Why is the above date and time important? Because FUTURAMA WILL RETURN TO THE AIR WITH BRAND NEW EPISODES ON COMEDY CENTRAL. That night will mark the first episode of a brand new 26 episode season and I cannot even begin to explain how excited I am. To any friends and family who may be reading this: I will be unreachable during the this time and if you talk to me either before or afterwords I will likely be incoherently giddy.

Earlier today Apple refreshed the MacBook Pro series of notebooks with new faster Intel Core i5 and Core i7 processors, updated graphics capabilities, and a longer battery life. The base price is staying the same at $1199 and, from what we can tell on Apple’s website, it is already in-stock and ready to ship in 1-3 business days. Pretty much everything else in this system stayed the same.

Today is a big day here at TAV! We just passed a small yet, to us, significant milestone on our Facebook Fan Page: 100 fans. Thank you to everyone who has become a fan so far. We hope to continue to grow and will continue to bring you the latest in everything Apple.

If you aren’t a fan of ours on Facebook yet, or weren’t aware we were on Facebook, you can follow us any time by clicking the Facebook link towards the top right of any page here.

If you are already a fan, please suggest us to anyone you might know who uses and loves Apple products as much as we do.

Thanks Again!
- The Apple Vine

In case you missed the live coverage that was all over the Internet mid-day today about Apple’s media event announcing the forthcoming update to the iPhone operating system for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, here’s a round-up of the new features you can look forward to.

• Multitasking
  Topping most people’s lists for features they’d like to see, developers will now have access in the SDK to seven different multitasking services, allowing Apps to run certain things in the background while supposedly not sacrificing battery life and performance. This will be available only to the iPhone 3GS, latest generation of iPod Touch, and all iPads. I shed a small tear that I shall never see this on my iPhone 3G.
• Folders
  It really doesn’t get much more straightforward than being able to organize your Apps in to folders. This was a fantastic feature on the Palm Pilot more than a decade ago, so no one is really sure what took so long for Apple to include it. I, for one, can’t wait to reorganize my dozens of Apps in to folders. This will also increase the limit of Apps to 2160, a huge leap from the prior limit of 180.
• Mail Improvements
  Can anyone say unified inbox? This has long been a great feature of Apple’s Mail client for the Mac OS X and those that use it deeply enjoy having it on my phone as well. In addition, you will be able to switch between mail accounts more quickly, reorganize messages in threads, and open attachments in third-party apps.
• iBooks
  Apple’s fledgling eBookstore for the iPad will now also have a native app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It will allow you access to the full book store as well as any books you’ve purchased for your other iPad.
• Game Center
  Not a ton is known yet, but developers will have access to new “GameKit APIs” that will help them develop for the “Game Center”, a social gaming network that Apple plans to roll out later this year. You can bet there will be a lot more buzz about this in the coming months.
• Enterprise Improvements
  If you’re a business customer, it will now be more appealing than ever to make the switch from your Crackberry to an iPhone (and, Apple hopes, other Apple hardware). There are new improvements to security, encryption, scalability, and cross-platform compatibility. You can finally even have more than a single Exchange email set up on the phone.
• iAds
  Here’s the biggie. According to Apple, “iAd is a breakthrough mobile advertising platform from Apple. With it, apps can feature rich media ads that combine the emotion of TV with the interactivity of the web. For developers, it means a new, easy-to-implement source of revenue. For advertisers, it creates a new media outlet that offers consumers highly targeted information.” Long story short, Apple is about to make a boatload more cash with what is almost guaranteed to be a hugely popular next-generation advertising platform across their various mobile devices.
• 100+ New User Features
  The above list is a small slice of what Apple claims is a laundry list of new user features. No solid word yet on exactly what all of them are, but as developers get their hands on the new SDK, details will continue to emerge. Don’t be surprised if not all of the features will be included on older devices.
• The Bad News
  For those of you using first generation iPhones and iPod Touches (iPods Touch? Neither looks right.), you don’t get any of the 4.0 love. The update will only be available for iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the 2nd and 3rd generation iPod Touch sometime this summer, with the iPad update coming in the fall.

This Thursday, April 8th, Apple will be holding a media event in which they will unveil what is being planned for the iPhone OS 4.0. It will take place at 10am Pacific Time on the Apple campus. If past similar events are any hint, SDK details will be announced with the actual SDK available shortly thereafter and the new OS itself available around June, but don’t be surprised if the iPad’s recent release pushes all of that back a little bit.

Weighing in at an impressively sized minimum download of 437.2MB (Much larger if you haven’t updated in a while), Apple released the latest updates for Mac OS X Snow Leopard sometime yesterday. The size of the update is more than justified, however, with the long list of fixes and tweaks it brings along with it.

Updates of note include, but are in no way limited to the following:

• Improve the reliability and compatibility of QuickTime X
• Address compatibility issues with OpenGL-based applications
• Address an issue that causes background message colors to display incorrectly in Mail
• Resolve an issue that prevented files with the # or & characters in their names from opening in Rosetta applications
• Resolve an issue that prevented files from copying to Windows file servers
• Improve performance of Logic Pro 9 and Main Stage 2 when running in 64-bit mode
• Improve sleep and wake reliability when using Bonjour wake on demand
• Address a color issue in iMovie with HD content
• Improve printing reliability
• Resolve issues with recurring events in iCal when connected to an Exchange server
• Improve the reliability of 3rd party USB input devices
• Fix glowing, stuck, or dark pixels when viewing video from the iMac (Late 2009) built-in iSight camera

Don’t have Snow Leopard yet? Pick up your copy today!

At some point in your life, you might want to buy someone an App for the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad without having to simply buy a gift card and telling them which App to get. Until the latest iTunes update, this was impossible. Now, however, Apple is kindly allowing us to give the gift of Apps. Starting earlier this week, Apple now allows users to buy an app for a friend or loved one (or enemy, depending on the App) as a gift via the App Store. Next time you try to download a new App you’ll likely be prompted with a new copy of Apple’s ToS, which details the change in legalese. Before you get too excited, there are a few limitations: You can’t use gift cards to purchase an App as a gift for someone else, you can’t gift in-App subscriptions or purchases, you can’t “gift” an OS update for the iPod Touch, and, of course, App gifts are non-refundable.

Semi-Serious Side Note: If anyone reading this wants to buy me some fun new App to be reviewed here, just let me know in the comments.

Ever wonder how Apple got its name? A great article over at Business Insider reveals how Apple as well as 12 other Silicon Valley giants originally got their name.

According to their article, Steve Jobs’ favorite fruit is apples. “The company was three months late in filing for a name and a trademark, so one day Steve Jobs challenged the other founders to come up with a better name than “Apple” by the end of the day or else that’s what he would file. The rest is history.”

Rumors coming in from various places around the web are reporting that Apple has decided to stop screen protectors from being sold in Apple stores. According to sources for MacWorld, “Apple will no longer sell such products, or any other products that adhere to Apple devices, in either the online Apple Store or Apple retail stores.” This apparently even includes the anti-glare film that is being sold to fit pretty much any Apple laptop. The reasoning behind this move is not exactly clear, as this has been one of the best selling iPhone and iPod accessories, but an educated guess would say that Apple doesn’t want to give off the impression that such protection is needed. This writer will, however, continue to keep one on his iPhone.

Although you will likely not find these at Apple stores, you can always still buy them online.

Thanks to a great new discovery by 9to5Mac, there is news of two new types of gestures that have popped up in the iPad SDK 3.2b4. As seen in the picture below, the devices will presumably now include an option for developers to use a “3 Tap” and a “Long Press”. The long press is currently used exclusively by the OS itself for the pop-up copy menu; The 3 tap is used to toggle the display on or off while using VoiceOver. Both of these however, will now be available for developers to include within their applications to perform other functions. Although there is no official word yet that these will be also available to developers for the iPod Touch and iPhone, it is probably safe to assume that they will be.