What’s New in the New, Slim IMac?

Apple‘s iMac, or all-in-one desktop Mac, has always had a flair for the dramatic. From the “transparent gumdrop” original, to the “Pixar lamp” model, through to today’s enormous flatscreens, it’s been perhaps the most distinctive desktop computer in each of its iterations.

Now, at the event where Apple introduced the new iPad Mini, it also refreshed its mainstream desktop Mac lineups. Both the Mac Mini and iMac got new models, each faster and more powerful than the previous year’s. But while the Mac Mini still looks basically the same, the iMac now cuts an incredibly slim profile, which Apple says is 5 millimeters thin at its edge.

It’s not as thin as it seems — it curves substantially towards the back, not that you’d be able to tell from most of the photos on Apple’s site. But it doesn’t just have its looks going for it.

Improved display

The iMac still doesn’t have a Retina Display; that honor went to the 13-inch MacBook Pro, the second Mac to get a screen so sharp you can’t discern individual pixels with your unaided eye. Apple claims that the iMac’s screen now features 75 percent glare reduction, however, as well as an IPS display for improved viewing angles. Finally, the screen is now flush with the glass, so that it looks like there’s nothing in between you and the picture.

No optical drive

The new iMac has an SDXC card slot, so you can plug in up to 64 GB digital camera memory cards. It also has two high-speed Thunderbolt ports, for attaching external displays and backup hard drives, as well as four USB ports. The slot-loading DVD drive, however, has been removed … so make room in the budget for an external drive, if you still need one.

Dramatically improved performance

It’s a cliche that each new generation of computers is faster, better, and smaller than the last these days. Apple provides concrete numbers and handy benchmarks, however: “up to 60 percent faster graphics,” for instance, and it says that they feature the new third-generation quad-core Intel Core processors. Obviously, how much faster it is than the last iMac will depend on the specs of each, but the high end is now much higher.

Fusion Drive

What about hard disk access speeds — the tightest bottleneck, when it comes to computer performance? One way to get around those is to use a solid-state drive, or SSD, which uses flash memory like on the iPad and is much faster than a magnetic hard disk. SSDs cost more, though, and don’t offer nearly as much storage space.

Apple’s solution to get around this is Fusion Drive, which pairs a smaller SSD with a 1 TB (or larger) hard disk. OS X and its core apps are preloaded on the faster SSD, and Fusion Drive automatically puts your most-used stuff on it as well. Expect this add-on option to be pricey, however; it costs $ 250 extra on the Mac Mini, and isn’t even available on the cheapest Mac Mini model.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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Disney to buy “Star Wars” producer for $4.05 billion

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Walt Disney Co agreed to buy filmmaker George Lucas‘s Lucasfilm Ltd and its “Star Wars” franchise for $ 4.05 billion in cash and stock, a blockbuster deal that includes the surprise promise of a new film in the series in 2015.

Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger told analysts on Tuesday that the plan is to release a new movie in the series every two to three years thereafter. The last “Star Wars” picture was “Revenge of the Sith” in 2005, and Lucas has in the past denied any plans for more.

Lucas, a Hollywood icon known for exercising control over the most minute details of the fictional universe he created, will remain as a creative consultant on the new films.

“It’s now time for me to pass ‘Star Wars’ on to a new generation of filmmakers,” he said in a statement. Lucas will become the second-largest individual holder of Disney shares, with a 2.2 percent stake.

Disney will pay about half the purchase price in cash and issue about 40 million shares at closing.

“This is one of the greatest entertainment properties of all time,” Iger said. Like Disney’s purchases of Marvel Entertainment and Pixar studio, LucasFilm will “drive long-term value to our shareholders,” he said.

Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo said the deal would lower Disney’s earnings per share by a low single-digits percentage in fiscal 2013 and 2014. He also said Disney would repurchase all of the issued shares on the open market within the next two years, on top of planned buybacks.

This agreement marks the third time in less than seven years that Disney has signed a massive deal to take over a beloved studio or character portfolio, part of its strategy to acquire brands that can be stretched across TV, movies, theme parks and the Internet.

In early 2006, Disney struck a deal to acquire “Toy Story” creator Pixar, and in the summer of 2009 it bought the comic book powerhouse Marvel.

“Disney already has a great portfolio and this adds one more,” said Morningstar analyst Michael Corty. “They don’t have any holes, but their past deals have been additive.”

Iger said he and Lucas first discussed a possible sale about 18 months ago. Lucas was pondering his retirement, and Iger was looking to add another well-known brand to the Disney empire. The two signed the deal at Disney’s Burbank, California, headquarters on Tuesday.

“Everywhere I went, ‘Star Wars’ was already there, and sometimes they got there ahead of us,” said Iger in an interview. “I kept seeing that brand and decided maybe we should buy it.”

He told analysts he believed there was “substantial pent-up demand” for new “Star Wars” movies. Each of the last three films in the series would have grossed $ 1.5 billion in today’s dollars at the box office, CFO Rasulo estimated.

The film’s iconic characters also will boost Disney’s sales of toys and other consumer products, particularly overseas, executives said. Sales of “Star Wars” items such as Darth Vader and Yoda action figures total roughly $ 215 million a year, Rasulo said.

In 2005, the year the last “Star Wars” film was released, LucasFilm generated $ 550 million in operating income, Rasulo said.

Disney also will be able to extend the presence of the franchise at its theme parks around the globe, Iger said. The company’s parks already feature rides based on “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones,” another Lucas property.

“Star Wars” characters also are likely to find a home on the Disney XD cable channel, which is aimed at young boys, Iger said.

Iger wouldn’t commit to keeping the “Star Wars” operation separate from Disney, as he did with Pixar and Marvel.

And Lucas won’t sit on the Disney board despite his 2.2 percent stake in the company, Iger said. The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who held a large stake in Disney after it bought his Pixar studio, had a seat on the Disney board.

From a fan’s perspective, critics said there was sure to be at least some excitement at the prospect of episode seven in the saga of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

“Do I want to see more Star Wars movies? Not really, but they’re not making these movies for me,” the film writer “Mr. Beaks” wrote on the well-regarded industry site Ain’t It Cool News. “There’s a whole new generation of Star Wars fans, and they worship the prequels like folks my age worshipped the original trilogy.”

Besides “Star Wars,” the Lucasfilm deal also includes rights to the “Indiana Jones” franchise, though Disney did not elaborate on any plans for that series.

(Additional reporting by Michael Erman in New York and Himank Sharma in Bangalore; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Ciro Scotti)

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Sandy prompts harrowing NYC hospital evacuation

NEW YORK (AP) — Evoking harrowing memories of Hurricane Katrina, 300 patients were evacuated floor by floor from a premier hospital that lost generator power at the height of superstorm Sandy.

Rescuers and staff at New York University Langone Medical Center, some making 10 to 15 trips down darkened stairwells, began their mission Monday night, the youngest and sickest first, finishing about 15 hours later.

Among the first out were 20 babies in neonatal intensive care, some on battery-powered respirators.

“Everyone here is a hero,” Dr. Bernard Birnbaum, a senior vice president at Tisch Hospital, the flagship at NYU, told exhausted crews as he released all but essential employees late Tuesday morning. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

More than two dozen ambulances from around the city lined up around the lower Manhattan block to transport the sick to Mount Sinai Hospital, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, St. Luke’s Hospital, New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Long Island Jewish Hospital.

Margaret Chu, 36, of Manhattan, gave birth to a son, Cole, shortly before noon Monday. “Then, a couple of hours later, things got a little hairy. The electricity started to flicker and the windows got shaky,” she said from LIJ’s Lenox Hill, where she was transported after generators failed and NYU was plunged into darkness.

Chu, accompanied by husband Gregory Prata, was able to walk 13 flights into a waiting ambulance with help from staff and first responders lighting the way by flashlight. She said other women who had given birth during the storm and were evacuated were carried down on sleigh-like gurneys.

“Everybody was pretty calm. I would call it organized chaos,” she said.

Meanwhile, other New York hospitals canceled outpatient appointments and elective surgeries. And several closed and evacuated patients, including New York Downtown Hospital, a Manhattan campus of the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System and other NYU-affiliated facilities. Bellevue and Coney Island Hospital were evacuating Tuesday afternoon.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was clearly angry about the NYU Medical Center crisis when he addressed reporters late Monday, saying hospital officials had assured the city they had working backup power.

Last year, NYU evacuated in advance of Hurricane Irene on the order of city officials, spokeswoman Allison Clair said. “This year we were not told to evacuate by the city.”

Without power, there are no elevators so patients — some of whom were being treated for cancer and other serious illnesses — were carefully carried down staircases. As the evacuation began, gusts of wind blew their blankets while nurses and other staff huddled around the sick on gurneys, some holding IVs and other equipment.

Luz Martinez, 42, of Roosevelt Island off midtown Manhattan in the East River, was home recuperating from a cesarean section when she got her first inkling that her 3-week-old daughter was being transferred out of NYU’s neonatal intensive care.

The baby, Emma, had been born prematurely. Martinez had been calling the hospital for regular updates but at one point Monday night, the phones were busy every time she called. Then she heard Bloomberg on television talking about the evacuation and soon after lost power at home.

“I went crazy. I wanted to come to the hospital,” Martinez said.

She and her husband hopped in the car but could find no way into Manhattan because of storm damage and bridge closings. That’s when NYU called her on her cellphone to say Emma was being taken to Mount Sinai.

But the terrified parents couldn’t get there, either. They called Mount Sinai through the wee hours for regular updates and finally reached their baby around noon Tuesday.

“It was a nightmare,” Martinez said by phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of crying.”

Emma is doing fine. Martinez praised the staff at both hospitals. “They all handled everything as smoothly as they could,” she said.

NYU sent home about 100 of its 400 patients earlier Monday to lighten its load, starting the evacuation of the remaining 300 patients at about 7:30 p.m. when backup generators began to fail, Clair said. There were no injuries during relocation.

The scene was reminiscent of hospital evacuations in New Orleans after Katrina, with patients being carried down stairs on stretchers because elevators were out, and nurses squeezing oxygen bags for them because of lack of power to run breathing machines.

The difference is that in New Orleans, patients were trapped in flooded hospitals; in New York, dozens of ambulances could get through to move patients to safety.

The hospital blamed the severity of Sandy and higher-than-expected storm surge that flooded its basement but had little else to say beyond a short statement emailed to reporters after the evacuation was complete.

“At this time, we are focusing on assessing the full extent of the storm’s impact on all of our patient care, research and education facilities,” the statement said.

Most of the power outages in lower Manhattan, where Tisch is located, were due to an explosion at an electrical substation, Consolidated Edison said. It wasn’t clear whether flooding or flying debris caused the explosion, said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison.

At NYU, sporadic telephone service made it difficult for the hospital to notify relatives where patients were taken. It relied instead on receiving hospitals to notify families.

Until the generators failed, Chu considered herself and her new baby out of harm’s way. By the time she was evacuated, the streets were eerily silent and the night sky lit up by emergency lights of waiting ambulances.

“My son will appreciate this someday,” she said.

___

Marchione, AP’s chief medical writer, reported from Milwaukee.

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Sandy prompts harrowing NYC hospital evacuation

NEW YORK (AP) — Evoking harrowing memories of Hurricane Katrina, 300 patients were evacuated floor by floor from a premier hospital that lost generator power at the height of superstorm Sandy.

Rescuers and staff at New York University Langone Medical Center, some making 10 to 15 trips down darkened stairwells, began their mission Monday night, the youngest and sickest first, finishing about 15 hours later.

Among the first out were 20 babies in neonatal intensive care, some on battery-powered respirators.

“Everyone here is a hero,” Dr. Bernard Birnbaum, a senior vice president at Tisch Hospital, the flagship at NYU, told exhausted crews as he released all but essential employees late Tuesday morning. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

More than two dozen ambulances from around the city lined up around the lower Manhattan block to transport the sick to Mount Sinai Hospital, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, St. Luke’s Hospital, New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Long Island Jewish Hospital.

Margaret Chu, 36, of Manhattan, gave birth to a son, Cole, shortly before noon Monday. “Then, a couple of hours later, things got a little hairy. The electricity started to flicker and the windows got shaky,” she said from LIJ’s Lenox Hill, where she was transported after generators failed and NYU was plunged into darkness.

Chu, accompanied by husband Gregory Prata, was able to walk 13 flights into a waiting ambulance with help from staff and first responders lighting the way by flashlight. She said other women who had given birth during the storm and were evacuated were carried down on sleigh-like gurneys.

“Everybody was pretty calm. I would call it organized chaos,” she said.

Meanwhile, other New York hospitals canceled outpatient appointments and elective surgeries. And several closed and evacuated patients, including New York Downtown Hospital, a Manhattan campus of the VA New York Harbor Healthcare System and other NYU-affiliated facilities. Bellevue and Coney Island Hospital were evacuating Tuesday afternoon.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was clearly angry about the NYU Medical Center crisis when he addressed reporters late Monday, saying hospital officials had assured the city they had working backup power.

Last year, NYU evacuated in advance of Hurricane Irene on the order of city officials, spokeswoman Allison Clair said. “This year we were not told to evacuate by the city.”

Without power, there are no elevators so patients — some of whom were being treated for cancer and other serious illnesses — were carefully carried down staircases. As the evacuation began, gusts of wind blew their blankets while nurses and other staff huddled around the sick on gurneys, some holding IVs and other equipment.

Luz Martinez, 42, of Roosevelt Island off midtown Manhattan in the East River, was home recuperating from a cesarean section when she got her first inkling that her 3-week-old daughter was being transferred out of NYU’s neonatal intensive care.

The baby, Emma, had been born prematurely. Martinez had been calling the hospital for regular updates but at one point Monday night, the phones were busy every time she called. Then she heard Bloomberg on television talking about the evacuation and soon after lost power at home.

“I went crazy. I wanted to come to the hospital,” Martinez said.

She and her husband hopped in the car but could find no way into Manhattan because of storm damage and bridge closings. That’s when NYU called her on her cellphone to say Emma was being taken to Mount Sinai.

But the terrified parents couldn’t get there, either. They called Mount Sinai through the wee hours for regular updates and finally reached their baby around noon Tuesday.

“It was a nightmare,” Martinez said by phone. “I’ve been doing a lot of crying.”

Emma is doing fine. Martinez praised the staff at both hospitals. “They all handled everything as smoothly as they could,” she said.

NYU sent home about 100 of its 400 patients earlier Monday to lighten its load, starting the evacuation of the remaining 300 patients at about 7:30 p.m. when backup generators began to fail, Clair said. There were no injuries during relocation.

The scene was reminiscent of hospital evacuations in New Orleans after Katrina, with patients being carried down stairs on stretchers because elevators were out, and nurses squeezing oxygen bags for them because of lack of power to run breathing machines.

The difference is that in New Orleans, patients were trapped in flooded hospitals; in New York, dozens of ambulances could get through to move patients to safety.

The hospital blamed the severity of Sandy and higher-than-expected storm surge that flooded its basement but had little else to say beyond a short statement emailed to reporters after the evacuation was complete.

“At this time, we are focusing on assessing the full extent of the storm’s impact on all of our patient care, research and education facilities,” the statement said.

Most of the power outages in lower Manhattan, where Tisch is located, were due to an explosion at an electrical substation, Consolidated Edison said. It wasn’t clear whether flooding or flying debris caused the explosion, said John Miksad, senior vice president for electric operations at Con Edison.

At NYU, sporadic telephone service made it difficult for the hospital to notify relatives where patients were taken. It relied instead on receiving hospitals to notify families.

Until the generators failed, Chu considered herself and her new baby out of harm’s way. By the time she was evacuated, the streets were eerily silent and the night sky lit up by emergency lights of waiting ambulances.

“My son will appreciate this someday,” she said.

___

Marchione, AP’s chief medical writer, reported from Milwaukee.

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NYC Rats: Stronger Than Sandy

Unprecedented flooding throughout low-lying portions of New York City over the past two days undoubtedly left hundreds—if not thousands—of rats scrambling for their dear lives. According to experts, most of them likely survived. “They’re a jack of all trades when it comes to locomotion,” says Rick Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. “They can’t sprint, but they run well; they’re not Michael Phelps, but they’re strong swimmers; and even though they don’t have prehensile tails, they climb well. They do it all.”

Ostfeld notes that rats can easily swim a couple hundred yards. In fact, he says, “one of the ways that rats have dispersed around the world is by jumping off of ships and swimming to shore—the proverbial ‘rats leaving a sinking ship’ is actually based on reality.”

No one knows exactly how many rats live in New York City, but Ostfeld suspects that there are at least as many rats as humans. The city’s population is dominated by the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus), an invader from Europe, and the Black rat (Rattus rattus), which originated in Asia. These highly resilient rats can be found throughout New York City, but they usually don’t travel far within those limits.

The displacement of rats caused by Hurricane Sandy—a dispersal of rats that is likely unprecedented for the city in terms of numbers—has Ostfeld concerned about a possible increased spread of rat-borne diseases. “You get infected individuals mixing with uninfected individuals and that’s a recipe for an outbreak,” says Ostfeld. “It spreads like the flu, from rat to rat.”

Urban rats are known to carry infectious diseases including leptospirosis, typhus, salmonella, hantavirus, and even the plague. The incubation period for these diseases in humans is usually a couple of weeks or months, and symptoms are often similar to those of a common flu. According to Ostfeld, “In the coming weeks and months, health-care providers should have rat-borne diseases on their radars and potentially test for them.”

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Hurricane’s death toll rises to 65 in Caribbean

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — As Americans braced Sunday for Hurricane Sandy, Haiti was still suffering.

Officials raised the storm-related death toll across the Caribbean to 65, with 51 of those coming in Haiti, which was pelted by three days of constant rains that ended only on Friday.

As the rains stopped and rivers began to recede, authorities were getting a fuller idea of how much damage Sandy brought on Haiti. Bridges collapsed. Banana crops were ruined. Homes were underwater. Officials said the death toll might still rise.

“This is a disaster of major proportions,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told The Associated Press, adding with a touch of hyperbole, “The whole south is under water.”

The country’s ramshackle housing and denuded hillsides are especially vulnerable to flooding. The bulk of the deaths were in the southern part of the country and the area around Port-au-Prince, the capital, which holds most of the 370,000 Haitians who are still living in flimsy shelters as a result of the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Santos Alexis, mayor of the southern city of Leogane, said Sunday that the rivers were receding and that people were beginning to dry their belongings in the sun.

“Things are back to being a little quiet,” Alexis said by telephone. “We have seen the end.”

Sandy also killed 11 in Cuba, where officials said it destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of houses. Deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. Authorities in the Dominican Republic said the storm destroyed several bridges and isolated at least 130 communities while damaging an estimated 3,500 homes.

Jamaica’s emergency management office on Sunday was airlifting supplies to marooned communities in remote areas of four badly impacted parishes.

In the Bahamas, Wolf Seyfert, operations director at local airline Western Air, said the domestic terminal of Grand Bahamas‘ airport received “substantial damage” from Sandy’s battering storm surge and would need to be rebuilt.

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Steve Ballmer Wants You to Come Over to Windows 8 [VIDEO]

On the fence about Windows 8, or Microsoft‘s Surface Tablet, or the new batch of Windows phones? Wondering whether to develop for them, or purchase one? The CEO of Microsoft would like a word with you.

[More from Mashable: Steve Ballmer on Tim Cook’s Attack: ‘I’m Glad He’s Paying Attention’]

I sat down with Steve Ballmer at the Windows 8 Phone launch in San Francisco Monday (full interview to follow), and we shot this quick one-on-one above. (Appropriately enough, it was shot on the HTC Windows Phone 8X; Ballmer was keen to test the image stabilization feature.)

[More from Mashable: Battle of the Tablets: Nexus 10 vs. iPad 4, Surface and Kindle Fire HD [CHART]]

Here, then, is Ballmer’s pitch for why you should buy into the Windows 8 ecosystem, Live Tiles and all. For consumers, it comes down to familiarity and personalization with a fresh interface. For developers, it’s about considering how many users will be on the new mobile platform in a year’s time.

Microsoft is having some success at persuading users to switch over: as the company announced at its Build conference Tuesday morning, there have been four million Windows 8 upgrades since Friday.

Are you convinced by the pitch? Let us know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Armstrong rehab stint forces Green Day cancellations

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Green Day said on Monday they are canceling their fall club tour and postponing early 2013 dates as frontman Billie Joe Armstrong continues treatment for substance abuse.

“Obviously the timing for this isn’t ideal, but Billie Joe‘s well-being is our main concern,” band member Mike Dirnt said in a posting on Green Day’s website.

“We are happy to say that Billie Joe is doing well, and we want to thank you all for the outpouring of support and well wishes that we have received, and we can’t wait to see you all again soon,” he added.

Armstrong, lead singer and guitarist for the Grammy-winning rock band, sought substance abuse treatment late last month following an angry, guitar-smashing on-stage outburst in Las Vegas. Details of his substance abuse have not been released.

Green Day also announced on Monday it was moving up the release date of “iTré!,” part of an ambitious trilogy of albums that marks their first collection of new music since 2009, to December 11 from its original date of January 15, in part to make up for the canceled and postponed dates.

“If we couldn’t be there to play it for you live, the least we could do was give you the next best thing,” said drummer Tre Cool.

The band’s latest tour, including dates in Seattle, Sacramento and Reno, was due to wind down in Tempe, Arizona, on December 10. The website said tickets for the club shows would be refunded, and that new dates for the postponed shows would be announced shortly.

The California-based punk rock band, formed in the late 1980s, has sold more than 65 million records worldwide and won five Grammys, including best alternative album for its 1994 major-label debut, “Dookie,” and best rock album for “American Idiot” and “21st Century Breakdown.”

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; Editing by Jill Serjeant, Gary Hill)

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Meningitis outbreak spreads to 19 states with case in Rhode Island

(Reuters) – The deadly meningitis outbreak tied to steroid injections from potentially tainted medications spread to a 19th state on Monday with the first case reported in Rhode Island, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Only four of the 23 states that received some of the medication have not reported cases of fungal meningitis, which has killed 25 people nationwide.

The four states that have not reported at least one case of meningitis are California, Nevada, West Virginia and Connecticut, the CDC said.

The total number of meningitis cases including the expansion to Rhode Island reached 347 nationwide on Monday, the CDC said, up 10 from the last report on Saturday.

There also are seven reported cases of infections after the tainted steroid was injected into a joint such as a knee, hip, shoulder or elbow, bringing the total number of infections to 354.

The steroid was supplied by New England Compounding Center of Massachusetts, which faces multiple investigations. Health authorities have said its facility near Boston failed to make medications in sterile conditions.

(Reporting by Greg McCune; Editing by Eric Beech)

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Meningitis outbreak spreads to 19 states with case in Rhode Island

(Reuters) – The deadly meningitis outbreak tied to steroid injections from potentially tainted medications spread to a 19th state on Monday with the first case reported in Rhode Island, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

Only four of the 23 states that received some of the medication have not reported cases of fungal meningitis, which has killed 25 people nationwide.

The four states that have not reported at least one case of meningitis are California, Nevada, West Virginia and Connecticut, the CDC said.

The total number of meningitis cases including the expansion to Rhode Island reached 347 nationwide on Monday, the CDC said, up 10 from the last report on Saturday.

There also are seven reported cases of infections after the tainted steroid was injected into a joint such as a knee, hip, shoulder or elbow, bringing the total number of infections to 354.

The steroid was supplied by New England Compounding Center of Massachusetts, which faces multiple investigations. Health authorities have said its facility near Boston failed to make medications in sterile conditions.

(Reporting by Greg McCune; Editing by Eric Beech)

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