Archive for the 'Hardware' Category

Tuesdays are nearly always the Apple day of the week. It’s Apple’s release date of choice, and rightly so; it allows stock to be in stores, and hence people’s hands, by the weekend.

But 2008 has been an interesting year, and it all started with a comment at a small event, known as MacWorld from a Mr Steven P. Jobs (ever heard of him, I certainly haven’t):

Apple being Apple took advantage of the 2-week extension to update AppleTV and released v2.0 (take 2) of the AppleTV software on Tuesday afternoon. To many, this has been a highly-anticipated release with many people (myself included) running Software Update on their AppleTVs a couple of times a day for the past 2-4 weeks. Twitter feeds, blogs and podcasts (Adam@The MacCast has been pulling his hair waiting for this update) have been yelling for the update. Well, now these people are rejoicing since they started to update their AppleTVs last night.

So was it worth the wait?

Impatience seems to be something of a virtue to many an iPhone or iPod touch owner in this day and age. Constant demand for new “JailBreaks” to the new software updates is another step in the somewhat endless cycle of new updates that break JailBreaks, and then finding the exploits necessary and re-JailBreaking again. Well, it seems as though the latest iPhone/iTouch update has indeed been broken, and until now its been super difficult to do, but today that has changed for the better.

Since we previously put the MacBook Air in perspective, it was high time we talked about the price. Starting at $1799, the MacBook Air may not float in everyone’s boat.

Yes, the Macbook Air is quite sexy. I think that a lot of the Apple products get instant “wow” power, based on great design, and ease of use. But in the long run, is the Macbook Air a laptop that YOU would buy? Is it powerful enough for your tasks?

Let’s take it to the polls to get an idea.

I was a bit hesitant about writing this article but the information (and results) are just too juicy not to give away. Half way through penning this I also noticed that Adam Pash at lifehacker did a similar story so I guess it’s acceptable to write about this sort of thing - and it should be. In case you haven’t guessed yet I’m going to detail for you my adventure building a Hackintosh box running Leopard that rivals the speed of a similarly configured Mac Pro.

But for less than 1/3rd the cost!

After its initial shine in the spotlight, the MacBook Air bashing began. It has been attacked from every angle. It’s expensive. The battery isn’t user-replaceable. It doesn’t have firewire. It doesn’t have ethernet. It doesn’t have an optical drive!

What everyone is missing in all this however, is that the people this notebook is targeted towards couldn’t care less about any of that stuff. Let me break it down for you right after the jump.

As speculated here and everywhere else, Steve Jobs has officially unveiled the MacBook Air subnotebook at his MacWorld 2008 keynote about 30 minutes ago. The Air will mark Apple’s return to the small form factor notebook market, which they last delved into with the popular iBook. And this thing is small! Weighing in at just 3lbs, at its thinnest width the Air is just 0.16″ and 0.76″ at its thickest height. The 13.3″ backlit LED display is said to rival the vanilla MacBook and as you can see from the photos it is unbelievably sexy and saliva worthy.

At the top of everyone’s Macworld 2008 prediction lists was the unveiling of a new small form factor notebook. Most rumors center on the machine being cast in aluminum like a MacBook Pro, very slim with a 13.3″ display, and utilizing some type of flash based memory (maybe something like the new 1.8″ SSD hard drives shown at last week’s CES08). Further rumors suggest some type of HD capable reader/writer, possibly an external Bluray drive, but I think that’s maybe just conjecture. If you remember, many major media outlets like The Guardian hinted at Apple’s subnotebook sans optical drive last November.

Everyone in the Mac community, MacApper included, has been wondering what Stevie J will have for us this year at Macworld. Our own James Matarrese wrote an opinion article today on why he thought the Apple TV won’t have a DVR. In a somewhat unusual welcome for this new writer, I’m going to tell you all the reasons he’s wrong!

There’s been a lot of speculation about what will be released at Macworld this year, and one thing that keeps coming up is the AppleTV. Among some of the hopes for the device, the one that stands out to me most is the suspected DVR. Now, at first glance, it would make a lot of sense for Apple to include DVR functionality. The hardware is there, and the software wouldn’t be very hard to implement, plus, it gives Apple entrance into yet another market yet uncharted to them, competing against the mighty TiVo.

A few weeks ago the nice guys at Sumo sent me one of their Omni beanbag chairs, and first off, I have to mention that I don’t think I’ve used my desk much since. Being a tech writer, and this a mac-oriented blog, you may ask: Of all random things, why a beanbag?

Well, this really just isn’t your run-of-the-mill beanbag, it’s at the top of it’s class. The first thing I noticed when it showed up on my doorstep was the pure size of it, however, that’s in now way a bad thing. Once I unpacked it all, there really was no other option than to let it catch your fall.

First off, Happy New Year! Coincidentally, January 1 marks the release of the highly anticipated and highly debated SIP VoIP client for the iPod touch. Yes, the guys over at TouchMods have come through and released the hot software to make VoIP calls.

The previously thought impossible is now actually possible. With a small appplication available in Installer.app, you can make actual voice calls on your iPod. How cool is that? Read along to find out more.

I’m sure by now everyone with an iPhone has seen and is equally excited about the latest firmware update for Apple’s iconic shiny phone. When videos of the update running on a live phone surfaced (hat tip TUAW) this weekend I was a bit skeptical, but it appears this update is legit. Killer new features will include: saving pinned locations in Google Maps, location triangulation via cell tower location (wow!), movable springboard icons, and multiple recipient SMSing.

The rumor of the impending Apple Tablet, or Mac Touch, is back once again, with one source claiming another source has said this about that. Great, that’s all fine and good, but what about bringing some cold hard speculation into the mix? I mean, insider knowledge is one thing, but its of no use to anyone without a little outsider guessing. You know, to balance things out a bit.

My guess is that, yes, oh yes, the Mac Touch is on its way. My reason? I believe Apple has been prepping us.

With the launch of the UK iPhone, Apple has released the iPhone/iPod touch 1.1.2 firmware. This update includes Multi-Lingual support with different keyboards, and various bug fixes, including covering the TIFF exploit hole.

Reports (Engadget, 9to5mac) are coming in from all over, testing the jailbreakme.com site to see if it works with the 1.1.2. Low and behold, it doesn’t. Moral of the story? Wait before you upgrade your iPhone if you want your 3rd party apps, themes, and all the other goodies. You could also wait until Apple releases the SDK, or just hold off on upgrading iTunes until jailbreakme.com figures things out.