Briefs: Beatles ‘08, Leopard update, new get-a-Mac ads
A few bits of Apple (AAPL) news worth noting:
Paul McCartney: “It’s all happening soon,” he told Billboard.com. “Most of us are all sort of ready. The whole thing is primed, ready to go — there’s just maybe one little sticking point left, and I think it’s being cleared up as we speak, so it shouldn’t be too long. It’s down to fine-tuning. I’m pretty sure it’ll be happening next year, 2008.” (link)
“Let me put that statement into American English,” says Fake Steve Jobs. “Paul wants more money.”
First Leopard Update: More than a dozen improvements in Mac OS X 10.5.1, issued three weeks after Leopard’s release, including fixes in Mail, Airport, Time Machine, Back to My Mac and some pesky Firewall issues. Not yet repaired: Among the repairs: that nasty core data bug.
iMac Anti-freeze: Apple also released a graphics firmware update that’s supposed to finally solve the freezing problem some aluminum iMac users have been suffering since September. I’ll believe it when my Dad tells me his iMac has gone more than a week without crashing.
Three New Mac Ads: The Get-a-Mac ads are back on TV (and available from Apple here) after a summer hiatus. “Same joke,” writes Michael Gartenberg. “Still as effective.” But maybe not quite as funny.
- Analyst: Apple will sell 4.47 million iPhones this quarter
- Best Buy to sell iPhones starting Sept. 7
- Steve Jobs: 60 million iPhone apps downloaded
- iPhone: Trouble in the App Store
- iPhone nano: A rumor before its time
- On the road
- iPhone apps: 1,001 and counting
- Jobs tells Times: No cancer
- Who is to blame for MobileMe?
- Two weeks later, New Yorkers wait 4 1/2 hours for an iPhone
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Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
