Seth Weintraub

Thanks to our website development partner, 10up , we’re proud to announce the addition of desktop OS X Push Notifications to 9to5Mac.com. (More on Safari Push at Apple). We were live last week and we’ve ‘pushed’ the new feature to 9to5Google and 9to5Toys this week. We’ll only send Push Notifications of full stories, not asides.

We’re a WordPress VIP hosted network, so setting up Safari Push isn’t as easy as it is for standalone sites; the plugins and backend had to pass Automattic‘s stringent code reviews.  That said, we are the first VIP site with Safari Push, although there will likely be many more now that an easy plug-in solution is available. From 10up:

10up has created the first WordPress plugin that works seamlessly with platforms like WordPress.com VIP to deliver desktop push notifications, a new feature in OS X 10.9 Mavericks. Readers can receive notifications even when their browser is closed simply by accepting a prompt when opening our website in Safari. Readers can customize notification preferences in System Preferences, or disable notifications from within Safari preferences.

For our publishers, delivering a notification is as simple as checking “Push desktop notification” within a post before we press “publish”.

10up is looking to selectively partner with WordPress-powered publications interested in becoming early adopters of their their plugin / service. Interested parties can reach 10up using their contact form – be sure to mention you’re interested in OS X notifications and that 9to5Mac sent you!

From 9to5toys:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKdcQtnKF54]

MacUpdate just launched their Winter Mac app bundle this morning. This bundle contains 10 apps + 2 bonus apps for early buyers. Together, the 12 apps are worth nearly $400 (or about $360 without the 2 bonus titles), but the bundle is priced at just $39.99.

The bundle includes:
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Black Friday 2013 is almost upon us and we’ve got the definitive game plan for Apple folks out there on tap. We cover Gear and Deals at 9to5Toys 365 days a year so we’re experts on where notable deals are to be had. (Unfortunately, this year they won’t be at Apple).

Over the next 36 hours, every retailer will officially begin their pre-announced Black Friday deals. More importantly, competition makes each retailer bring their lowest prices down further throughout the day. It’s what makes Black Friday Black Friday.

Walmart pushed their sales up a full week, Amazon made its earliest start ever, Target is adding huge gift cards to its 5% Red Card and Best Buy has been putting its doorbuster deals online throughout this entire week. MacMall & B&H are already in full swing. We already have excellent Black Friday software bundle sales from: Parallels,  Adobe and Stack Social.

Keep up with the latest deals and news by following 9to5Toys on Twitter, RSS Feed, Facebook, Google+ and Safari Push to get updated deals as the day progresses. For Apple’s products, we’ll be updating the 9to5Mac Product pages all day long.

Hopefully these online savings allow you to avoid lines (like the folks in the picture above) and have a Happy Thanksgiving weekend with football, family, food and friends.

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Update: Pad and Quill is taking: 20% off iPhone cases,  25% off MacBook cases for 9to5 readers

Brian and Kari from Pad and Quill have sent me a few of their drop dead gorgeous iPhone and iPad cases over the past few months. These are hand-made with natural leather and wood materials with high-quality stitching throughout. The ‘Little Pocket Book’ above is a great wallet case for the iPhone 5/5s.  You can just feel the quality of the materials and craftsmanship here. People stop and ask me where I got my iPhone case and if it was hand made.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boy3tbSBM8s]

This week, Pad and Quill launched the Satchel Bag, Messenger Bag and Field Bag (videos below).  Again, incredible looking product for any Apple user that wants to differentiate from the every day stuff. If the quality is anything like the iPhone and iPad cases, these will be around for a long time.
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We’re gearing up for Black Friday over at 9to5Toys with a lot of hot deals but here are two no-brainers: If you don’t already have Amazon Prime, get it now for free for 30 days (until after Christmas).  Prime would be worth its $79/yearly fee for either its Free 2-Day shipping OR the 40,000 Free Movies and TV episodes you can watch on iOS devices-Airplay/Roku/Games Consoles/etc but you get both and Amazon throws in 300,000 books you can “borrow”. No brainer at $79/year but even more of a no-brainer free for the holidays.

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The Black Friday software bundles are already streaming in and this latest from Parallels promises to be popular.  For the retail price of Parallels 9 alone ($79.99), you get Parallels 9 and a 6 month subscription to Parallels Access for iPad.  Parallels then adds Snagit screen capture tool, CleanMyMac 2 and Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac. You also get a year of Hightail (formally Yousendit) Professional plan for sending big files via email, Boom volume booster and mSecure password manager. A fantastic deal at $79.99 (make sure to click the “Bundle and Save” link), it ends December 3.

We reviewed Parallels 9 in September (excerpted below the fold) and found it to again be the best virtualization software for Mac with speed improvements for Mavericks and Windows 8.1 along with easier setup and operation.

Today’s earlier Black Friday software bundles from Adobe and Stack Social. 
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Adobe today announced a pretty solid Black Friday deal. Adobe initially launched the Photoshop Photography Program in September to support the needs and workflow of photographers who use CS3 or later. Now, for a limited time, Adobe it is extending this offer to ALL photographers for $9.99/month as an annual subscription – valid from Nov. 20 (9:00 a.m. PST) through Dec. 2, 2013 (11:59 p.m. PST) on Adobe.com…
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From 9to5toys.com

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAkzRPycPzk]

Stack Social is offering up a very solid Black Friday Bundle this week.  11 great apps for $49.99, chance to win an iPad, and no lines to wait in. Get in there now.

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According to Israeli publication Calcalist.co.il, Apple has purchased PrimeSense, the company behind the original Microsoft Kinect’s technology somewhere near a valuation in the $345M range. According to the report, a delegation of PrimeSense senior executives visited Apple’s engineering offices in recent days. The purchase would bolster Apple’s living room TV interface offerings and allow Apple to add controls with body movements and hand gestures to its products.

Calcalist reported in July that Apple was mulling a purchase for somewhere in the neighborhood of $280M.  PrimeSense had issued a denial that it was in talks to be bought by Apple. As we know with past history surrounding these type of matters, company denials don’t often mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Apple purchased Israeli Flash chip optimization company Anobit in late 2011 for $400M+, also originally reported by Calcalist. The company now functions as one of Apple’s R&D centers in-country…
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVukJXI5NXM]

After much anticipation, Google finally released its native Google Play Music app for iOS today. The All Access and Radio service was originally announced at Google IO in May with the promise that it would be ported to iOS devices a few weeks later. Then it was rumored last month. Well, today it is really here and Google was nice enough to give us a great look at the service yesterday (video above).

Google’s music ecosystem differs greatly from Apple’s and more closely resembles Spotify or Amazon with a focus on the Cloud. On Macs and PCs you can use it through a browser with an interface that is remarkably robust for a webpage, but obviously not quite as responsive as iTunes, especially with local music.

Play millions of songs, instantly, on any device, including all the music you’ve ever bought…from anywhere.

Google’s Music is in the Cloud (mostly) so you can seamlessly move from device to device, though there is a 5 app limit (but no limit on devices with web browser access). You can upload 20,000 songs for free, create playlists and share with friends, listen to your music anywhere there is a web browser or iOS/Android device. Kind of a no-brainer…
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From 9to5Toys.com:

As we’ve noted on a few occasions, Sprint pre-paid subsidiaryBoost Mobile is now carrying the iPhone for the first time in its history. Launching today, the iPhone 5s and 5c are $100 off of Apple’s retail price if ordered online. However, Boost is running a special promotion until November 24th where you get an additional $100 off if you switch in store from another carrier. I confirmed the deal with a PR rep who said:

Yes. Now through Nov. 24 new customers who come into a participating Boost Mobile store and switch to Boost Mobile from another carrier will be eligible for a special in-store promotion of $100 off any device bringing new customers  additional cost savings.  The link below will help consumers find participating stores in their area that are selling iPhone.

Boost Mobile plans start at $55/month but drop significantly as you make payments on time. Find the nearest Boost Mobile here.
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TL;DR: Gold is Best

The folks at iMod have been active contributors to the MFi/Lightning cable debate since the standard debuted a year ago. MFi is Apple’s standard for 3rd party Lighting cables which requires Apple approved chip designs to run. There has been an ongoing debate on whether 3rd parties should need to follow Apple’s rules since third party non-MFi cables in many, but not all, cases have seemed to function properly.

iPhone5Mod, as they were known then, were one of the first ones with a Non-MFI cable. They were able to circumvent Apple’s recent tightening of the standard in iOS7 and recently they’ve put out a non-MFI cable that circumvents Apple’s latest “cat-and-mouse” effort to stem Lighting cable abuse from non-MFi manufacturers. Unfortunately, if you bought one of iMod’s early cables, Apple has ‘cut’ you out of the loop.
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Apple’s Campus 2 project will also house a 1,000-person auditorium off the main R&D ‘Mothership’, though this structure looks even more other-worldly. The Norman Foster mockups from Cupertino.org, and dug up by Apple Gazette last week, show an auditorium entrance surrounded by glass and with a metal roof.

The auditorium itself will be underground from the glass-surrounded auditorium. For its product launch events, Apple has typically either used its own Town Hall at its main Cupertino HQ or buildings in San Francisco such as Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center.

It seems likely that with 1000 seats, Apple Campus 2 could replace most product unveilings at the main campus and in San Francisco. However, Apple will continue to need Moscone West for WWDC, a conference that brings in around 5000 people each year.

We’ve included the floor plan drawing from our original full gallery of the space from September of last year. You can see from the renderings and the floor plans that both the elevators and stairs that resemble the ones at the 5th Avenue Retail Store in New York.

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Macworld’s benchmarks

…less expensive, better battery life too

Apple’s relentless improvement iterations continue unabated. Macworld’s early benchmarks on Apple’s new base model 13″MacBook Pro with built in Intel Iris Graphics are in and show huge speed gains in graphics performance:

The most impressive improvements in the new laptops came courtesy of the new Iris graphics. Compared to the HD 4000 graphics in the early 2013 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the Iris graphics posted between 45 and 50 percent higher frame rates in Cinebench r15’s OpenGL tests and the Unigine Valley Benchmark. Unigen’s Heaven benchmark showed the new systems with about 65 percent improvement in frame rates over the earlier model.

Iris Graphics also support displays up to 4K at 24Hz, a first for Apple’s entry level Pro laptops.

CPU performance improvement is slight but the Intel Haswell architecture adds a few hours of (Apple’s estimated) battery life while the machine actually got thinner and lighter. Meanwhile, Apple loaded up faster 802.11ac Wifi and speedy Samsung PCIe SSDs up to 1TB and Thunderbolt 2.0.

Price? Dropped $100  to $1299. (we are already seeing discounts/tax advantages in our Products section).
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As hinted by its CEO John Legere, T-Mobile will now be offering the iPad and be a carrier option from the Apple Store. But that’s not all. He hints that some ‘uncarrier’ plans are coming.

Apple just finished their event and we’re proud to be a part of it. But how do we make this #uncarrier? Hmm…

— John Legere (@JohnLegere) October 22, 2013

Update – and here it is: T-Mobile will be giving the first 200mb away free much like it does for Google on its Chromebooks. From there it will be $30 for 2.5GB and $40 for 4.5 GB. Both great deals.

Along with US Cellular who announced on Friday, Boost Mobile will now also offer the iPhone 5s and 5c on November 8th according to short press release this morning (below).

Boost is a Sprint Co. pre-paid sister site of Virgin, which also announced iPhone 5s and 5c availability last month with $100 off retail pricing and $30/month plans. Boost Mobile iPhone media (above) was leaked last month.

Nine other regional carriers have announced iPhone 5s/5c availability on November 1st. 
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Apple has published multiple patent applications for keyboard covers for its iPad that sort of resemble what Microsoft did in its keyboard cover for Surface. Until now, however, Apple has relied on third-party vendors like Logitech, Zagg (who has already announced a new iPad 5 keyboard case) and Belkin to provide these covers. Logitech and Zagg have had keyboard covers for the iPad since before both the patent application above and Microsoft’s Surface announcement.

But today, Jamie Ryan, who lists Apple Developer Relations as a recent job, says that Apple has been working on a prototype of such a device and could release it at tomorrow’s event. He thinks it could be Bluetooth 4.0 to save power and was ‘told other cover like accessories are also being looked at.’

The patent shown above also includes other innovations such as solar power, big media control buttons, multi-touch, wireless charging and even a second display…
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYsSiaBZmRk]

Apple revealed its first magazine ads for the iPhone 5s this past week and they were gold, featuring the gold iPhone 5s. During today’s football games, Apple released its first TV ad with the same affinity for the ‘Midas model’.

The video above (via Verge) shows a similar video shown at the launch event with a quick demo of TouchID.

What conclusion can we draw from this?

Gold is best.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRwcIumf-mI&start=261]

Update: Apple has added the ad to its website

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