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Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Talk about irony: With the latest version of Bluestacks’ mobile app player, Mac users will be able to run just about any Android app — even though Apple fans still have no method for running iOS apps on OS X.

Bluestacks is today releasing a free beta version of its mobile app player on Macs, which lets Mac users download and install every Android app on the Google Play store. A previous version of Bluestacks for Macs only ran a few preinstalled Android apps.

The company’s Windows client for running Android apps landed last March, and it has been installed on more than five million Windows PCs so far.

Bluestacks’ virtualizes Android to run the platform’s mobile apps, similar to how VMWare lets you run a virtualized version of desktop operating systems. The company calls its patent-pending virtualization technology Layercake, and it’s also partnered up with Asus and AMD to bring Android apps to their devices.

While most people probably aren’t clamoring to run mobile apps on their desktops, Bluestacks is useful for those rare occasions where you need to run an app with no desktop equivalent. For example, there’s currently no way to use Instagram without an iOS or Android device. I haven’t had a chance to test out Bluestacks’ Mac player yet, but I found its Windows sibling to be fast and seamless.

The Campbell, Calif.-based BlueStacks has raised $15 million so far from Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Venture Management, Citrix Systems, and others.

Image via Rob Bumahn/Flickr

You can now finally get your hands on Apple’s latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion, on the Mac App Store for $19.99.

Apple announced that it would be releasing the OS today as part of its earnings release yesterday, after previously promising that it would be released in July.

Good luck getting the OS up and running anytime soon, though. It took me about 15 minutes to successfully purchase Mountain Lion from the App Store, thanks to the hordes of Mac owners trying to update at the same time. The update itself is also 4.05 gigabytes, so it’ll likely take you a while to download it.

Remember that if you’ve purchased a Mac computer on or after June 11, you can get a free upgrade to Mountain Lion.

Unlike last year’s OS X Lion release, this update will only be available for download via the Mac App Store. Just like Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion is an incremental update, more than a completely revamped OS. (That’s why it’s so cheap.)

Mountain Lion brings over many features first seen in iOS, like a notification center, built-in social networking support, iMessage, and voice dictation.

New details have emerged about the upcoming Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, including confirmation that the film will end in the year 2000 before Jobs introduced the iPod, iPhone, and iPad to the world.

Word landed on April’s Fools Day that Kutcher, star of various movies and TV shows and a surprisingly smart tech investor, would play Jobs. Turns out the announcement wasn’t a joke and since that time, people have wanted to know more the independent feature, which is now tentatively titled “Jobs: Get Inspired.” (We hope they change the name.)

Producer Mark Hulme was interviewed by Neowin and spilled a few new details, including that the film will “primarily” cover Apple from the years 1971 through 2000. Hulme suggests that the time period covered is the reason the team wanted the film to star Kutcher, who looks an awful lot like a young Steve Jobs.

“Since our film covers the early years of Apple, when Jobs was in his 20′s, we needed an actor who could carry not only the youthfulness of Jobs at the time but also the psychological complexity,” Hulme told Neowin. “Because of that, and Ashton’s physical similarities to Jobs, he’s perfect for our film.”

While Jobs helped bring several important devices to the world before his death, the modern computing era was radically changed by the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, all of which were released after 2000. So while the film will see Jobs through the Apple II and Macintosh releases and his exodus and return to the company, it’s unfortunate it will not document some of Jobs’ most successful products.

The Jobs biopic will be directed by Swing Vote helmer Joshua Michael Stern. It begin filming in May and released in the fourth quarter of 2012. The movie will mostly be filmed in Los Angeles.

Sony also has plans to make a biographical film on Jobs’ life, but it will be at least another year before that hits theaters. Sony’s take will be based on Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography of Jobs and will not be an indie flick.

In addition to the announcements about Apple’s next operating system Mac OS X Mountain Lion, the company rolled out a beta edition of its iMessages chat app today.

Apple previously launched its iMessages for the iPhone and iPad as an answer to RIM’s popular BlackBerry Messenger Service. The app lets you send text, pictures, contacts, and video over 3G and Wi-Fi connections to anyone with an Apple ID or one of the other third-party messaging services. One big perk to using Messages is that it doesn’t charge you for each individual message, similar to the way wireless carriers do with SMS. Now, Apple wants to bring this functionality to the desktop in an effort to bridge the gap between conversations on mobile devices.

The new Messages beta replaces Apple’s native OS X instant message client iChat, which aggregates the IM functionality from several third-party services (Google Chat, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber accounts) into a sole location. Personally, I prefer using other IM applications (such as the open-source Adium) so I never paid much attention to iChat anyway, which I’m guessing the majority of other Mac users did as well. That said, I might actually use the new Messages app in addition to my preferred IM desktop client.

Unlike iChat, the Messages app doesn’t just focus on communicating with people who appear online at the same time that you do. Both the new desktop app as well as the iMessages iPhone/iPad counterpart emphasize short back-and-forth responses similar to SMS conversations. The app still has a buddy list of contacts, but the chat window looks nearly identical to the iMessages iOS apps.

People who never use instant messenger but frequently send texts will probably end up using this app. It’s also likely that far fewer SMS messages will get sent over the course of time, especially if you consider the rising cost of texting plans. That’s a good thing for Apple and a very bad thing for wireless carriers, who draw a large amount of revenue through texting services.

The Messages beta app is available now via Apple’s official site, with the full release due out with the launch of OS X Mountain Lion.

Image courtesy of senai aksoy, Shutterstock

Apple unveiled its next big cat operating system for desktops today, OS X “Mountain Lion,” which shares even more with iOS than its predecessor.

Like OS X Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion (technically OS X version 10.8) is being positioned as a minor upgrade over last year’s Lion release. For the most part, the new OS looks the same, but it also includes apps that first appeared on iOS, deeper integration with iCloud, as well as the Notification Center and Game Center from iOS.

Developers can get their hands on Mountain Lion today in a preview release, but the rest of us will have to wait until this summer for the software. Apple typically holds events to reveal new versions of Mac OS X, so the fact that the company quietly unveiled the OS today is yet another sign that this isn’t a huge release. Apple is also quietly killing off the “Mac” part of the OS X name.

The new OS will bring over iMessage, Reminders, and Notes from iOS, which will all synchronize with their mobile counterparts. Apple is also releasing a beta version of iMessage today, which replaces iChat for instant messaging functionality, for current OS X Lion users. iMessage will let OS X users send free messages to iOS 5 users, and the conversations will also be seamlessly synchronized between mobile and desktop.

Powering synchronization behind the scenes in Mountain Lion is deeper integration with iCloud, which is now also featured on the OS X Finder.

Notification Center will wrangle together all of your application notifications in one spot, much like the popular program Growl. It’ll be accessible from anywhere in the OS with a new two-finger swipe motion. Game Center, not surprisingly, will serve as the go-to spot for all of your games, and will also bring over leaderboards and achievements from iOS.

More than anything, the new Mountain Lion seems dedicated to unifying your experience between iOS and OS X with iCloud. But at the moment, it seems like most of its new additions could have simply been software upgrades to Lion. Expect Apple to reveal more new features for Mountain Lion in the coming months, which will likely justify its standing as a whole new OS.

It’s interesting to consider how Apple is approaching its new OS compared to Microsoft, which is fundamentally changing what a desktop OS can be with Windows 8. Both companies are attempting to bring mobile elements to the desktop, but Apple is taking a more incremental approach (which, admittedly, it always has with OS X), whereas Microsoft is diving headfirst into new territory.

Mountain Lion also adds Share Sheets, which will basically let you share files with services like Twitter, as well as AirPlay Mirroring, which can push whatever is on your screen to an Apple TV. There will also be improvements to how OS X handles apps from the Mac App Store, thanks to new security levels and the addition of developer signatures, which allow the OS to alert you when you’re installing software from unsigned developers.

Apple also isn’t saying anything about bringing its virtual assistant Siri over to Mountain Lion, which for many would be reason enough to upgrade.

Via CNet

Analysts have been speculating since December that this would be a blowout quarter for Apple. Meanwhile, Wall Street expected earnings of $10.07 per share on revenues of $38.76 billion, according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster. Simply put, Apple blew pretty much every estimate out of the water.

The big problem last time around was that Apple missed the mark on iPhone sales due to the October release of the iPhone 4S. Consumers ended up delaying their purchases in anticipation of the new model, and to make things even worse iPhone 4S sales weren’t counted for that quarter.

The first quarter of 2012 therefore had the benefit of all the iPhone 4S sales (remember Apple sold 4 million units alone in the first weekend), as well as the typical holiday shopping bump. It’s also a major improvement to this time last year, when Apple saw profit of $6 billion on revenue of $26.74 billion.

The company reported record sales all around for the quarter: 37.04 million iPhones (a 128 percent jump over last year; also, we told you so), 15.43 million iPads (a 111 percent jump), and 5.2 million Macs, up 26 percent. iPod sales didn’t fare as well, with Apple reporting 15.4 million units sold, a 21 percent decline from a year ago.

Apple says it generated $17.5 billion in cash flow from operations during the first quarter, which gives it $97.6 billion cash and securities on hand. The company is “actively” looking for uses for the cash, but “we’re not letting it burn a hole in our pockets,” Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said during the earnings call today.

For the next quarter’s guidance, Apple expects to see revenue of $32.5 billion and profits of $8.50 a share.

Apple money image via Shutterstock

It also charmed customers with its cute, approachable icons, from the smiling Mac that appeared while it was booting to the bomb that popped up when something went terribly wrong. The Mac’s many icons were the work of Susan Kare, a painter who landed at Apple at just the right time and came to play a key role in the original Macintosh team. Kare started sketching icons on graph paper using markers, and eventually wound up designing many of the interface elements in the Mac. Her designs helped shape the personality of the Mac, giving it a touch of whimsy and friendliness not seen in computers before.

Kare went on to design icons for Windows, OS/2 and even designed the Solitaire deck that shipped with Windows. She’s just come out with a retrospective book showcasing her work, Susan Kare ICONS, and it’s a great opportunity for students of design to stop and consider what separates interfaces that people merely use from the ones that people actually love. You can also buy fine art prints of her classic icons from her site.

There aren’t too many designers whose work can honestly be described as “iconic,” but in Kare’s case, that adjective is true both literally and figuratively.

VentureBeat interviewed Kare via e-mail recently. Here’s the (lightly edited) text of our exchange.

Did you try many different versions of your classic Mac icons before settling on the right ones?

It was definitely an interative process. I always like to work with placeholders and tweak and improve images while there’s time. I remember trying a lot of different images for “copy” (some involving mirrors) and “undo.” Abstract nouns and verbs are always tough.

Lots of people must be designing icons now, for websites and software. What are some examples that you really admire?

Never say never, but I tend to prefer simple imagery for user interfaces without too much detail. I remember reading in Scott McCloud’s book, Understanding Comics, why more people can “see” themselves in a simple smile face graphic than a detailed drawing of Prince Valiant. This principle applies to icons: Universality is good. So a very detailed, very specific icon of a certain type of writing implement seems less effective as a symbol.

One detail: I can never understand why the red circle-with-slash is occasionally used to mean “delete” when it means something is prohibited.

Your icons play a huge role in the personality and approachability of the interfaces they appear in. They’re also very clear and understandable. What advice do you have for people designing interfaces or websites?

Thank you! I try to think hard about the meaning of icons and look at them in context (in a mockup) and exercise restraint. You don’t want the UI to compete with the data.

What are you really excited about that’s just coming up in terms of computer design or interface design?

The thermostat from Nest looks great!

It seems like you sort of fell into icon design by being in the right place at the right time. Yet this is a seemingly very limited medium. Are you able to express yourself as an artist through computer icons? Or do you have other outlets (like painting)?

Some projects have many constraints in terms of limited screen real estate or palette, but the problems to solve are always interesting. I also love working on logos and working with type. And I have always enjoyed making sculpture.

Images courtesy Susan Kare.

What follows is a collection of our favorite Jobs moments, which may or may not have to do with technology, but offer a glimpse of insight into one of our greatest modern minds.

Steve says Microsoft has no taste

Jobs made it clear that he respected Microsoft’s success, but was saddened by the company’s complete lack of taste, in the 1996 PBS documentary “The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires.“

“They don’t think of original ideas… And they don’t bring much culture into their product,” Jobs said. “I don’t have a problem with their success… I have a problem with the fact that that they just make third-rate products.”

Elegantly cutting down the competition, that’s so Steve.

Steve admits Microsoft helped save Apple… twice

Elsewhere in The Triumph of the Nerds, Jobs discussed how important Microsoft’s contributions to the first Mac were:

“Microsoft took a big gamble to write for the Mac. I brooded for a few months, but it was not very long after that that it really occurred to me that if we didn’t do something here, the Apple II was running out of gas, and we needed to do something with this technology fast or else Apple might cease to exist as the company that it was.”

Microsoft made its Office suite available on the Mac in 1989 before it even landed on Windows. The Mac Office suite continues to be a huge moneymaker for MS.

Microsoft’s second big Apple save came during Macworld Expo in 1997, when Bill Gates appeared on screen to announce that MS would be investing $150 million in Apple. The audience of Apple fans wasn’t exactly welcoming to Gates, but without the Microsoft deal Apple likely wouldn’t have been able to rebound as quickly in the late 90′s. Yes, you can thank Microsoft that Apple survived long enough to develop the iPod and iPhone.

Having the humility to let his sworn enemies save Apple, that’s so Steve.

Steve prepares young Stanford grads for life

Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech is one of his most cited works, perhaps because it’s one of the few times he’s opened up and given us a glimpse at his life philosophy. Throughout the speech, which is a must-listen, Jobs discusses why he dropped out of Reed College, love and loss, and of course, death.

Steve Jobs: Email ninja

Unlike most executives, Jobs may actually reply to you if you drop him a line — often to hilarious effect. Last year, the email master told a college journalism student to “Leave us alone” after she wrote him because Apple’s media relations team failed to get back to her. Also last year, Jobs also got into a late-night email exchange with Gawker blogger Ryan Tate, who was admittedly a bit tipsy at the time while complaining about Apple’s closed iOS ecosystem. That led to Jobs saying that the iPad provides “freedom from porn” since it doesn’t support Flash videos.

Being vaguely Orwellian after producing the iconic 1984 Apple ad? That’s so Steve.

Steve inspires Noah Wyle’s best performance ever

Sure, Noah Wyle may have been quite the actor on “E.R.” and “The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice”, but I think it may have required all of his thespian talents to bring Steve Jobs’ personality to life in the 1999 made-for-TV movie “The Pirates of Silicon Valley.”

Below, check out the scene where Wyle’s Jobs believes that Bill Gates (played by Anthony Michael Hall) stole the idea of a graphical user interface for Windows from Apple. If that’s not so Steve, I don’t know what is.

Steve trash talks the mobile competition

Jobs made a surprise appearance on Apple’s fourth quarter earnings call last year, seemingly just to trash the company’s mobile competitors. “We’ve now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future,” he said during the call.

As for Android, Jobs said that the notion of it being open is a “smokescreen.” He added that “it’s really about fragmented versus integrated. We believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.”

He also had choice words for companies making 7-inch tablets, because he believes that screen size is too small for useful tablet apps. “One could increase the resolution to make up for the difference, but it’s meaningless unless the thing also includes sandpaper so users can sand down their fingers.” Ouch.

Steve knows how to give presentations

It’s difficult to write an article about iconic Jobs moments without at least mentioning his product reveals. Below find our favorites.

Thanks to VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell for the top Photoshopped pic

The list of iconic designs Steve Jobs made possible is long. But his most brilliant and ambitious design may be Apple itself.

Jobs, who announced his resignation as Apple’s CEO yesterday, is rightly hailed as one of the most design-savvy executives in the electronics industry. He’s also an impressive architect of business structures.

In the coming years, with Jobs out of the leadership role, we’ll see just how well-designed the company he spent 15 years assembling really is. My guess is that it’s very well put together indeed.

Jobs has been working on this “product,” Apple Inc., for a long time. Immediately after rejoining Apple in 1996, he killed Apple’s clone program, radically trimmed the product lines, and generally cleaned house. He hired designer Jonathan Ive, a smart move for a leader who knew that product design would be critical in the coming years. Just as critically, he also hired Tim Cook, a man known for ruthlessly efficient operations savvy.

Over the past decade and a half, Apple has quietly built not only an impressive product lineup, but also one of the most efficient and resilient manufacturing, distribution and retail systems in the world.

“You could argue that probably his greatest achievement was Apple itself,” said Leander Kahney, editor of Cult of Mac and the author of “Inside Steve’s Brain.” “He has embedded his DNA into the way it does things. I think it’s going to be around for decades, executing on that.

“It’s the corporate personification of his spirit.”

(Click here to see VentureBeat’s video interview with Leander Kahney about Steve Jobs and Apple.)

According to Kahney, there are two key components to Apple’s success: people and process.

The people side of that formula owes much to Jobs’s very hands-on approach to hiring.

“The single most important thing he does, himself, is recruit people,” said Kahney. Jobs hires the best talent he can find, whether it’s executive, engineering, or operational. Once the right people are on board, he helps ensure that those people are in an environment where they can do their best work.

That’s not to say that Jobs is a touchy-feely human resources type recruiter. He’s famous for terminating job interviews within five minutes if he senses that the candidate isn’t up to the task. And a good work environment doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t terrified of the boss, either. Jobs is a demanding leader who doesn’t hesitate to be rude to or even yell at employees if their work doesn’t measure up.

The second part of the formula is process: How Apple comes up with product ideas, again and again, and is able to manufacture those ideas consistently, in volume. It’s not just that the company has product design and engineering geniuses (it does), but it also has found a way of generating new ideas that is uniquely creative.

A big part of that is prototyping. Whereas other companies might make six or seven prototypes while developing a new product, Apple will make hundreds, Kahney said. “They discover these products through prototypes, and that’s what makes it so creative.”

Venture capitalist Stewart Alsop, of Alsop Louie Partners, also praises Apple’s internal process. For instance, Alsop says, the company plans on the first version of any given product failing. It knows that consumers and the market will uncover faults with a product that no amount of prototyping can resolve.

Because the company typically puts several years of work into each new product before unveiling it, that means it still has a substantial lead over its rivals, even if its first version doesn’t exactly surprise and delight the masses.

For instance, Apple put underpowered processors in the first version of its iPad in order to cut costs, and only upgraded the processor — significantly — with the iPad 2 when it recognized how important that was in the real world. But because Apple had already invested huge amounts of time into the engineering and manufacturing of the iPad (going so far as to acquire a chip company and create a custom chip for the iPad), it was already years ahead of competitors like Motorola, RIM and HP.

“Nobody can catch up with that, because they don’t have a process for creating great products,” said Alsop.

Manufacturing is another area where Apple has changed the game. The company has forged uniquely close relationships with Chinese manufacturers like Foxconn, and it regularly pushes the limits of what their factories are capable of doing.

The unibody aluminum shell of recent MacBooks, for instance, represents years of design and manufacturing work. The almost seamless way in which the front and back halves of an iPhone’s chassis fit together is another, less obvious innovation: Five years ago, that level of precision was impossible in mass-produced products.

Designer Jony Ive spends a lot of time in China, Kahney says, working with manufacturers on ensuring that their machines and processes are capable of mass-producing what Apple needs.

“I think they’ve reinvented mass production,” Kahney said. “As much of what they do goes into manufacturing techniques as the product themselves.”

“The whole process — how they manufacture products, how they source components — it’s totally amazing,” said Alsop.

Even the design of Apple’s proposed new campus reflects Jobs’s commitment to building a company to last. Its futuristic design has been compared to a flying saucer, and the renderings that the company included in its planning proposal to the city of Cupertino, where they hope to build it, have a celestial, otherworldly feel to them. Beams of sunlight shoot out from behind the sleek lines of the circular building, making it look like it is about to float off into space — or perhaps has just crash-landed on Earth like the Starship Enterprise.

It’s clear that the building is intended as an icon, a monument: a permanent reminder of what makes Apple unique. It’s even got a circular shape that encloses a central courtyard like the walls around a fortress keep, enclosing a special, secret, pristinely “Apple” space. Working there, you’d be constantly reminded of the man who made the company.

“Tim Cook can probably hold the team together, so the real question is 10 years out,” said Alsop, who foresees years of continued revenue growth for the Cupertino company.

To sum up: Jobs has spent 15 years building the ultimate machine for inventing, manufacturing and selling consumer electronics, and just because he’s retiring, the machine is not about to grind to a halt any time soon.

“This guy’s been thinking about it for a long time,” Alsop said.

Related stories on VentureBeat:

• Markets will punish Apple for the loss of its master magician
• Apple’s Tim Cook has some big shoes to fill
• Tributes to Steve Jobs from business executives start pouring in
• Top 10 Steve Jobs resignation reaction stories
• Why Apple employees avoid getting in the elevator with Steve Jobs

Top image: Rendering from Apple’s proposal to the city of Cupertino, Calif.

Florida-based Operating System Solutions has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Apple, the website Patently Apple reports. But the surprising part is that the patent in question was originally owned by LG Electronics.

Count 1 in the court’s document reads, “Apple sells or offers to sell within this district, computer systems, including but not limited to the MacBook Pro, that utilize the Mac OSX operating system that infringes at least claim 1 of the OSS [Operating System Solutions] Patent.”

The patent abstract describes it as “a method for quickly booting a personal computer system using boot configuration information on memory and the attached devices that was created and saved in a hard disk at the preceding boot process.” Its quick boot method is a multi-step process (see flow chart below) that involves saving a computer’s boot configuration to memory so that it can boot up more quickly in the future. According to the lawsuit, Apple’s OS X violates this method in the patent.

Patently Apple points out that the original owner of the 2002 patent was LG Electronics, but it was subsequently reissued to Protimus Technologies in 2008. It’s unclear how the patent found its way to OSS — a company which can’t even be located via a Google search — or if LG still has any ties to the patent. Since OSS has no Internet presence, it’s likely that it’s a patent holding company (also known as a patent troll).

The Mac App Store allows users to instantly purchase software for their Macs from a single location. It was an attempt by Apple to bring the app purchasing mentality from iOS into the desktop arena, and it looks like that plan was indeed successful.

One success story Apple pointed out was the Mac image editor Pixelmator, which managed to earn $1 million in its first 20 days on the App Store. Autodesk, the company behind the popular 3D design tool AutoCAD, gained 1 million new users thanks to the store. Just like its iOS App Store, Apple takes a 30 percent cut from purchases on the Mac App Store.

I’d still like to see a further breakdown of just how well Apple’s Mac Store is performing. It definitely seems strange that a service only available to Macs could sell more software than established retailers. Then again, Apple could just be counting individual programs sold, and not the total amount it’s making from them.

The announcement cements the fact that this year’s WWDC is all about software. We already knew that Apple would be dishing out more details on OS X Lion at the event (we already caught a glimpse of it in February), and iOS 5 seemed like a given as well.

But the announcement is definitely a strange way for Apple to reference iCloud, a service that has been talked about for some time but never acknowledged by Apple.

So what is iCloud? Apple’s doesn’t offer up many details, but at this point we can assume it’s the name of Apple’s online music service. And it could also serve as an upgraded version of MobileMe, Apple’s subscription-based file storage, mail and calendar syncing service. I suspect iCloud will make it easy for consumers to store their media files online and easily retrieve them via the iPhone and iPad.

Apple has been building up a data center in North Carolina for some time, and it’s also piecing together a smaller data center in Santa Clara, Calif., both of which are expected to serve at the heart of Apple’s cloud services.

The company will definitely have some surprises in store for its WWDC keynote, but at this point it doesn’t seem very likely that we’ll see new iPhone hardware at the event.

At the moment, Reading List only appears to be something that’s in early builds of Mac OS X Lion, Apple’s next operating system — but I would wager that it will also be something that’s implemented (and synchronized) on the iPhone and iPad.

If that’s the case, the feature spells trouble for Instapaper and ReadItLater, both of which have gathered millions of users thanks to their synchronized bookmarking implementations. Instapaper developer Marco Arment doesn’t seem too worried, though, saying on Twitter, “For many reasons, I believe Instapaper would still have a market even if Apple implemented Reading List synced to iOS devices.” He also said it appears the feature is more closely imitating ReadItLater at the moment, which isn’t as feature-rich as Instapaper.

The news comes only a few days after Arment said he will retire the free version of Instapaper on the iPhone and iPad, leaving only the $4.99 version on the App Store. Instapaper sales will definitely be threatened if Apple ends up making Reading List a way to synchronize pages to read across its devices.

This is how Apple describes the feature: “Reading List lets you collect webpages and links for you to read later. To add the current page to your Reading List, click Add Page. You can also Shift-click a link to quickly add it to the list. To hide and show Reading List, click the Reading List icon (eyeglasses) in the bookmarks bar.”

Since joining the company in 1997, Serlet has played a critical role in developing Apple’s operating system, Mac OS X. Although not as well known by the general public as Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Serlet was considered a key figure inside of Apple.

Sertlet’s departure may indicate a diminishing role for Apple’s desktop operating system as the iOS, the operating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, becomes a larger focus.

Says Serlet, “I’ve worked with Steve for 22 years and have had an incredible time developing products at both NeXT and Apple, but at this point, I want to focus less on products and more on science.”

Craig Federighi, Apple’s Vice President of Mac Software Engineering, will take on Serlet’s responsibilities and will report to Steve Jobs. Federighi has been managing the Mac OS software engineering team for the past two years.

Before joining Apple, Serlet spent a number of years at Xerox PARC and NeXT. He earned his doctorate degree in Computer Science from the University of Orsay, France.

The vulnerability is currently being exploited via a Flash file embedded in Microsoft Excel (.xls) file. The file has been distributed as an e-mail attachment. There are no reports yet on attacks targeting Acrobat software.

Users should be very careful with e-mail attachments until a fix has been issued and the software has been updated. Adobe promises that an update will be available on March 21.

Acrobat and Acrobat Reader are used to create and read PDF files. Flash and PDF files are very popular among malicious code writers because they are so widely used across different platforms. Almost every computer in the world has Acrobat or Flash installed. A single vulnerability can be exploited in Windows, Mac and other operating systems.

The affected versions are Adobe Flash Player 10.2 for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris and Android systems. Adobe Reader and Acrobat X are affected on Windows and Macintosh only. The full details of affected versions are on Adobe’s website.

The Mac app has been available as a public beta since October, which is quite some time to wait for the official release, considering that FaceTime was originally announced in June for the iPhone 4 and was one of the device’s most touted apps.

With the FaceTime for Mac app, any Mac user can video chat with other Mac or iOS users over an Internet connection. FaceTime for Mac is now in version 1.0, and the app can be set up using an existing Apple ID. Among the new features, FaceTime enables HD video calls up to 720p on supported Intel-based Macs. The app is now available as a download to existing Mac owners, but the software will come pre-installed with the new MacBook Pro line of laptops.

So, people buying a new laptop will get to enjoy the FaceTime app free of charge (kind of—considering they just ponied up hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a computer), but running for under a buck, it’s hardly a massive investment for others. Then again, Skype is still free.

A few screen issues are being reported: Some users are seeing a flickering display and horizontal lines after waking up their Air from sleep mode or plugging in another display. Others are seeing their screens fade from light to dark after coming out of sleep mode. One temporary fix Apple’s memo offered is to put the computer to sleep again by closing the lid for 10 seconds, and then opening the lid to wake it up.

The memo states that the “issue has been isolated and will be addressed in an upcoming software update.” Hopefully, a software fix is enough to correct the issue — as the video below demonstrates, it seems to be a pretty glaring screen problem for some users. If it’s a hardware issue, Apple will have to issue a recall for its new Macbook Air computers.

Air users are also reporting that their computers are facing system crashes via kernel panics (a term used to describe major system crashes on Mac OSX and Linux machines). Apple’s memo didn’t mention that issue specifically, but a software update could potentially fix it as well.

Once you’ve logged into the FaceTime software, you can easily see all of the account settings for the Apple ID used to connect — including the username, ID, place and birth date, as well as the security question and its answer. All of the information is available in plain text (completely unsecured) and you’re not asked to re-enter your password to view it, something which is fairly standard for account security. Using the birth date and security question information, anyone can change the password of the corresponding Apple ID.

The other major issue is that FaceTime apparently doesn’t forget your password when you log out. Upon restarting the application, your password remains in the password field — something which shouldn’t happen without your approval in any application.

How can you protect yourself? Aside from avoiding the FaceTime software for now, which is an early release that’s still in beta testing, you could also set a master password on your computer so that nobody can log in to your system without your permission. General common sense security also applies: It’s yet another reminder why you should never leave your computer running in a public space.

Apple will surely fix the security hole at some point, but until it does you should be extra careful with FaceTime on your Mac.

via Engadget

For example, only one of the retailers AppleInsider tracks currently lists the cheaper 1.83GHz MacBook Air model in stock — others like Amazon, MacMall, and J&R are completely out of stock. The site also notes that most of the retailers offering the higher end 2.13GHz MacBook Pro are either completely out of stock, or incredible low on supply. This is the first time AppleInsider has noticed this phenomenon since it began tracking the MacBook Air’s supply two years ago.

Retailers like Best Buy and Amazon have also been told that Apple won’t replenish their stock until October 12 to 16, sources familiar with their buying operations tell AppleInsider. Such a delay in supply generally only occurs when Apple is preparing to revamp a product line, the sources say.

The current MacBook Air product line hasn’t been updated since June 2009, so it’s certainly due for a refresh. Apple is also no stranger to updating product lines in October — last year it announced a new iMac design and all-metal Macbook on October 20.

The supply shortage lends credence to rumors from Asia in September that Apple was looking to introduce a smaller 11-inch Macbook Air. Rumors of a smaller Air go back as far as July of this year, when sources said that Apple was aiming to make the computer smaller, thinner, and powered by a low-voltage “Core i” series Intel processor.

Honestly, there’s no reason why Apple wouldn’t want to release a smaller MacBook Air. Apple doesn’t provide sales data for the computer, but word on its sales has been negative for some time. It’s certainly nowhere near as successful as Apple’s more iconic MacBook and MacBook Pro lines.

A smaller and cheaper Air could be very tempting to many consumers, and it would be a way for Apple to take advantage of the newer low-voltage processors that many laptop makers are using today. Low-voltage CPUs generally allow for netbook-like battery life — with the added benefit of much more horsepower. Apple could also stand to offer an Air cheaper than the current low-end model at $1,499.