News tagged ‘MacBook’

This Wednesday Toshiba had experienced the power outage at Fab 3 and Fab 4 in the city of Yokkaichi, Japan. This caused an immediate shutdown of the NAND chip production at the plant. Though as of 15:00 on Friday facility became fully operational again, it is believed that such a force majeure may result in a 20% reduction in the sales of NAND flash in the next two months. Toshiba hasn't given official word on that information yet.

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Five years ago, Apple was selling the iBook G4 which evolved from the original iMac. The iBook released mid 2005 got 1.33 or 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 processors, 12.1 inch or 14.1 inch display, weighted 4.9 lbs (2.2 kg) (smaller version) or 5.9 lbs (2.7 kg) (larger version). Both models had 1024x768 screen resolution and were 1.35 inches (3.4 cm) thick.

Apple's latest laptop, the 11.6 inch MacBook Air, is equipped with  1.4 or 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, weighs just 2.3 lbs (1.04 kg) and is only 0.68 inches (1.7 cm) at its thickest.

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On Wednesday Apple released a MacBook Air EFI firmware update 2.0 to resolve issue with display. The update is recommended for all new 11-inch and 13-inch MacBook Air models and requires Mac OS X 10.6.5. It addresses problems where the MacBook Air is unresponsive or displays just a black screen after booting or waking. Despite scattered reports of issues with the MacBook Air, the laptop has continued to sell well, especially the 11-inch model. Analysts tracking retail activity on Black Friday found that the 11-inch MacBook Air was "flying off the shelves" and a "customer favorite."

Download the MacBook Air EFI firmware update 2.0

Ticongera Securities analyst Brian White provided another update for investors while touring the Far East. In his note he says that iPhone 4, iPad and 11-inch MacBook Air are the most difficult products to purchase in China.

Local carrier China Unicom cannot fulfill almost a third of preorders, and people wait for their devices for around two months. That creates wide growth opportunities in China, and White says Apple's interest in this market is definitely positive.

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This week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released another pile of Apple's patent applications that reveal the company’s interest in further improving of its technology of keyboard backlights. It is said in the documents, that though current keyboards have a light feedback, for example, when the "Caps Lock" is enabled, more informative keyboards would be more beneficial for users.

"Most conventional keyboards lack the ability to convey complex information to a user (such as, for example, more information than just whether the CAPS lock key is on). And while some conventional keyboards may include backlit keys, conventional keyboards with backlighting do not offer the ability to dynamically control lighting schemes for each of the keys individually based on interaction from the user."

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On Tuesday Apple revealed the patent application, which depicts a laptop that slides into tablet. On the shots above you may see how the standard laptop with a traditional keyboard, body, display frame and display might be transformed into a tablet by sliding the display across the keyboard. The patent relates to scrolling operations but it does not depict real convertible laptop to tablet form factor. The idea of the patent was expressed by Apples CEO Steve Jobs while the presentation of the new MacBook when he wondered what would happen if a MacBook and an iPad hooked up. So this patent with a touchscreen and a keyboard, laptop and tablet configurations reveals implementation of this idea and possibility of integration between the two products.

Apple seems to have grate plans for 2011. So, we’d summarized all rumors and official statement, and formed the following list, which shows Apple's plans for the new year:

• Lion OS;
• Mac App Store;
• iPad 2
• Implementing of Light Peak optical interconnect technology developed by Intel to replace such things like USB, DisplayPort and HDMI. In future, the technology has the potential to reach speeds of 100Gbps. it is also requires smaller connections and thinner cables;
• New model of MacBook Pro notebooks equipped with Intel's Light Peak, 512 GB of SSD storage, without an optical drive. These MacBook Pro's will last longer, run quieter and be lighter and more power-efficient;
• Apple-branded Blu-ray player/burning device which is also capable of burning standard optical media such as DVD or CD;
• Subscription service via iTunes, which would be focused on video services.

According to sources close to component makers for Apple’s computers, the company ships around one million MacBooks per month in Q4 2010. Part of the new MacBook Airs is accounted to 20-25% of the volume. In the first three quarters of 2010 Apple sold about 6.88 million units, and its global notebook market share rose from 3.7% in the first quarter to 5.2% in the third. Apple’s market share in the US market surged from 6.7% to 12.6%. So, it looks like 2011 will be an interesting year for Mac users. Moreover, Apple plans to open the Mac App Store, update the MacBook Pro line and launch new OS X Lion.

Apple is rumored to plan to launch an all new MacBook Pro in April 2011 alongside an update to Final Cut Pro. The new design seems to be similar to the 2010 MacBook Air. The new MacBook Pros will have solid state storage and 512GB memory. Apple will remove the optical drive and pushed to market Light Peak optical cable interface. Apple is likely not to replace the traditional 13" MacBook Pro and leave only one legacy 15" design in the lineup. Prices will vary from $1,799 for the traditional model with upgrade options available to $1,999 for the new MacBook Pros and scale up according to configuration.

Adobe’s CEO revealed this week that Abode is currently testing Flash Player optimized for Apple’s new MacBook. It’s not a secret that new laptops are shipping without Flash preinstalled due to battery problem. The new MacBook Air became Apple's first Mac to ship without Flash Player.  The battery life of the small notebook took a significant hit when browsing the Web with Flash Player. Adobe is looking to improve battery life on the MacBook Air with a new custom build of Adobe Flash. The company believes that the key to conserving battery life lies in hardware acceleration. “When we have access to hardware acceleration, we've proven that Flash has equal or better performance on every platform,” – Adobe claims.

Last week Ars Technica test found out that the MacBook Airs battery life was reduced by up to two hours when Flash was installed. But the Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch believes that it is impossible.  In his interview to Fast Company he claimed that reports of Adobe Flash causing reduced battery life are a “false argument.”

“When you're displaying content, any technology will use more power to display, versus not displaying content. If you used HTML5, for example, to display advertisements, that would use as much or more processing power than what Flash uses”, -  Lynch explained.

Moreover, he blamed Apple in inciting and condoning a negative campaign against Flash. Earlier this year, Jobs spoke out against Flash in an open letter, labeling it unfit for the modern era of low-power devices. And as a result, the MacBook Airs and Macs are shipped now without Flash pre-installed.

Today Toshiba started selling Blade X-gale Solid state drives for mass market, the same that are used in the new MacBook Airs. That was confirmed by MacRumors, which compared Toshiba's part numbers with the numbers of the components found in the latest Apple's notebooks.

Here are the short specs of the SSDs:

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In the screenshot above, you can see a Macbook Air with a picture of the new Mac App store, which divines some potential prices for Apple's official apps.  This is directly from Apple’s website. So, what are the prices? Turns out they're pretty close to current software prices. The iLife apps are priced out at $14.99, while the iWork apps are priced at $19.99, and when you add them all up, they cost about the same as the bundles you can buy in the Apple retail store. There's also a few other titles at various prices. There's a dice game called Roll 'Em which is priced for free, an app called Color Studio at $29.99, and another game called Fast Lane priced at just $4.99.  If this is a real picture of what some of the Mac apps might cost then it will be interesting to see what we get when the store officially opens.

This week Barron's site published a forecast of Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair, which reveals details on Apple’s suggested progress based on the study of the company's supply chain. He is assured the Cupertino's company will sell 100 million iPhones, which in turn means almost 100% year over year sales growth for the device in 2011. Besides that, the analyst also suggested the number of iPads sold will reach 45-48 million next year.

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Today Daniel Chin, who is a president of Sanho Corporation, revealed in a press release that the company's HyperMac product line will get new brand "HyperJuice" because of a lawsuit that was filed by Apple.

"In the coming weeks, the 'HyperMac' brand name will be renamed to 'HyperJuice' as part of our ongoing comprehensive licensing negotiations with Apple regarding a wide array of technologies and issues".

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