Apple News Weekly

Intuit has begun offering its entry-level financial management software Quicken Essentials for Mac on the Mac App Store. This is the standard edition of Essentials that has been on sale for quite a while, not a new version -- something Intuit is quick to point out in the description for the software. It's merely a new distribution point.

Quicken Essentials for Mac, a basic starter edition, helps you manage all of your personal finance in one place, so you can see where you’re spending and where you can save. Quicken automatically categorizes your financial transactions, stay on top of bills and helps you set goals so you can save more.

**For Quicken Essentials for Mac users: Please note, this is not a new release of Quicken Essentials for Mac. **

Quicken Essentials does work under OS X Lion, but it is a far cry from Quicken for Mac 2007, which was the last fully-featured version of Quicken released for the Mac platform. Intuit promised last month that a Lion-compatible version of Quicken 2007 would be available for customers by "early spring."

Quicken Essentials for Mac is available for $49.99 on the Mac App Store. [Direct Link]

Thanks Ahan!

Back in late December, Apple was fined $1.2 million by Italian regulators over allegations that the company promoted its AppleCare extended warranty program to customers without adequately disclosing that many of the program's benefits were already included in the standard two-year warranty required by Italian law.


As noted by @setteBIT, Apple has now added to its Italian online store a prominent link sharing the court decision (PDF). The document outlines the requirement that Apple modify the marketing terms for its AppleCare services in Italy within 90 days from the December 21 decision to properly reflect what is covered under standard two-year warranties and to widely publicize that information to consumers.

It is unclear whether Apple will continue to appeal the fine, with today's posting of the decision perhaps designed to meet the court's requirements while the case remains ongoing.

Apple has pushed out Build 11D50 of OS X 10.7.3 to registered developers. Apple continues to report no known issues in the seed notes, and asks developers to focus their testing on Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight and Safari.


The previous builds had appeared to be close to a final release, but Apple is clearly still making some final tweaks to the update. The release description has indicated that the main improvements in OS X 10.7.3 will be support for several new languages and fixes for issues related to smart cards, directory services authentication, and Windows file sharing.

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2012 first quarter, which spanned 14 weeks and ended December 31, 2011. The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. “We’re thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads, and Macs,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple’s momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline.”

As noted in our forums, Apple today pushed out a new firmware update specifically targeting users of the company's Mid-2010 13-inch MacBook Pro model. The new MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.5 brings compatibility with Lion Internet Recovery, allowing users of OS X Lion to reinstall the operating system from scratch on a brand-new hard drive without the need for physical recovery media.

About MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.5

This update enables Lion Recovery from an Internet connection on MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010) models.

For more information about Lion Recovery, please visit this website: http://www.apple.com/macosx/recovery/.

The update has not yet appeared on Apple's support downloads site, but weighs in at a small 2.9 MB for the user who posted the Software Update screenshot.

Lion Internet Recovery debuted alongside OS X Lion on new MacBook Air and Mac mini models introduced last July. The feature adds a minimal bootable install onto a machine's firmware to allow it to connect the Internet and download the full Lion operating system for installation. OS X Lion by default installs a recovery partition on the machine's hard drive for this purpose, but for users who are installing a blank hard drive or whose recovery partition becomes inaccessible, Internet Recovery provides yet another fallback option for Lion installation.

Following the July introduction of Internet Recovery on the current MacBook Air and Mac mini models, Apple extended the feature in mid-September to the then-current Early 2011 MacBook Pro models that had been released in February 2011. One month later Apple brought the feature to Apple's current-generation iMac line, leaving only the aging Mac Pro without support for Internet Recovery.

With today's firmware update, Apple has for the first time reached back to a previous-generation model to bring Lion Internet Recovery to the 13-inch MacBook Pro that was offered from April 2010 through February 2011.

Update: Users are also reporting that similar EFI firmware updates are available for the Mid-2010 white MacBook and the Mid-2010 Mac mini.

Virgin America has named one of its fleet after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, emblazoning a popular Jobs quote "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" on the side of this Airbus A320.

Steve mentioned the phrase in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, noting that it was originally used in The Whole Earth Catalog in the 1970's:

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

A Virgin America spokesperson explained to MacRumors that the name was chosen as part of an internal plane naming competition. The plane, with tail number N845VA, first flew last fall.

Virgin America is the only airline based in Silicon Valley, with 2,200 employees based in Burlingame.

(Photo courtesy Virgin America)

Apple is planning to open a new store-within-a-store concept at the legendary Harrods department store on Brompton Road in London, according to 9to5Mac.

Harrods boasts more than 1 million square feet of selling space across 330 departments -- plenty of room for an Apple Store of sorts. The store-in-store concept will feature wooden tables and signage but won't have the signature feature of any standalone Apple Store: the Genius bar.

9to5Mac claims the store will be smaller than the typical standalone Apple Store, but will be larger than the standard store-within-a-store at Best Buy or the new pilot program at Target stores in the US.

The richly detailed interior of Harrods
Harrods is perhaps the best-known department store in the world and is visited by more than 300,000 customers on its busiest days. The store is owned by Qatar Holdings, the nation of Qatar's sovereign wealth fund; it was sold by Mohamad Al-Fayed for £1.5 billion in 2010.

(Images courtesy Flickr/sonewfangled and Flickr/Herry Lawford)

Apple today announced iBooks 2 for iPad, featuring iBooks textbooks, an entirely new kind of textbook that’s dynamic, engaging, and truly interactive. iBooks textbooks offer iPad users gorgeous, full-screen textbooks with interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos, and unrivaled navigation. Leading education services companies including Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw-Hill, and Pearson will deliver educational titles on the iBookstore, with most priced at $14.99 or less. And with the new iBooks Author, anyone with a Mac can create iBooks textbooks and publish them to Apple’s iBookstore. Starting today, iBooks 2 is available free from the App Store and iBooks Author is available free from the Mac App Store

Apple today announced an all-new iTunes U app, giving educators and students everything they need on their iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch to teach and take entire courses. The all-new iTunes U app lets teachers create and manage courses — including essential components such as lectures, assignments, books, quizzes, and syllabuses — and offer them to millions of iOS users around the world. The app also gives iOS users access to the world’s largest catalog of free educational content from top universities including Cambridge, Duke, Harvard, Oxford and Stanford. And starting today, any K-12 school district can offer full courses through the iTunes U app.

One week after the previous developer seed, Apple late yesterday pushed out Build 11D46 of OS X 10.7.3 to registered developers. Apple continues to report no known issues in the seed notes, and asks developers to focus their testing on iCloud Document Storage, Address Book, iCal, Mail, Spotlight and Safari.


The file size has once again grown slightly, with the delta version of the new build for updating from OS X 10.7.2 weighing in at 996.98 MB and a combo version good for updating from any previous version of OS X Lion weighing in at 1.26 GB.

The previous 11D42 build had appeared to be close to a final release, but Apple is clearly still making some final tweaks to the update. The release description has indicated that the main improvements in OS X 10.7.3 will be support for several new languages and fixes for issues related to smart cards, directory services authentication, and Windows file sharing.