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LaCie Hub Now Shipping, Connects eSATA Drives via Thunderbolt
Announced at CES earlier this year, the LaCie's new Thunderbolt eSATA Hub is now shipping. The device allows external eSATA drives to be connected to Thunderbolt equipped Macs. The daisy-chainable hub includes two eSATA ports and retails for $199. eSATA is a high performance drive connector used to connect external hard drives to your computer. eSATA has never been a standard option on Macs, but is a faster alternative to USB 2.0 and Firewire and is commonly found on high performance external drives and storage arrays.
For those who are have existing eSATA drives or are waiting for Thunderbolt drives to drop in price, this could be a good interim solution. The Hub isn't yet available for order on LaCie's website. We spoke to someone at LaCie's sales center who told us the first batch had sold out, but that more were to arrive in a few days. Interested parties can contact LaCie sales directly to place an order for one of these backordered units, and it'll ship out when LaCie receives them.
Just a day after media reports pointed out the outdated billboard atop the West 14th Street flagship Apple Store in New York City, it has been replaced with an updated sign.
SplatF's Dan Frommer snapped a picture of the updated billboard showing a shot from the new iPad television ad with the iPad being used to make a painting.
The timing of the updated billboard so soon after the media's commentary on it yesterday is most likely a simple coincidence.
He did the integrated system again, iPod, iPad, and it worked, “but what happens? Google rips it off”.
Isaacson continued: “It's almost copied verbatim by Android. And then they licence it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated him. It wasn't a matter of money. He said: 'You can't pay me off, I'm here to destroy you'.”Isaacson went on to say that he believes that Tim Cook will handle things differently and "will settle that lawsuit." Apple is currently involved in a number of lawsuits over Android with manufacturers around the world.
While Apple's lost iPhone 4 that surfaced on Gizmodo back in 2010 made the biggest headlines, a similar situation reportedly played out ahead of the iPhone 4S launch last year, with an Apple employee having apparently lost a prototype of the device at a San Francisco bar more than two months before it was publicly introduced.
Apple responded relatively quickly to the loss of the prototype iPhone, and early reports claimed that the company had worked with San Francisco police to track the device to a home in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. They were, however, unsuccessful in locating the iPhone. Controversy erupted when the San Francisco police initially denied that they had participated in any such investigation, leading to suggestions that Apple investigators had impersonated police officers in their search.
The San Francisco Police Department did finally admit that it had assisted Apple with a search of the home in question, but the home's owner, Sergio Calderón, threatened to file a lawsuit over the incident. He claimed that the Apple security officers who searched his home had given the impression that they were police officers, thus making their search of his home an illegal breach of his rights. The last significant update in the case came in early December, when CNET interviewed Calderón's lawyer, who indicated that settlement negotiations with Apple had ended and that a lawsuit would be filed in the following weeks.
Nearly four months later and with no lawsuit having been filed, Network World has now followed up with the lawyer, David Monroe, to find out the status of the situation. Tellingly, Monroe repeatedly asserted that he had "no comment" on any of Network World's questions, all but confirming that he and his client did in fact reach a settlement with Apple. Unsurprisingly, that settlement would have included a nondisclosure agreement preventing Monroe or Calderón from commenting on the situation.Having heard nothing more in the subsequent four months, I called Monroe yesterday and asked if he could update me on the status of that lawsuit.
"I have no comment about that," he replied.
I asked if there had been a settlement between Apple and his client, Sergio Calderone.
"I have no comment about that."
I mentioned the bit about him saying in December that a lawsuit was then imminent - within a few weeks -- and asked what had changed since then.
"I have no comment about that."
I was about to try a fourth round but by then we were both chuckling over the futility of the exercise.Apple has refused to comment publicly on the situation all along, and did not respond to an inquiry from Network World regarding an update. Curiously, Apple's head of global security, John Theriault, left the company in November of last year, with sources indicating that his departure was indeed linked to the circumstances surrounding the lost iPhone 4S. Theriault now works as an independent management consultant in San Francisco.
For its part, the San Francisco Police Department conducted an internal investigation into its handling of the case, but it is unclear what the outcome of that investigation was.
Regarding the new iPad, certifications for all models of the new iPad are still pending for both Brazilian- and Chinese-assembled models, but it is clear that the company is making preparations to launch the device with at least some domestic production in Brazil. Apple will, however, be unable to launch the new iPad in Brazil until appropriate certifications are received, and the company has yet to announce a launch date for the device.
As with the iPhone, Chinese-assembled versions of iPad models manufactured for sale in Brazil would carry the BZ/A suffix on their model numbers as seen with most Apple products in that market, while their Brazilian-assembled counterparts would carry a BR/A suffix.
Ars Technica reports on a Tweet from Russian malware analyst Ivan Sorokin at Dr. Web claiming that the Flashback trojan has now infected over 600,000 Macs worldwide. That number reportedly includes 274 machines "from Cupertino", presumably meaning at Apple's headquarters.According to Dr. Web, the 57 percent of the infected Macs are located in the US and 20 percent are in Canada. Like older versions of the malware, the latest Flashback variant searches an infected Mac for a number of antivirus applications before generating a list of botnet control servers and beginning the process of checking in with them.The authors of the Flashback trojan have continued to tweak the software since it first surfaced last September, adjusting its tactics several times to include both social engineering tricks and exploits of vulnerabilities.
The most recently-seen version of Flashback surfaced earlier this week, exploiting a Java vulnerability that was unpatched on OS X. While Oracle had released an update closing the hole on Windows back in February, Apple had yet to issue a fix for Macs, as the company has historically maintained its own Java updates that are deployed some time after Oracle issues its own corresponding updates. But just a day after that report, Apple did update Java to address the vulnerability being exploited by Flashback.
Antivirus firm F-Secure has instructions on how users can determine whether their machines are infected by the Flashback trojan. The instructions do involve running commands in Terminal, and users should thus take care to follow the instructions exactly.
As noted by The Tech Block and The Next Web, during his Talk Show podcast with Dan Benjamin, DaringFireball's John Gruber offered up some additional confirmation of the existence of a 7.85" iPad. Gruber reports that he has been told by "numerous" people that this size iPad is something Apple has been "noodling with".
When asked by Benjamin if he thought a 7.85" iPad would ever be released, Gruber responded (at ~1hr 19min):“Well, I don’t know. What I do know is that they have one in the lab…a 7.85 inch iPad that runs at 1024×768… it’s just like the 9.7" iPad shrunk down a little bit. Apps wouldn't need to be recompiled or redesigned to work optimally on it. It's just the iPad smaller.Gruber has offered accurate information in the past and seems to have many contacts with Apple. Gruber does point out that Apple has many prototype products that never make it to market, and reminds us that Steve Jobs once said that he's was as proud of the products that Apple hasn't done as the ones they have.
It has been clear to us that a 7.85" iPad has been in late prototyping stages. Reports have been coming from the Chinese supply chain about such a device for months. This indicates that Apple isn't just toying around the the form factor in their labs in Cupertino, but is also working with supplies on possible production. As Gruber said, this still isn't a sign that Apple will necessarily release such a device.
The reason why a 7.85" screen might make sense for a new iPad has been detailed in the past, and we have a paper mockup that can be printed out to compare its size to a 9.7" iPad.
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