Gadgety News

I’ve got kinda used to flicking past ‘Black Friday Sale’ notices on my feeds and emails but, fortuntely, I hit reverse when I saw this and now have decided to share.

Apple is bringing a Black Friday sale from the US and delivering it to us folks in the UK. Thanks Apple - Thapple!

Log onto the Apple Store’s website this Friday and you’re promised bargains in excelcis.

We’re being spoilt here - first it was Darling’s VAT cut and now this!  Lumme!

Apple’s being coy as to which products will see a price drop - iPods, MacBooks and Mac desktops? I just don’t know.

What I do know is that Apple mentions the iPhone specifically

I think a date with Apple for cheaper Crimbo gifts is called for

Sorry - this MacBook Nano has probably never seen an Apple let alone Cupertino!

Whether this is a little custom hack or there’s someone is making a living churning these funked MSI U100 types out from a lock-up “sarf of the river” I have no idea.

But these shiny-but-fake Mini Mac’s do come complete with Mac OS X installed and to be honest I think I’d have one - if only just to confuse everyone else!

Granted - whoever is dishing these out needs to give them a little more tweaking but I’m intereseted - contact me yeah? 

They come in black or white (guess which one I want) and here are the specs:

MSI U100 MacBook Nano
Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz
2G DDRII
10″ WSVGA LED (1024×600)
320GB SATA
1kg
MMC/SD/MS 4
Windows XP Pro + Mac OSX Leopard

Flickr via Gizmodo

You may be aware that there has been some rumours about new MacBooks.

No? Really?

Well Apple has given its range of MacBooks an external makeover and a serious power boost to boot!

Their graphics processors have enjoyed the biggest tune-up - each of the machines comes with an NVIDA GeForce 9400M GPU.  Allegedly five times more powerful than the previous MacBook offerings.

MacBook Pro users can choose to upgrade their chipset to the 9400M GT for a extra graphical boost.

The displays are new and nifty as well. The LED backlighting ensures brighter, more vibrant colours as well as requiring less power to operate.  How thoughtful.

That’s all very groovy but kinda par for the upgrading a laptop course really innit?

Hold onto your shorts!

The traditional trackpad has been binned in favour of a special new glass design.

Stevie J said that it took months for the designers to perfect, and it features multitouch gesture support capable of tracking four fingers at the same time.  Wheeeeeeeeeeee!!

Each model is hewn from a single piece of aluminium and the screen now has a black surround to match the keys.

Even I’m being tempted over to the fruity side! 

For all you stick-in-the-muds the plain old white MacBook is still going to be on offer at a lower price,

The MacBook Air has had a hike in storage - 120GB as standard - and there’s 2GB of RAM inside, with the option of 1.6 GHz or 1.86 GHz processors.

If you go for the big-boy they also throw in a 128GB SSD too for the exchange of an extra £500.

Prices start from £939 for the MacBook, £1,399 for the Pro and £1,299 for the Air.

Dear Santa…………………….

There have been the usual rumours ahead of the Keynote here are some of the more………confirmed variety.

It will be packing two NVIDIA GPUs inside.

The MacBook and 17-inch MacBook Pro aren’t getting refreshed.
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball says that the button-less trackpad is indeed glass, and “is a button itself”.

Mr Gruber also claims that none of the new laptops will reach the rumored $899 price point stating that the part number spotted in earlier rumours seems to be associated with a new 24-inch LED Apple Cinema Display with DisplayPort according to MacRumors, not a low-end MacBook.

To support this, Gruber says that the aluminum MacBooks will indeed be announced in $1,299 (2GHz, 2GB memory, 160GB disk) and $1,499 (2.4GHz, 2GB memory, 250GB disk) configs and will ship by the end of the week along with new 120GB HDD and 128GB SSD configurations of the MacBook Air. While CPU clocks will remain pretty much the same.

All new MacBooks, that’s the regular, Pro, and Air, will feature the new NVIDIA 9400M GPU.

The 15-inch MacBook Pro (the 17-inch will remain unchanged albeit with 4GB of memory and bigger 320GB disk) will feature a second 9600M GT GPU making it a true graphics powerhouse as previously speculated. Lastly, the current 2.1GHz white MacBook remains in the line-up but will be cut to $999.

Not long to wait now ;0,

Engadget

While most of us are wondering or just looking forward to Stevie J’s next keynote on October 14th those clever so-and-so’s over at bbGadgets may just have unlocked the secret behind Apple’s Oct 14th MacBook event teaser.

They’re assuming that the Apple logo is a 1.5″ standard thingy, so they measured the laptop to have a 13.3″ diagonal length.

That’s the same size as the current generation MacBook, which would seem to support all of those other ‘Brick’ rumours that are flying around but I haven’t reported on……..

bbGadgets

Word on the street is that the employees at NVIDIA have had their grubby little paws all over the latest Apple notebook and given it high-fives all round for its superior hardware prowess. 

Sources claim that the new model will get rid of Intel’s factory standard platform and replace it with components supplied by either Apple or an outside party………

A possible switch to a NVIDIA chipset commonly used for Intel-based notebooks, would give Apple faster video acceleration and more advanced power management.

Further speculation on a possible release date suggests that the notebooks could be available as soon as October 14th - like, next week people!

Again, lots of speculation abounds but it has been eight months since there’s been any updates to the range - could the time be now?

And as Morrisey once said - How Soon Is Now?

AppleInsider

Well, little or no surprise that Apple’s 3Gesus phone has appeared as this year’s best gadget as chosen by readers of Stuff magazine in its annual Gadget of the Year awards.

Stuff described the iPhone 3G as “a faster, cleverer version of an already remarkable phone.” It makes it as a neat 1-2 as the phone’s first incarnation won the coolest gadget prize last year.

The 3G beat some stiff competition in the form of Sony’s PlayStation 3, Microsoft’s Xbox 360, Nintendo’s Wii Fit and the B&W Zeppelin iPod speakers dock.

Stuff’s Editor, Fraser Macdonald, said the nominated products were judged on their performance, design and value, as well as “that elusive cool factor.”

“Having our readers vote for a number of the awards has been fascinating,” he said. “They are the ones out there on the street buying gadgets and so they are a great barometer.”

The magazine’s own gadget of the year prize, chosen by its editorial staff, went to the Asus Eee Pc, the sub £300 lappy that’s started a strong competitive market noone knew existed.

The judges said it had made more of an impact than any other device and marked the start of a “laptop for everyone” era.

Here are a smattering of the other winners that were announced at the ceremony held at the Dorchester Hotel in London yesterday:

• International brand: Nokia
• Innovation: Sony Reader
• Design: Apple MacBook Air
• Game: Grand Theft Auto IV
• Green gadget: Ego Electric Street Scoota
• Retailer: Firebox.com

Details of all the winners are at: http://awards.stuff.tv

The Samsung X360 is pretty impressive.

Its size and weight (very light and very thin) and is ready to taunt the MacBook Air.

It has a 13.3-inch, 1200 x 800 pixel screen and by all reports is also very good.

It’s also all ported up, more so than Apple’s notebook: direct HDMI out, three USB ports, Express Card slot, 7-in-1 flash card reader, external optical unit included, and fingerprint reader for security.

For Windows users the Samsung X360 looks like a great choice but Apple fanboys will argue that a revision of the MacBook Air is just around the corner and that the Sammy wont play OS X.

For me though on the surface of it all the winner is the Samsung X360.

The only drawback for me is the lack of colour choices - you get the usual ‘Piano Black’ but even for an ardent fan of black such as me - it would be nice to have a choice.

Sammy aint pulling any punches either as it’s being branded it as “lighter than air” and say it’s the “lightest notebook in its 13.3 inch class” since it weighs just 1.27 kg.

Under the hood there’s a 45nm Core 2 Duo mobile processor and it comes with an external DVD drive.

The battery life is claimed to be 10 hours, by Samsung.

It’ll be available in September in some European countries, and Russia, China and Hong Kong, but there’s no info on the US release or pricing.

Apple’s famously super slim MacBook Air may be getting itself a processor revamp soon.

Word on the interblogsphere is that retailers have been told there’s a new MBA a-coming and that it’ll sport Intel’s latest 45nm Penryn processor rather than the older 65nm chip it current runs on - which would mean speeds up to a much more respectable 3GHz if it happens.

Other possibles are better graphics from Centrino 2 and maybe a beefed up battery.  RAH!

It’s all rumour, whispered suggestions and hearsay at the moment, but hey - it’s been a week or so since the last rumour aint it?

Well, it’s been days since the last Apple Rumour so let’s have another!

Apparently, according to Seth Weintraub, the next generation of MacBooks are supposed to be thinner (no, really!?!) and feature a glass track-pad with multi-touch and gesture support.

Glass is nice to touch just have that Windolene ready folks!

The body of the new MacBooks would be made from a single piece of aluminium.

The new MacBooks will most likely run Intel’s Centrino 2 and are supposed to be out by September!

More details at ComputerWorld.

Photos: Gernot Poetsch

Alrighty!!

It’s time to synchronise your timepieces people!  If, like me, you wont be over in the states on Monday Enadget will be feeding us the good stuff.

If you (possibly) want to get all the juice about the:

3G iPhone

Mid-range Mac desktop

Tablet MacBook

Tablet iPod touch

New MacBook Pros

Hang on though.  This is the WWDC (World Wide Developer Con) and is usually all about the software so Apple may only announce one or two new pieces of hardware.  Maybe. Perhaps.

In that case:

iPhone 2.0 firmware

OS X 10.6

Me.com

Here’s a bunch of things that should help you out.

Where you need to be:
Steve Jobs WWDC 2008 keynote - live coverage
All WWDC 2008 coverage [RSS] [Twitter]

En Español:
El WWDC empieza este lunes 9 de junio a las 10:00 PST USA… ¡prepárate!

And here’s when you gotta be there:
07:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Mountain
12:00PM - Central
01:00PM - Eastern
05:00PM - GMT
06:00PM - London
07:00PM - Paris
02:00AM - Tokyo (June 10th)

Enjoy :0)

Last month I reported back about the Lenovo laptop that started out in life by taunting the MacBook Air.

Now they’ve kidney-punched Apple with their new ad. Just look at it:

• Stoopidly thin lappy (but this one has an optical drive)? Check.

• Floating with a drop shadow? Check.

• Helvetica Light hook phrase? Yup.

“Thinnovation” may have been changed to “The art of thin,” but c’mon; you can’t ignore the MBA similarities in the Lenovo web ad for the ThinkPad X300.

With the “No-compromise” and “Everything else is just hot air?” tag lines - I reckon we’re in for a rumble!!!

SCATTER!

Well in true form of a post-Apple store closure - Apple has released details of how they have refreshed their MacBook and MacBook Pro line.

Boosting the processor speeds and giving the Pros that tasty multi-touch the MacBook Air has been tarting about.

Updates to the GPU, an optional LED backlight for 17-inchers, as well as LEDs on all the rest of the Pros and of course the uprated topspeeds.

The new specs on the MBPs include a speed tweak to a base of 2.4GHz all the way up to 2.6GHz, a mysteriously familiar 3MB or 6MB L2 cache on the CPU, added RAM to the graphics card (up to 512MB for the 17-inch model), and of course the new touchy-pad.

It’s a little leap but no doubt will have Mac Fans salivating!  :0P

Prices
The 2.1 GHz, 13-inch white MacBook $1,099 (US)
The 2.4 GHz, 13-inch white MacBook $1,299 (US)
The 2.4 GHz, 13-inch black MacBook $1,499 (US)
The 2.4 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro $1,999 (US)
The 2.5 GHz, 15-inch MacBook Pro $2,499 (US)
The 2.5 GHz, 17-inch MacBook Pro, for a suggested retail price of $2,799 (US)

Just in case you were in any doubt as to whether Mr J was going to reveal something important in …….ooooooo……….90 minutes’ time - fear  not.

A few people have let me know that Apple’s e-store has closed - the portent of something fabby I hope!!!

The people over at 9to5Mac reckon that they’ve discovered what this “Something in the Air” campaign by Apple is all about.

They reckon that Apple’s rumored ultra-portable will be dubbed the MacBook Air. One of their readers discovered a machine identifying itself as a “MacBookAir” in a January 9, 2008 Adium usage log; that’s a full 3 days before the afore mentioned MacWorld banner was revealed!

If this turns out to be true, it’s thought that the name could refer to the ultra-portable’s weight, WWAN capability, or even Wireless USB support. 

A daft name that sounds like a pair of trainers or perhaps a “low-fat” option at the golden arches; but can I just say Wii?

Mixing the the 2 main rumours of the Apple iMac-like dock patent and the MacBook touch, here’s a very nice rendering of how the things may look together.

The design includes a minimalist dock station, with an optical drive, extra hard-drive, charging and wireless connectivity but without the screen.

According to the author, “the Keyboard Wireless Dock connects to the dock using Wireless USB. It also has a bigger hard drive, some sort of DVD player/burner, inputs for your USB and Firewire devices. The whole keyboard part itself is used as a large multitouch track pad. Since the keys need to be depressed when hit, you can do lighter touches as you move across the whole thing.”

I’ve got to keep reminding myself that this is just a mock up, a very nice mock up I agree, but a mock up nonetheless; especially in that black Powerbook-titanium.

I’m loving the mini-dock concept as if/when we get the MacBook lite and it ends up being an ultra-slim MacBook without an optical drive the mini-dock would make perfect sense.

We just have to wait and see what happens and if it actually happens……oh come on Apple!!!!!

Flickr via MacRumors Forums

iPhone developer Pumpkin plugged “rental” into a string search of the iPhone’s lockdown daemon file—which authorizes the iPhone for services—returning a curious set of hits:

pumpkin:~ pumpkin$ strings /usr/local/share/iphone-filesystem/usr/libexec/lockdownd | grep -i rental
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not retrieve FairPlayID
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not initialize FairPlay context
trigger_rental_bag_verification: Could not verify the rental bag response: %d
load_rental_bag_request: Could not retrieve FairPlayID
load_rental_bag_request: Could not initialize FairPlay context
load_rental_bag_request: Could not generate rental bag request
…..

There’s some code there, so where’s the goods?There are actually a few more lines of code, but you get the point. If you recall, this is the second set of code that’s been found pointing toward upcoming, or at least potential, video rentals.

The “could not retrieve FairPlayID” lines are probably the most interesting, or at the least ones begging most to be read into, since a rental setup with auto-suiciding content would require a variation of the current FairPlay scheme. On the face of it, it looks like the content’s gotta be DRM-okayed with a kosher FairPlay ID as it’s loaded.

The more relevant FairPlay DRM question for rentals is what kind of restrictions we’re looking at. Rumors popped up this summer Apple was chatting up studios, which the Hollywood people confirmed. But they also confirmed they told Apple to take a hike, since they wanted more stringent rental windows, crippled portability and a higher pricepoint.

So unless Apple’s compromised on the position we heard earlier—Hollywood’s not getting any looser, see: NBC—it could be still be a while before we welcome Appleflix to the world. [TUAW]

From Gizmodo

As rumored, Apple has quietly updated the MacBook tonight (last night) to the Santa Rosa architecture with mild speed bumps and the GMA X3100 integrated video.

White 13.3″
$1099.00 2.0GHz/1GB RAM/80GB/Combo/GMA X3100
$1299.00 2.2GHz/1GB RAM/120GB/SD-DL/GMA X3100

Black 13.3″
$1499.00 2.2GHz/1GB RAM/160GB/SD-DL/GMA X3100

Despite comparable clock speeds (2.0 -> 2.0GHz, 2.16 -> 2.2GHz) to the old models, the new MacBooks use the Santa Rosa chipset which boasts a faster 800MHz front side bus over the previous MacBook models. The introduction of the GMA X3100 video card also provides significant benefits over the previous models. The new specs can be seen at the Apple Store:

Apple’s product pages on the rest of the site had not yet been updated at the time of this writing. The new MacBooks appeared in Apple Retail stores on Wednesday, but the boxes were accompanied by instructions not to open them until further notice.Updatex2: Apple’s store pulled the new specs, and now is showing them again.Update 3: The MacBook Pro now has the option to upgrade to a 2.6GHz processor for $250, and also has the option for a 250GB drive.

From Mac Rumours.com