Apple’s stepchildren, Mac Mini and OS X, see some quiet updates
If you couldn’t tell from their exclusion in the race for the much coveted Apple Design Awards, the award of excellence for developers, there doesn’t seem to be much love from Apple marketing or management for the Mac. Everything is about the iPhone and iPad these days as was witnessed by the recent WWDC and all the hype about the upcoming iPhone 4.
However don’t lament to much Mac users as there has been some stuff updated today albeit very quietly and with no fanfare at all.
Today saw a new Mac Mini slip quietly into the Apple Store with a bunch of upgrade to go along with the $100.00 price increase.
Apple® today unveiled a completely redesigned Mac® mini, featuring up to twice the graphics performance, a new HDMI port and a new SD card slot, all in an amazingly compact aluminum enclosure. Mac mini is the world’s most energy efficient desktop and starting at $699, is the most affordable way to enjoy Mac OS® X, iLife® or Mac OS X Snow Leopard® Server.
“The sleek, aluminum Mac mini packs great features, versatility and value into an elegant, amazingly compact design,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With twice the graphics performance, HDMI support and industry-leading energy efficiency, customers are going to love the new Mac mini.”
Source:Apple PR release
To go along with the Mac Mini it seems, according to the crew at Gizmodo, that there is a new OS X also available which brings the version number up to 10.6.4 and comes with the new Safari 5. According to their post this is what you can expect with the updated OS X
General fixes and improvements
-improves compatibility with some Braille displays
-resolves an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive
-resolves an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening
-addresses issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers
-improves reliability of VPN connections
-resolves a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing
-resolves an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view
-resolves an issue with Parental Controls Time Limits for Open Directory or Active Directory users
-resolves a display sleep issue with MacBook Pro (Early 2010) computers
-resolves an issue with MacBook Pro (Early 2010) computers in which the right speaker may sound louder -than the left speaker
-includes Safari 5.0; for more information about Safari 5.0, see this webpage
-Security improvements; for information about the security content of this update, please visit this article
-Fixes and improvements for Aperture 3-adds tethered shooting support for additional digital camera models
-addresses IPTC metadata compatibility issues
-Fixes and improvements for external devices-RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras
-resolves an issue with using third-party USB web cameras
-resolves an issue with noise when using some third-party FireWire audio devices
-resolves pairing issues with Apple remotes
See Apple fans, there’s still some love for you even if it does seem to be the kind that Apple doesn’t want to talk about in public.
