Ok, here are the details so far. Jobs has officially announced an ultraportable MacBook called the MacBook Air, just as predicted. Unlike any other ultraportable, however, the Air is sick mad woot. 0.76″ thick on the fat end and 0.16″ thick on the thin end and weighing only 3 pounds. Jobs pulled the damn thing out of a manila envelope! 13.3″ LED backlit display. Backlit version of the keyboard from the MacBook. iSight camera. Multitouch gesture trackpad. 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo CPU. 80GB 1.8″ hard drives, with an optional 64GB SSD. 2GBs of RAM, 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, one USB 2.0 port, Micro DVI, headphone jack, Magsafe port, and an optional USB SuperDrive for US$99. Available in two weeks.

US$1,799. As many pictures as I can manage as soon as possible. WOW!

written by Tyler Regas

If by something in the air, Jobs means that there will be a lot of bits moving wirelessly, then the banners are accurate. First up is the iPhone and iPod Touch updates. Among a range of other things, you can now customize your home screen and Google Maps now features the ability to locate you. It uses cell tower triangulation and Skyhook’s Wi-Fi access point positioning technology to pin you down. Neat. What’s not neat is that iPod Touch users will have to pay US$20 for the privilege. Feh.

Then there’s Time Capsule again. The 500GB model is US$299 while the 1TB model is US$499. Pretty slick indeed.

iTunes movie rentals will be from all major studios. The films will become available 30 days after DVD release and be available to watch for 24 hours. Older movies will be US$2.99 while first release films will be US$3.99. You can also watch them on anything that can run or work with iTunes.

Apple TV also gets an update, which Jobs is calling Take 2. I’m not sure if that’s some kind of official name or what. The update now gets the ability to stream SD or HD with 5.1 surround directly to the Apple TV unit. No more compy required.

written by Tyler Regas

It doesn’t have the same killer ONE-TWO punch as the iPhone had last year, but Apple still chose Day 2 of CES to announce two new major updates. First, the less significant of the two (though still very important), is the refresh of the Xserve line, which now sports all new innards. Second, the real kick ass one, is the introduction of an 8-core MacPro based on Intel’s recent Xeon processors dubbed “Harpertown”. Just to make this clear, this is still a dual processor system, its just that the new CPUs have four cores each, instead of two. The other insane item is that this machine can drive up to eight (yeah, 8 of ‘em) 30″ displays at the same time, with the right video cards, of course. Still. That’s made video.

written by Tyler Regas

Hallelujah! Its about time someone released an NTFS filesystem for Mac OS X, especially in the day of Boot Camp. Besides, I can’t do anything with my Vista Ultimate partition. It just sits there on my desktop, and not being able to write to it reduces my productivity. If Paragon’s NTFS For Mac OS X works, and I pray that it does, it will be a huge boon. I’m hoping that I will be able to use Automator and AppleScript functions to maintain files on both sides, similar to what I can do in Windows with MacDrive 7. While its not free, it is a mere $US29.95 (that’s an intro price, reg. is US$39.95, still not bad).

written by Tyler Regas

Apple isn’t even making announcements any more. They’re just goosing their machines and sticking them out there. They just did that to their MacBook and MacBook Pro lines, bringing both into the Santa Rosa chipset line-up. This brings all MB and MBP models up to an 800Mhz Front Side Bus and upgrades video across the board. The one thing that really yanks my chain is the move to nVidia 8600 GT video units for all MacBook Pros. I have to put up with an ATI X1800 chipset, and ATI doesn’t get the same kind of support in the gaming industry as nVidia does. Its why I can’t play Lost Planet!

The only other significant change is the inclusion of the new LED backlight, which is good news for green lovers. Prices are the same across the range and hard drives can be bumped to 250GB. Oh, and if you’re really hard core, you can order your MBP with a 2.6GHz Core 2 Duo. Wow.

written by Tyler Regas

Ok folks. It looks like the real deal has arrived, so you need to be prepared for it. Intego Security has posted an alert (see next page) for a malware package targeted at Mac porn viewers. This is a phishing package, so its aim is to get secure identity data from you. Its called OSX.RSPlug.A Trojan Horse, and it comes disguised as a Quicktime codec installer. Once you have downloaded and run the installer it changes your DNS to point to malicious servers.

I’ll save you some trouble: Download VLC Media Player from VideoLAN.org and watch as much video as you like, secure in the knowledge that you don’t need any more codecs. And, as always, be careful what you download, where you get it from, and what you do with it. Continue reading »

written by Tyler Regas

I just wanted to let you all know that we do not ignore Leopard here. I have it and it is already installed on a G4 PowerMac and a MacBook Pro and getting used a lot. My initial impression is that the improvements, tweaks, new features, and fixes are far greater than the sum of the nice new interface. Don’t pay any attention to the new Dock or the transparent Menubar as they are not playing the leading roles here. Look instead to Spaces, Time Machine, the vast number of additions to Safari and Terminal, the incredibly fast Spotlight which now highlights apps first, and a huge number of other things.

I’ll have a review up soon, and I don’t think it will be difficult for me to goad Edgar into a counterpoint piece. He’s such a Windows lover! He runs XP on his MacBook and doesn’t even bother to use the Mac. At least the hardware sells itself!

written by Tyler Regas

Okay, here’s the deal. Jobs Co. has caught wind that all kinds of people want to see 3rd party apps on their iPhones and iPod Touch devices. Its rather amazing as people were really just keeping it quiet, but Steve is an upstanding guy. He was apparently out beating the street with a strained ear to find out what people really wanted. After due diligence, Steve announced that Apple will be shipping an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the iPhone and iPod Touch. This will allow developers to create real applications for these handheld sweeties. I’d say you can look forward to Flash-enabled Firefox pretty soon here, kids! Read on for the announcement text. Continue reading »

written by Tyler Regas

What is it about Apple? There are a dozen major makers making and selling hundreds of models of mobile phones all around the world, yet they go after the Apple iPhone. Sure! Why not!  Greenpeace, that even-handed group, put out a report stating that Apple’s manufacturing parters are using toxic chemicals in the popular iPhone. Duh! I’d be interested to see how many handsets are made using the same substances. So, these rocket scientists are considering taking Apple to court, suing to have Apple remove these items from the manufacturing process. Good luck with that! [Source: ABC News]

written by Tyler Regas