Apple's iOS 5 battery fix en route (Apple Talk Weekly)
Got a quick-draining battery since upgrading to iOS 5? Apple's got a fix for that coming up soon. More on that, and the rest of this week's news in Apple land in this week's edition of Apple Talk Weekly.
This week brought good news for those affected with lackluster iPhone battery life after upgrading to iOS 5. Help is on the way.
Apple copped to the quick drainage problem and said it was working on a fix in the form of a software update that will arrive to users in the "next few weeks."
In the meantime, the company pushed out two uncharacteristically quick, nearly back to back betas of iOS 5.0.1 to developers, the software that includes the fix, along with patches to other bugs that were in the initial release of the iOS 5 software. That right there is a good sign we could get the software fix sooner than expected.
Read on for a rundown of everything else that happened this week in Apple land.
News
A flurry of new filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission posted yesterday show Apple's top executives getting bonuses with big payouts that hinge on them staying with the company through the end of 2016. Most got 150,000 shares, worth a little more than $60 million based on yesterday's closing Apple stock price. Apple's Eddy Cue pulled in another 100,000 shares to go with the bonus he got when he became a senior vice president at the beginning of September.
Apple misses iTunes Match launch deadline
Apple this week missed the deadline it laid out last month to bring its iTunes Match service to users by the end of October. That's the service that scans your iTunes library and replaces any tracks you've ripped with full-quality copies from Apple's iTunes Music Store, that is if they have a license to it and you're a paid subscriber of the service. Apple followed up this week by releasing a new developer beta of iTunes with the feature enabled.
Siri experiences second outage
Apple's Siri service, the voice assistant feature that's exclusive to the recently launched iPhone 4S, underwent its second major outage this week. The service was down, or otherwise spotty for a little less than three hours on Thursday afternoon, returning to normal without an explanation from Apple. The feature, which turns voice commands into actions on the phone, requires being piped through Apple's servers to work.
Later this month, the iPhone 4S will be arriving in 15 more countries including Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and South Korea. Preorders for those countries began yesterday.
Apple's NYC "cube" reopens
Apple's highest-profile store in the Big Apple re-opened this week following a nearly five-month construction overhaul. Work on the store, which is one of the most photographed landmarks in New York, began in mid-June. The company tweaked the design of its iconic glass cube "by using larger, seamless pieces of glass." Since opening in 2006, the company's Fifth Avenue location has gone on to become one of the company's busiest and reportedly the most profitable.
Garageband arrives on iPhones, iPods
Apple made its Garageband app for iOS work on iPhones and iPods this week. Previously the software was only available to iPad users. Users get all the same software-based music tools as before, along with a few tweaks like making custom chords, and exporting in uncompressed audio formats.
Rumors
Apple mulling end of life for Mac Pro tower?
Apple's line of high-end desktop towers could be more endangered than originally thought. A new report this week claimed that the company is considering shelving what is currently its most expensive product. While Mac hardware sales have grown considerably overall, notebooks eclipsed the company's desktop sales in 2004 and haven't looked shown any signs of receding.
Apple may have bought up 3D mapping company C3 Technologies, a which makes 3D cartography that could replace or augment what is currently available on Apple's iOS products. The company was originally rumored to be purchased by Apple in August, with Apple blog 9to5Mac suggesting this week that the sale was confirmed.
Even though Apple's Mac OS X 10.7 came out just a few months ago, it's already testing the next major version. That's according to MacRumors and 9to5Mac, which this week posted logs showing users on OS X 10.8 accessing both sites from nearby Apple's headquarters.
Apple's product line is set to get some big makeovers next year, if a new report is to be believed. Citing sources in "the upstream supply chain," tech news site Digitimes said this week that Apple plans to "overhaul" its iPhone, iPad, MacBook Air and iMac during the course of next year. Of note is mention of Apple releasing two--count them two--models of the iPad next year within just a few months of one another.
Apple Talk Weekly is a weekly roundup of some of the week's top Apple-related news and rumors. It appears every Saturday morning and is curated by CNET's Apple reporter Josh Lowensohn.