It’s been an exciting week for Apple news what with the announcement of the iPhone 5, new iPods and iTunes 11 (in fact, my Twitter feed has seemed to consist of nothing but these topics) but we’ve still managed to find you some different news for your browsing pleasure this week.
If you still haven’t caught up on all the action from last Wednesday (and frankly, where have you been living these past few days?!) then be sure to check out our full roundup of all the new product announcements.
Enjoy!
OS X 10.8.2 fixes battery life issues experienced
The latest seed of OS X 10.8.2 to registered Apple developers seem to have fixed the battery drain issues that were first seen with the release of Mountain Lion back in July. Upon upgrading, some users reported a significant decrease in their Mac’s battery life and some even struggled to get 50% of the reported duration.
Mountain Lion may have loads of extra features but some users have complained about diminished battery life.
The Mac Observer ran tests on a 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro under certain conditions. Whereas under the later builds of Lion, the MBP was holding out for approximately 370 minutes (just a little over 6 hours under moderate usage), with the first release of Mountain Lion the laptop was conking out after a mere 259 minutes (or a little over 4 hours). However, the latest build of Mountain Lion seems to have rectified the issue, with the battery life being restored to pre-Mountain Lion levels. You can check out the full results of the experiment, along with a more detailed explanation of their testing conditions, over at the Mac Observer website.
Given the rapid release cycle of pre-release builds of OS X 10.8.2 to registered Apple developers (and the apparent lack of bugs in later releases), it is rumoured that the final version will be released to everyone very soon. The new version brings along Facebook integration (which was missing from the original release), along with improvements to the Game Center, iMessage and iOS 6 compatibility.
RIP Ping (for good this time)
With the announcement of iTunes 11 back last Wednesday, Apple has officially killed Ping, its failed attempt at social networking from inside iTunes. There had been rumours for sometime that Ping was going to be axed along with the next version of iTunes and indeed this has been confirmed. The service will be shutting down on September 30th and is no longer accepting new members.
Ping is to be replaced on September 30th by tighter Twitter and Facebook integration in iTunes.
Ping’s demise was, ultimately, inevitable given the increased Twitter and Facebook integration in the new version of iTunes and in iOS 6 and the service was infamously featured as one of CNN’s tech fails of 2010, along with the iPhone 4 Antennagate problem and Google Buzz.
Mountain Lion is fastest-selling OS X release of all time
Last Wednesday wasn’t just a good day for prospective iPhone users – Apple also announced right at the start of the keynote that Mountain Lion was the fastest selling OS X version of all time, selling 7 million copies since its release in July. Macs are also enjoying a wider market share and Apple has surpassed the likes of Dell, Acer and Toshiba to become the leading notebook maker in the United States, enjoying a 27% market share and a year-on-year growth rate of 15% (meanwhile, PCs are growing at a pitiful 2% year-on-year!).
Heard Anything Else?
If you’ve heard anything else exciting that’s happened this week then go ahead and post a link to it in the Comments section below for the benefit of our other readers!