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Other World Computing (OWC), a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today the OWC Mercury Aura Pro Express/Mercury Aura Envoy as the industry's first high-performance Solid State Drive upgrade and bus-powered enclosure bundle for 2010-2011 MacBook Air computers. Representing a 'Dream Team' of performance and convenience, the Mercury Aura Bundle includes a Mercury Aura Pro Express SSD that offers nearly 8x the factory maximum storage capacity along with extreme data rate speeds up to or exceeding 500 MB/s - representing up to 68 percent faster real-world speed than the factory Flash SSD. After installing the Aura Pro Express in the MacBook Air, the factory SSD is easily converted into an external storage solution inside the Mercury Aura Envoy to complete the two-in-one storage upgrade.

G-Technology today announced a new line of portable and desktop USB 3.0 storage solutions for a broad range of users from consumers to audio/video professionals. Given the brand's strength in the content creation and Apple Mac community, G-Technology is well positioned to move the Mac industry forward in leveraging high-capacity, high-performance USB 3.0 drives across a variety of customer segments, all while delivering one of the industry's most respected external storage platforms with proven quality, reliability and performance.

Today, new kinds of devices and media formats require considerably more interface bandwidth and higher transfer rates to move, store and edit data quickly. Backward compatible with USB 2.0, G-Technology's USB 3.0 drives deliver speeds 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and six times faster than FireWire 800. This means that users can now transfer two full-length movies from a G-Technology USB 3.0 drive to a computer in minutes.

Belkin today launched WeMo, a line of modular, Wi-Fi-based products that turn an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch into a remote control for household devices. Consisting of two initial products, the WeMo Switch and the WeMo Motion, WeMo works with the free WeMo app to create a scalable, customizable home control system designed to provide added safety, convenience, and peace of mind.

"WeMo uses familiar technology to create a plug-and-play solution for controlling gadgets and appliances remotely," said Jamie Elgie, senior director of product management for Belkin. "Designed to address simple automation needs without the hassle or expense of whole home automation, WeMo is an easy and fun way to put your home at your fingertips."

QNAP Systems, Inc. announced today a partnership with TappIn, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of GlobalSCAPE, a leading innovator of secure information exchange solutions for businesses and consumers. TappIn by GlobalSCAPE's secure content mobility solution will be available to QNAP's customers using the storage vendor's popular NAS devices. Tapp In provides a secure, integrated service for customers to receive on-the-go access to digital contents stored on a QNAP Turbo NAS device from any web-browser, tablet, or smartphone, including Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows Phone 7, and Kindle Fire. QNAP customers simply register for TappIn and begin accessing their contents on any Turbo NAS device via a TappIn web application or mobile apps.

According to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC), the volume of digital information may balloon from 2.7 zettabytes this year -- the equivalent of filling 2.7 billion of Apple Inc.'s priciest desktop iMacs to capacity -- to 8 zettabytes by 2015. The explosion of digital content is paralleled by the proliferation of devices on which people can access it. As this market's demand continues to increase, QNAP's integration of TappIn by GlobalSCAPE into its NAS devices will provide a solution for its customers that allows comprehensive local storage, and enables simple and secure content mobility, helping QNAP to continue its trend as one of the top providers of NAS and unified storage devices in the industry.

S3 Graphics' future hung in the balance since June 2011, when its parent company VIA Technologies announced sale of its stake in it. Since then, it's been a word on the wires, that smartphone maker HTC has been in the fray to buy it out, since it is facing IP turbulence with Apple. HTC and Apple used S3 Graphics (September 2011) and AMD (November 2011), respectively, as proxies in their patent infringement battles. It emerged out of the patent spat, that S3 Graphics holds a handy bouquet of graphics IP, and HTC announced that it is now back on track to acquire it.

Smartphone giant HTC backed S3 Graphics' claims to certain graphics-related patents in the patent infringement case against Apple. "We think S3's patent portfolio is valid and strong, and we have decided to complete the purchase of S3 after cautious assessment," HTC's general counsel Grace Lei said, at an annual shareholders' general meeting. S3 Graphics currently owns about 270 patents, some of which are licensed to Sony Corp., Nintendo Co. and Microsoft Corp., Lei added.

PROMISE Technology Inc., a leader in providing high-performance storage solutions for the rich media market and the leader in designing cutting-edge Thunderbolt enabled devices today introduced the Pegasus J2, the world's fastest ultraportable Thunderbolt storage device, capable of delivering up to 750 MB/s in a device the size of a smartphone. Pegasus J2 brings an unparalleled level of performance in a small form factor to the market enabling both consumers and media professionals to manage the explosion of unstructured data and digital assets critical to their creative projects. The J2 is the perfect complement for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

Compatible with all Thunderbolt enabled Macs, the PROMISE Pegasus J2 is a pocket-sized, blazing fast external storage device that offers up to half a Terabyte of storage and is available in 256GB and 512GB capacities. The Pegasus J2 is flash-based making it the ideal solution for anyone who craves extreme performance in the consumer and professional post-production markets. This addition to its internationally award winning Pegasus line boasts a cutting edge, compact product design with an emphasis on reducing the footprint coupled with reduced environmental noise.

Seagate Technology plc., today introduced Backup Plus storage devices - its reinvented consumer storage product family that delivers the easiest setup, one-click backup and the ability to save and share your content on Facebook and Flickr.

Seagate Backup Plus hard drives are newly designed external storage that work interchangeably with both Windows and Apple computers and deliver new features to protect, share and save nearly every aspect of one's digital life. These products come loaded with the new hassle-free Seagate Dashboard software for one-click local backup making it easier than ever to eliminate excuses or apprehensions about backing up one's most valuable digital content. Seagate Backup Plus products are the world's first external hard drives to provide backup for content on social networks, such as Facebook and Flickr. Storing a local duplicate copy of photos from social networks is now as easy as backing up files on your computer. Seagate Backup Plus will provide the peace of mind that every aspect of one's digital life is safe from loss.

Apple today unveiled an all new 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring a stunning Retina display, all flash storage and quad-core processors in a radically thin and light design. Measuring a mere 0.71 inches and weighing only 4.46 pounds, the completely redesigned MacBook Pro sets a new standard in performance and portability for pro users.

"The MacBook Pro with Retina display pushes the limits of performance and portability like no other notebook," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "With a gorgeous Retina display, all flash architecture and a radically thin and light design, the new MacBook Pro is the most advanced Mac we have ever built."

If televised visits by Apple's top-brass to Foxconn's manufacturing facilities, and commitments to improve working conditions were mere PR exercises meant to cover up the issue of dismal working conditions, they failed. About 1,000 workers at Foxconn's manufacturing facility at Chengdu rioted on a large scale, which took the police several hours to subdue. According to media reports, the riot started when the facility guards were trying to stop a thief, while other workers who held grudges against the guards prevented them from catching the thief. Soon, the situation went out of control, as 1,000 workers started a riot. The workers were seen chucking pots, pans, garbage, and even fireworks from their dormitory windows. Public facilities sustained damage, the police made several arrests. The episode reveals that worker-management relations, at least at the Chengdu plant, which manufactures a massive amount of iPhone and iPad products for Apple, are at a breaking point.

Owing to an overhaul of the MacBook Pro to the "wedge-shaped" design in use by its MacBook Air family, Apple is reportedly seeing labour shortages by its suppliers, due to strong demand by Apple. It is even reported that some of these suppliers are outsourcing portions of their processes to meet shipment schedules. It is unusual for suppliers (ODMs and OEMs) to see labour shortages this time of the year (May-June), due to a traditionally slow season, however, Apple strong orders from Apple's new MacBook are leaving many upstream makers unable to satisfy demand. According to sources, it is likely that Apple launches its new MacBook line in July.

Weeks after security mogul Eugene Kaspersky opined that Apple is "10 years behind Microsoft on security," Kaspersky Lab revealed that it is collaborating with Apple to investigate security concerns (read: vulnerabilities) of its operating systems, and improve its security. Kaspersky Lab CTO Nikolai Grebennikov in an interview with Computing.co.uk was quoted saying "Apple recently invited us to improve its security."

Kaspersky Lab maintains that Apple's software is extremely vulnerable, going as far as to claim that Apple doesn't pay enough attention to security. "Our first investigations show Apple doesn't pay enough attention to security. For example, Oracle closed a vulnerability in Java, which was a target for a major botnet several months ago," said Grebennikov. Apple's decision to handle updates of Java runtime environment for OS X by itself, breaking away from Oracle's update cycle, particularly drew flack from Grebennikov. "Apple blocked Oracle from updating Java on Mac OS, and they perform all the udpates themselves. They only released the patch a few weeks ago - two or three months after the Oracle patch. That's far too long," he said. Kaspersky isn't too optimistic about the infinitely more popular iOS platform, either. "Our experience tells us that in the near future, perhaps in a year or so, we will see the first malware targeting iOS," it commented.

NVIDIA today announced that LLVM, one of the industry's most popular open source compilers, now supports NVIDIA GPUs, dramatically expanding the range of researchers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and programming languages that can take advantage of the benefits of GPU acceleration.

LLVM is a widely used open source compiler infrastructure, with a modular design that makes it easy to add support for programming languages and processor architectures. The CUDA compiler provides C, C++ and Fortran support for accelerating application using the massively parallel NVIDIA GPUs. NVIDIA has worked with LLVM developers to provide the CUDA compiler source code changes to the LLVM core and parallel thread execution backend. As a result, programmers can develop applications for GPU accelerators using a broader selection of programming languages, making GPU computing more accessible and pervasive than ever before.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced an update enabling browser support for Wi-Drive. The update allows multiplatform wireless streaming of data to any Wi-Fi enabled mobile device via a Web browser. The feature will be included in future shipments and all current owners of Wi-Drive can update their own device.

This expansion of device support allows a mixture of users' preferred mobile devices to simultaneously access and share content on the Wi-Drive. With integrated Wi-Fi and four hours of battery life, Kingston Wi-Drive offers great pocket-sized portable storage (up to 64GB) and easy file sharing for any Wi-Fi device including Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Android devices, Kindle Fire and more.

In a bid to turn up the heat in the crucial $500-$1000 market segment, Apple is on the verge of launching a new $799 MacBook Air variant. The new variant's introduction is strategically timed to dampen Intel's Ultrabook platform launch. Despite high material costs, Intel is aggressively pushing for its Ultrabook ecosystem partners to come up with products as low as $799-$699. OEM majors believe that Ultrabook's success could be limited till the launch of Windows 8 operating system. Intel set aside close to $400 million to construct the Ultrabook ecosystem, including $100 million in setting up an application store. With MacBook Air being an already established brand, Apple is looking to capture the $799 price-point.

TSMC, which is currently able to meet less than 70 percent of orders placed by Qualcomm, NVIDIA, AMD, TI, and Broadcom, for 28 nm chip manufacturing, is planning an early investment into its succeeding 20 nm manufacturing process that will ensure it has a new process ready well in advance (of its 2013 target), so it could seek orders in advance, and attain high volume capacity by 2013. Industry sources say TSMC has a good chance of landing orders for CPUs by Apple, in 2014. Apple's current-generation A5X chip is built on the 40 nm process, by Samsung. TSMC has revealed plans to invest about US$700 million in building a 20nm R&D line in 2012 - instead of its originally-planned 2013.

Apple's next big move will be to provide wireless service directly to its iPad and iPhone customers, according to veteran wireless industry strategist Whitey Bluestein.

Bluestein told an international gathering of wireless operators, resellers and suppliers that Apple has all of the critical elements - the world's leading brand, distribution through 363 Apple Stores, digital content (music, video and apps)-which will allow it to exploit its 250 million iTunes accounts with credit cards on file.

He also noted that Apple has a patent-pending network architecture to enter the wireless industry as a service provider. Apple filed a patent application in October 2006, shortly before the first iPhone announcement, with a diagram on how it would offer wireless service directly to customers using networks of several mobile operators. The patent application was extended in fall 2011. Bluestein said that the patent confirms that Apple has thought through how it would offer service directly to customers.

Worldwide semiconductor revenues increased more than 3.7% year over year to $301 billion in 2011, according to the latest version of the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiconductor Applications Forecaster (SAF). The industry weathered the macroeconomic uncertainties in the U.S and Europe, the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, China's slow down in the second half of the year, and floods in Thailand. Meanwhile, device applications, such as smartphones, media tablets and e-readers, automotive infotainment, notebook PCs, datacenter servers, and wireless and wired communication infrastructure drove robust consumption of semiconductors.

IDC's SAF tracks more than 100 semiconductor companies. Over 40 of these companies experienced year-over-year revenue growth greater than 5%, while about the same number of companies saw their revenue decline by more than 5%.

Apple wants to hold patents to the wedge-shaped design of its MacBook Air, and an interesting technique to adjust OLED display brightness. The application for this patent passed through USPTO, on Thursday. The application describes claims over "wedge shaped top case", with a lid hinged to a base. The wedge-shape contributes to the user's impression of a device, its lightness, and its durability. Apple's MacBook Air bears this design, and reports indicate that so will the upcoming MacBook Pro series. Wired.com opines that the move is to block out partners of Intel's Ultrabook ecosystem from imitating the design.

Another more interesting patent application for a technique to adjust brightness of OLED displays. None of Apple's products, not even the iPod Nano, feature an OLED screen, yet Apple is frantically applying for the patent. While conventional LCD panels use an augmented illumination source (such as LED or CCFL), in OLED displays, there is no external illumination, and hence adjusting brightness is very tricky from a technical standpoint. The method Apple described in its patent claim consists of converting an image (frame) on a logarithmic scale along the palette, dimming it, and then displaying that dimmed frame. This patent could prove valuable for Apple, as the industry is beginning to transition from TFT-LCD to OLED flat-panel displays.

Cooler Master, an industry leading chassis, thermal solution, peripheral, and accessory manufacturer today announces a visually alluring new piece of functional art, the ARC MacBook Pro and iPad stand. Draw attention to your beautiful pieces of technology with this new multipurpose stand.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 second quarter ended March 31, 2012. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $39.2 billion and quarterly net profit of $11.6 billion, or $12.30 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $24.7 billion and net profit of $6.0 billion, or $6.40 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 47.4 percent compared to 41.4 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 64 percent of the quarter's revenue.

The Company sold 35.1 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 11.8 million iPads during the quarter, a 151 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 4 million Macs during the quarter, a 7 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 7.7 million iPods, a 15 percent unit decline from the year-ago quarter.

New research released by Sophos has revealed a disturbingly high level of malware on Mac computers -- with both Windows and Mac threats being discovered.
Sophos experts analyzed a snapshot of 100,000 Mac computers running its free anti-virus software, and discovered that one in five machines was found to be carrying one or more instances of Windows malware.

Although Windows malware on Macs will not cause symptoms (unless users also run Windows on their computer), it can still be spread to other computers. Additionally, Sophos's analysis shows that 2.7 percent (one in thirty six) of Macs were found to be carrying Mac OS X malware.

Hackintosh (running Apple OS X on a non-Apple PC) interest group tonymacx86 discovered that GIGABYTE's 3D UEFI BIOS is most trouble-free with hackintoshing, leaving you with no risky BIOS modding to do. The BIOS tells OS X about what the hardware environment is like. If the OS doesn't have an environment that it's designed for, it crashes with a kernel panic.

GIGABYTE 3D UEFI BIOS, tonymacx86 reports, as tested on a GA-Z77-DS3H, already has power-management descriptors, so you don't have to add any power-management DSDT tables for sleep/wake or power-management functions. Most other onboard devices on the Z77-DS3H run seamlessly with Apple's native drivers. The Atheros gigabit Ethernet controller works with MultiBeast driver, Realtek ALC887 HDA codec works with ALC8xxHDA/AppleHDA, and Intel HD 3000 graphics embedded into the Core i5-2500K (used in the testing) works just fine.

Market researcher Ming-Chi Kuo, who is credible with reports on Apple's product lineup in the past, predicted that Apple could discontinue the 17-inch variant of its MacBook Pro soon, owing to weak sales. Apple's next MacBook Pro could look increasingly like the MacBook Air, offering high-performance in a very compact form-factor. Being a major design rejig, Apple could take a fresh look at the viability of each variant based on its past market reception. "While adding new products, Apple is likely to stop making the 17" MacBook Pro this year due to falling shipments, in order to maintain a lean product line strategy," Kuo writes in his report.

Kingston launched a fleet of new system-specific SO-DIMM memory packages. Each of these packages contain memory that's tested for 100% compatibility and rated performance on the notebook makes they're specific to. These include HP, Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. The new packages make it easy for ground-store buyers to pick the right memory for their notebooks off the rack, with minimal help from the storekeepers. Newer batches of Kingston DDR3 SO-DIMM memory for notebooks will implement the new packaging.