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  • Ed
    As is typical of Apple, the first quarter of the year tends to be heavy with new product announcements from Steve Jobs & Co. Rumors are abound of a successor to the current generation of iPad, which was debuted almost a year ago.
     
    One of the most notable omissions from the current iPad is a camera: something which is widely expected to be addressed with both front- and rear-facing cameras in the next-generation iPad. It should also be noted that prior to the iPad's debut, Apple did file for a patent for user-recognition using a front-facing camera in order to authenticate users, as opposed to typing a password: could this eventually see reality with the new iPad?
     
    Another rumor abound on the 'net is the possibility of quadruple the resolution, just like the iPhone benefitted from with last years release of the iPhone 4. The iPad's current resolution of 1024 x 768 is expected to quadruple to a whopping 2048 x 1536 - essentially a 4:3 version of the resolution on a 27" iMac! Reports are surfacing of high resolution versions of images in Apple's iBooks app which strongly support this rumor.
     
    In order to power this huge increase in resolution, it is widely expected that a new version of Apple's A4 processor, possibly titled A5 or A8, will debut with the next generation of iPads.
     
    Furthermore, it's also expected that an SD card slot may appear on the new device, inline with the addition of SD card slots on higher-end MacBook Pro's.
     
    Stay tuned for further info on the new iPad as it nears launch.
  • Ed

    Mac App Store could launch next week

    By Ed, in OSx86,

    Rumors are abound that the recently announced Mac App Store could be launch as early as next Monday, the 13th of December.
     
    When the dedicated Mac software store was announced by Apple on October 20th, it was slated to launch "within 90 days" which would fall inline with Apple's usual flurry of announcements and launches in January. However, it would appear that Steve's worked his team hard in order to get a release in ahead of Christmas when no doubt many people will be unwrapping brand new Macs for Christmas.
     
    This rumor also coincides with other reports of leaked betas of Mac OS X 10.6.6 featuring support for the forthcoming Mac App Store.
  • Ed
    Apple has recently won several patents for mobile and touch devices, including one of particular note which depicts a Macbook-like mobile device with a screen that slides down and over the tactile to keyboard to form an iPad-like touch device.
     
    For those of you that just can't decide between the iPad and MacBook Air, this may be just what you're after - although it's unclear whether this would be an iOS or full-blown Mac OS X mobile device, if it indeed every comes to fruition.
     

  • TH3L4UGH1NGM4N
    Apple patent could show plans for Light Peak adoption
     
    updated 12:20 pm EST, Tue November 30, 2010
     
    Company rumored as early Light Peak adopter.
     


    Source:


     
    Electronista

     
    Intel Light Peak rumored launching early, Apple a candidate
     
    updated 11:25 pm EDT, Wed November 3, 2010
     


    Source:
     

     
    Electronista

    Apple's Next MacBook Pro to Include SSD and Light Peak: Blog Rumors
     
    The latest round of Apple rumors has Steve Jobs launching a new redesign of the MacBook Pro in April 2011 with solid-state drives and the Intel Light Peak optical cable technology.

    Apple is notoriously reticent about providing information about upcoming products, but that doesn't stop the Apple faithful from speculating. The latest rumor making the rounds of Apple blogs predicts the next MacBook Pro notebook will move to solid-state drives.
     
    Mark Reschke from the Three-Guys-And-A-Podcast blog wrote Nov. 24 that Apple will be launching the "all-new MacBook Pro" design with SSDs in April 2011. He correctly predicted the launch of a new MacBook Air in September.

    The new design centers on the notebook's optical drives, or rather the lack of them. "The new MacBook Pros will move to solid state storage, up to 512GB, remove the optical drive, and we believe Light Peak is being pushed to make its first-ever entrance into the market, another Apple exclusive," Reschke wrote.
     
    Intel's Light Peak is a high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect multiple electronic devices, including peripherals, displays and disk drives. While the Light Peak connectors will be smaller with cables that are longer, thinner and more flexible, the technology will be capable of transferring data at blazing speeds, starting at 10Gb per second, according to Intel.
     
    Even though Light Peak is an Intel project, there is rampant speculation that Apple is collaborating with Intel on the technology. Many blogs are also claiming that it will be "an Apple exclusive when it first hits the market."
     
    While Apple has never commented on its involvement with Light Peak, sources told CNET late last year, "Apple is an innovating force in the industry and makes requests that nobody else does, and that only helps innovation."
     
    Apple CEO Steve Jobs also recently said, "We don't see USB 3 taking off this time." Many Apple watchers have taken this statement as additional evidence that the new Macs will get Light Peak next year.

    Intel has said customers will have Light Peak components before the end of 2010 and that peripherals and PCs with Light Peak connectors will appear on the market in 2011. With Reschke's April prediction, the timing is not too far off for Light Peak to be in the MacBook Pro.
     
    "We don't believe this will be a simple refresh of the MacBook Pro; rather, Apple will deliver an all-out redesign, the big brother of the MacBook air," Reschke wrote. This is in line with Jobs telling the crowd during the MacBook Air launch that they can expect similar things from all MacBook models in the future.

    The MacBook Pro was last refreshed in April, with the addition of the Core i5 and i7 options. While SSDs have been available as options on the MacBook Pro line, the new redesign would mean a significant boost in processing power between the entry-level MacBook line and the high-end Pro machines. The predicted MacBook Pros will last longer, run quieter, and be lighter and more power-efficient because there will be next to no moving parts within the case.
     
    There is also some speculation that dropping the internal DVD drive paves the way for Apple to come out with its own brand of external DVD player/burner with Light Peak to work with the MacBook Pro.

    Reschke noted that Apple is likely to leave one legacy 15-inch design in the lineup for those not yet comfortable with the shift to solid-state drives and no optical drive. He speculated that the new MacBook Pros will start at $1,999 and scale up according to configuration.
     


    Source:


     
    eweek
     


    Thanks to Hangten for the info!


  • Ed
    Apple's annual Black Friday discounts have started in the Apple Store Australia. Expect US and other Apple Stores to follow suit over the next few hours.
    Disc
    Apple's annual Black Friday discounts have started in the Apple Store Australia. Expect US and other Apple Stores to follow suit over the next few hours.

    Discounts seem to mostly be at the 8% mark and are for one day only. Apple Authorized Resellers have also started their only Black Friday sales too, including MacMall, MacConnection, Best Buy and Walmart.

    If you've been holding off pulling the trigger on a new Mac for a while, this may be a good time to grab yourself a discount!
  • Ed
    Whilst Apple may still be the minority desktop computing platform, since the launch of its iPad this year it has dominated the tablet market and taken no prisoners.
     

    A major survey conducted by consumer shopping site VoucherCodes.co.uk has revealed some interesting insights into what we look for in a tablet device - a few highlights include:


    Dell and RIM have the largest amount of public trust in their tablet after Apple.
    For just a $160 saving, over a third of the market would move away from Apple.
    Every age demographic indicated they wanted the device most for instant access to the web, suggesting clever tie ups with networks could win the battle outright.
    Older demographics indicated the highest interest in purchasing a Tablet Device.
    Women value Price whereas men value Breadth and Quality of Features as the factors most likely to influence their purchase of a tablet device. 


    Head on over to their site to see the full article and brilliant infographic.
  • Ed
    Apple's next major update to its mobile operating system platform, iOS 4.2, has been seeded to developers. The OS which was shown off at an iPod event by Steve Jobs in September has key new features including AirPrint and AirPlay, as well as bringing iPhone features to the iPad such as multitasking, unified mail inbox, threaded messages, and the ability to open attachments in third party apps. Other rumoured enhancements include the abbilility to launch a FaceTime chat from an SMS message, support for Google's revised YouTube voting, and new CoreMIDI music APIs for music apps to taken advantage of.
     
    Apple is now accepting app submissions that are 4.2 compatible so a release for the new iOS is expected to be imminent.
  • Ed
    Steve Jobs unveiled at the tail end of the "Back to the Mac" keynote an all-new line-up of MacBook Airs, featuring a familiar 13" model, and a new smaller borderline-netbook 11" model - the smallest Apple notebook ever produced.
     
    The new MacBook Air models feature an even slimmer, lighter design, measuring just 0.68 inches (17mm) at its thickest point, and an incredible 0.11 inches (3mm) at its thinnest point. The 13" model weighs in at 2.9 pounds (1.32kg) and the 11" at just 2.3 pounds (1.06kg).
     
    One of the major new features of the new MacBook Airs which Apple is hinting at doing across its entire MacBook range is the SSD implementation - gone is the standard 1.8" hard drive bay, and in place is an SSD solution that connects directly to the motherboard, saving valuable space. In fact, most of the space in the new MacBook Air is occupied by the battery components, which deliver 7 hours of "wireless productivity" (a new battery benchmark phrase coined by Apple to give realistic battery times) on the 13" model, and 5 hours of "wireless productivity" on the 11" model, and an impressive 30 days of standby time.
     
    New to the MacBook Air is the nVidia GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM which is shared with the main system memory. RAM is now standard at 2GB, with an optional upgrade to 4GB. Frontside bus remains at 1066MHz for the 13", and the new 11" model has an 800MHz bus.
     
    Ports remain largely the same with a minimalistic approach, albeit with 2 USB ports now as opposed to the previous solitary port. The headphone jack also supports the microphone on the Apple iPhone earphones, which may be handy for those of you that use Skype, iChat, etc.
     
    The 13" screen is still LED but now sports a higher resolution of 1440x900, and the smaller 11" packs a still impressive resolution of 1366x768 which is a 16:9 aspect ratio, inline with the new 27" cinema display and current range of iMacs.
     
    Sadly, the reduced size does mean that the backlit keyboard has been omitted from the new MacBook Air.
     
    Pricing starts at just $999 for the base 11" MacBook Air which certainly makes it a more affordable option than its predecessor, and are available to order from the Apple Store now.
  • Ed
    A new improved MacBook Air is predicted to be announced by Apple tomorrow, and rumors are heating up across the 'net in anticipation of Apple's "Back to the Mac" event which is widely expected to preview the next generation operating-system, Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion".
     
    Pictured in this post is reportedly the innards of a prototype of the forthcoming MacBook Air.
     
    So far, the rumor-mill is predicting that the MacBook Air will now come in two sizes: an existing 13" model, and a new 11.6" variant which may be the closest Apple comes to releasing a netbook, despite the fact that users have been happily running Mac OS X on their netbooks for quite some time!
     
    Allegedly, the standard 1.8" storage bay which houses either an HDD or SSD will be replaced with an SSD card-based storage solution.
     
    Pricing is also rumored to be addressed, with a more aggressive price-point, which has often been a major criticism of the relatively expensive existing models.
     
    The new MacBook Air is also now reported to be even slimmer than the previous model, and no longer sports a port flap.
  • TH3L4UGH1NGM4N

    Tablet War

    By TH3L4UGH1NGM4N, in OSx86,

    The fight is making it's way to the Techway Fight Club floor where these two contenders will take on each other. The infamous iPad will find it's competitor the Blqckberry PlayBook. Playbook you might say may sound quite silly for a tablet but Research In Motion (RIM) is playing no folly with this new gig as it projected to have high sales from the company.
     
    Here is a breif brake down of the specs of each contender respectively.
     
    Weing in at approximately 0.9 lbs (400g for our metric readers) from the depths of the motional movements of research we have the
     
    Blackberry PlayBook
     

     
    Courtesy of Engadget
     
    With the spec sheet shown below...


    7? LCD, 1024 x 600, WSVGA, capacitive touch screen with full multi-touch and gesture support
    1 GHz dual-core processor
    1GB RAM
    BlackBerry Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing
    Dual HD cameras (3 MP front facing, 5 MP rear facing), supports 1080p HD video recording
    Video playback: 1080p HD Video, H.264, MPEG, DivX, WMV
    Audio playback: MP3, AAC, WMA
    HDMI video output
    Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n
    Bluetooth? 2.1 + EDR
    Connectors: microHDMI, microUSB, charging contacts
    Open, flexible application platform with support for WebKit/HTML-5, Adobe
    Flash Player 10.1, Adobe Mobile AIR, Adobe Reader, POSIX, OpenGL, Java
    Measures 5.1?x7.6?x0.4? (130mm x 193mm x 10mm)
    Additional features and specifications of the BlackBerry PlayBook will be shared on or before the date this product is launched in retail outlets.These should prove to be some very strong points to take on the tablet King sir iPad the first.
     
    Incase for any non logical reason you have forgotten the specs for Sir iPad, here's the run down once more to job those brain cells of yours
     
    Apple iPad
     

     
    Courtesy of Apple


    Display

    9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
    1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)
    Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating
    Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously
    Capacity


    16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive
    Processor


    1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip
    Audio Playback


    Audio formats supported: HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
    Wi-Fi
    Digital compass
    Assisted GPS (Wi-Fi + 3G model)
    Cellular (Wi-Fi + 3G model)Now it is up to the comsumers with that given information and their interest in gadgets to see which tablet will win them over. RIM's ironically named "PlayBook", seems to digress a bit from RIM's business minded moto. Nonetheless, ultimately it will be the end user experience that will determine how the newbie tablet will fair with the current King of All the iPad.
     
    The PlayBook will have to produce some serious sales to begin playing catchup with the iPad if RIM hopes for it to become a successful tablet because other manufactures are bound to jump on to the tablet bandwaggon war in a few months from now. How will the PlayBook play its cards in this bloodbath round? The quarterly earnings will soon tell.
     
    InsanelyMac thoughts?
    Let's get ready to ruuumbleeee!
     
    Sources: Apple iPad Spec Sheet, Engadget
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