with its unique Pull&Push control mechanics and unusual dynamism, StoneLoops! was able to entertain wide variety of gamers, including the "hardcore" crowd.

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Verbatim Nano mouse

post from MacNN | The Macintosh News Network on 21 May 2009 11:05:00 AM. © MacNN | The Macintosh News Network

Verbatim on Thursday announced the launch of its Color Nano Wireless Notebook Mouse that is compatib...

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Russian Clone Maker Rolls Out Fleet Of OS X
Desktops, Laptops, and a Netbook

Apple must feel besieged by an attack of the clones these days, with Mac OS knockoff makers popping up in the U.S. (Psystar and OpenTech), Germany (PearC), Argentina (OpeniMac) the U.K. (FreedomPC). Now a Russian startup calling itself RussianMac is offering a comprehensive line of desktop and laptop computers.

The list of clones covers pretty much all the bases, and includes the RuMac Multimedia/Home Of Theater model, a middle-of-the-road desktop tower the Standart, a PRO tower, a Mini desktop, a standard-sized laptop family called the Book and a netbook called the MiniBook.

Multimedia/”Home Of Theater”

ht_big The RuMac Multimedia/Home Of Theater (machine translation) model is, says RussianMac, aimed at those who want to have a multimedia or domestic cinema computer with the facility to connect to a wide-format LCD-television set and use as a DVD player along with the usual computer functions. This machine is touted as specially configured for outstanding video.

Technical specs include an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 Ghz “Wolfdale” processor (or an optional quad-core running at 2.4 Ghz), four DDR2 RAM slots supporting up to 4GB, two PCI slots, two Express slots, support for connection of up to four 4 SATA-devices, a 500GB/7200 RPM HD, NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT graphics with 512Mb of GDDR3 VRAM and two DVI ports, a 20x DVD±RW drive, a Blu-Ray drive, 10/100/1000Mbit Ethernet, one FireWire port, 4x USB 2.0 ports, 1x RJ-45 LAN, audio in/out ports. The Multimedia/Home Theater RuMac sells for roughly $700 in base configuration. Keyboard, mouse and monitor are sold separately.

Standart

standart_big The RuMac Standart tower desktop is fitted with a 2.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM, a 500 GB 7,200 RPM HDD, ATI HD2600 with two DDR2 RAM slots supporting up to 4GB of memory, two PCI slots, two Express slots, support for up to four SATA devices, a 20x DVD±RW burner, 10/100Mbit Ethernet four USB 2.0 ports, a RJ-45 LAN port, VGA, audio in/out, and a 400 Watt power supply. A wide selection of housings is offered. Base price for the Standart is approximately $490. Keyboard, mouse and monitor are sold separately.

PRO

pro_big The PRO tower desktop RuMac is intended for professional tasks like working with music, high-end graphics and video, and has a lot of headroom for upgrade and expansion with support for up to five hard drives and 16 GB of RAM.

It’s available with either Duo or Quad Core Intel processors of up to Core 2 Duo 3.16 GHz, with the most potent being the 3.00 GHz Quad. Also available are a 2.8 GHz Duo, 2.4 GHz Quad, 2.5 GHz Quad, and 2.8 GHz Quad.

There are four RAM slots supporting a maximum of 16GB, two PCI slots, three PCI-Express slots, support for connection of up to six SATA devices, five-drive RAID support (standard is a 500GB 7200 RPM HDD with a VelociRaptor of 10,000 RPM option), NVIDIA GeForce 9500GT graphics with 512Mb of GDDR3 VRAM and two DVI ports, a 20x DVD±RW burner, a Blu-Ray drive,10/100/1000Mbit Ethernet, two FireWire ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, two RJ-45 LAN ports, audio in/out, and a 450 Watt power supply. The base RuMac PRO starts at about $740. Keyboard, mouse and monitor are sold separately.

Mini

mini_big The 3 kg RuMac Mini measures a tiny 26 x 7 x 27 cm, and boasts low energy consumption. According to the site’s translated description, RussianMac seems to be selling this as the perfect iPhone development machine. The Mini’s processor is an Intel atom 230 running at 1.6 Ghz, with 2GB of RAM, Intel GMA950 integrated graphics, a 320GB SATA-II 7200 rpm HDD (500GB upgrade optional), an 8x DVD±RW slot loading burner, 10/100Mbit Ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports, a VGA port, and audio in/out, and sells for approximately $365. Keyboard, mouse and monitor are sold separately.

Book

book_big The 15.4″ 2.4 Kg. RuMac Book laptop had a 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1 GB of standard RAM memory and sold for roughly $785 when it was available, but it’s already been discontinued to be replaced by a RuMac Book with a Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz with 2GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD. FireWire (hooray!), WiFi, Bluetooth, and Ethernet are all included. The new Book is available for pre-order.

miniBook

minibook10_big Meanwhile, the RuMac miniBook (which looks exactly like the Eee PC 1000HE, suspiciously enough), is, to the best of my knowledge, the first over-the-counter Mac OS netbook. It’s available with either an 8.9- or 10-inch 1024 x 600 matte finish display, Intel GMA950 graphics, uses the ubiquitous 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor, and also comes with 1 GB of RAM, a 60GB, 5400 RPM hard drive, plus WiFi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0, a 1.3 megapixel webcam, three USB 2.0 ports, VGA, audio in/out and a MMC/SD slot. It sells for approximately $500 or $700, depending on screen size.

RussianMac says its computers are ?adapted? to support Mac OS X Leopard, without going into detail, and claims that ?software designed for Leopard works flawlessly? on RuMac computers. As for OS 10.6 support in the future, RussianMac says discussion of that is “premature.”

The prices are certainly attractive. Quality and service before, during, and after purchase are another story. If you’re not in Russia, it’s a moot point as the company says that thus far international delivery is impossible due to “complex” customs issues. If do you happen to be in Russia, and can get your hands on one of these, let us know what they’re like below.

RussianMac claims it does not violate the Mac OS X end-user license agreement ? at least in Russia. The computers are not bundled with a copy of OS X, which must be purchased separately It’ll be interesting to see how Apple addresses this latest clone challenge. Their legal battle with Psystar is ongoing, but it looks like they won’t have any shortage of other parties to go after once they’re through with them if this keeps up.

Read The Full Article:
http://theappleblog.com/2009/05/21/russian-clone-maker-rolls-out-fleet-of-os-x-de
sktops-laptops-and-a-netbook/

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Zykloid Software announces Posterino 1.5.1 for
Mac OS X

Zykloid Software has announced Posterino 1.5.1, a maintenance update to their popular life poster and postcard creator for Mac OS X. With a focus on ease-of-use, Posterino creates life posters, photo collages, frames, postcards, greeting cards and contact sheets from digital images. Posterino supports auto-placement of photos, export of posters or postcards, custom template creation, and various image manipulation routines such as cropping and rotation. Version 1.5.1 offers various improvements.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-5746.htm

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