The new Airport Extreme and Time Capsule released by Apple in June didn't have an advertised upgrade, outside of a capacity bump on the Time Capsule. However, Brian Klug at AnandTech has written an extraordinarily detailed review of the new devices and found they are notably improved from the prior generation.


Klug notes that the new devices are virtually indistinguishable from their older counterparts, but in detailed testing, they found increased throughput and range.

At the end of the day, the new Airport Extreme dramatically improves throughput in the best case and in a few regions where signal was previously unusable. In the worst case (location 4), performance improves from being essentially unusable to totally fine, and in the case of the 2010MBP goes from not being able to connect at all to pushing 23 Mbps.

[...]

The main improvements with AFS (real-world file transfer) happen out at the extremes where previously signal was unusable on 2.4GHz, and likewise on 5GHz. That really tells the story of the (sometimes dramatic) difference that the higher power WLAN solution in the 5th generation makes over the 4th generation.

The highest speeds are attained with the 2011 generation MacBook Pro which includes an upgraded "three spatial stream compliant WLAN stack", which basically is next-generation wireless software and hardware.


The new Airport Extreme includes a slightly different chipset as well, moving from one sourced from Marvell to one from Broadcom:

The result of the move from Marvell to Broadcom is twofold. First, performance and range is definitely better thanks to more transmit power and the improved sensitivity afforded by newer generation chipsets. Second, the combination of lots of Broadcom in Apple’s hardware lineup (from the iPhone, iPad, and MacBooks, to iMac and Mac Mini) with Broadcom in the access point likely allows for the use of frame bursting or some other packet aggregation technique that speeds things up in some scenarios. It’s another example of how having that complete hardware control can in fact result in some benefit—in this case, faster WiFi.

Klug finishes the review by noting the Airport Extreme is reasonably priced compared to the competition and he prefers it due to it "actually work[ing] without locking up, becoming unstable periodically, dropping the session from overheating when being pushed to 100% for hours, or requiring a daily reboot."


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• 'Cut the Rope: Experiments' Delivers More Candy For Om Nom
• Logic 9.1.5 Updates Bring Bug Fixes and Apogee Duet 2 Compatibility Improvements
• Condé Nast Launches Free 'Goings On Around Town' App
• Google+ for iOS Gains iPad and iPod Touch Support, Not Yet Universal
• UK Carrier Orange to Offer Customers 'Free' iTunes Movie Rental in Ongoing Promo

Metropolitan Police have multiple police vans parked in Oxford Circus, including three parked directly in front of the Apple Store flagship on Regent Street. The picture above was posted to Twitter by @Joe, a venture capitalist with m8 Capital in London.

Londoners are facing rioting and looting for the third night in a row. The BBC has extensive coverage of the events.

Any UK readers with pictures, video, or other information, please get in touch via Twitter, email, or the comments on this post.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• 'Cut the Rope: Experiments' Delivers More Candy For Om Nom
• Logic 9.1.5 Updates Bring Bug Fixes and Apogee Duet 2 Compatibility Improvements
• Condé Nast Launches Free 'Goings On Around Town' App
• Google+ for iOS Gains iPad and iPod Touch Support, Not Yet Universal
• UK Carrier Orange to Offer Customers 'Free' iTunes Movie Rental in Ongoing Promo

Apple today released Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, a utility that lets users create a Lion recovery partition on an external drive or USB key. Lion Recovery lets users "repair disks or reinstall OS X Lion without the need for a physical disc."

To create an external Lion Recovery, download the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant application. Insert an external drive, launch the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant, select the drive where you would like to install, and follow the on screen instructions.

When the Lion Recovery Disk Assistant completes, the new partition will not be visible in the Finder or Disk Utility. To access Lion Recovery, reboot the computer while holding the Option key. Select Recovery HD from the Startup Manager.

Lion Recovery Disk Assistant can be downloaded from Apple's support website.

Apple's knowledge base article about the utility notes that the partition it creates has all the same capabilities as the Lion Recovery that is installed during a Lion installation. However, this partition could be used in the event a user can't start their computer from the Recovery partition or if the hard drive is replaced.

[Users can] reinstall Lion, repair the disk using Disk Utility, restore from a Time Machine backup, or browse the web with Safari. This drive can be used in the event you cannot start your computer with the built-in Recovery HD, or you have replaced the hard drive with a new one that does not have Mac OS X installed.

The document has two final notes:

- If the computer shipped with Lion, the external recovery drive can only be used with the system that created it.

- If the system was upgraded from Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard to Lion, the external recovery drive can be used with other systems that were upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion.

We had previously reported that in order to do a clean install of Lion, Snow Leopard would need to be installed first. With this recovery partition creator, there is now an official path to perform a clean install without Snow Leopard. Also, this would seem to make the unofficial Lion boot disk creator unnecessary.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• 'Cut the Rope: Experiments' Delivers More Candy For Om Nom
• Logic 9.1.5 Updates Bring Bug Fixes and Apogee Duet 2 Compatibility Improvements
• Condé Nast Launches Free 'Goings On Around Town' App
• Google+ for iOS Gains iPad and iPod Touch Support, Not Yet Universal
• UK Carrier Orange to Offer Customers 'Free' iTunes Movie Rental in Ongoing Promo

MacDefender was the most significant malware attack on the Mac in years, if ever. The threat started in May, infecting many less-savvy Mac users, and had become widespread enough that Apple was forced to release a special anti-malware security fix. The software would be downloaded when users visited certain websites and, once installed, looked to be legitimate anti-virus software. Unsuspecting users would get warnings of viruses infecting their system. By entering their credit card number, users could pay to "remove" the viruses.

Except it was all fake. There were no viruses, just a piece of software trying to trick users into handing over their credit card numbers.


The hidden developer behind MacDefender continued to release new variants of the malware into the wild, resulting in a cat-and-mouse game as Apple continued to ban new variants of the software.

Then, one day, MacDefender simply disappeared. Richard Gaywood, at TUAW, pointed out that Apple hadn't updated its malware definitions -- the code designed to kill MacDefender -- since June 18.

Brian Krebs might have the answer:

On June 23, Russian police arrested Pavel Vrublevsky, the co-founder of Russian online payment giant ChronoPay and a major player in the fake AV market.

[...]

In May, I wrote about evidence showing that ChronoPay employees were involved in pushing MacDefender — fake AV software targeting Mac users. ChronoPay later issued a statement denying it had any involvement in the MacDefender scourge.

But last week, Russian cops who raided ChronoPay’s offices in Moscow found otherwise. According to a source who was involved in the raid, police found mountains of evidence that ChronoPay employees were running technical and customer support for a variety of fake AV programs, including MacDefender.

The last release of MacDefender occurred on June 18. ChronoPay's offices are raided June 23. A coincidence perhaps, or Russian law enforcement saving Mac users from fake antivirus software.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Lion USB Keys Available For Some via AppleCare
• GLMPS Brings Harry Potter-esque Moving Photos to the iPhone
• Page 2: Claimed iPhone 5 Spy Photo
• Apple Releases QuickTime 7.7 Security Update for Mac OS X Leopard and Windows
• Vonage Introduces iPhone VoIP App With Free 15 Minute Call

Find My Mac has gone live for developers beta testing Apple's iCloud service. Find My Mac was officially added to Lion in Developer Preview 4, released after WWDC in June, though evidence of the feature had leaked in prior releases.

Find My Mac is very similar to Find My iPhone, only because the Mac has no GPS functionality, it seems likely the feature relies solely on nearby Wi-Fi networks to determine the computer's location.


Once it finds the lost Mac, users can send a message, remotely lock the screen, or even wipe out the entire drive. Find My Mac may launch this fall with the general release of iCloud.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Vonage Introduces iPhone VoIP App With Free 15 Minute Call
• OWC SSDs Turn the 2011 Mac Mini Into a Powerhouse
• Apple to Begin Merging iOS and OS X With Quad-Core A6 Chip Next Year?
• Suppliers to Begin Shipping iPhone 5 to Apple in September
• Apple Revises "What Makes An iPhone An iPhone" Ads

Google believes Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies are waging a "hostile, organized campaign against Android" though "bogus patents", according to a post on the Official Google Blog:

They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Mobile; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.

The post, written by David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer at Google, also attacks Microsoft and Apple's $4.5 billion winning bid for Nortel's portfolio (which is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice on antitrust grounds), saying the patent war is "escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth." Google's final losing bid for Nortel's patent assets was around $4 billion.

A few weeks ago, it was rumored that Apple and Google were weighing competing bids for InterDigital, a mobile-technology firm that has an extensive wireless patent portfolio. That portfolio could sell for billions as well.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• OWC SSDs Turn the 2011 Mac Mini Into a Powerhouse
• Apple to Begin Merging iOS and OS X With Quad-Core A6 Chip Next Year?
• Suppliers to Begin Shipping iPhone 5 to Apple in September
• Apple Revises "What Makes An iPhone An iPhone" Ads
• iPad's 'Design Efficiencies' Make It Tough For Other Tablets to Compete

The first subscriber numbers for Condé Nast's iPad experiment are out, and The New Yorker has 100,000 readers, according to the New York Times:

Offering the first detailed glimpse into iPad magazine sales since subscriptions became available in the spring, The New Yorker said that it now had 100,000 iPad readers, including about 20,000 people who bought subscriptions at $59.99 a year.

Additionally, more than 75,000 people have taken advantage of the magazine’s offer to allow print subscribers to download the app free. Several thousand more people, on average, buy single issues for $4.99 each week.

The article's numbers are a little confusing, mostly because of the word "additionally", but here's how we see it breaking down:

- 75,000 readers who already subscribe to the New Yorker print edition.
- 20,000 readers who subscribe to the annual iPad-only edition for $59.99/year.
- 5,000 readers who buy individual issues for $4.99/week.

The New Yorker's reader count is the highest of any of Condé's iPad titles, which includes tech-savvy Wired magazine. The New Yorker has more than 1 million print subscribers.

All the Condé Nast titles are available via in-app subscription, with Apple taking 30% of sales. Apple has collected approximately $360,000 from The New Yorker's 20,000 annual subscribers.

Condé reported today that it has 242,000 digital readers (PDF) across all its titles, with 106,000 of those being new readers without print subscriptions.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Installing a Second Hard Drive in Your 2011 Mac Mini
• iPhones Flying High: Make Up 2/3 Of In-Flight Wi-Fi Users
• Google Updates iPad Search Experience
• Nortel Completes $4.5 Billion Patent Sale to Apple-Led Consortium [Updated]
• Advice From A Genius: Should You Buy AppleCare?

Apple has started refunding users who were charged multiple times for their Lion purchases. We reported last week on a user whose checking account was drained of nearly $4,000 when he was charged 122 times for Lion. The email above was sent to a user who was charged 8 times.

John Christman, the user who was charged 122 times was eventually made whole:

Apple kept me on a very need-to-know basis all along, but once I confirmed the money was in my PayPal account, he then asked for a list of fees to review. Once he saw the fees (very minimal), he offered to pay them and give me a bit extra to pay any additional fees I incur.

Other users who were double charged may see similar emails soon.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• iPhones Flying High: Make Up 2/3 Of In-Flight Wi-Fi Users
• Google Updates iPad Search Experience
• Nortel Completes $4.5 Billion Patent Sale to Apple-Led Consortium [Updated]
• Advice From A Genius: Should You Buy AppleCare?
• Apple Updates Online Order Status Pages During Overnight Downtime

The next version of iTunes will get a full facelift and extensive iCloud integration, according to a report from iDownloadBlog.

From what we’re hearing, the UI would be much more cleaner and “slick.” iCloud is also going to be more closely integrated with iTunes. Rather than the iTunes Store being essentially a web browser, the Store will actually be integrated into the entire app— much like Spotify is currently.

We’re also hearing that iCloud backups will be integrated into iTunes. This means if you back up your iDevice to iCloud, that same backup will be stored locally on your computer. Also, app data from iCloud will be synced closely with iTunes. For example, if you beat a level in Angry Birds, that level data will be synced to iCloud and then to your iTunes library.

It would make sense -- the iCloud is meant to be "the truth", with all other devices (including your Mac and PC) backing up to it.

This can be seen currently with the limited iCloud support Apple has already implemented. If you purchase an App within iTunes (and have the appropriate settings saved), it automatically downloads to your iOS device. I've begun doing all my app shopping within iTunes for this reason.

iDownloadBlog is a completely unproven source, with no track record, so take this report with a grain of salt.

By coincidence, in yesterday's anonymous "unproven source" report that Apple was considering an acquisition of Barnes & Noble, BGR's tipster said iTunes 11 would be released in September along with iOS 5 and iCloud, and would support reading iBooks on the Mac.

Apple is currently beta testing iTunes 10.5, along with developer previews of iOS 5. This could have placeholder code for iCloud, while hiding a larger redesign of the application itself.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Advice From A Genius: Should You Buy AppleCare?
• Apple Updates Online Order Status Pages During Overnight Downtime
• Samsung Halts Public Disclosures of Mobile Phone Sales Numbers
• A Couple of iPhone 5 Design Mockups
• Apple's iPad Crushing Motorola's Xoom

Apple may be looking at an acquisition of bookseller Barnes & Noble, according to an "unproven source" at BGR:

We received a tip from an unproven source claiming to have knowledge of discussions within Apple to possibly purchase Barnes & Noble...

This unproven source also said that iTunes 11 would be released in September along with iOS 5 and iCloud, and will support reading iBooks on computers as well as textbook purchases and rentals.

It's unclear what Apple would gain from such a purchase. B&N has more than 700 stores plus another 600 college bookstores, as well as decent digital penetration with its own eBookstore and Nook e-reader.

Barnes & Noble is currently trading with a market cap just above $1b, which would be a very small dent in Apple's $76 billion cash pile, though the price would obviously be higher as a takeover premium.

We're a little skeptical about the whole thing and mention it primarily to encourage conversation. If Apple really wanted to purchase a bookseller, it could have bought Borders at fire sale prices. Wall Street seems unimpressed by the rumor: Barnes & Noble's stock price is flat on the day.

(Image via Flickr/cjc4454)


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Calorific Lite Makes Calorie Tracking Simpler
• MSFT: Lion Features Coming to Office "In Months, Not Days"
• Make Your iPhone Like Your Old Phone With Snake '97
• BBC iPlayer for iPad Going International: Western Europe Today, U.S. and Others Later This Year
• Most iPhone Growth From Overseas, Verizon a "Small Bang"