It’s our last recap of the week, which means the weekend is once again upon us! There are plenty of Thursday updates you’ll want to get a heads-up about before wrapping up the work week, particularly for owners of mid-2012 MacBook Air models. Don’t be shy, dig in and enjoy our bite-sized nuggets of tech news — it will only take a few minutes!
If you own a mid-2012 MacBook Air, Apple would like you to download and install the MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0 it released on Thursday. The 1.69MB update “addresses a storage firmware issue that, in rare cases, may cause a system to fail to recover from a crash,” which certainly sounds important enough to set aside some time in your day for installation. Apple recommends doing a full backup of your MacBook Air flash storage prior to updating, which is a warning we wouldn’t ignore given what the firmware is actually patching.
Frequent eBay shoppers and sellers will be delighted to learn the company has pushed out updates to its existing iPhone and iPad apps on Thursday, which introduce a new look and feel alongside a Shopping Cart for U.S. and U.K. buyers. In certain U.S. states, new eBay customers can scan their driver’s license straight into the app for faster registration (and therefore, quicker buying!), and eBay promises that your last-minute bidding will be vastly improved over previous versions as well. The free eBay for iPhone 3.0.0 and eBay for iPad 2.3.0 are now available from the App Store.
Mac users who work with network-attached storage or Linux and Windows hard drives have no doubt discovered all of the annoying little DS_Store and invisible folders OS X spreads around. A little .95 application called BlueHarvest makes short work of this dilemma, and thanks to the version 5.5 update released this week, no longer takes up space in the System Preferences to do so. Available for OS X Mountain Lion or Lion, BlueHarvest 5.5 is now packaged as a full-fledged application with optional menu bar icon, which also adds a new blacklist function for deleting arbitrary files. The update is absolutely free for existing users, and installs right over the old version, removing its pane from System Preferences. Can anyone guess what famous sci-fi movie the name “Blue Harvest” was derived from? Chime in with a comment if so…
Definitely falling into the “what took so long?” category is this week’s release of UPS for iPad, a free tablet-only app for tracking packages and freight shipments from everyone’s favorite brown carrier. Like the iPhone/iPod touch app, UPS for iPad can be used for some basic functionality without having to log in, but those with a My UPS ID will receive the most benefit from the app, including syncing recent tracking information from the website and the ability to enroll in UPS My Choice and even change preferences for incoming shipments to your address. The free UPS for iPad is now available for download from the App Store.
The folks at Stupid Raisins teamed up with CineFlare to introduce a new batch of animated Final Cut Pro X titles in a package called Title Pop. Available with the latest FXFactory version 4.0.6 from Noise Industries, the plug-ins offer 50 customizable titles, complete with 32 build in/out, 10 highlight and eight animation loops with such varied names as Fidget, Kookie, Quiver and Sketchy. Of course, once you start customizing the presets, there’s no end to the number of options you’ll probably come up with! Title Pop is available as a free trial so you can give it a spin before committing to the purchase.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook is headed to Washington, D.C. next week to testify about the company’s offshore cash hoard, a rare public appearance which is being preceded by an interview that offers a glimpse of what’s to come.
Politico published an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook on Thursday, only days before the executive heads to the nation’s capital to discuss more than 0 billion the company has sitting in reserve overseas.
Cook’s testimony on U.S. tax reform before a panel of Senators puts Apple on the offensive over recent accusations that it should be bringing more of its offshore profits home, where it would be subject to a 35 percent corporate tax.
“I can tell you unequivocally Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas,” Cook stated defensively. “We don’t do that. We pay taxes on all the products we sell in the U.S., and we pay every dollar that we owe. And so I’d like to be really clear on that.”
The mere fact that Cook is headed to Washington, D.C. at all is remarkable — his predecessor, late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, avoided government completely for the better part of his tenure.
“We don’t have a large presence in Washington, as you probably know, but we care deeply about public policy and believe creative policy can be a huge catalyst for a better society and a stronger economy,” Cook said.
Ironically, Apple is already one of the nation’s largest taxpayers, having paid out almost billion for its 2012 fiscal year — an amount that Cupertino expects to increase by another billion this year.
While Cook didn’t get into the details, he also elaborated on plans to invest 0 million into manufacturing domestically, which will begin with “a new version of a current Mac product” later this year.
“We’re going very deep in this project,” Cook said, with Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Florida and Kentucky earmarked for component manufacturing or final assembly of the mystery product.
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(Image courtesy of AllThingsD)
Network television streams have been rumored for the Apple TV for quite some time, but we’re finally getting a glimpse of what Cupertino may be working on, thanks to a new deal with The CW.
MacRumors reported Thursday that The CW will be coming to the Apple TV in the near future as a standalone app similar to the one already available for Microsoft’s Windows 8 and Xbox 360.
The network announced the news to advertisers at its annual upfront presentation in New York, which CW President Mark Pedowitz views as a way to expand its viewerships without the subscriber authentication that plagues other solutions.
“This year we’re reaching more viewers on more platforms,” said Pedowitz. “We are reaching our audience everywhere they are, and we want you to be with us everywhere we go.”
The CW already offers an iOS app for streaming content to mobile devices, but its arrival on Apple TV would complement existing services such as Hulu Plus and Netflix.
“It’s a dedicated CW app that will work like our Xbox and mobile and tablet apps,” a CW representative told MacRumors. “No cable authentication required, full episodes of our shows available next day after air, ad-supported.”
The network didn’t elaborate on exactly when the app might be added to Apple TV, but sometime between now and the new fall television season in September would be a likely bet.
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
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