Last week, the Newspaper Association of America posted the quarterly financial data of the U.S. newspaper industry. It tracks both print and online revenues for the industry as a whole. But unlike past updates, the NAA did not promote these numbers. When you look at them, it’s easy to see why.
In Q2 2009, newspapers made $6.8 billion in print and online revenues. In the same quarter last year, the newspapers made $9.6 billion, a nearly $3 billion difference in the span of a year, or a full 29% from 2008 to 2009.
posts
Apple Event on Sept. 9
Apple Inc said on Monday that it would host a media event next week, when the company is widely expected to unveil an updated line of iPod media players.
Apple declined to say what products would be featured at the September 9 event, which was announced in an invitation emailed to members of the media.
The invitation featured an iPod and the tagline: “It’s only rock and roll, but we like it.”
Apple Reverses Air Hinge Repair Strategy
Apple support article #ts2948:
Learn what you can do if you experience one or more of these issues with the hinges on your MacBook Air.
• Unable to close lid completely.
• Broken or cracked plastic near one or both of the hinges.
• More than one inch (2.54cm) of free play while opening or closing the lid.
• Lid falls freely into closed position from a 30-degree open position. (From a closed position, open the lid approximately 30 degrees and let go.)
More on Snow Leopard’s Kernel
CNET:
Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system, released Friday, by default loads with a 32-bit kernel, despite running 64-bit applications.
While Mac OS X version 10.6 ships with a number of 64-bit native applications, the kernel itself defaults to 32-bit, unless the user holds down the “6” and “4” keys during boot time, at which point the 64-bit kernel is loaded. Only Apple’s X-Serve products, using Snow Leopard Server, boot into a 64-bit kernel by default.
Additional Services
Mac OS X Automation has quite a collection of downloadable services available. Nice stuff.
Loving Memphis: An Open Letter
by Stephen M. Hackett
I have the coordinates to Memphis tattooed on my left forearm. I get asked about it almost everyday, and usually the response I get is goes something like this:
Why would you get that tattooed on your arm?
My answer is simple — I love Memphis. It’s a great city.
I’m not talking about the postcard platitudes that include sweet tea, BBQ and Elvis. Those type of niceties keep us distracted from the real issues.
Snow Leopard Ripped a New One
Randall C. Kennedy of InfoWorld:
Mac OS X Snow Leopard is truly an underwhelming release, one that borrows most of its “new” ideas from Windows Vista. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to drive OS evolution forward, introducing a raft of truly innovative features with Windows 7. The new Taskbar puts Apple’s clumsy Mac OS X Dock to shame, while its enhanced support for multicore CPUs means that even non-optimized code gets a boost – no Grand Central Dispatch tweaking required.
Initial Thoughts on Snow Leopard
Well, Snow Leopard is here. I — like millions of other users — upgraded my Macs yesterday to 10.6.
Snow Leopard is a curious release. It doesn’t introduce a lot of end-user features, but rather, is a refinement of what was already there — for the most part.
Installation
After 9 years, Apple has changed the install process for OS X. They’ve simplified it, which is pretty surprising considering how easy it was before. This PDF on Apple’s site outlines the new process. One thing that bugs me is that by default, Snow Leopard doesn’t include Rosetta, which allows PPC apps to run on Intel machines. Apple’s obviously closing the door on PowerPC Macs with this release, but turning off Rosetta this early seems rash. It’s an optional install I recommend for everyone.
Crowd-Sourcing Snow Leopard Issues
MacInTouch has a page up dedicated to Snow Leopard issues found by readers.
There’s also a very lengthy page up on wikidot regarding Snow Leopard and third-party apps.
It’s this kind of stuff that makes me love the hardcore Mac population so much.
Warriors of the .Net
A must-watch for any geek.
Another Silly App Store Rejection
From Mark Jardine at TapBots (the creators of the excellent Convertbot iPhone app) has written about their recent App Store rejection:
We’re no strangers to silly app rejection emails from Apple, but this one seems to take the cake (at least in our opinion). Convertbot 1.4 was rejected because our icon for Time is too similar to one of Apple’s default resource icons for History/Recent. They say users might get confused that our Time category might mean History or Recent. Now I might be able to understand if this happened when we first submitted Convertbot, but there have been multiple releases already so why is this a show-stopper now? It does worry me that our product has to be held back for another 1–2 weeks for something so trivial.
$29 Disc Works for Tiger Users, Too?
Apple has previously stated that while Leopard users simply need to purchase the $29 DVD to upgrade their machines to Snow Leopard, Tiger users with Intel machines needed the $169 Mac Box Set to upgrade. As a bonus, those users get iWork ’09 and iLife ’09 as well.
It seems that the $29 Snow Leopard DVD can indeed update users still running Tiger, however.