News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
News, Reviews and more from Australia's Macintosh Authority
Worldwide sales of phones reached nearly 305 million in the second quarter, 11.8 percent over the same period last year, according to research released by Gartner. While that reflects that there are some bright spots, growth was tempered by economic slowdowns in some regions. In mature markets like Europe and the US, buyers are favouring mid-tier phones over high-end devices, the researchers found. Also, fewer people are choosing to replace their phones as high fuel and food costs compete for dollars.Economic trouble in many regions of the world is slowing down mobile phone sales, presen...
The wait is over for users of the Australian iTunes Store who've been looking longingly at the movie content available from the American counterpart of the Store. As of this morning, movies from 20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Sony Pictures Television International and Lionsgate are available for sale and rental.
Matthew JC. Powell | Aug 14, 2008
At the moment, Research In Motion's BlackBerry is very much the dominant player in the corporate smartphone market -- a position it has held for some time and in which it is well and truly entrenched. It's the game to beat if Apple wants to boast about enterprise adoption of the iPhone, and so far it's got little more than a few careful sniffs. One of those sniffers, however, happens to be one of the biggest companies on the planet.
Matthew JC. Powell | Aug 14, 2008
Sydney's second Apple Store, its first in a suburban shopping centre, opened this morning to subdued scenes compared to the opening of the George Street Store in June. Subdued, at least, in terms of the media frenzy. The Apple faithful queued up outside seemed no less enthusiastic as 9am approached. And the staff, as always, were buoyant. As with the George Street opening, the entire staff of the Store ran out to greet the queue just before opening, high-fiving and cheering enthusiastically. Then they formed an honour guard, with more clapping and cheering as customers entered, runnimng the gauntlet to collect one of 1000 free t-shirts available for the occasion.
Matthew JC. Powell | Aug 9, 2008
There were 6am calls from Finnish certificate authorities and also some pretty harsh words from his peers in the security community, even an accidentally leaked Black Hat presentation, but after managing the response to one of the most highly publicised internet flaws in recent memory, Dan Kaminsky said Wednesday that he’d do it all over again.
Robert McMillan | Aug 7, 2008
Sun Microsystems has begun offering a downloadable beta version of StarOffice 9, its office software suite. The beta release is free; the release version of the application is currently priced at $US69.95. StarOffice is based on the same underpinnings as the open source office suite OpenOffice.org. It provides an alternative to Microsoft Office using applications that support the XML file format. Individual components of StarOffice include a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, drawing tool, database tool and formula generator.
Peter Cohen | Aug 5, 2008
Apple has announced that its second NSW store will open on Saturday 9 August in Chatswood on Sydney's North Shore. The Store, in the Chatswood Chase shopping centre at 345 Victoria Avenue, promises to be somewhat smaller than the large George Street store in Sydney's CBD but will also offer the same One to One training, Genius Bar and other services as the flagship store. Apple has so far indicated that it will also be opening a shopfront location in the Chadstone shopping centre near Melbourne, but has not yet disclosed any CBD location in that city.
Matthew JC. Powell | Aug 4, 2008
Apple on Thursday released Security Update 2008-005, patching a critical DNS (Domain Name Server) flaw that other companies began fixing on July 8. The DNS fix is among 13 items updated in the security release. First reported by Dan Kaminsky of IOActive, the DNS flaw would allow an attacker to introduce forged DNS information into the cache of a caching nameserver. The end result of the attack, known as cache poisoning, is that a visitor to a Web site is redirected to wherever the attacker choses to send them.
Jim Dalrymple | Aug 1, 2008
Apple has completed the process of restoring mail service to MobileMe customers that found themselves without e-mail over the past week or so. According to Apple, one percent of members were affected by the mail problems. The restoration of the mail service also includes historical messages, the company said in a posting to its MobileMe web site. Apple has set up temporary chat support dedicated to users that still have problems with mail.
Jim Dalrymple | Jul 31, 2008
Cuil, the latest search engine startup to come out swinging from its corner with the hope of knocking out Google, is instead taking a beating that could do it long-term damage as a credible contender. The company received broad media coverage on Monday, primarily because it has former Google engineers on its team and because of its claim to have the world’s largest search index, but Cuil is now facing an angry backlash. The site had performance and availability problems throughout launch day, and a growing chorus of search market observers has declared the engine’s results to its queries unimpressive.
Juan Carlos Perez | Jul 30, 2008
Jumsoft on Tuesday announced the release of Home Business Trio '08 for the Macintosh. It includes three already-released software applications aimed at Mac business users, and it costs $US59.
Peter Cohen | Jul 30, 2008
Adobe hason Tuesday officially released Photoshop Lightroom 2, a product that was first released as a beta in April 2008. Lightroom has many new features including being Adobe’s first application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5. Tom Hogarty, senior product manager for Lightroom and Camera Raw at Adobe, said that the Lightroom 2 beta was downloaded 130,000 times. The company received a lot of valuable feedback about the new features and some insight into how professional photographers were using the application during the beta process.
Jim Dalrymple | Jul 30, 2008
Australian free-to-air television guide IceTV is now available via the iTunes App Store for people to install on their iPhones. Usage of the free app requires registration with the IceTV service, which is free and provides a one-day TV listing. Paid subscribers to the IceTV service get a seven-day listing. Other features available to subscribers are the ability to record programs remotely using EyeTV, a personalised TV guide and recommendations based on shows you've previously recorded.
