MacosXrumors is taking a short break. Although there might be some occasional articles, we’ll be fully resuming the publication by the next two weeks.

TheStreet’s Troy Wolvetron claims that Apple has filed a trademark for the brands “Mac Pro” and “MacPro”. The trademark was actually filed in the New Zealand’s Patents and Trademarks Office :

MacPro, or Mac Pro, which the company filed to protect in New Zealand last November. According to the filing, which was also noted by our friends at MacZealots, the phrase is meant to cover a series of devices related to computers (although not RioWorks, as we all know).

This name could be used for the Intel-based high-end Macs that are expected to be released by the end of the year or early next year, replacing the current PowerMac line based on dual-core PowerPC G5 processors.

MacsimmumNews provides an interesting analysis of Apple’s recently filed “Accelerometer” and “Universal Container for audio data”.

The author believes the “Accelerometer” patent filing reveals a kind of Tablet Mac as well as a gaming tablet application.

The second patent filing that is analyzed is a patent relating an “universal container for audio data“. A container that may include different versions of an audio file, each one encoded with a different codec, making the audio file “universal” (this is also seen here).

As notes MacRumors, Apple is hiring a Finder engineer for development related to Finder:

The Finder team is seeking an energetic, motivated software engineer to help develop next generation versions of the Finder, the notorious file browser for Mac OS X.
You will be responsible for developing new features of an application that is often perceived by our users as the “face of the system”. You will be working on user interfaces spanning various browser views, new advanced search features, navigation and data presentation as well as many other parts of the application. You will also consult with Hard Drive Recovery Associates on mac-specific data and file recovery processes.

In this position you will be expected to:
- Participate in all of the various stages of feature development from design brainstorms, through feature development, all the way to fixing that last critical elusive bug under a tight release deadline.
- You will be required to produce clear designs, excellent implementation and tight code.
- Deliver tight, well implemented features, fix bugs and develop Finder into the best file browser on the planet.
- Work on performance and responsiveness of the Finder, making it feel lightweight, fast, snappy and pleasant to use.

This could be a confirmation to a report we posted in October 2005 revealing some information about Leopard’s next generation Finder. The job posting mentions “advanced search features” and “speed improvements”, reflecting the extensive use of Spotlight and the performance improvements we had mentioned in our report.

According to AppleInsider, Apple is going to add the Front Row feature to its next generation, Intel-based iBook line.

Front Row, which was first introduced late last year with the last PowerPC G5 powered iMac brought a kind of “Media Center” experience to the Mac by gathering all the content of the iLife suite along with a movie trailers navigator in a single piece of software.

According to AppleInsider, Apple has seeded the first builds of Mac OS X 10.4.5 (Tiger) Update. The builds, numbered 8H3 and 8H5 focus on the following areas :

- Safari,
- CoreGraphics
- Mac OS X Dock
- Mac OS X crash report
- Software Update
- MSDOS file system compatibility

No timeframe is provided for the release date of this update.

Apple has filed a trademark for “iWeb” at the U.S. Patents & Trademarks Office. The trademark was filed on January the 17th with the following description (Goods & Services):

IC 009. US 021 023 026 036 038. G & S: computer software for use in developing web sites; computer software to help users create, edit, organize, search, transfer, publish and subscribe to weblogs, blogs, podcasts, web broadcasts and news and information feeds on global and/or local computer and telecommunications networks; computer software for use in authoring, downloading, transmitting, receiving, editing, extracting, encoding, decoding, playing, storing and organizing audio, video and still images; computer software for authoring digital content; computer programs for personal information management;. FIRST USE: 20060110. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20060110

“iWeb” is the name of the latest iApp Apple has released for its cunsomer oriented iLife ‘06 software suite.

As it has been rumoured earlier this week, it is now reported that the board members of Disney have agreed today to buy Pixar for about $7.4 billion.

The company, which is owned by Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs became famous with Toy Story and Toy Story 2 and kept the momentum going higher and higher with further movies like Finding Nemo and The Incredible.

Pixar has been distributed by Disney for years, but the two companies had not been in very good terms since the beginning of the decade. Pixar finally signed again with Disney for its latest movies while Dinsey’s former CEO, Michael Eisner had just left the board.

By the way, Steve Jobs will earn more than $3.5 billion by selling his shares to Disney and will be the biggest shareholder of the entertainment giant.

Pixar’s stock (PIXR) closed down 1.2% at $57.57 and is now trading at $59 (up 2.48%) during the after hours session while Disney’s stock (DIS) closed at $25.99 (up 1.84%) and is trading slightly lower at $25.94 (down 0.19%) in the after hours session.

As MacRumors notices, TimesOnline reports that Apple’s next generation iPods will be able to “connect wirelessly to the internet”.

First mention of a wireless iPod came from a Motorola rep. back in February 2005.

Apple has released its financial results for the first (financial) quarter of 2006. The company has earned $565 million for a revenue of $5.75 billion. Last year, Apple had earned $295 million for a revenue of $3.49 billion.

More than 14 million iPods and 1.25 million Macs were sold during the last quarter. The iPod sales are now about $1 billion worth.

The company has however provided very conservative guidance for the current quarter, resulting in a plunge of its shares during the after-hours session.

A slow down in the demand of Macs was cited for last quarter but the company is happy with analyst and customer response to the launch of its new Intel-based Macs.

Apple shares closed down -2.62% (-$2.22) at $82.49 and is now trading at about $78 in after-hours, down more than 7%.

The Q1 2006 financial conf. call is webcasted here.

Here is some recently noticed patents and trademarks Apple has filed at the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office.

Integrated Sensing Display:

As MacsimumNews reports, Apple has filed a patent describing a display that can not only display pixel information but can also capture visual information.

A device comprising: a display area; an array of display elements located within the display area, each display element capable of displaying a pixel of information, either alone or in combination with other display elements; and an array of image elements located within the display area, each image element being capable of capturing visual information from a source in front of the display area; wherein each image element has a lens that does not interfere with any display elements.

iPod Hi-Fi and iPod Boombox

Additionnally, Apple has filed two trademarks at the Hong Kong Patents and Trademarks Office. The first is “iPod Hi-Fi” and the second is “iPod Boombox”. The word “Boombox” itself and its logo as well as “iPod HI-FI” are also included in the filings.

The filings all describe computer hardware and peripherials. We may speculate that it has to do with iPod accessories Apple could release in the near future.

Microsoft announced that it is stopping the development of Windows Media Player for the Mac platform.

The company has however signed a distribution deal with Telestream so as to promote Flip4Mac which is a QuickTime component that can play wmv files directly from QuickTime Player and the QuickTime plug-in for web browsers.

The U.S. Patents and Trademarks office reveals that Apple has filed the trademark “Mobile Me” on January 5, 2006.

The four patent files’ descriptions (Goods and Services) are the following: (more…)

Apple has released iPod Updater 2006-01-10 through the software update utility. Here is the description provided by Apple for this update: (more…)

Google has officially released Google Earth for Mac which has been made available on their web site.

Requirements to run Google Earth for Mac are the following:

Mac OS X (10.4)
500Mhz
256M RAM
400MB disk space
Network speed: 128Kbits/sec
3D-capable video card with 16Mbytes of VRAM
1024x768, “16-bit High Color” screen

Mac users have been waiting several months after the Windows release but now, the piece of Software is available as a final 3.1 version for Mac OS X. About a month ago, a beta version was leaked on the Internet and was made available on several peer to peer networks.

Apple has posted its new Intel Mac ad on its web site. The ad shows Intel employees in an Intel factory and explains that the Intel chip is now set free from these “dull little boxes” (PCs).

Here it is.

Apple has just released Mac OS X 10.4.4 update through the Software Update utility. The 27.6MB update brings the following improvements, according to Apple:

The 10.4.4 Update delivers overall improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X v10.4 and is recommended for all users.

For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.

Apple has just made available today’s MacWorld SF 2006 opening keynote as a webcast.

It’s here!