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Contest: 3 chances to win a Parallels 8 Desktop bundle from 9to5Mac and MacUpdate

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 12 2013 - 9:57 pm PT
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From 9to5Toys.com

MacUpdate’s offers its Parallels Desktop 8 March bundle which effectively knocks $30 off the price of Parallels 8 and then hooks you up with 9 additional Mac applications for free (normally $618). A free demo is also available as well.

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– Parallels Desktop 8 ($79.99) – Run Windows/Linux/Chrome on your Mac.
– DEVONthink Pro ($79.95) – Info manager.
– Prizmo ($49.95) – OCR Scanner for editing printed documents
– MacUpdate Desktop ($10.00) – Software update utility
– MotionComposer ($149.00) – Design animated and interactive Web content.
– 1000 OpenType fonts Collection ($99.00) – OpenType Fonts.
– iStat Menus ($16.00) – Monitor your Mac from the menubar.
– PhotoStyler 6 ($29.99) – Stylize your photos with filters, presets, more.
– DiskAid 6 ($29.90) – Flexible file transfer tool for iOS.
– Mac Internet Security 2013 ($29.99) – Macware and anti-virus utility.

We’ve secured three copies of the MacUpdate bundle for our readers and will award one on each of the three major social platforms: FACEBOOK, TWITTER and GOOGLE+. Just Follow/Like/Circle 9to5Mac (if you haven’t already) and Tweet/comment this post to enter. We’ll pick a winner as the deal expires next week.

Update: Winners: Robert, Tyler and TK

Google Now for iOS promo video leaks to YouTube

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 12 2013 - 3:18 pm PT
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[viddler id=a66cf352 w=704 h=400]

Google Now, the prediction software that debuted on Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich last year, may be crossing over to iOS in the very near future. A promotional video posted on YouTube today—but was pulled minutes later—showed Google Now on the iPhone and iPad.

A tipster for Engadget recorded the video and re-uploaded it online, which is now available above. The speaker in the video seems to be the same female voice found in the original Google Now promotional video from last year (below). Unless this is a very elaborate hoax, it would seem that a Google Now update is in store for Google Search app.

Perhaps the delay in going live is due to App Store approval.

We’ll update when/if the app update to the Google Search app goes live.


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USB 3 ports? This new Satechi hub has 10 and enough amps to charge an iPad

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 12 2013 - 3:12 pm PT
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This new 10 port USB 3 adapter seems like the last USB adapter you’d ever need. I usually have between four to eight devices plugged into my monitor, keyboards, and Macs in a big mess. This thing divides it into three separate banks, puts it out of the way, and includes a 2.1A iPad charging port.

Get it ($20 off) for $49.99 at Amazon
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Two new iPhone 5 commercials ‘Discover’ and ‘Brilliant’ show off Hue lighting, Passbook, and other features

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 11 2013 - 6:17 pm PT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvKyYeJJYwM

A new iPhone 5 commercial just aired tonight and shows off a few features like cooking apps and Passbook in action. The Starbucks Passbook-enabled app, a remote control app, MyScript Calculator, and the Hue Lighting app that got an SDK earlier today are among the other apps also shown off.

These ads are of the same format as the “Alive” and “Together” iPad ads released in mid-February, as well as the Hollywood ad released during the Oscars to moderate reviews.

Another new ad called “Discover” is below.


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Two great Mac Bundles headlined by Parallels 8 and Roxio Toast 11 for $50/ea

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 6 2013 - 3:36 am PT
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It’s Bundle Season at 9to5Toys.com again where there are currently 4 solid bundles happening simultaneously:

First up, we have MacUpdate’s Parallels Desktop 8 bundle which effectively knocks $30 off the price of Parallels 8 and then hooks you up with 9 additional Mac applications for free (normally $618). A free demo is also available.

Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 6.20.26 AM.

Not to be outdone, MacLegion/Stacksocial has their Spring 2013 Bundle which is headlined by the normally $100 Roxio Toast Pro 11 media creation software for $49.99 but also includes nine other great apps valued at over $390 below:

medium_MainFrame_template_1.

Don’t forget the $45 Lifehacker bundle is still happening as well as the $50 ‘PickaBundle’ which allows you to choose 10 of 25 quality apps including a Mac Blu-ray player.
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Samsung to make strategic $110M investment in struggling Apple partner Sharp

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 5 2013 - 5:59 pm PT
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Reuters has the story:

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is set to invest about $110 million in struggling Sharp Corp, a deal that will ensure it a smooth supply of large-sized TV panels and help bolster the Japanese company’s chances of survival. The 10 billion yen investment will give Samsung a 3 percent stake in Sharp, three sources familiar with matter told Reuters. “Rather than the amount of investment, it is the partnership with Samsung that Sharp gains that is important. Sharp gains an opportunity to use the Samsung platform,” said Tetsuro Ii, chief executive officer of Commons AM, a Tokyo based investment fund.

A deal would come as Sharp tries to boost utilization at its Kameyama display plant in central Japan. The Japanese company, has had to slash production of Apple iPad screens at the facility since the start of the year, sources told Reuters in January, as consumer demand shifts to the smaller iPad mini, for which Sharp is not a supplier.

Sharp continues to struggle to get its IGZO displays into the market. Taking money from rival Samsung doesn’t seem like something it would do—unless it was in dire straits. It is interesting that Apple doesn’t have any (more) cash to invest in Sharp.

Well, whatever Sharp has to do to get this 32-inch 4K IGZO display (pictured above) to market we’ll tolerate.


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If the latest Chrome update crashes your jailbroken iPhone, the fix is to enable crash reporting

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 5 2013 - 4:54 am PT
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We heard reports that yesterday’s Chrome browser update is crashing on Jailbroken iPhones. It appears there was some code that detected jailbreaks in the browser and assumed that crash-reporting was enabled. The fix is unsurprisingly enabling crash reporting.

Google said a fix will be in the next update, but it doesn’t have a timeframe on that.

We have found a bug that affects jailbroken devices with crash reporting and metrics *disabled*. The fix will be in our next release (we can’t say when that will be, please don’t ask).

One workaround is to enable crash reporting. Open “Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Local State” and change the “reporting_enabled” flag to “true”. That will enable reporting without needing to reinstall the app. Mind you, we haven’t tested this ourselves. :-) If you do not wish to do this, or are not comfortable doing this, you’ll need to wait for the next release. The other workaround is to uninstall and re-install and enable crash reporting, but you might lose data if you don’t use sync.

For those who are hitting crashes with 3rd-party add-ons, this workaround is not sufficient and you will need to contact the 3rd-party developer directly and have them update their add-on to work with Chrome M25.

To fix via SSH:
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Twitter puts TweetDeck’s mobile apps out to pasture

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 4 2013 - 4:16 pm PT
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tweetdeck-iphoneTwitter updated TweetDeck for Mac just last month with over 90 new fixes and features.

However, for those of you who use TweetDeck on iPhone, there is some bad news afoot:

To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

“Oh, and screw Facebook too.”

[tweet https://twitter.com/brucecaraway/status/308735851150573568]
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The Lightning Digital AV Adapter doesn’t do native 1080P out, possibly because it is an AirPlay receiver

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Mar 1 2013 - 6:40 pm PT
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Digital-A-V-connector-Lighting-take-apartThe hacked apart cable costs as much as a Roku because it has the same kind of horsepower

The fine software developers over at Panic are working on some new AV software, and they are investigating Apple’s new-ish Lightning Digital AV Adapter. What they found is that unlike the earlier 30-pin module, the Lightning adapter doesn’t carry a native 1080p signal. In fact, when mirroring, Apple says the optimum resolution is 1,600-by-900, and, when that signal is shown on a 1080p display, it is likely up-converted, showing artifacts consistent with streaming and uncompressing video data

Screen Shot 2013-03-01 at 9.40.50 PMBefore it is ripped apart, via Amazon

What’s more interesting is that they split open the cable and found a full ARM processor with 256MB of RAM to process video signals inside the adapter cable. We knew way back in September that the 8-pin adapter wouldn’t carry video natively, but Apple was able to build a cable. How? Panic thinks that it is actually streaming an AirPlay network signal through the cable, and the ARM processor is decoding it.

Why would Apple do this? It’s likely Apple wants to move people to AirPlay wireless streaming to Apple TV, so this is just a stopgap solution. Rather than making a larger Lightning cable, it sacrificed on wired video-out quality and HDMI (And VGA?) cable costs.

Update: Our friends at Braeburn and an anonymous Apple Engineer sent along their takes on the situation below:


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Leap Motion controller shipping May 13, Pre-order now at Best Buy

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 27 2013 - 7:56 am PT
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXKindguPTI&start=20]

Leap, creators of the Mac and PC 3D motion-tracking device, announced this morning that it will begin shipping its Leap Motion on May 13. Last May, Leap announced it would open up pre-orders for the device for $69.99.

With today’s announcement, Leap raised the price of the controller $10 dollars; $79.99 is the new retail price. Leap also announced that starting today Best Buy would take pre-orders for the device with a May 19 delivery date…


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Judge upholds $368M VirnetX verdict over Apple, AAPL stock expected to take a small hit

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 27 2013 - 5:03 am PT
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Screen Shot 2013-02-27 at 8.12.19 AMAs reported at Seeking Alpha:

The parties are ordered to get together between themselves for “royalty” mediation settlement for future use of the technologies in dispute or the judge has stated that he will make a ruling if not reached within 45 days.

Patent troll, East Texas kangaroo court, lawyers making a lot of money over ideas that seem obvious (transparent VPN and DNS). AAPL is down slightly in pre-trading this morning.


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Mophie Juice Pack Air launches for iPhone 5 with bigger battery than previously released ‘Helium’

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 24 2013 - 2:15 pm PT
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Screen Shot 2013-02-24 at 5.13.44 PM

Mophie has unveiled its second iPhone 5-compatible charging case: the Juice Pack Air. The Air will retail for $99. Black models will ship in 7 to 10 business days, while the red and white flavors will begin shipping on March 22.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc1LLhzoSWs]

The Juice Pack Air includes a 1700mAh battery. That is 200mAh more of juice compared to Mophie’s recently released Juice Pack Helium case. Here are the benefits, according to Mophie, over an iPhone 5 without a Juice Pack Air:

Talk Time
Up to additional 8 hours on 3G

Internet Use
Up to additional 8 hours on 3G
Up to additional 8 hours on LTE
Up to additional 10 hours on WiFi

Audio Playback
Up to 40 hours

Video Playback
Up to 10 hours

The Air’s extra juice is a $20 premium over the Helium’s $79 price point.


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Official ‘second screen’ PlayStation PS4 app for iOS and Android announced

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 20 2013 - 7:32 pm PT
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playstation-social-second-screen

At Sony’s PS4 keynote, game developer Evolution Studios promised its driving game Drive Club would have a “second screen” option for Android tablets. This would allow gamers to socialize with other players from a tablet, but it was previously unclear if this feature would be compatible with games and devices other than Android tablets.

Just a mere four hours after today’s keynote, Sony has announced a new version of its “PlayStation App”. It is compatible, in addition to Android, with iOS devices. The app will turn tablets and phones into a “second screen” controller. Users will also be able to download games to their PS4 while on the go, so they’ll be ready to play once they arrive home.

It is currently unknown if the app will be similar to Microsoft’s Xbox app that allows users to view the stats of other gamers. Sony has yet to announce a release date, but the console is scheduled to arrive during the 2013 holiday season.


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Microsoft raises prices on Microsoft Office for Mac, no one notices

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 18 2013 - 1:35 pm PT
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Microsoft-office-mac-price.

According to Computerworld, Microsoft raised its pricing on Office for Mac 2011 during its Office 365 event last month by as much as 17 percent and stopped selling multi-license packages of the application suite. The move is likely to drive customers to its Office 365 program for PC/Mac that is $99 a year for a family.

The move puts Office for Mac 2011 on the same pricing schedule as the new Office 2013 for Windows. The price increases and the disappearance of the multi-license bundles also makes Microsoft’s Office 365, a software-by-subscription deal the company has aggressively pushed, more competitive with traditional “perpetual” licenses.

It’s not clear when Microsoft raised prices. The oldest search engine cache Computerworld found with the new prices was Feb. 2, so the company boosted them before then, likely on Jan. 29, the day it launched Office 2013 and Office 365 Home Premium. Microsoft did not mention the changes to Office for Mac in its press releases that day, or otherwise publicize the move on its Mac-specific website.

Indeed, Apple now offers Office for Student/Professional for $140/230. Amazon still says it is $119 but notes that Office 2011 is an older version and the newer version that includes a key card is $139 marked down to $131 with a new SKU. You can still buy the multi-user packs at significant discount, but those likely are only while supplies last.
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Deal Alert: MacConnection drops 13″ Retina MacBook Pro to $1349 ($150 off)

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 15 2013 - 5:06 pm PT
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From 9to5Toys.com and 9to5Mac Product Pages:

Screen Shot 2013-02-15 at 8.03.34 PM

MacConnection is having a flash sale on the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display knocking $150 off the just lowered price. $1349 is the lowest price we’ve ever seen on what many consider to be Apple’s best portable computer. Apple charges less for Refurbished models.

For other configurations, see our MacBook Pro , MacBook Air and other product pages.

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Google to open retail stores to compete with Apple Stores

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 15 2013 - 1:16 pm PT
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Google is launching retail stores by the end of the year to sell its own products, we’re reporting over at 9to5Google. Will Google try to squeeze into the local Mall between the new Microsoft store and the existing Apple store? Will it be able to supplant some of Apple’s MacBook sales with its $249 Chromebooks? iPhones with Nexuses? Find out more.
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Deals: Lifehacker Mac Bundle for $49.99 and Borderlands 2 bundle for $41.99

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 13 2013 - 7:52 am PT
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Screen Shot 2013-02-13 at 10.24.16 AM.

StackSocial today has 9 Elite Apps That Will Make Your Mac Unstoppable for $49. There are some quality ones in here like TechTool Pro 6, Path Finder 6, TextExpander 4, MacHider, Dropzone 2, AirServer, CameraBag 2, and MacPilot 5. Check out the video below or StackSocial for details.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgC8I66cBS8]

MacUpdate today has a solid deal on Borderlands 2…

Screen Shot 2013-02-13 at 10.41.57 AM

..along with some excellent expansion packs…

Screen Shot 2013-02-13 at 10.48.51 AM

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Deal Alert: MacConnection drops Retina MacBook Pro 13″ to $1499 ($200 off)

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 11 2013 - 11:37 am PT
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From 9to5Toys.com and 9to5Mac Product Pages:

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 2.31.03 PM

MacConnection is having a flash sale on the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display knocking $200 off the price. $1499 is the lowest price we’ve ever seen on what many consider to be Apple’s best portable computer. Apple charges $60 less for Refurbished models.

For other configurations, see our MacBook Pro , MacBook Air and other product pages.

Screen Shot 2013-02-11 at 2.36.28 PM

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MacMall Special: Lowest prices on MacBook Airs plus Free Parallels & Free FedEx Overnight until Fri 9:15PM ET

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 5 2013 - 11:32 am PT
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From 9to5Toys.com and 9to5Mac Product Pages comes a special deal from MacMall for our readers who are looking for MacBook Airs at the lowest prices. Across the board, Macmall has the lowest prices when coupled with additional 3% off 9to5Mac promo code NTFMMWB38592 

Screen Shot 2013-02-05 at 1.52.54 PM.

MacMall goes beyond lowest prices: Until Friday at 9:15PM ET, readers will get free overnight shipping and a free copy of Parallels Desktop with every order. MacMall also offers financing and/or no payments for 6 months and accepts payments with Paypal or Amazon as well as major credit cards. This week’s MacMall specials include half off Quickbooks 2013 for Mac, iPad  SmartCovers starting at $26.99 and other Blowout deals on peripherals.

MacMall has additional MacBook Air 8GB BTO configurations that knock an additional 3% off the already lowest prices we could find:
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Save over 60% off of SanDisk USB, SD Card storage at Amazon: 64GB starting at $32

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 4 2013 - 7:30 am PT
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From 9to5toys.com  (Twitter, Feed, Facebook), today:

Screen Shot 2013-02-04 at 10.02.00 AM

Today only, Amazon offers significant savings on a wide variety of SanDisk portable storage products. Best Bets are the 64GB SanDisk Cruzer USB Flash drive for $31.99 and the speedy 30MB/S 64GB Ultra SDXC Card for $41.99. Both ship free and are the lowest pries we’ve seen.
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13-inch Retina MacBook Pro for $1515, 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro $1980 at Amazon, Best Buy

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 1 2013 - 9:28 am PT
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Screen Shot 2013-02-01 at 9.12.06 AM

Amazon dropped the price of the Retina MacBook Pro to $1999 with free shipping. That’s tied for the lowest price we’ve ever seen on this product. Apple sells the refurb for $100 less (with Tax in more locations which negates the savings).

Amazon also has the 13-inch MacBook Pro for $1515.59. The sale compares with $1469 for a refurb with the same Tax equalizer.

Screen Shot 2013-02-01 at 9.25.06 AM

The sale is in response to Best Buy knocking $200 off MacBook Pros (and $20 more off from in-store pickup). The effective price of a 15-inch Retina  MacBook Pro is $1980.

If you are holding out for a MacBook Air, check back with us tomorrow, we’ll have the lowest prices you can find on MacBook Airs across the board.
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