Autodesk to Release AutoCAD for Mac, iPad and iPhone

Autodesk is expected to announce the release of AutoCAD for the Mac, iPad and iPhone platforms on Tuesday. This represents the return of AutoCAD to the Mac platform after nearly a two decade hiatus.

The return of AutoCAD to the Mac could help Apple sustain its momentum in the competitive market for personal computers, especially with business customers, where Apple has made significant inroads recently. Autodesk estimates that 10 million people use the AutoCAD software around the world, and the company said that its customers had been asking for a Mac version with growing frequency.

We first revealed screenshots of the beta version of AutoCAD back in May which had undergone early testing.

Meanwhile a mobile version called AutoCAD WS will be available free on Apple's App Store for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. The free version is said to allow users to view AutoCAD designs and make minor changes.

The Mac OS X version of AutoCAD should be released by the end of October.

Apple Opens Door to Free iPad Content for Print Magazine Subscribers

Fortune reports that Apple and Time Inc. have come to an agreement to allow the publisher to offer subscribers to its print magazines free access to content through their corresponding iPad applications. The agreement, which is marked by the debut of PEOPLE Magazine under the new structure, sees subscribers to the print edition receiving free access while non-subscribers can purchase individual issues for $3.99 each.

Until now, the iPad versions of People, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune have cost the same as the newsstand price -- $3.99 for each issue of People, $4.99 to $5.99 each for the rest -- even if you were are already paying to get the paper edition in the mail.

That changed with this week's People iPad app, which is, for the first time, free to People subscribers. Fortune and the rest of Time Inc.'s (TWX) flagship magazines are expected to adopt the same pricing structure within the next 30 days.

Additional details on the PEOPLE Magazine application and pricing policies are available through the magazine's site.

Late last month, we noted that Apple and magazine publishers had been at an impasse over subscription pricing, and while some progress certainly remains to be made in the area of offering true multi-issue subscriptions for digital content, allowing print subscribers to receive free digital editions marks an important first step.

iPad Supply Constraints Begin to Ease, iPhone 4 Expected to Follow

Fortune noted yesterday that supply constraints for the iPad appear to be easing slightly, with shipping estimates for orders placed through Apple's U.S. online store now coming in at 3-5 business days, down from 7-10 business days. The change was noted in a research brief from analyst Jeff Fidacaro of Susquehanna Financial.

"iPad demand remains strong with production ramping above expectations," writes Fidacaro. He has revised his iPad build forecast for Apple's (AAPL) fourth fiscal quarter to 7 million units, up from 6 million units. And his 4Q iPad shipment estimate now stands at 4.75 million units, a 45% increase from Q3.

The Fortune report also shares results of a weekly survey of in-store iPad and iPod availability at Best Buy locations conducted by Barcalys' Ben Reitzes showing significant improvement this week for all iPad models.

Meanwhile, GigaOM reports on a research note from Rodman Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar claiming that production of both the iPad and iPhone 4 is beginning to approach demand, with iPhone shortages expected to ease by the end of next month.

The wait for a new Apple iPhone 4 order should be shorter by the end of September, which would help Apple sell 14 million new handsets in the third quarter and another 15 million in the final three months of 2010 according to an industry analyst. With the expectation that LG is ramping up production of 9.7-inch display panels, iPad orders should flow faster as well, with Apple having the capability to sell 5 to 6 million tablets this quarter.

Shipping estimates for iPhone 4 orders placed through Apple's U.S. online store remain at three weeks, however, suggesting that a considerable backlog still remains.

Apple Tweaks Online Store With 'Compare Macs' Feature, Collapsible Configuration Sections

During a period of overnight downtime last night, Apple appears to have made several tweaks to the functionality of its online store.


The Loop points out a new "Compare Macs" feature offering users the ability to compare specs among up to three selected Mac models. The new option is available through either a direct link or as an option in the Mac product line menu bar after selecting a model.


Apple has also added collapsible sections to its configuration pages for various Mac models. The change allows users to open and close sections dedicated to topics such as hardware options, software options, service and support add-ons, and accessories.

Apple Releases New 'iPad is Delicious' Commercial

Apple yesterday released a new iPad commercial, airing it on primetime television and posting it to the company's iPad site andYouTube page.

The ad features a series of quick shots showing off various capabilities of the device paired with related adjectives shown in text to go along with the "iPad is..." theme: delicious, current, learning, playful, literary, artful, friendly, productive, scientific, and (of course) magical.

In May, Apple debuted an iPad ad that harkened back to a nearly 20-year-old campaign for the company's Newton personal digital assistant device. We wondered whether Apple would continue with the Newton-styled iPad ads, the company has moved away from that theme with its new ad.

Microsoft Highlights Compatibility, Graphing and Photo Editing in Office for Mac 2011

Microsoft has posted a new video clip highlighting some of the features of its Office for Mac 2011 suite due for release in late October. Among the features touched upon by Microsoft's Senior Evangelist for the Macintosh Business Unit Kurt Schmucker:

- Compatibility: Microsoft has focused on making Office for Mac 2011 more compatible with the Windows version than ever before, ensuring that users and documents can move seamlessly between platforms.

We'll take a document and print it out with Word for Windows and with Word for Macintosh. Take the two sheets of paper, overlay them...hold them up to the light. If we see any difference, we consider that a bug that we have to fix.

-Graphing: Office for Mac 2011 brings a number of new tools to help users display data in graphical formats, including theSparklines feature that debuted in Office for Windows 2010. Sparklines allows users to display simple data in small graphs that fit right into the cells of Excel spreadsheets to provide a significant amount of information at just a quick glance.

- Photo Editing: Available throughout the suite, photo editing tools will allow users to perform a number of tasks such as filter application, background removal, and color correction without having to leave the document on which they are working.

The video is part of a continuing series of behind-the-scenes previews of Office for Mac 2011. The first video posted in late July discussed template galleries, Outlook features such as Conversation View, and the ribbon toolbar.

HTML5 Continuing to Gain Ground With Yahoo! Mail for iPad, Vimeo Embedding

HTML5, the Web standard promoted by Apple in favor of Flash as the future of media delivery on the Internet, is continuing to gain support among popular Web sites and services. In particular, announcements from Yahoo! and Vimeo yesterday demonstrate the increasing adoption of the standard.

Yahoo! yesterday announced the launch of an HTML5-based Web mail interface newly customized for the iPad, bringing a number of enhancements.

If you've used our recently launched HTML5 mobile Web mail for iPhone you'll feel right at home. We've kept all the things users love about our new mobile Web mail experience, while also optimizing for the gorgeous large screen of the iPad.

Among the new features are local caching for offline access, improvements to searching and organization, enhanced attachment handling, and a dual pane view similar to that employed by the native iPad email application. Google launched a similar HTML5-based interface for Gmail on the iPad in April.

Video sharing site Vimeo also announced yesterday the launch of a new "Universal Player" to allow users of Apple's iOS devices to view embedded video content from Vimeo.

Since we rolled out the HTML5 player in January people have been clamoring for an embeddable version, especially for iPhones and iPads. Today we're taking a big leap forward for compatibility and updating our embed code. We call it the Universal Player.

The Universal Player is as easy to use as the old embed code, just a lot more compatible. Instead of being a direct link to a Flash player the new Universal Player can automatically detect what kind of device is viewing the video and choose the optimum player based on the device's capabilities. For example, it will serve mobile video to iPhones and Androids and HD to iPads and Desktops.

Vimeo launched support for HTML5-based video on its own site earlier this year, but the extension of HTML5 compatibility to embedded videos will significantly broaden users' ability to experience the site's content across the Internet.

Google to Launch Chrome OS Tablet in Late November?

Download Squad claims that Google is preparing to launch a Chrome OS-powered tablet on November 26th, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. known as Black Friday for its widespread discounts to kick off the holiday shopping season. According to the report, the Chrome OS tablet will be manufactured by HTC and Google will partner with Verizon for data service plans on the device.

So what will the Google tablet pack for hardware? It'll likely be based on NVidia's Tegra 2 platform and sport a 1280x720 multitouch display, 2GB of RAM, minimum 32GB SSD, WiFi/Bluetooth/3G connectivity, GPS, webcam, and possibly expandable storage via a multi-card reader. Expect it to be every bit as geek-tastic as the Nexus One -- Google won't want to disappoint its early adopters.

Pricing for the device and data service is unknown, although speculation suggests that data plan contracts could allow for subsidies to greatly reduce the cost of the actual device.

Google previewed Chrome OS in November of last year, stating that the browser-based operating system would debut on netbooks in late 2010. The company also noted its explorations of how Chrome OS might work on other form factors, includingtablets, to illustrate the potential of the platform. With the success of Apple's iPad launched earlier this year, tablets have become an increasingly visible alternative to netbook and low-end notebooks, and Google is unsurprisingly apparently preparing to make its move into the space to go head-to-head with Apple once again.

Apple Seeds First Developer Build of Mac OS X 10.6.5

Apple today seeded the first developer build of Mac OS X 10.6.5, the fifth maintenance release to the company's Mac OS X Snow Leopard operating system. According to those familiar with the release, which is termed Build 10H525, developers are being asked to focus their testing on iCal, Mail, Printing, 3D Graphics, QuickTime and X11.

The build reportedly contains two documented known issues related to activating user interface elements in Web Views such as in the iTunes Store and errors with connecting to Exchange servers. Apple also notes that Mac OS X 10.6.5 developer builds contain the latest graphics drivers being tested in parallel in the Snow Leopard Graphics Update.

We noted late last month that Apple appeared to be gearing up to begin seeding builds of Mac OS X 10.6.5, but it seems to have taken a bit longer than expected for Apple to push out the first of an unknown number of builds. Apple's seeding programs can be highly variable in length due to the uncertain nature of the testing and tweaking process, and thus we do not yet have an estimate of when Mac OS X 10.6.5 might be released to the public.

Mac OS X 10.6.4 was released in mid-June, shortly after the close of Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference.

China Unicom to Sell iPhone 4 and iPad

As noted by AppleInsider, Caixin Online reports that China Unicom will launch the iPhone 4 in September and has secured the rights to sell the iPad in China. The iPhone 4 will be made available in early September while no release date has been specified for the iPad.

It was reported last month that a China Unicom executive had flown to the United States to meet with Apple executives to finalize a distribution deal for the iPad and iPhone 4.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that China Unicom would begin selling iPhone 3GS models with Wi-Fi enabled just earlier this month, after months of selling the device without Wi-Fi enabled in order to adhere to government regulations.

7-Inch iPad to Launch By Christmas?

IDG News translates a new Economic Daily News report that claims a 7" iPad will indeed be launched by Christmas of this year.

The Economic Daily reports that Taiwanese companies have won a number of component contracts for the iPad 2. Chimei Innolux will supply 7-inch LCD screens, which use the same IPS (in-plane switching) technology found in the original iPad, which improves viewing angles and color on LCD screens. Touchscreen technology for the screens will come from Cando Corporation, the report says.

While talk of a 7" iPad has been circulating for some time, it has recently regained the spotlight with a report from iLoungeearlier this month. iLounge offered the above mock-up and suggested the 7" iPad would launch later this year or early next. Meanwhile, Digitimes also reported on the likelihood a 7" iPad just last week.

The currently shipping 9.7" iPad has been seen as a huge success selling 3.27 million units during the first quarter of sales.

Apple to Begin Taking Orders for New Mac Pro on August 9th

Thursday July 29, 2010 10:06 PM EST; Category: Mac Pro

Written by Eric Slivka

Several readers have informed us and we have confirmed that Apple Store representatives are telling potential buyers of the company's new Mac Proannounced earlier this week that the updated models are set to become available for ordering on August 9th. Company sales representatives on both chat and telephone support systems have cited that date for the launch.

While Apple will begin taking orders on August 9th, it is not yet confirmed that machines will actually begin shipping on that date. Representatives have claimed, however, that the August 9th date will be for actual orders and not for a pre-order program, suggesting that orders should begin shipping fairly soon after that date.

Apple's press release from earlier this week and the Mac Pro pages on its website simply state "August" as the availability date for the new Mac Pros, so it has been unclear at what point in the month customers could expect to begin placing their orders.

Apple Removes Competitor Antenna Performance Comparisons From Site

Sunday August 01, 2010 09:44 AM EST; Category: iPhone

Written by Eric Slivka

Apple has revamped the antenna performance page on its website, removing references to and videos of the performance of competitors' smartphones in comparison to the iPhone 4. Apple launched the page after its iPhone 4 press conference to demonstrate how a number of other handsets, including ones from Research in Motion, HTC, and Samsung, as well as the iPhone 3GS, see signal attenuation when gripped tightly in the hand.

Apple's continued interest in drawing its competitors into the antenna performance discussion was furthered by several updates to the site to add the Nokia N97 miniand the Motorola Droid X. Just a week after the most recent update, however, all of the comparisons have been removed, leaving only general claims that the attenuation issue affects most models of smartphones.

The opposite of amplification, attenuation happens whenever a signal is obstructed. All antennas - including television, radio, GPS and mobile antennas - can experience attenuation. And with most antennas, the density and composition of the human hand can cause attenuation to a greater degree than some other materials. On a mobile phone, signal loss typically occurs when your hand attenuates the most sensitive part of the antenna. Which, on iPhone 4, is the black strip of the lower left corner of the antenna band.

The reason for the removal is unknown, with speculation running from Apple receiving complaints from other handset makers to the company simply wishing to reduce the amount of attention drawn to the issue now that its free case programis underway and Apple bumpers are making their way into the hands of consumers. Interestingly, the videos remain available on the company's YouTube site and on many, but not all, international versions of its antenna performance page.