It turns out that his hobby 9to5Mac blog was always his favorite and in 2011 he went full time adding his Fortune Google followers to 9to5Google and adding the style and commerce component 9to5Toys gear and deals site. In 2013, Weintraub bought one of the Tesla’s first Model S EVs off the assembly line and so began his love affair with the Electric Vehicle and green energy which in 2014 turned into electrek.
In 2018, DroneDJ was born to cover the burgeoning world of drones and UAV’s led by China’s DJI.
From 1997-2007, Weintraub was a Global IT director and Web Developer for a number of companies with stints at multimedia and branding agencies in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney, Hong Kong, Madrid and London before becoming a publisher/blogger.
Seth received a bachelors degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Southern California with a minor in Multimedia and Creative Technology in 1997. In 2004, he received a Masters from NYU’s Tisch School of the Art’s ITP program.
Hobbies: Weintraub is a licensed single engine private pilot, certified open water scuba diver and spent over a year traveling to 60 cities in 23 countries. Whatever free time exists is now guaranteed to his lovely wife and two amazing sons.
Parallels also announced the availability of the Parallels Desktop 8 Switch to Mac™ edition, which includes Parallels Desktop 8 software and a set of switching tools to automatically move programs, files and browser favorites to Mac, as well as in-box video tutorials to learn about the Mac. Details are available at www.parallels.com/products/desktop/stm.
New-and-improved features in Parallels Desktop 8 include: Expand Expanding Close
iFun got its hands on a Telekom (T-Mobile) NanoSIM, which first started arriving at the carrier this week, and the following message (translated) came along with the package:
Dear partners,
You will receive today a new generation of SIM cards for the latest generation of smartphones that come in the near future on the market. Sort your SIM card please first not in their cards in hand and give it not out to customers.We will inform you shortly about how to proceed.
Two British tabloids, the Sun and the Daily Mail, reported that actor Bruce Willis was going after Apple’s iTunes to let him pass down purchased media to his heirs. It’s too good a story to pass up…except, according to the actor’s wife, it is not true.
The story of passing along iTunes media rights is an interesting story, however. You have always been able to burn music to optical and keep copies around. In that case, retention rights are a little more straightforward. As for apps and other media, it gets more murky.
Another “iMac” has shown up on Geekbench (July, May), as AppleBitch notes, which adds to its speculation that an iMac refresh is forthcoming at around the time of the iPhone launch. This one notably has an unlocked Intel processor, 1333MHz RAM and runs a standard 10.8.1 build, which significantly diminishes its likelihood of being real.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo interestingly revised his estimates (via MacRumors) today on 27-inch iMacs shipping to being much further out in the year due to issues in the supply chain. However, it is not just the iMac. Kuo is pushing all of his predictions further as we end the month of August:
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The shipping gap would imply a very unorthodox Apple release of the 21-inch iMac about two months ahead of the 27-inch iMac. Also unorthodox: Kuo is calling for the 13-inch Retina Pro to be released ahead of the new iPhone and just a quarter after Apple released all-new MacBook Pros including a 15-inch Retina version. (Interestingly—Samsung just announced a 13-inch ‘Retina’ laptop).
Also, in the wake of the recent October iPad Mini event news, Kuo is pushing his iPad mini shipping estimates out a month from mid-September to late October.
These figures vary widely from his estimates from just a month ago, where all of Apple’s new products were to hit the pavement by the end of September and the Touch and Nano were to ship at the end of August:
Marco Arment, developer of the Instapaper App, found a few new devices in his logs: iPad2,5 and iPad2,6. He did not say where these devices were geo-located, but the fact that he is now totally convinced these are new Apple products, and not an easy jailbreak-faking, leads us to believe he found them on Apple’s Cupertino network (or his logs do not record geo-location and he is taking a leap of faith). Update: Arment clarifies (or muddies?) his logging a bit:
It should also be said that Apple’s newest 2,4 iPad, the new die shrunk version of the iPad 2, could also be expanding to GSM+CDMA versions, which would naturally follow 2,5 and 2,6. However, ignoring that possibility and adding together the other evidence and rumors of the upcoming iPad Minis, let us assume these are new iPad Minis.
The two versions mean there is likely a 3G or 4G version and a Wi-Fi version. That goes along with many of the iPad Mini case assemblies we found (right) in which some have gaps at the top where Apple traditionally uses cell radio transparent plastic in its iPads.
Arment assumes there is a 2,7 version out there somewhere that does CDMA, but he’s assuming the iPad Minis will use the older 3G chips and not the newer 4G LTE Qualcomm GOBI chips that do both CDMA and GSM as well as many versions of LTE.
We are inclined to believe that Apple, if all of the above is indeed true about the iPad mini, will build 4G LTE chips into this device. With the iPad 3 and now the new iPhone both utilizing LTE chips, Apple will have the type of scale and cost reduction down on these devices to make them cost effective enough to put in a lower-cost Mini. So, expect a $100-ish premium for an LTE iPad Mini—perhaps $349 with 32GB of storage?
The place where Steve Jobs got his start, Atari, has been porting its classic games to HTML5 on a browser for cross-platform capabilities. Sure, Microsoft is doing some of the promotional work, but the games work across platforms and browsers.
Step into a bizarro time warp and play games like the re-imagined Centipede, Combat, or six others. More importantly, Atari is building HTML5 frameworks for more games in the future, which could benefit other developers.
For those of us Apple Developers and “IT Pros”, the biggest non-Apple event of the year is the MacTech Conference in sunny LA from October 17-19 this year. They’ve announced that Matt Drance will be keynoting and…
Sandy Krasner, a Project Software System Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a member of the Mars Science Laboratory team (the people who made “Curiosity” happen) will be giving a Special Session entitled “Interplanetary Networking, Curiosity Style.” In more detail, downloading pictures from the surface of Mars is not like surfing the web. Flying through the atmosphere of Mars at 12,500 mph; wireless links 100’s of millions of miles long; orbiting satellites that can take pictures of pizza pans from orbit and serve as routers; 20 minute passes 2-4 times a day; 50 mbytes/day; working on Mars time; and even space weather shooting holes in the data stream. Come see how Curiosity returned those fantastic pictures from 166 million miles away. Plus hear about the Interplanetary Internet of the future.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MacTech Conference 2012: Keynote and Special Mars Rover Session Added
– Event helps techs see the future: from vision to JPL’s interplanetary networking
August 30, 2012 — Westlake Village, CA — MacTech Conference for Apple Developers and IT Pros, October 17-19, 2012 in Los Angeles, has announced its keynote speaker, and a special presentation by NASA JPL’s Mars Rover team. The event: a three-day, information-packed event that will have sessions and activities throughout the day and evening. This immersive conference is hotel-based, giving attendees the opportunity to not only learn from the best, but also to meet new people and spend time with their peers as well. Information about the conference is at http://www.mactech.com/conference .
Matt Drance, a former Apple Evangelist, and the voice behind Apple Outsider, will open the event in his keynote on Tech’s Role in Shaping the Future. In more detail, the technologies made common in the last few years have changed the way people see computing devices. The iPhone, iPad, and Mac have transcended merely performing tasks: they’re an integral part of more and more aspects of modern life not just for technical people, but for everyone. Matt will kick off the conference with a conversation about the tech and the ever-important impact.
Sandy Krasner, a Project Software System Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and a member of the Mars Science Laboratory team (the people who made “Curiosity” happen) will be giving a Special Session entitled “Interplanetary Networking, Curiosity Style.” In more detail, downloading pictures from the surface of Mars is not like surfing the web. Flying through the atmosphere of Mars at 12,500 mph; wireless links 100’s of millions of miles long; orbiting satellites that can take pictures of pizza pans from orbit and serve as routers; 20 minute passes 2-4 times a day; 50 mbytes/day; working on Mars time; and even space weather shooting holes in the data stream. Come see how Curiosity returned those fantastic pictures from 166 million miles away. Plus hear about the Interplanetary Internet of the future.
“Now we’re adding a couple of special sessions that really point to a theme attendees will see throughout our event: what the future holds,” said Neil Ticktin, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher, MacTech Magazine. “We’re fortunate to have not only an insightful keynote speaker to pull back the curtains on the future, but to also have JPL share with us a real world glimpse into the interplanetary Internet … a la Curiosity.”
MacTech Conference is a multi-track event with a focus on both programming/development, as well as IT/Enterprise. Sessions will focus on both desktop and mobile with appropriate levels of attention paid to the Mac and iOS. Check out the speaker and topic list (http://www.mactech.com/conference/sessions) for specific sessions and speaker list.
The event will be held Wednesday through Friday October 17-19. The conference kicks off at 10am on Wednesday and is packed with sessions using MacTech’s well-established running order format. The evenings are filled with special activities and events designed specifically to have fun and give attendees an opportunity to form bonds with their peers and meet new people.
MacTech Conference is priced economically at $999 (pre-registration pricing) including all meals, a MacTech Magazine subscription, a schedule packed full of sessions, exclusive entertainment, and more. Registration is far ahead of last year — and guest rooms at the hotel are almost sold out. Pre-registration ends on September 15th, and attendees can still save $300 off the on-site registration price. Register at http://www.mactech.com/conference/register
“These new sessions are in addition to our already world-class speaker line up: amazing people that will present and be in attendance at MacTech Conference 2012. See all the announced sessions at http://www.mactech.com/conference/sessions ,” said Ed Marczak, Sessions Chair and Executive Editor, MacTech Magazine.
A limited number of partial and full student scholarships, as well as educational discounts are available. See http://www.mactech.com/conference/student for more information.
Available on a first-come, first-served basis, MacTech Conference attendees get a special rate of just $184 per night, which includes Internet access. The Sheraton is a quality venue with rooms that typically run $229.00 or more per night, plus tax, and with Internet access available for an additional fee.
Established in 1984, MacTech Magazine is the only monthly magazine focused on Apple at the technical level. Each month, MacTech and MacTech.com is read by 150,000 technical Macintosh users in over 175 countries, from network administrators to programmers, from solution providers to Enterprise, and in general anyone that’s interested in the Macintosh beyond the user level.
If you’re interested in getting under the hood of your Mac, or if you want to know how to make things happen inside the box, you should be reading MacTech Magazine. Contact the magazine. Toll free: 877-MACTECH, International:805-494-9797, custservice@mactech.com, http://www.mactech.com
The fast keep getting faster. Western Digital announced two new speedy new platter drives aimed at Mac users today. The Thunderbolt “My Book VelociRaptor Duo” is a speed improvement on WD’s previous Thunderbolt Drives coming from the addition of two 10,000RPM internal HDDs (the speed of the drives is actually still the bottleneck here —Thunderbolt is very fast).
Extreme speed of WD VelociRaptor drives inside.
With the extreme speed of two 10,000 RPM WD VelociRaptor drives inside united with the revolutionary speed of Thunderbolt technology your creative inspirations have never moved so fast.
Enhanced workflow efficiency.
The dual Thunderbolt ports make it easy to daisy chain more drives for even greater speeds and higher capacity. Add peripherals to further enhance your productivity.
User-configurable for speed or double-safe data protection.
Customize this dual-drive storage system to your needs – RAID 0 for speed, RAID 1 for data protection, JBOD to use the drives individually.
Did you know…
My Book VelociRaptor Duo is a bootable external device supported by Mac OS X. For additional information, please click here.
Western Digitial also upped the speed of its Mac Portable Drives (which we’ve reviewed favorably) with USB 3.0 and sizes up to 2TB:
Ultra-fast USB 3.0 connectivity.
With the blazing-fast connectivity of USB 3.0, this drive lets you access and save files in record time. Reduce transfer time by up to 3 times when compared to USB 2.0 transfer rates.**Performance may vary based on user’s hardware and system configuration.
Massive capacity in a small design.
This compact enclosure offers up to a massive 2 TB of storage. It’s the ideal companion for anyone with lots of photos, movies, videos and files that they want to take with them.
Password protection secures
your drive.
Use WD Security utility to set password protection and hardware encryption and protect your files from unauthorized use or access.
Parallels also announced the availability of Parallels Desktop 8 Switch to MacTM Edition, which includes Parallels Desktop 8 software and a set of switching tools to automatically move programs, files and browser favorites to Mac, as well as in-box video tutorials to learn about the Mac. Details are available at www.parallels.com/products/desktop/stm.
New and improved features in Parallels Desktop 8 include:
Life Simplified
Speak, don’t type – Use the new Mountain Lion Dictation tool across both Windows and Mac environments
Open in Internet Explorer – When a website doesn’t render well within Safari, launch it in Internet Explorer with a click of a button
Drag and drop email attachments – Simply drag and drop files from the desktop onto the Dock icons for Outlook and other Windows email clients to attach and share them
Multilingual keyboard – Keyboard language changes made on the Mac automatically sync, to simplify switching languages in Windows
Parallels Wizard –Download and automatically install Windows or other operating systems (OSes) including Google Chrome OS, Ubuntu and Android on your Mac. Parallels Desktop customers have downloaded more than 500,000 copies of Windows using the Parallels Wizard to-date, and many additional customers have moved their Windows PCs to their Mac or added Windows and other OSes.
Bluetooth-sharing – Multiple Windows and Mac devices can now share Bluetooth connections
Windows apps on OS X Launchpad – Add Windows applications to the Mountain Lion or Lion Launchpad to quickly launch Mac and Windows applications used most
Consolidated notifications – Integration of Windows notifications into the Mac OS X Notification Center makes it easy to stay updated on Windows virtual machine operations
Resource monitoring – Disk space and memory usage of virtual machines are conveniently displayed for easy customization and management
Mountain Lion gestures for Windows apps – Enjoy seamless integration of Mountain Lion gestures with Windows apps – such as pinch to zoom, Mission Control, three-finger drag, swipe between full-screen apps, two-finger scroll, Launchpad and rotate
USB 3.0 devices support – Benefit from easy access to all-important files and data from a virtual machine
Visually Stunning
Brilliant Retina display support – Enjoy stunning Retina display resolution in Windows OS and Windows applications to see crisper fonts, vivid photos, images and animations
No-hassle presentations – The new Presentation Wizard makes presentations interruption- free by disabling screensavers on Mac and Windows, optimizing the full-screen display and automatically adjusting resolution
Improved graphics – Don’t compromise, even with graphically intensive applications
 Proven Performance
Unmatched performance – Enjoy improved Parallels Desktop 8 performance that is up to 30 percent faster for input/output (I/O) operations, 30 percent faster for games and up to 25 percent faster for virtual machine operations such as boot, suspend, shutdown and resume, when compared to Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac**. Parallels Desktop 7 beat the leading competitor in nearly 75 percent of the benchmark tests conducted by MacTech magazine and won 60 percent of the tests by a factor of 10 percent or more.
Availability and Pricing
Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac is available beginning Aug. 30, 2012, as an upgrade for current Parallels Desktop for Mac users. The full version will be available to new customers on www.parallels.com/desktop starting September 4. Packaged software will also be available starting September 4 at Apple retail stores, Apple.com, Amazon.com, Fry’s Electronics, MicroCenter and hundreds of other resellers and retail locations nationwide.
The US College Athletic conference, formally known as the PAC-10, is announcing a new iPad app today that allows you to stream college sports directly to your iPad wherever you are. Games that are broadcasted on TV will require a Cable television login and password, but no login will be required for long-tail events like rowing or UCLA football that do not get TV airtime. All major cable providers are on board except Comcast, of course, which has its own Xfinity iPad app. Pac-12 is working with smaller cable networks to get on board too.
I am not going to beat around the bush. As a die-hard (No. 1 Ranked ) USC Football fan, who often has to run around to different local bars in New York to find the game, this might be my app of the year. Maybe best app of all time. Even better, since Ooyala is helping with the App, fans can embed clips of PAC-12 sports into their blogs and websites. The app will also feature recaps and interviews that are not broadcast.
I got a chance to talk with PAC-12 a little bit about the creation of this app and the services behind it. Ooyala received a lot of help from Apple (which, I am told, has a lot of PAC-12 Alumni itching for this service) getting this product up and running. “Pac-12 Now is game changer in our ability to deliver our content to millions of fans,” said Pac-12 Enterprises President Gary Stevenson. “Today we are one step closer to achieving our goal of connecting fans with our live programming and feature content when and where they choose to access it.”
To cater viewing to each individual, Ooyala created a graphic interactive programming guide (IPG) that is more like a map of what is important to the viewer rather than a traditional grid-formatted guide. In addition to prioritizing teams and sports preferred by the viewer, as indicated during set-up, future versions of the IPG will highlight events that are currently live, games that are tied or nearing a close finish, and games trending in a viewer’s social graph. Additionally, fans can chat and share their viewing experience with friends through Facebook and Twitter feeds optionally presented adjacent to the video display.
“The result of our work with the Pac-12 Networks is a multi-screen fan experience that changes the way sports are watched,” said Ooyala Chief Executive Officer Jay Fulcher. “The web and iPad experiences blur the line between broadband and traditional broadcasts, and are hallmarks of a new way of distributing entertainment – in this case sports – reaching digital consumers on their schedule, on their preferred screen and with a more engaging experience. The result is a win for everyone involved – the fans, the Pac-12 and their participating broadcast affiliates.”
Google currently dominates mobile app usage (if you call the iOS Maps app “Google”—which really isn’t true), but when Apple starts using its own backend maps for Maps, this chart is going to turn upside down. Not only is there going to be fewer map queries going to Google, but Apple partners like Yelp will also see a big increase in draw. Note to Apple from above: You might want to include Gasbuddy results in Maps; it appears to be very popular.
Of particular interest are the upgrades to Boombox speaker and mini-Boombox speakers that go very nicely with iOS devices (as you can see from the videos above and below). We will have a review up after using these for a few weeks. Get all of the information here, and see the gallery, press release and videos below:
Motorola Mobility agreed to license its standards-essential patents in Germany to Apple, according to a filing on Monday (via FossPatents). In the deal, which chiefly includes cellular standard-essential patents, Apple agreed that it is legally responsible for past damages in connection to the patents. The timeframe for the treaty’s conception is unknown at the moment, with both firms also neglecting to reveal royalty rates in the paperwork. However, the courts in Germany could determine those rates based on FRAND policies. The admittedly biased, for-hire bloggerFlorian Mueller explained:
In a filing made late on Monday (August 27, 2012) with the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, the Google subsidiary has now confirmed the recent conclusion of a standard-essential patent license agreement with Apple. Under the agreement, Apple is now licensed to use some if not all of Motorola’s standard-essential patents in Germany, though the parties have not yet agreed on a FRAND royalty rate, which will ultimately have to be set by German courts unless they agree on a rate prior to its judicial determination.
Given the primarily metal backside of the new iPhone, it’s highly unlikely that NFC is in the cards for this generation. In fact, given the very little space at top and bottom dedicated to those glass RF windows, you can almost entirely rule it out.
NFC operates on the 13.56MHz ISM band, which has a relatively large wavelength, at 22.1 m. Making a traditional dipole antenna that radiates at all given the constraints of a smartphone package is thus a big challenge, considering that smartphones are maybe 5-inches tall at maximum, to say nothing of the supposed upcoming iPhone’s longest linear dimension.
Darlymple often gets directives from Apple, which seem aimed at tempering expectations for upcoming products without an official announcement. The post is in response to an iPhone parts leak from yesterday in which a mystery chip was speculated to carry NFC. Coincidentally, Patently Apple dug up another new Apple iPhone NFC patent this morning that shows an NFC reader right at the top of the iPhone (44). Apple has clearly been investigating NFC hardware for a while.
The Wall Street Journal hinted last month that Apple was dropping the NFC idea:
Apple just announced that Vice President of Mac Software Engineering Craig Federighi and Vice President of Hardware Engineering Dan Riccio will join CEO Tim Cook’s executive team as SVPs. Apple’s Executive Bio page updated thusly:
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Note: Apple currently has two SVPs of hardware engineering. Bob Mansfield announced his retirement in June but will instead stay to work on future products, while reporting to Cook.
Reports emerged over the weekend about AT&T forcing its employees into a Sept. 21 to Sept. 30 “Vacation Blackout”.
According to an AT&T sales rep, AT&T staff has been given a vacation blackout from September 21 to September 30, just like Verizon employees. Our source also mentioned that blue carrier employees are undergoing training for an “iconic release.”
“Not true!” we’ve heard. We reached out to AT&T to see what it had to say regarding the above. An AT&T spokesperson told us this morning that there is no company-wide vacation blackout for the end of September.
We also talked to AT&T reps at other stores who implied more people are being put on duty, depending on staffing levels of that particular store, but there is no “blackout.” One New York employee will even sit out the first week of the iPhone launch due to a long-planned vacation.
TechCrunch sourced one rep from a single AT&T store, which may have its own little under-staffed blackout, but, as we heard, the policy is not nationwide.
While not official from Apple, the store that was previously rumored to be an Apple Store in Stockholm’s Taby C mall appears pretty likely to be an Apple Store. The run-up to this day has been long for Swedish Apple users. The local MacWorld.se says doors should open around Oct. 25, which is just in time for iPad Minis and the holidays. Watch out IKEA!
[Internal Memo] Regarding the Jury Verdict in California
On Friday, August 24, 2012, the jury verdict in our trial against Apple was announced at the US District Court for the Northern District of California. The following is an internal memo that reflects Samsung’s position regarding the verdict:
We initially proposed to negotiate with Apple instead of going to court, as they had been one of our most important customers. However, Apple pressed on with a lawsuit, and we have had little choice but to counter-sue, so that we can protect our company.
Certainly, we are very disappointed by the verdict at the US District Court for the Northern District of California (NDCA), and it is regrettable that the verdict has caused concern amongst our employees, as well as our loyal customers.
However, the judge’s final ruling remains, along with a number of other procedures. We will continue to do our utmost until our arguments have been accepted.
The NDCA verdict starkly contrasts decisions made by courts in a number of other countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Korea, which have previously ruled that we did not copy Apple’s designs. These courts also recognized our arguments concerning our standards patents.
History has shown there has yet to be a company that has won the hearts and minds of consumers and achieved continuous growth, when its primary means to competition has been the outright abuse of patent law, not the pursuit of innovation.
We trust that the consumers and the market will side with those who prioritize innovation over litigation, and we will prove this beyond doubt.
If, when you read “History has shown there has yet to be a company that has won the hearts and minds of consumers and achieved continuous growth, when its primary means to competition has been the outright abuse of patent law, not the pursuit of innovation.” you thought “Microsoft!”, you are not alone. Expand Expanding Close
Yet another new iPhone parts leak surfaced over the weekend at Apple.pro. At first glance, everything looks like a rerun of leaks past, but that new square chip subsystem at the top, as Macotakara notes, could yield some exciting possibilities. The most obvious answer is NFC.
We first found NFC code in hardware dumps from upcoming iPhone prototypes, so the likelihood of Apple including the hardware is high.
Further investigation into this hardware code dump leads us to believe that these iPhones also have Near Field Communication controllers directly connected to the Power Management Unit.
If you flip that iPhone part over, the unnamed chip seems to be in the same general area where Apple’s patents place the NFC radio/receiver. Many believe Apple putting NFC in the iPhone will change the game and be a big part of the Sept. 12 event. Expand Expanding Close
Google is implying this evening that the core Android OS was not part of the problem with Samsung’s big patent loss last week. The Verge noted Google’s official statement:
The court of appeals will review both infringement and the validity of the patent claims. Most of these don’t relate to the core Android operating system, and several are being re-examined by the US Patent Office. The mobile industry is moving fast and all players — including newcomers — are building upon ideas that have been around for decades. We work with our partners to give consumers innovative and affordable products, and we don’t want anything to limit that.
Can this really be the case when the “pure Google” Nexus S was hit with two patents: the ‘381 inertial scrolling and rubber band effect’ patent and Patent 915 (right), which covers “programming interface for responding to finger scrolls and gestures” (a pretty far reaching one). They are not hardware patents or issues due to “rectangles” or any other manufacturing claims. These are software patents and there is no Samsung in pure Android software.
To be clear, Nexus devices are Google devices manufactured by Samsung (or HTC or Acer) and loaded with the “Pure Google Android OS” without any Samsung Touchwiz overlay or carrier software.
Google’s Android OS, not just Samsung, was hit with two different patent infringement charges last week.
As you can probably see, we made some big changes to the look and feel of the site this weekend. The new design was put together by Get10Up.com and we want to thank Taylor, Jake and the rest of the team for getting it all into place and making this happen.
We did not hate the old 9to5 design, but we wanted to start from scratch on so many different aspects due to Retina devices proliferating and the move toward mobile. Some improvements you will notice:
1. All of the design elements are optimized for Retina displays. In addition, we are able to display images and video over 700 pixels wide in this new format (1,400 pixel Retina). This allows us to bring imagery and video clarity that has always been hard to deliver (without “open in a new window”). Our CMS/Hosting partners WordPress VIP are also jumping on the Retina train with new additions that will allow us to deliver Retina quality imagery without compromising load times for those without Retina displays.
2. Mobile. We have been through a bunch of mobile designs before, which we were not particularly fond of (and neither were you!), but last year we gave up and decided we were going to start fresh. If you are reading this on a mobile device, you will hopefully like the changes at hand. Desktop users: Have a look…or just resize your browser and notice how the responsive desktop elements fall away into a mobile experience.
3. Load times. Even with Retina images and design elements, we wanted to bring load times down. The team at Get10Up was able to pull this off with their mastery of WordPress, CSS and some front- and back-end “magic.” No matter what device you are using, you should notice significant page load time improvement.
4. We are a blog and proud of it. Recently, many of the bigger blogs attempted to change formats from their roots in the reverse chronological format into something like a magazine or newspaper. We played with the idea, but we found that we really, truly enjoy the traditional blog format whether we’re on an iPhone, an iPad, or our Macs. With that said, we also enlarged our Top 4 Feature Stories to spread across the page. In addition, we are improving our “asides” as smaller, title-only lines on the front page. We love these for small, quick bits of news and hope you do too.
5. Hooray for Authors! We gave a little more space to Mark, Jordan, Elyse, Jake, Mike, and all of our contributors who do a great job of delivering Apple news, rumors, reviews, and opinion to you first. You will see their faces on stories so you will know who is delivering your news.
6. Sharing buttons: Nowhere and everywhere. We labored over the decision about whether to include sharing buttons. On one hand, they are very helpful when you want to share a post with your social networks. On the other hand, they take valuable load time, are ugly, and they get in the way of the flow of content.
We think we came up with an elegant compromise: There are no social buttons anywhere on the site, but sharing buttons will load with counts (now including Pinterest!) if you hit the ‘share’ text on top or ‘share this’ text on the bottom of a post. They are a little harder to find, but we think you will have no problem sharing if you should decide.
7. You! As you’ve probably noticed (see @inadarei above), we’ve been embedding a lot of reader Tweet reactions to posts recently. Besides just calling out great comments, embedding allows us to share the conversation. If you have something to add, include the post URL and cc @9to5mac on the tweet for consideration.
We also pushed updates to 9to5Google.comand 9to5Toys.com, which should unite the experience. 9to5Forums.comand our commenting engine also got a big pickup this week from VanillaForums. It improves voting/order of comments, spam removal, and a host of smaller improvements. 9to5Forums will move to the new design shortly.
We really hope you like the update and it improves your experience at 9to5 (more on the way too). We love bringing you your favorite technology news!
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