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Better late than never (see Sourcecrowd’s previous report here) Apple Apple’s new OS X iteration is coming: a definite sign that the Leopard will not suffer further delays is that it is now available for pre-order from a few outlets. So if you want to be one of the first to get your hands on the latest and greatest features when the 10.5 version of the operating system ships in October, click on the Apple links in this post to reserve your copy.

To see some of the nifty new feautures of Leopard and for more information, go to Apple’s website. Apple Mac OS X Version 10.5 Leopard has a retail price of $129.

OpenMoko have announced the Neo 1973, a sim-free, completely open source driven mobile phone running on a flavour of the Linux operating system. Although in its opening stages of development, the phone promises to spread open source to the mobile phone industry just as Linux brought freedom to Pc users: the base version of the NEO sells for $300, has a 2.8″ VGA touch screen, a micro SD card slot, a USB port and 2.5G GSM quad band capability. It shares a complete lack of buttons with Apple’s iPhone, with a touch screen that can be operated by both fingers and stylus. An improved, mass market model has been scheduled for October, to be sold at a $450 price point, adding wi-fi, 3-D motion sensors and graphics accelerators.

It looks like revolutionary devices, not only smart phones but smarter phones, are finally making their way into the stagnant mobile phone market, offering plenty of new choices to the public.

Apple has announced the release date of its upcoming iPhone mobile device in the US in a series of ads which began airing on Sunday. The three ads have also been posted on Apple’s own website. The iPhone was first unveiled in January by company CEO Steve Jobs, and has since been one of the most talked about, and sought after, gadgets of the year. Drawing both critiques and accolades even before it has been released to the public, the only thing that everybody seems to be agreeing on is that they would like one!

Featuring a 3.5-inch multi-touch display, the device is a widescreen iPod, a quad-band GSM phone with a 2-megapixel camera, and an internet browsing powerhouse thanks to the full-size Safari browser and underlying OS X operating system. Further communication possibilities are opened by the phone’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and EDGE data transfer capabilities. Two models will be available on the launch date of June 29: a 4GB one priced at $499 and a 8GB version priced at $599. According to the ads sales are subject to 2 years plan subscriptions with AT&T.

Square Group Ltd in association with Adobe, Apple and a slew of other partners organized an Adobe Creative Suite CS3 seminar at BFI Southbank in London last Tuesday, May 15, 2007. The seminar featured presentations from both Adobe and Apple about the new features of the many applications that make up Adobe’s new crown jewel, CS3, alongside demonstrations of related products from the likes of Eizo, Wacom, Extensis, HP and G-Tech. SourceCrowd was in attendance and can bring you an exclusive report from the event.
Before the seminar, attendees were able to peruse stands with a few interesting products on show. Eizo wowed the crowd with its stunning professional quality displays like the ColorEdge CE240W sporting hardware colour calibration, 14-bit color processing and easy profiling. Extensis was showcasing two of its software products for asset management: Suitcase Fusion, a font manager to organize, categorize and activate/deactivate fonts on the fly, and Portfolio, a complete multimedia files management tool. HP was showcasing the HP B9180 Photosmart Pro Printer, an eight-tanks pigment ink powerhouse which demonstrated stunning results on some of HP’s custom papers (especially impressive were the results on canvas-textured paper). Wacom had both the A4 Intuos3 graphic tablet and the Cintiq 21UX display available for hands-on demonstrations, making precise editing of pictures a breeze. Last but not least, G-Tech had the whole range of its external high speed hard drives solution on display. The elegant silver enclosures sport the latest in eSata and Firewire connections on the G-Raid2, G-Drive 250GB External FW400/USB2, G-Mini and G-Safe, with high-end fibre-channel RAID solutions also available in the G-Speed models.

Then it was finally time to immerse into the presentation!

The first speaker was Richard West, Apple Business Development Manager for the UK and Ireland. He started by stressing how important it is, in a multimedia communicational landscape, to put to good use the plethora of different ways that businesses have to reach clients, by customizing communications to target and focus on different markets. Adobe Creative Suite CS3, he argued, is the tool of choice to do so, allowing the use of a single creative process for multiple disciplines through its multiplicity of applications. Since output is so important to the designers and developers who use CS3, he then went on to demonstrate how colour calibration devices (in this case, the Pantone Huey Pro MEU113) can work in tandem with OS X ColorSync Utility (found in the Applications>Utilities folder) to prevent disparity between screen output versus print/web output. In particular he showed how it is possible to compare colour spaces graphically, and onscreen proofing of different colour spaces just by dragging and dropping images on the application. Microsoft’s Windows has “borrowed” the same functionality for its latest OS, implemented in Vista under the name Windows Colour System (located in the Control Panel).

Stay tuned for the second part of our report - coming soon!

Borrowing a page from Microsoft’s history of development woes for the recently released new OS, Vista, Apple has today announced that its eagerly anticipated new version of Mac OS X, Leopard, will be delayed until October 2007. The Cupertino, California based company had announced that Leopard would be released sometime in the spring at last June’s WWDC (its annual developers convention).

Now, according to a press release appearing on Apple’s official website, the release date has been pushed back because some key resources have been redirected from the OS development team in order to meet the late June deadline for the iPhone. Although this probably means no delays for THE hottest gadget of the year, many will see this as a missed opportunity for Apple to steal some of Microsoft’s thunder, seen the tepid reactions to the Vista release from both critics and the public.