Appletell

Manga/anime artist Yoshitoshi ABe, creator and contributor to such series as Serial Experiments Lain and Haibane Renmei recently spoke at

Mr. Yoshitoshi is a huge Mac fan, maintaining a homepage on Mac.com, releasing a self-published manga (known as “dojinshi") for the iPhone in 20 countries and sneaking references to Apple products into his work.

After some difficulty in finding a DVI adapter for his Macbook Air, ABe began his presentation (through a translator) by talking about the human eye, and the iPhone.

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The presence of a LED lit display in Apple’s relatively new MacBook Air has apparently brought the technology to the forefront of new machines.  However, it is not just computers as you would expect, LCD televisions are also jumping on the bandwagon.  There is expected to be a large 16.7 million devices using this technology by the end of this year compared to a measly 4 million in 2007.  One reason the technology is so appealing is because of its even lighting and low energy consumption.  On the other end, one reason it has been adopted so slowly is due to its high cost.

I don’t know about you, but I’m all for longer battery life in laptops.  Not only that, but LED lit displays take up about only half the space of a traditional CCFL backlight which allows for thinner machines.  Once the price falls a little lower due to higher production, we could be seeing LED displays a lot more in the future.

Via [MacNN]

Just after my recent Safari rant, Apple publishes an update.  This version, 3.1.1, fixes 39MB worth of security issues and bugs, one of which was the one that allowed a hacker to get full access of a MacBook Air at a recent PWN2OWN conference.  This update deals with four specific bugs and, in my opinion, is a very good step in the right direction.

More specifically, this update fixed an issue involving the way WebKit handled a host name containing a semi colon in the URL.  This bug, according to Apple, could allow a malicious URL to gain access to a machine.  Another issue fixed consisted of buffer overflows while handling JavaScript expressions.  This update is for both Mac users and Windows users, so be sure to download it for a more secure machine.

You can finds Apple’s detailed notes on this release at their site.

Apple today released Firmware Updates for the Intel iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Aluminum Keyboard.

The firmware updates are available at apple.com and through Software Update. They “[fix] several issues to improve the stability of [the] computers.” The keyboard update addresses an issue with keys repeating themselves wittttttttttttthout warning.

Firmware Updates require a restart and the keyboard update renders your keyboard useless for as much as 5 minutes while it installs, then it, too, requires a restart of your computer. Follow the instructions (usually “Quit Everything, Touch Nothing") to the letter, other wise your computer may get messed up. Potentially REALLY messed up.

Oddly, I downloaded the Firmware Update for my MacBook Pro manually, as Software Update didn’t find it and it told me I didn’t need the update. Is this happening to anyone else?

This week, Apple released a new software update, weighing in at about 551kb, to the MacBook Air’s system management control (SMC) in hopes that it will finally put an end to frequent and annoying freezing and overheating issues that have troubled some early adopters of Apple’s newest line of notebooks.

The new update specifically fixes the speed and operation of the MacBook Air’s internal fan, which is responsible for cooling the notebook and preventing overheating issues. The fan has failed to perform properly before the update was released, which resulted in random intervals of freezing that left the MacBook Air unresponsive for 10 to 15 second periods (if not longer) at a time, according to several users who have posted on Apple’s support forums (see here and here).

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