Weekly News Roundup – 9 November 2012

Once again the week is coming to an end and that means it’s time for a roundup of the past weeks news!

Apple Responds To Request To Make Apple TV, Bonjour Work Better For Higher Education  – A coalition of higher education IT folks petitioned Apple last August to make Bonjour, AirPlay, and AirPrint work better on large campus networks. The petition currently has 750 signatures, which may have helped Apple take notice. This week, the Cupertino-based tech company responded to the petition by proposing a new industry standard that will fix issues with its “zero-configuration” networking technology–Bonjour–to let it scale better and be more secure across larger networks.

DC Puts All Its Comics on the iBookstore – Today, DC Comics announced that its entire lineup of comics are coming to the iBookstore. Previously, only DC’s graphic novels were available on the store.

Passbook-enabled gift cards now available via Apple Store app – We knew it was coming and yesterday’s Apple Store app update made it a reality: You can now use Passbook-enabled virtual gift cards to pay for items at Apple retail outlets.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom goes Retina – Adobe announced this afternoon that Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has been updated with Retina graphics to support the Retina MacBook Pro.

Apple suppliers’ sales surge 29% thanks to product lineup overhaul – An overhaul of Apple’s lineup and anticipated strong sales of those new products have resulted in a major growth spike among Apple’s suppliers.

Pulse 3.0 newsreader hits iOS with new interface, improved search – Version 3.0 of the popular iOS newsreader Pulse has hit the App Store and remains a free — but now universal — app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

Apple examining headphones that can double as loudspeakers – In a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday, Apple presented an invention for a “dual-mode headphone” that can transform from a normal set of earbuds to a more robust speaker system.

Apple’s next major market for iOS may be automotive – Over the past two years, pundits have focused on living room TVs as the most likely new market for Apple to expand into, but evidence suggests that the company’s next big step for iOS is more likely to involve the automotive market.

Hands-on demo and speed tests of new Apple Mac Fusion Drive – TLDToday put together a neat hands-on demo video of Apple’s new Mac Fusion Drive in a new Mac mini. The video walks through how the Fusion Drive is seen as a single volume in OS X. The drive’s speed is also compared to a 5400 RPM hard drive, and the speed tests do seem to live up to the benchmarks that Apple reports for the drive.

Parallels 8 updated with USB 3.0 support, Windows 8 tablet gestures, more – Parallels introduced a big update today for Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac. It includes new features for Windows 8 users, full USB 3.0 support, and improved Retina display settings.

Apple puts delivery dates back on LTE iPad mini orders, customers seeing November 21st date – After the LTE iPad mini went on sale alongside the WiFi version, we noted that customers were seeing various delivery dates for the product. However, most readers reported delivery dates of either November 21st or November 23