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News: halogen-free power cables, education event predictions, Skype 5.5 beta, and more!
Mon, 16th Jan 2012
FYI, this story is more than a year old

As a part of Apple's continued push towards greener electronics, a company called Volex is making the move to halogen-free power cables. Apple is currently Volex's biggest company, and Volex supplies Apple with USB and power cables. The switch to halogen-free cables is reported to cost around $6 million, but these are one-time costs and Volex is otherwise confident that profits this year will meet expectations. There's an Apple education event happening in New York in a few days, and Macworld has compiled some speculation as to what will be announced. Dan Moren and Lex Friedman think the event will be all about enhancing the pre-existing iBooks offering, perhaps by making it available on the Mac — or even spruce up iWork for Mac a little more. Only time will tell.

The Skype 5.5 beta for the Mac has been released, which features a few calling improvements and user interface improvements so users have easier access to commonly-accessed actions, such as muting their microphone.

OS X 10.7.3 has been released to developers once again, this time with a newer build number of 11D42. MacRumors thinks it's very possible this will be the last beta before the public release, due to it containing what might be the final release description.