MacWorld News

Apple ranks first in tech-support ratings
In Consumer Reports’ latest survey of computer tech support, Apple has come out far ahead of their competition for their support of laptop and desktop computers.

TextExpander 3 saves you from more tedious typing
This new version of SmileOnMyMac’s time-saving text snippet tool gains faster tools, search, more powerful options for customizing snippets on the fly, and easier ways to sync one’s snippet library between Macs.

Facebook, Twitter ready location-based features
Facebook and Twitter are preparing to flip the switch on features that will allow you to share your location with your friends at any time.

Apple holds second place U.S. smartphone share
ComScore’s latest numbers on U.S. smartphone market share show Apple holding second place, though Android is growing strongly.

Samsung’s 3D TVs: bold and bright
On Tuesday, Samsung showed off its first-ever line of 3D LED TVs as well as other additions to its LED, LCD, and plasma TV lineups, many of which offer built-in 3D technology.

Brizzly gobbles up iPhone Twitter client Birdfeed
Birdfeed, the “very nice twitter client for your iPhone and iPod Touch,” has been purchased and replaced with Brizzly by Thing Labs.

Bike directions added to Google Maps
Google has added bicycle directions for Google Maps making it easier for cyclists to plan routes in 150 U.S. cities including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Portland and Washington, DC.

Intego releases VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection
Intego has released VirusBarrier X6 Dual Protection, which offers all the features of its X6 product for both Mac and Windows operating systems running on the same machine.

Arm sees more than 50 new iPad-like devices out this year
The launch of Apple’s iPad will pave the way for over 50 rival tablet PC devices to be launched globally, an Arm executive said Wednesday.

LogMeIn intros Pro2 remote access for Mac
LogMeIn has announced Pro2 remote access for Mac with a range of new features and enhancements.

E-books are largest category in App Store
Games have fallen into second place in the App Store, with nearly 30,000 e-book apps to choose from.

Apple releases MainStage 2.1.1, fixes 32-bit issues
Apple on Wednesday released MainStage 2.1.1, providing fifty minor fixes to the program including issues with 32-bit plug-in support.

Macworld UK

Facebook, Google and eBay, Internet giants slam Labour’s planned Digital Econ…
BT and TalkTalk, add the amendment to the Digital Economy Bill has “obvious shortcomings”

Google, Facebook and eBay are among the tech giants that have slammed the government’s plans to tackle internet piracy, claiming it will “threaten freedom of speech”.

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac reigns in benchmark comparison tests
Allows users to run Windows, Linux and other operating systems side-by-side with Mac OS X

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac beat the competition and Parallels Desktop 4 in a recent independent comparison test. MacTech magazine published the results of extensive in depth benchmark testing of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac compared with both Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac and VMware Fusion 3.  Introduced in November 2009, Parallels Desktop 5 software allows users, currently around 2 million of them, to run Windows, Linux and other operating systems side-by-side with Mac OS X. At launch, the company promised more than 70 new features in Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, offering users greater flexibility in how they run a PC on a Mac.The magazine compared Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac (build 9308) versus VMware Fusion 3.0.1.

Counterfeit card fraud drops by half in the UK
But online banking fraud continues to rise, according to figures from financial institutions

Fraud losses due to counterfeit payment cards fell by half in 2009 from the year prior in the U.K., but online banking losses continued to rise, according to new banking industry figures released Wednesday.

EFF dubs Apple a ‘jealous feudal lord’ over iPhone dev contract
Publishes iPhone developer license, blasts Apple for ‘troubling’ clauses

Street Fighter IV arrives in the Apple iTunes App Store
With a price of £5.99, everything about this iPhone game is high-end

Students of the hadouken have a new venue to test their fighting mettle: Street Fighter IV launched Wednesday for the iPhone and iPod touch. This seminal arcade fighter brings high-end graphics, complex combos, and a memorable cast of characters to the mobile platform.

KRCS offers up to £100 off a Mac when recycling any computer
The deal, which runs until 11th April 2010, is one of several green campaigns currently available

Apple Premium Reseller KRCS is offering up to £100 off a Mac when they recycle any computer.The deal, which runs until 11th April 2010, is one of several green campaigns currently being run by  Apple Premium Resellers.”Now’s the time to upgrade your PC to a new Mac at KRCS,” the company insists in a promotional email.”Bring your old computer, regardless of manufacturer, to one of our high street stores and we’ll give you up to £100 off a new Mac. We’ll even recycle your old computer responsibly, using European recycling centres, for free!”The following KRCS discount deals are offered:£50 off 21-inch iMacUp to £70 off MacBook Pro 13-inch£100 off MacBook Air & MacBook Pro 15-inch/17-inchMore details can be found at www.krcs.co.uk or by calling the company directly.

Arm sees over 50 new iPad-like devices out this year
A number of companies plan to ride Apple’s coattails with tablet devices of their own

The launch of Apple’s iPad will pave the way for a slew of rival products this year, an Arm executive said Wednesday, predicting over 50 tablet PC devices will be launched globally. The coming swarm of tablets has even prompted Arm, Intel’s main rival in the mobile microprocessor business, to rent more space at the Computex electronics trade show in Taipei this year to show off the devices, in addition to e-readers, mini-laptops and other devices that use Arm processing cores. “The first tablet devices will launch in the second quarter by [mobile network] carriers,” said Roy Chen, Arm’s worldwide mobile computing ODM manager, during a press meeting in Taipei. “You’ll see a lot more in the third quarter,” he added. He said many tablet-like devices will be launched in China, but companies everywhere plan to launch tablets this year, including the top 10 telecommunications network operators. He declined to name specific companies. Like many chip makers, Arm often gains an inside view of products its chips are being used in, sometimes when asked for additional engineering support and other times due to partnership programs. The company showed off two tablet devices at the Taipei news conference, both running Google’s Android mobile OS.

Play.com, Expansys hint at UK Apple iPad pricing
Online retailers will both start selling Apple’s new device in April

Online retailers Play.com and Expansys will both stock Apple’s iPad when it hits the UK at the end of April.

Twitter to begin screening some links for phishing
Twitter will shorten some links sent through the service to twt.tl

Twitter launched a new link-screening service on Tuesday aimed at preventing phishing and other malicious attacks against users of the popular microblogging service.

Google opens marketplace for cloud apps
Google Apps Marketplace continues push into the enterprise with help from third-party vendors

In another move to work its way into the enterprise , Google has unveiled an online store where users can buy cloud-based applications designed to work with Google’s own apps.

Ex-Sun boss dishes dirt on Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Bill Gates
Jonathan Schwartz is starting to share stories about his days at Sun, possibly in preparation for a book

Don’t expect Jonathan Schwartz,  former CEO of Sun Microsystems, to go quietly. Instead he has taken to his personal blog, provocatively titled “What I couldn’t say…,” to dish some industry dirt and tell his side of the story about the demise of Sun. He has already hinted at plans to write a book, and a new post Tuesday suggests a tell-all tome could indeed be in the offing. “I feel for Google — Steve Jobs threatened to sue me, too,” Schwartz writes, apparently referring to Apple’s patent lawsuit against HTC, which makes Google’s Nexus One smartphone. Schwartz says he had just unveiled Sun’s Linux desktop, Project Looking Glass, in 2003, when Jobs called him to assert that Sun’s graphics were “stepping all over” Apple’s intellectual property. If Sun tried to commercialize the technology, Schwartz says, Jobs told him, “I’ll just sue you.” As Schwartz tells it, he responded by reminding Jobs about Sun’s considerable arsenal of OS-related patents. “Steve was silent,” Schwartz writes. A later meeting with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer ended on a similar note, according to Schwartz. The Microsoft duo, then its CEO and president, had flown to Silicon Valley to meet with Sun’s executive team. “As we sat down in our Menlo Park conference room, Bill skipped the small talk and went straight to the point, ‘Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice,’” Schwartz writes. OpenOffice is the open-source productivity suite that Sun backed heavily as an alternative to Microsoft Office. “Bill was delivering a slightly more sophisticated variant of the threat Steve had made, but he had a different solution in mind,” Schwartz writes. Gates offered Sun a patent license. “That was code for ‘We’ll go away if you pay us a royalty for every download’ — the digital version of a protection racket.”

Data issue hits US BlackBerry devices
Two separate problems could be affecting some BlackBerry users in the US

On Tuesday, some BlackBerry users in the US complained of an inability to use data services for the second day in a row.

Yahoo News search: Apple Mac

Mac Rumors

Steve Jobs Ranked World’s 136th Richest Person

In its annual list of the world’s billionaires, Forbes this year ranked Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a tie with six others for 136th place with a net worth of $5.5 billion. Jobs’ net worth is up from $5.1 billion in an October 2009 Forbes ranking…

New Hexacore Mac Pros Next Tuesday?

ZDNet reports that it has received information from tipsters claiming that Apple will release new Mac Pro models next Tuesday, adding a hexacore Core i7-based model to its lineup.

I’m gett…

New iPad SDK Adds Gesture Tools, Removes Video Chat Icons
Apple yesterday released the fourth beta version of the SDK for iPad developers, and observers have started to find a few differences popping up in the latest update.

9 to 5 Mac reports that Apple has added support for “3Tap” a…

Six Months Later: ‘iTunes LP’ Format Performance Remains Lackluster

GigaOM provides an interesting reexamination of Apple’s “iTunes LP” format for enhanced album content six months after the format’s debut. While iTunes LPs were touted at its launch as a means to reignite sales of albums as opposed to indivi…

Verizon Viewing iPad as Opportunity to Push MiFi Service

Engadget reports on a leaked internal memo from Verizon to its staff members promoting Apple’s iPad as an “opportunity” to sell its data plans, seeking to encourage customers to purchase a Wi-Fi iPad model and pair it with Verizon services su…

Apple Reportedly Disrupting iPhone Competitors With Legal Threats Backed Up b…

Fortune reports on a new research note from Oppenhiemer & Co.’s Yair Reiner claiming that Apple in January began high-level talks with major phone manufacturers expressing its displeasure with what it con…

iPhone Developer Agreement Revealed by Electronic Frontier Foundation

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) yesterday announced that it had obtained a copy of Apple’s iPhone Developer Program License Agreement and published it for public consumption. While the contents of the license agreement, which govern…

Apple Releases iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 4 for iPad

Apple today released iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 4 via the iPhone Dev Center, offering developers updated tools for building applications for the iPad. The last update to the SDK was issued two weeks ago, continuing a trend of biweekly revisions.

MacHeist nanoBundle: 8 Mac Apps for $19.95 [Updated]

A few times a year, MacRumors partners with MacHeist to promote their Mac application bundle deal. Their latest bundle delivers at least eight Mac applications for $19.95 (over $280 value if all purchased separately) including:

…

FileMaker Pro 11 Brings Streamlined Database Creation With New Reporting and …

Apple subsidiary FileMaker today announced the release of FileMaker Pro 11, the latest version of its popular database application. The updated version brings several new features, as well as streamlined…

Gruber: No ‘Widget Mode’ for Minor Applications on iPad

Last month, speculation that a number of minor iPhone applications such as Stocks, Weather, Voice Memo, Clock, and Calculator “missing” from the iPad could reappear in some sort of “widget mode” similar t…

Valve Officially Announces Steam and Game Library Coming to Mac in April

Valve Software today officially announced that it is bringing its Steam game distribution platform, as well as its own library of games, to Mac OS X next month.

Steam and Valve’s library of games including Left 4 Dead 2, Team …