World of Apple

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple have purchased a large data centre in Newark, CA.

Apple has bought the facility for an estimated $50 million, the building is positioned on 39800 and 39840 Eureka drive and was originally conceived for use by MCI Worldcom.

The data centre is described a “Tier IV” and is supposed to have the best redundancy and security and quite often cost up to and beyond $1200 per square foot.

Apple has been showing of the latest revision of Aperture at the Photography Marketing Association show in Florida. The application is said to sport many new features, speed increases and improvements to RAW image processing.

Aperture 1.1 is said to be fully Intel native and adds updates to algorithms for RAW processing as well as adding new tools such as Boost, Sharpening, Chromatic Blur and Auto Noise Compression.

Auto Noise Compression is said to be an impressive addition to the application, it detects all the camera settings of the shot and makes adjustments to the noise accordingly. Notably any images processed within Aperture 1.0 can be migrated to the new 1.1 RAW processing settings with ease.

Further support for RGB displays, layered PSD files, DPI controls for image export, tethered workflows have all been included in the update.

Aperture 1.1 is also said to be 2-3x faster on PowerPC systems or 4-6x faster on Intel machines.

The update is expected to be available next month in Software Update.

Apple has reached its started of selling 1 billion songs on its iTunes Music Store.

1 billion songs have been legally downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Music lovers like you in 21 countries around the globe have purchased one billion songs from the iTunes Music Store. And for helping us reach this massive milestone in digital music history, we’d like to thank you.

The winner or winning song have not been announced yet.

As Mac Book Pro’s began shipping just a few days ago and now they are slowing trickling into peoples hands its time we caught up with the mass of activity that has surrounded the MacBook Pro.

Didn’t take long for some crazy person to disect the MacBook Pro, in fact just two days after the units began shipping we can now see the insiders thanks to OWC , notice that there is no Intel logo to be seen, well done Apple!

It’s becoming a fashion now to pull out a really old Mac and race it against the newest hottest kit, well Rich J. Lee has dug out his TiBook and gave it a boot race against the MacBook Pro.

The movie shows the sheer speed of the MacBook Pro booting up in a mere 27 seconds, but someone out there really should give it a boot race against something a little more up to date.

And as if seeing the MacBook Pro bootup and seeing it naked wasn’t enough we have some unpacking porn for you…

• However much I dislike the guy, John O’Grady has received him system and has been showing it off, he’s also been reporting some really bad battery benchmarks.
• Bernard Bolduc has taken some nice and simple images for us to druel over.
• And finally good old Dan from UNEASYsilence has posted his pictures of his sexy MacBook Pro.

Briefly - Apple has now officially removed the 15″ PowerBook from its shelves.

This ones official, Apple is planning a special event for February 28th at 10:00AM PST (6:00PM GMT). The event is too be held at the Apple Town Hall on the Cupertino Campus.

The invitation features a large iCal style icon with the date set to February 28th 2006, the words included are: “Come see some fun new products from Apple”

AppleInsider has pointed at this iPod boombox thing they keep going on about.

As we reported just the other day Apple has now officially launched its new ProCare package, you can find out more on theProCare website.

Last Wednesday the Metro newspaper featured a very biased article about Macs and PCs. The article somehow reminds me of that one by Dvorak last week.

Click the thumbnail to download low res JPEG.

Alterntively click here to view the higher res PDF.

Thanks to Natalie for this one

This week Apple announced that it was shifting the processor speeds of the MacBook Pro’s up and it also announced that the machines would start shipping this week, about two days ago some Mac users began reporting that their tracking pages showed that the MacBook Pro had been shipped, now it seems they are turning up on peoples doorsteps.

If yours has turned up we want to know all about it and more importantly we want to see you unpack the beauty, post images in the gallery or post them in the comments.

[Update] Some pictures have already popped up on Flickr but the sticker on the bottom clearly says Apple Development Team so apparently these aren’t the real thing either.

Apple has announced that its Hingham Store will open tomorrow at 9:00am, the store is dubbed Apple Store Derby Street and for those of you unaware of what we’re going on about this is a store in Massachusetts.

As always the first 1000 through the stores will be given a Apple branded t-shirt and the usual sweepstake is up for grabs.

As always if your attending we want to hear your thoughts and if you got a camera get your pictures featured on World of Apple.

Apple has today released an update to iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie HD, iWeb and iDVD.

iDVD 6.0.1 - 5.3MB

This update to iDVD 6 resolves issues with integration with the other iLife applications, importing of legacy projects and some theme related issues. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

iPhoto 6.0.1 - 13.7MB

This update to iPhoto resolves issues with photocasting, viewing thumbnails in large libraries, and ordering cards, calendars and books. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

iMovie HD 6.0.1 - 52.6MB

This update to iMovie HD 6 resolves issues with Ken Burns rendering performance, Scrubber Bar editing performance and theme image quality. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

iWeb Update 1.0.1 - 19.1MB

This update to iWeb 1.0 addresses issues related to publishing and blogs. It also addresses a number of other minor issues.

iTunes 6.0.1 - 18.7MB

With iTunes 6, you can preview, buy, and download over 2,000 music videos and hit TV shows on the iTunes Music Store and sync your music and purchased videos with iPod to enjoy on the go. To watch purchased videos, you must have QuickTime 7.0.3 or later and Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later.

iTunes 6.0.3 includes stability and performance improvements over iTunes 6.0.2.

Note: After purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store with iTunes 6 or later, you will also need to upgrade your other computers that purchase music from the iTunes Music Store to the latest version of iTunes.