For weeks – months even – analysts have been telling Apple to make a netbook for the masses, a $299 junker designed for those who surf the web on the couch, their Cheeto-stained hands scrabbling for the TiVo remote while they incessantly refresh Reddit and hope against hope that their Craigslist Missed Connection emails them back. The Air, they said, was too expensive, designed for the frou-frou quiche-eaters of Silicon (V)alley while the MacBook Pros were too overpowered for the likes of Flyover Sally and her sad-eyed brood of younglings. They needed to sell something to the masses, something solid, American, and corn-fed.
Well, now Sally, the quiche-eaters, and the Cheeto dude – and the rest of us – have the new MacBook. It offers a bit less power and peformance than the Pro line, a little more of the styling of the Air line, and sells right at $999, a magic marketing number that is neither North of $1000 (before taxes) and South of corporate financial suicide.
[UPDATE - Added battery test.] Read More
Imagine if it were your job to race to the Apple store whenever anything came out, and then as soon as you step outside, to just hurl it against the wall and take pictures of the fragments. Well, that’s pretty much iFixit in a nutshell. Sure, they use screwdrivers and stuff, and take it apart all neat-like, and have nice cuticles, but basically they’re exploding the latest and greatest device for your entertainment.
Hey, it’s not like I have a problem with it. Otherwise I’d never know what those new MacBooks look like on the inside.
For $19 you can get an Apple Remote that looks like an unibody MacBook Pro with black buttons and a different layout. Clearly the Internet has been waiting for this all morning. Read More
Gadzooks, a new MacBook! Yup, Apple has re-designed the entry level MacBook, and it’s now made of “rugged polycarbonate that withstands the rough and tumble of everyday life.” LED backlit, too.
Here it is: the new Magic Mouse, a single button mouse (with a software-controlled right click option) and a touch sensitive top surface that allows you to touch the mouse to pinch, scroll, and drag, just like a trackpad. The mouse uses two AA batteries and lasts 4 months on one change.
It costs $69 and is available at the end of October.
Just like the rumor stated, Apple refreshed the Mac mini lineup today. The smallest Macs now sport faster 2.26GHz or 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo CPUs, 2 or 4 GB of RAM, and either 160 or 320 HDD. There is also a $999 1TB option but you must forgo the optical drive. Apple must be paying attention too because OS X server is now an official option. Prices are still the same as the previous options with the base model starting out at $599. Read More
Today could be a big Apple day. John Gruber and Dan Lyons both think that we might just see a plethora of new Apple products today. Exciting, I know. These new models would include new iMacs, plastic Macbooks, Mac Minis, 2nd generation Mighty Mouse that isn’t called a Mighty Mouse, and some sort of multitouch desktop gadget thingy. Yeah, all that is suppose to come out today even though Apple doesnt’ have a press conference on the books and Steve Jobs knows I don’t really want to work that hard today. Yeah, we talk.
The Q4 numbers are in for Apple and they’re good. Quite good. Really good.
The company posted revenue of $9.87 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion, or $1.82 per diluted share. Apple’s own earnings projections for Q4 were $1.23 a share, but they always put them laughably low. Analysts’ projections expected them to be around $1.42 a share, but some were looking for numbers as high as $1.60 a share. Apple beat all of those, easily.
Apple sold 3.05 million Macs in the quarter, up 17 percent from a year ago. They also sold 7.4 million iPhones in the quarter, a 7 percent growth from a year ago. Both of those are record sales numbers, CEO Steve Jobs notes.
I’m not about to knock myself out for noting the 800th iMac rumor of the past few weeks, so here’s the deal: people “close” to Apple now aren’t sure whether or not Blu-ray will wind up on the next iMac revision. Blu-ray may be on Mac Pros, and maybe then only as a build-to-order option, but that’s enough “maybes” to bore a slug.
Oh Snow Leopard, you have made my day. Remember when updates used to be in the hundreds of megabytes? Your unified architecture has slimmed down apps and updates so much that they are only a thousandth the size now.
Or it could be that it’s just a tiny patch to fix an uncommon but problematic hard drive error (since it’s only 22KB more for Leopard). Either way, the update is there. Been having hard drive issues? This may just fix it.
Yesterday, word got out of Apple’s new iFrame standard, which purports to expedite video editing by keeping the video in “the same format used on a computer.” Really, it’s nothing but a resolution and wrapper. So why am I losing my mind over it? Because the way iFrame is being positioned and propagated is misleading and harmful to consumers. Oh I know, what an alarmist, right? It’s just a video format! But with personal video becoming more and more ubiquitous and invading class after class of gadgets, these former trivialities are becoming more important by the day.
And for once, we are actually gravitating towards a couple unified standards in both encoding and resolution — and then Apple butts in with this ugly stepchild of a format. Read More
Why would you do this, Apple? I know you don’t like the usual resolutions out there, but did you have to go and throw another one on the pile? That’s why there are so many competing formats in the first place. 960×540 H264 MP4? Sure, I could select those specifications if I wanted them, but why would I? Most cameras shoot to VGA or 720p now. Why would you decide to popularize a format that is exactly halfway between them? The idea, supposedly, is “keeping the content in its native recorded format while editing.” Great! What a great idea! Oh wait, everything already does that, and you’re just making a new, dumb-ass format that will only complicate things further! Read More
The whole world was bullish on iTunes LPs when they were announced; I called it a black eye for the majors, whose CMX format has yet to be popularized. But the hype was curbed when it was discovered that there was a $10,000 fee associated with the service, putting it completely out of reach for less affluent artists and small labels who can’t afford that price for promotion.
Luckily for them, Apple was nice enough to make the format rather basic. It turns out anyone versed in a little HTML and Javascript can put together an LP that’s just as good as a “real” one.
This Apple-Psystar business sure is hotting up! Both Apple and Psystar have asked for summary judgments based on what they believe to be What’s Going On. Such an action would avoid a pesky trial, which would necessarily costs both companies a whole lot of money.
It seems that Apple has such of thirst for flash memory (for use in its iPods, iPhones, maybe tablets, etc.) that it’s having a profound effect on the flash suppliers. Tighter supplies, uncertainty about where to go for more flash, etc. Apple gets most of its flash memory from Samsung, but other people get flash from Samsung, too, and now they’re all, “Um, hey Samsung, do you have any flash for us?” Then Samsung shrugs its shoulders, “Yeah, man, Apple just paid us $80 zillion for the lot of it. You’ll have to go somewhere else. Sorry.”
Amazon has confirmed that they are making the Kindle DX international as well. No word on pricing or availability but you can expect it sometime next year.
It seems pretty clear at this point that Apple is getting ready to release a new mouse, probably with some kind of multi-touch capabilities, that is probably attached to some new iMacs. No one is happier about that than me, as I hate the current Mighty Mouse. But it looks like Apple may not have a chance to create a device that lives up to that name this time around, as someone else has won the trademark for the name “Mighty Mouse.”
For $19 you can get an Apple Remote that looks like an unibody MacBook Pro with black buttons and a different layout. Clearly the Internet has been waiting for this all morning.
Oh Snow Leopard, you have made my day. Remember when updates used to be in the 
