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. **

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!

Autodesk

was at Macworld showing off a new product for the Mac called Autodesk Inventor Fusion

. Autodesk Inventor Fusion is an existing 3D mechanical design software on Windows, but will soon become available for the Mac for the first time.

Autodesk made headlines

back in 2010 when they returned to the Mac platform after a two decade hiatus. Due to the success they've seen with their existing Mac products, the company will be bringing Inventor Fusion to the Mac.

In the next few weeks, Autodesk will be releasing a free Technology Preview for the program which will allow Mac users to download an early version and provide feedback. The final release will come at some point later. Inventor Fusion is meant to be an easier to use tool focused on mechanical design which incorporates physical properties of objects.

Autodesk® Inventor® Fusion is 3D modeling software that showcases intuitive direct manipulation capabilities for unrivaled ease of use. By uniting direct modeling and parametric workflows, Inventor Fusion offers the best of both worlds. Designers can freely explore complex shapes and forms while maintaining the underlying parametric history. Inventor Fusion makes it easy to open and edit 3D models from almost any source and incorporate them into your design, enabling rapid design changes without limitations.

Facebook page

set up for Inventor Fusion and will be announcing the Mac download in the near future.

 U.S. carrier T-Mobile has decided to offer "additional support" to customers using the iPhone on its network, reports TmoNews

. While T-Mobile doesn't sell the iPhone, it reports that more than 1 million unlocked

iPhones are used on its network and the additional support will be useful to T-Mobile's less tech-savvy iPhone users.


T-Mobile will support users who have questions about "common procedures, information about feature and specifications and other basic device questions." Most T-Mobile iPhone users are limited to T-Mobile's slower EDGE network due to the iPhone's incompatibility with the 1700/2100 MHz bands used by the carrier for its faster data networks. Late last year, though, some of T-Mobile's towers were adjusted for its faster HSPA+ network, moving them

to the iPhone-accessible 1900MHz band in some "pockets" of the country.

Earlier this month, T-Mobile claimed

the next iPhone chipset could be capable of supporting the carrier's Advanced Wireless Spectrum, but noted that it didn't have any specific knowledge of Apple's future products.

 A U.S. District Judge has ruled that an anti-trust case filed against a number of tech companies

can continue, saying "they still have an antitrust claim" according to Bloomberg.

[Judge] Koh didn?t take issue with the allegations about the agreements between individual companies, Joseph Saveri, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview after the hearing. Instead, Koh has questions about ?how it ties together,? or claims of an over-arching conspiracy between all the companies, he said.

according to the lawsuit

, which alleges that "no solicitation" agreements appeared in 2005 between Apple, Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar. The agreements prevented companies from contacting employees at other companies who were party to the agreement, though employees were free to apply for jobs at other institutions.

The agreements were investigated

in 2010 by the Justice Department. The claims were eventually settled

, with the companies agreeing not to form no-solicitation agreements for five years.

The current lawsuit is a class-action civil suit brought by employees who said they were harmed by the anti-competitive actions of the defendant companies.

 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.

 In the wake of yesterday's report

regarding treatment of workers at the facilities of Apple's suppliers, Apple CEO Tim Cook has sent an email to company employees addressing the situation. As published by 9to5Mac

, the email highlights Apple's efforts to oversee compliance with company standards for workers' rights and the transparency with which it has shared that information. From Cook's opening statement:

As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately some people are questioning Apple?s values today, and I?d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don?t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It?s not who we are.

We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do ? and never have done ? is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word.

highlighted responses

from a number of Chinese readers, many of whom note that the issue is certainly not exclusive to Apple and should also be being addressed by government regulations designed to protect workers. Many readers note that China's cheap labor force has enabled the country's rapid economic expansion over the last several decades and the culture is so ingrained across all industries that it will be difficult to change.

 
Research firm Strategy Analytics today announced

its estimates of the global smartphone market for the fourth quarter of 2011, finding that Apple narrowly squeezed by Samsung to retake the title of world's largest smartphone vendor as measured by unit shipments. According to Strategy Analytics' numbers, Apple's 37 million iPhones narrowly eclipsed Samsung's quarterly smartphone shipments of 36.5 million units.

Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, ?While Apple took the top spot in smartphones on a quarterly basis, Samsung became the market leader in annual terms for the first time with 20 percent global share during 2011. With global smartphone shipments nearing half a billion units in 2011, Samsung is now well positioned alongside Apple in a two-horse race at the forefront of one of the world?s largest and most valuable consumer electronics markets.?

taking the title

in the second quarter of 2011 as it passed Nokia and held off a surging Samsung to become the world's largest smartphone vendor. But Apple's reign at the top was short-lived as Samsung easily topped the list

in the third quarter on continued growth paired with a pause in iPhone sales ahead of the iPhone 4S launch. With the iPhone 4S launch now fueling Apple's numbers, it was able to retake the lead from Samsung in the fourth quarter, although it was not able to top the charts for full-year 2011.

One caveat for numbers released by Strategy Analytics and other research firms comes from the fact that Samsung no longer reports mobile phone sales numbers

, ending the practice in mid-2010 for competitive reasons. Consequently, observers can only estimate Samsung's sales numbers based on the company's financial performance and other evidence.

 Macworld | iWorld carries the usual collection of iPhone cases and accessories, not all of which are insanely great

. But here are a few interesting ones that were on the show floor as I made my way through the masses.


Opena Case

and Intoxicase

were both showing off iPhone cases with built in bottle openers. Intoxicase's even integrates

with an app that counts the number of openings. Not sure the demand for such a thing, but here they are.


WaveCradle

is simple aluminum stand that amplifies the audio coming from your iPhone. The stand simple curves the audio towards the listener and they claim an 8 decibel increase. Cradles cost from $19.85 to $28.50.


Nomad Brush

sells capacitive tipped paint brushes for use on your iPad. The iPad can't sense pressure, so the use of these special brushes is primarily for feel. Artists may be more accustomed to using a brush than their finger. Brushes cost from $18 to $39.


iLidiPhoneCase

claims to be the thinnest iPhone wallet case. It's priced at $39.95 and is shipping in a few weeks. The floor model felt a bit plastic-y, however.

 
We briefly mentioned

WDC's press release that they would be showing their new MyBook Thunderbolt Duo at Macworld. Here are photos from the show floor of the unit. As expected, the new drive shares the same appearance as their previous two drive MyBook hardware

.

This new model, however, incorporates two Thunderbolt ports that allows the units to be daisy chained with each other to create a single logical drive.


At the show, WDC was showing 4 devices daisy chained with Thunderbolt in a striped configuration. Each MyBook Thunderbolt Duo had two 3TB drives, giving a total capacity of 24TB that appeared on the desktop as one contiguous 24TB device.


The individual drives within each unit are user serviceable/replaceable and can be configured in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 configurations. The product will be available this quarter with pricing to be announced then.