Sonnet Technologies says its Qio E3 professional SxS media reader is now shipping and available for purchase. As the latest member of the Sonnet Qio series of professional universal media reader/writers, the Qio E3 offers a high-speed alternative to stand-alone card readers. The E3 is the first three-slot SxS memory card reader available, according to Sonnet Technologies. It includes an integrated two-port 6 Gb/s eSATA interface for connecting external storage systems, and doubles as a bus expansion system for ExpressCard/34 adapter cards. Sonnet's Qio E3 provides users with the ability to transfer data concurrently from three SxS memory cards for Sony XDCAM EX professional HD camcorders. Users can copy files between any cards, attached storage, and the computer with aggregate bandwidth of up to 400 MB/second, with an aggregate ingest speed for three SxS cards of 300 MB/sec. Designed both for in-studio and on-location use, the E3 features a compact case with the same 5.9-inch by 6.2-...

Ballistic has announced its Ballistic Tough Jacket Case (http://www.goballisticcase.com) for the iPad 2. The US$69.99 case sports three layers:an inner silicone layer to absorb shock; an impact resistant hard plastic to protect the iPad 2; and shock absorbent polymer to offer added protection. The removable cover of the Tough Jacket has two functions. It allows you to either protect your screen while on-the-go -- or you can utilize it as a kickstand at two different angles. The Ballistic Tough Jacket -- which is available in either black or red -- also sports patent pending Ballistic corners which keep all sides of your iPad 2 safe, guaranteeing it’s protected against almost any type of drop, according to Adam Stubin, vice president of Business Development, Ballistic. The "lay-on-table" feature is an added design benefit of the patented Ballistic corners, which means the Apple tablet screen will never come in contact with surfaces when laid flat, keeping your screen from harm, he...

One Geek Army has released MovieIcon 2.6.1, an update of the Mac OS X 10.7.x ("Lion") app that automatically searches out video cover art for users' movie and TV show titles. The update includes improved IMDb searches for lesser known titles and iTunes artwork embedding. With MovieIcon, users can drag their title covers into the app, and thes oftware automatically searches out all of the available artwork for each title, based on the file's name. This can be done with a single file, or in batches. It works for movies, TV shows, and non-commercial or personally created videos. MovieIcon costs US$9.99. It's available worldwide exclusively through the Mac App Store in the Utilities category.

MonkeyBread Software today announces MBS FileMaker Plugin 2.5 for Mac OS X or Windows. Among other features, it adds CURL upload/download and CUPS printer functions. MBS is a FileMaker Pro plug-in that supports a plugin architecture that enables additions to its built-in feature set. It includes 765 different functions. MBS FileMaker Plugin 2.5 for Mac OS X or Windows is available directly from the MonkeyBread website (http://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/) with licenses starting at US$149. Not all functions are available in both versions, so check the specs. A free trial download is also available.

Bare Bones Software (http://www.barebones.com) has released Yojimbo 3.0.3, an upgrade to the information organizer for Mac OS X, and Yojimbo 1.0.4 for the iPad. Both are maintenance updates, which include fixes for specific reported issues. They're free updates for registered users. Yojimbo 3 is available at a suggested retail price of US$39 for an individual license; $69 for a family-pack license for up to five people in a single household; or $29 for an academic license. All licenses provide for synchronization of multiple computers. Any registered customer with Yojimbo 1.0 through 1.5.2 may purchase an upgrade to Yojimbo 3 for $20, including individual, family and academic licenses. All registered Yojimbo 2 customers are eligible to receive a free upgrade to Yojimbo 3. Yojimbo 3 may be ordered from the Bare Bones Software online store (http://www.barebones.com/store/). Multi-user (site) license pricing is also available.

Yazsoft (http://www.yazsoft.com) has released Speed Download 5.3, the latest version of its Mac OS X download manager that combines four products: a download manager with auto-resuming downloads, a secure FTP client, a file sharing utility with full encryption, and .Mac/iDisk/WEBDAV connectivity. Version 5.3 introduces a Safari extension for even better Safari integration. Speed Download requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or higher. It costs US$25 for a single-user license. You can also obtain it in the $35 Mega Bundle, which includes all of Yazsoft's apps. Speed Download is available in US English, French and Polish localizations.

A new Motorola lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, claims Apple is infringing on six of the company's patents with the iPhone 4S and iCloud. Motorola is seeking damages and an injunction of the two products. "Apple's infringing activities have caused and will continue to cause Motorola Mobility irreparable harm, for which it has no adequate remedy at law, unless Apple's infringing activities are enjoined by this Court," the company said in its filing. This is part of an ongoing battle. Earlier this month the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Motorola's Droid smartphones don't violate three Apple patents. The ruling is preliminary and needs to be approved by the ITC's full six-member commission. Apple alleges that Motorola infringes 24 of its patents (21 of them with Android-based phones, the remaining three with set-top boxes and DVRs), while Motorola previously asserted 18 patents against a variety of Apple...

Apple has passed Exxon Mobil to become the most valuable U.S. company and the most publicly traded company in the world. Apple stock shot up 8% at the open Wednesday to US$454.44 a share, one day after Apple reported the best quarterly results in history for a tech company. This pushed the company's market value to $418 billion. Exxon has a market vaue of $416 billion.

Apple’s iPhone 4S launch has helped the company regain global momentum with the US driving growth, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel (http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/). In the latest 12 weeks of sales, Apple’s share was at 44.9% while Android took 44.8% of the US market, says the research group. Apple also increased its share of the British smartphone market from 22.0% a year ago to 34.0%. "Apple has continued its strong sales run in the US, UK and Australia over the Christmas period," says Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director, Kantar. " Overall, Apple sales are now growing at a faster rate than Android across the nine countries we cover."

HackintoshUK (http://www.hackintoshuk.com/) is a new UK company that sells "Hackintoshs" -- PCs that run Mac OS X 10.7 ("Lion"). Recently, "MacNews/MacTech" interviewed Tristan Kirkpatrick of HackintoshUK to get some details about the company -- including how they planned to avoid the fate of Psystar. MacTech: How long has HackintoshUK been in business? Kirkpatrick: HackintoshUK is a very young company, started at the beginning of 2012 with the initial idea of building desktops that are open to all operating systems, including OS X and Linux. MacTech What was the impetus for starting the company? Kirkpatrick: We didn't like the limitations that were offered by other companies in terms of operating system. With the belief that people should be free to decide whether to use Windows, OS X or Linux we make the decision a little easier by modern computers designed to be used however they wish by the end-user. MacTech: what are your products and pricing like? Kirkpatrick: Currently we...

In a conference call regarding fiscal 2012's first quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2011, Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the Mac set new records for both desktop and laptops. Apple sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26% unit increase over the year-ago quarter. That's 26% annual growth compared to flat growth for the computer industry overall. Mac sales outgrew the industry average in all of Apple's markets, Oppenheimer said. In the Asia/Pacifia region, sales were up 53% year-over-year. The chief financial officer said that MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs and iMacs were Apple's biggest sellers. He also said that customers have downloaded over 100 million apps from the Mac App Store in less than a year.

During fiscal 2012's first quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2011, Apple retail store also generated record results with revenue of US$6.1 billion. Average revenue per store was $17.1 million, compared to 12 million in the year-ago quarter. Apple says 110 million people visited the retail stores last quarter; that's a year-on-year increase of 45%. On average there were 22,000 visitors per store per week. The stores sold 1.1 million Macs during the quarter. According to Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer says that half the Mac sales were to those new to the Mac platform. You could have predicted that if you've previously listened toApple's comments on its fiscal results. "The retail stores experienced strong year-over-year growth with new recordsin all major product lines," Oppenheimer says.

Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, discussing the company's fiscal 2012 first quarter that ended Dec. 31, 2011, said that sales of 15.5 million iPods was down 21% from the year-ago quarter but still ahead of expectations. iPads and iPhones are cannibalizing sales of the MP3 player. Oppenheimer said the iPod touch accounts for over half of the product line. According to the NPD research group, the iPod still has over 70% of the US MP3 player market share. Apple launched the iTunes Music Store in Brazil and 27 other countries in 2011. iTunes now has more than 20 million songs from major labels and thousands of independent artists, Oppenheimer says. There were over 140 million downloads from iTunes on Dec. 25.

The iPad was extremely popular with holiday buyers. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the first fiscal quarter, a 111% increase over the year-ago quarter. Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer says Apple remains very optimistic about the potential of this market. During the quarter, revenue from iPads and accessories increased by 99%, to $9.1 billion. Oppenheimer says 1.5 million iPads are now in use in education institutions. The Apple tablet is extremely popular with students, teachers, and administrators, he adds.

Apple became the biggest buyer of semiconductors last year, ahead of Samsung Electronics and Hewlett-Packard, according to new data from the Gartner research group (http://www.gartner.com), as reported by "InfoWorld" (http://macte.ch/twd5N). Apple's increased semiconductor spending is the result of a number of factors, the article says. The company sold more smartphones, and its tablet business was also highly successful in 2011, according to Gartner. The success of the MacBook Air also increased Apple's semiconductor demand, it said. Apple spent a total of US$17.3 billion on semiconductors during 2011, compared to $12.8 billion during 2010, according to Gartner's estimates.

The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period, according to the Pew Internet research group (http://www.pewinternet.org). The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January. These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers, says Pew Internet. However, as the holiday gift-giving season approached, the marketplace for both devices dramatically shifted. In the tablet world, Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble’s Nook Tablet were introduced at considerably cheaper prices than other tablets. In the e-book reader world, some versions of the Kindle and Nook and other readers fell well...

Parallels (http://www.parallels.com), which specializes in hosting and cloud services enablement, has announced its roster of keynote speakers for Parallels Summit 2012, the annual global gathering of the cloud industry. Among them is Guy Kawasaki, the first Apple evangelist. 
The Summit is scheduled from Feb. 14-16, 2012, at the Gaylord Palms Hotel and Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Parallels leadership will also deliver keynote speeches -- including Birger Steen, CEO, Serguei Beloussov, executive chairman of the Board and chief architect; and Jack Zubarev, president, Marketing and Alliances. Kawasaki was the original chief evangelist at Apple. In his second act, Kawasaki’s excelled at being a serial entrepreneur and networker, social media guru, best-selling author and featured columnist for American Express OPEN Forum for small business on his blog, "Powering Small Business Success." In his keynote, Kawasaki will share insights from his life experiences on how to tap into...

SQLabs has announced SQLiteSync for Mac OS X and Windows. It's a application to compare, merge and keep in sync two sqlite databases. It's able to visualize the differences between millions of rows in few milliseconds, according to the folks at SQLabs. SQLiteSync's smart visualization technology is also able to detect BLOB columns and large text columns and display all of them in a preview panel and more. SQLiteSync requires MacOS X 10.5 or higher. A single license costs US$49. Company and multiplatform licenses are also available. For more info go to the SQLabs website (http://www.sqlabs.com/).

"SuperMeet Workshops" return to San Francisco, as part of the Eleventh Annual San Francisco SuperMeet (http://supermeet.com) to be held on Friday, Jan. 27 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center beginning at 10 a.m. Each 90-minute workshop will feature fresh content from Adobe, Blackmagic Design, Canon and Light Iron. Workshop attendees have 12 sessions to choose from and can choose a maximum of three workshops. Tickets for the "SuperMeet Workshops" can be purchased online. Tickets can be purchased online for US$5-$10 (plus ticket fee) per class. Workshops will cost $15 per class at the door.

Reinvented Software has updated Poster 1.0 for Mac OS X (http://reinventedsoftware.com/poster/), to version 1.2. The upgrade includes an updated user interface design, improvements when posting to Facebook and SmugMug and the ability to export faces from iPhoto and Aperture. Poster works with popular photo editing and management applications and can also perform some tricks of its own, such as rotating and resizing photos before uploading. With it you can post photos and videos to Flickr and photos to Facebook. For Flickr, Poster can post both photos and videos, auto-complete tags, allows you to create and choose sets, submit photos to groups, tag people and moderate your photos all within the app. Its All Items view lets you work with an entire set of photos as easily as just one. For Facebook, Poster will not only post to your profile, but also any pages that you administer, making Poster suitable for anyone whose business, band or cause takes advantage of Facebook's user community...

Avenza Systems (http://www.avenza.com), producers of MAPublisher cartographic software for Adobe Illustrator and PDF Maps for Apple iOS, has released Geographic Imager 3.4 for Adobe Photoshop. This release is fully compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS5.1, which is also known as Adobe Photoshop 12.1 in Adobe CS5.5, as well as Adobe Photoshop 12.0.4 in Adobe CS5. The upgrade has even more format support. It also includes new options to import and export images. Geographic Imager 3.4 is available immediately free of charge to all Geographic Imager Maintenance Program members and at prices starting at US$319 for non-maintenance members. Academic and volume license pricing are also available.

Macoscope has released HUDTube 1.4, an update to their video playback utility for Mac OS X. The upgrade supports Apple's AirPlay and browser extensions. HUDTube is designed to let you enjoy browser-free videos. If it plays on your Mac with HUDTube, it also plays on your Apple TV. To use HUDTube you install a Safari or Chrome plug-in. Without dragging, you can send your videos and playlists to the app window. HUDTube requires Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later. It costs US$4.99 and is available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Video category.

A new report/survey from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (http://www.cirpllc.com/) -- as reported by "AppleInsider" (http://www.appleinsider.com) -- found that 21% of iPhone 4S buyers chose Apple's highest capacity 64GB model, while 36% of users migrated from another platform, such as Android, BlackBerry or Palm. The data comes from a survey of customers that bought an iPhone in October, November and December of 2011. From an initial response of 6,316 subjects, CIRP surveyed 365 qualified people for its analysis. The survey also found that AT&T, Verizon and Sprint have maintained their market shares consistently among iPhone owners. However, the availability of the iPhone has also helped the three largest wireless providers in the U.S. take customers from other carriers that do not over the iPhone, most notably T-Mobile. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners provides equity securities research to the investment community. Read more about their report at http://macte.ch/...

In 2011, Apple became the world’s largest purchaser of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microphones following the tremendous sales growth of iPhones, headsets and most notably iPads, causing the company to surpass Samsung Electronics to take the top spot. Apple in 2011 increased its procurement of MEMS microphones by 173% to reach 349 million units, up from 128 million in 2010, according to an IHS iSuppli (http://www.isuppli.com). This represented the strongest growth among the major MEMS microphone buyers, allowing Apple to move up one position to take the No. 1 spot in purchases, according to the research group. Apple’s share of MEMS buying amounted to 27% for the year, compared to 20% for Samsung. MEMS microphones are very small devices that employ a pressure-sensitive diaphragm etched on a semiconductor. The microphones are commonly employed in cellphones, headsets, notebook computer and video cameras, replacing conventional electret condenser microphones (ECM) while...