The direction that Apple has taken with the iPhone, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro has irritated some folks and rightfully so. Why would anyone be opposed to a removable battery?
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Dell is hinting at a tiny laptop line called Adamo which might be some sort of boutique line or actually be the name of a new, ultrathin laptop that will give the MacBook Air a run for its money. Ashlee Vance at NYT writes:

But most telling of all might have been the reaction of Michael Tatelman, Dell’s vice president in charge of consumer sales and marketing, to my question about whether or not Dell had an Air-like product in store. Mr. Tatelman’s mouth gaped open and his eyes darted away from my face.

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Unibody Macbooks and MacBook Pros, along with newer MacBook Airs, have gotten a firmware update from Apple, ostensibly addressing “stability issues.” I think they’re talking about that RAM thing because a firmware update isn’t going to change your 9600M’s faulty high-lead solder into eutectic.

Oh yes I went there!

If you recently (like in the last week) ordered the entry-level Nvidia-equipped MacBook Air then you probably got an e-mail stating that your pretentious little toy is being delayed. It appears they won’t begin shipping for 2-3 weeks if you choose to go with a 120GB SATA drive. But if you go with the 128GB SSD drive the shipping estimate speeds up to 3-5 days. Read More

Is the MacBook Air overpriced at $2,499 fully loaded? Seventy percent of us here at CrunchGear think so—Apple worshiper Biggs calls it a “great machine,” however—but what do we know? Nothing, apparently, if we’re to believe CNet, which comes to the conclusion that the MacBook Air, compared to other ultraportables, isn’t overpriced at all.

The argument goes: ultraportables writ large are expensive, so to single out the MacBook Air is unfair. The similarly spec’d Dell Latitude E4200, for example, costs $2,495. Same thing with the Toshiba Portege R600, which is even more expensive at $2,999.

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Once thought to be wildly overpriced (by me, anyway), the MacBook Air almost seems like an okay deal at $1,349. It’s refurbished, yes, so you’ll have to decide if that’s a big deal to you or not. It still has a one year warranty and you can extend it if you like.

The $1,349 version is the one with the 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB of RAM, and the 80GB hard drive. The 1.8GHz version is also available for $1,499 along with the 64GB solid state drive version for $1,799. Have at it.

Refurbished MacBook Air (scroll down) [Apple Store via dealnews]

To be fair, you don’t have to own a MacBook Air in order to purchase Iomega’s eGo Helium portable hard drive. It is, however, “a perfect match for the new MacBook Air notebook” according to Iomega. It’s even pre-formatted to the HFS+ file system.

The drive itself has 320GB of storage space, weighs less than half a pound, and requires no external power supply. You’ll also get some software included: EMC Retrospect and MozyHome (2GB version), although you’ll have to download it. Oh, and you can get 2GB of Mozy service for free no matter who you are. So not a huge deal there. You’ll get a license for the EMC software, though, which is nice.

It’ll be available in October with an MSRP of $149.99, although it’s currently listed at $142.49 on Iomega’s site (not in stock yet, of course).

Please stop with the manila envelope comparisons!

Come September, we’re expecting a whole bushel of Apple improvements. I’m looking forward to a completely new MacBook Pro for use with Snow Leopard, but those of you more concerned with form than function will be happy to hear that the MacBook Air will be getting spec’ed up too. It’s been reported that the new line of Airs will sport 120GB/160GB optional HDDs, a Penryn-based processor instead of the custom Merom Core2 touted at its debut, and will have a better battery.

The upgraded parts will probably suck up the new battery’s capacity, so don’t go looking for extended life, but at least you’ll be able to get more done during those few hours. Expect a new charger as well. I’d still go for a MacBook or MBP over one of these prissy little things, but at least they’re a little less underpowered now.

After you spent all that money on a new MacBook Air, you are probably paranoid about it getting damaged. In fact, you’re so paranoid that a normal laptop case will not suffice — you will also want it wrapped in a sleeve.

Since you are not alone in your paranoia, many companies offer products like the ZeroShock III MacBook Air Sleeve ($27.95 USD). This particular sleeve is composed of high-resistance polyurethane foam and features a low-profile design. Not only that, it’s designed to fit nicely in a separate bag or backpack, so you’re doubly protected.

Now you can safely walk form your house to the coffee shop without a worry. Well… unless you’re using your iPhone without a case. Then you will be paranoid that you’re going to drop that and scuff it up.

Apparently it’s Tuesday Laptop Madness, for Lenovo has announced a new laptop, the ThinkPad X200. It also released the IdeaPad U330, but that’s hardly as interesting.

The Intel Core 2 Duo (2.26-2.40 GHz)-powered ThinkPad X220 is supposed to compete with the useless MacBook Air, and has similar specs. It weighs 2.95 pounds and has a 12.2-inch LCD. As far as storage goes, you can select a standard 320GB hard drive, or pony up for the 64GB solid state drive. Whether or not that has any noticeable impact on your computing performance, there’s conflicting reports.

The usual wireless options are here like BlueTooth and Wi-Fi.

In other words, a tiny, fully functional laptop, just one without an optical drive.

She’ll set you back $1,199 in August when she’s available.

via PC World/Yahoo

Apple has dropped the price of its solid state drive MacBook Air by $500. Now, the useless laptop equipped with a solid state drive can be had for the low, low price of $2,598. That’s with a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo processor.

Note that the upgrade price from the 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz has also dropped, from $300 to $200.

Not that solid state drives save you any battery power, mind you.

via AppleInsider

I guess these guys figure that if you’re willing to shell out a few grand for a computer less powerful than a MacBook, they might just be spendy enough to drop another G on a solar panel to keep the thing alive. These three “Juicz” chargers from Quickertek appear to do the job if you’re willing to modify your adapter or buy their pre-modded one for a bill.

As fun as it would be to run on sunlight (might be handy if you’re a hermit), it’s really just far, far too expensive at this time. The cheapest option is $500 and it will take half a day to recharge your Air. If you have money to burn, you could do worse than a nice, foldable solar charger, but right now the performance isn’t really justifying the price.

Here is a protective apparatus from Agent 18 for your precious MacBook Air, called the MacBook Air Shield. It costs $50 and comes in white, black, or pink. Guess what else?! It allows you to plug stuff into the ports on the side of your MacBook Air and “features an opening for the notebook’s vents to prevent overheating,” which you can see in that U-shaped area of the above photo.

It’s made from “durable polycarbonate” — hard plastic, in layman’s terms. You’ll need to trade in $50 to get one of these, and you can do so at Apple Stores or on Agent 18’s website, although I’ll be damned if I could find it there.

More photos after the jump…

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Want to relive that special manila moment again and again? Want to impress your pals at the cafe before they have second thoughts about the practicality of the sexy little device? Bird Electron is coming out with a pretty nice-looking little replacement envelope, complete with double-circle tie, but somewhat more durable and protective than heavy-duty paper. I’m not a fan of the Air, but if I had one, I’d definitely buy one of these for the precious li’l thing.

Maybe it’s a “manileather” envelope. Either way, it’s not available yet. [via Akihabara News]

When Devin skewered the MacBook Air some time ago, he was summarily insulted and burned in virtual effigy; we all laughed at him in the chat room. Far from being useless, however, one valid criticism against the MacBook Air was that it wasn’t portable enough. How could Apple leave out built-in EVDO, no one said? Rather than complain about, one Jordan Bunnell took the Apple by its core or some other stupid metaphor and installed his own damn EVDO module. Hello, world indeed!

The man, armed only with a Veriozn USB727 Aircard, a soldering iron, the heart of a lion and the free time of a loaf-about, managed to get the card working as clear as day.

I have zero engineering ability, so I won’t even pretend to re-tell exactly what he did, but all the pictures are dynamic.

Pretty neat, deep and otherworldly cynicism aside.

via MacNN

Lenovo pretty much sums up my opinion of the MacBook air in this very clever, very cheeky parody of that Air commercial you’ve been seeing for the last two months. In it, an Air is taken out of an manila envelope, just as Steve the Great did at MacWorld in January.

Then, all the components it’s missing (optical drive, 3G wireless, etc.) are plugged into a hub, which is plugged into the single USB port. Then it all gets crammed back into the envelope.

It’s a clever way of advertising the X300 ultraportables, laptops we like anyway. They’re not as slick as the MacBook Air, but if it ran OSX, I’d pick one up in a heartbeat.

A gentleman recently won $10,000 for hacking a MacBook Air using an exploit in the Safari Web browser. This was during a laptop hacking contest and it made news all over the Internet.

As it turns out, the exploit he used had been known for a year, it was part of the Perl Compatibility Regular Expressions library, a piece of open-source software included with OSX that many Apple applications use, including Safari.

The developers who manage the PCRE patched the exploit months ago, the patch wasn’t part of OSX updates until late last week, though the latest security update does include the patch.

That means those fearing security problems with their OSX computers need only to update to abate those terrors.