News tagged ‘MacBook’

The iPod touch 4G is most probably going to change its shape. The back of the device will be neither flat glass, like for the iPhone 4, nor is it going to be a curved surface, like a dome.

The anonymous source claims that the shape is going to be

Familiar. Think of the top of a MacBook Pro, only smaller, which is to say flat rather than curved at the center—closer to the look of the first-generation iPod touch’s back, only with modifications. The rear camera is there, but there is still some question as to whether what’s next to it will be a LED flash like the one in the iPhone 4, or a microphone like the one next to the video camera of the iPod nano. We’ve been told to expect a microphone rather than a flash, with a continuation of the bottom-mounted headphone port and Dock Connector port.

The new iPod touch is going to be announced at the Special Event on September 1^st.

Do you remember the robot called T-1000 Skynet made of liquid metal in the film Terminator 2? It seems that Steve Jobs decided to create devices of next generation using Liquidmetal Technologies, a California company from which Apple has recently acquired the exclusive rights for creation of liquid metal alloy products.

One of the best and most distinctive factors in all Apple products is how this company produces its own devices, the quality of production, as well as the materials used, which, undoubtedly, have first-class quality.

Now that Apple has the exclusive rights to create products of the liquid metal, we can assume that it has no plans to create a robot for the next Terminator movie, but probably will use it for such devices as iMac, iPad and iPhone of the next generation in order to be one step ahead of its competitors.

Among the downsides that the present Apple’s MacBooks have lies in the fact that there is no possibility of 4G, 3G or LTE network connection without using a USB modem (or some other devices).

According to the Apple’s patent filings we may state that the company has some ideas and is working on their fulfillment. It goes about a telephonic MacBook that will have a magnetically coupled antenna.

It is said that the company is planning to use the wireless communication circuitry in MacBooks. Thus, users can get data communications in some communication bands and cellular telephone communications in several frequency bands.

Let’s wait what actions Apple is going to take with such fancy patent ideas for their future line of MacBooks, but we think that users won’t be disappointed.

According to a new report, published by Philip Elmer-DeWitt from Fortune, Apple's share on the portable PC market grew from 5 to 12% in the second quarter, making it the third world biggest mobile PC vendor after Dell and HP in volume sales.

Such data was revealed by Chris Whitmore, who is an analyst Deutsche Bank.

"Our retail checks suggest this share shift continues in July, where the iPad is directly cannibalizing demand for other vendors' notebook products. Remarkably, Apple's traditional MacBook business posted accelerated unit growth on a Y/Y basis in 2Q despite the launch of the iPad while every other Top 5 vendor slowed."

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Yesterday new unknown Apple product was approved by Federal Communications Commission.  Page 45 in the FCC documents reveals that the product is named as a"Bluetooth Trackpad". It's a rectangular shaped device with a model number of A1339. It can connect to a MacBook via Bluetooth, but Wi-Fi or cellular data wireless radios were not mentioned in the filings.

The documents about this device were submitted to the FCC last October, the same time when its initial testing was completed.

Last year it was rumored that Apple prepares a multi-touch standalone trackpad style device which was called as the "Magic Trackpad". Looks like this is finally it.

Yesterday Apple officially presented its new back-to-school promotion. This is an annual sale, when school faculty and students can purchase a Mac and get a 8GB iPod touch for free. Apple claims on its website:

"Take a free 8GB iPod touch to school. Along with tons of other great features, iPod touch has built-in Wi-Fi for downloading thousands of games, movies, songs, apps, and amazing, free educational content from iTunes U."

If you have an education discount, along with acquiring new iPod touch you can save $50 on a low-end MacBook, $100 on a MacBook Air and iMac desktop and $200 on a MacBook Pro. Such educational discounts are available to staff and faculty of K-12 schools, and to students, professors and staff of any college.

The deal applies between May 25 and Sept. 7, 2010. Those who doesn't want to get free iPod touch can receive a $199 discount for purchasing 160GB iPod classic or a higher-capacity iPod touch, a $179 discount for a 16GB iPod nano, $149 discount for a 8GB iPod nano, $99 discount for a stainless steel 4Gb iPod shuffle, and $79 discount for a regular 4GB iPod shuffle.

Customers can use their educational discounts in an Apple online store, retail stores, authorized campus stores or call 1-800-MY-APPLE.

This week Apple revealed new patent application that describes its new superior advertisement technique. The document entitled "System and method for providing contextual l advertisements according to a dynamic pricing scheme."

Its main idea is that the effectiveness of the modern mobile advertisements can be improved with using unique pricing scheme (when advertiser pays variable price that based "on the likelihood of influencing user behaviour") and special marketing factors that can determine the effectiveness of the ad.

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iPad USB Camera Connection Kit is much more useful as it seems. Max Sha, an experienced user, was able to access external hard drive with this kit. All you need is a jailbroken iPad, an external drive, a split-USB cable to give the drive some power and a terminal of some sort (f.e. MacBook) to mount the external storage. While it is a little unwieldy, it shows that Terabytes of external storage for iPad is possible.

Here is a complete step-by-step guide from Max Sha:

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As you remember, recently we wrote about police investigating the deal about Gizmodo purchase of an iPhone 4G prototype. The company paid $5,000 to obtain it from an unknown person who found it at one of the California's bars.

Last Friday California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team visited Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's home and seized 2 servers and 4 computers for a felony investigation of an iPhone 4G prototype. If to be exact, here is a list:

• MacBook
• MacBook Pro
• 32 Gb iPad
• 16 Gb IPhone
• AirPort Extreme
• IBM ThinkPad
• Dell desktop
• External hard drives and some other devices and accessories

This information was revealed by Gizmodo. The author of the post placed copy of the warrant, which was issued by a superior court judge in San Mateo County, California. It is also stated in the article that warrant is invalid because of a section 1524(g) of the California Penal Code.

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As time goes by Apple CEO receives more e-mails and answers on some of it. If you analyze his behavior, you can see that it becomes a tradition to answer to company's customers before the announcement of a new device. So maybe we can expect something revolutionary again, but at this moment we can just take a look at what we have for today.

Two days ago a Macrumors reader mailed a letter to Steve Jobs. He was concerned about whether Apple will lose their vision on the MacBooks' department. The answer was:

"Not to worry."

Another TUAW reader asked if he will have an ability to transfer his Google Docs to the iPad through iDisk or iWork.com. Steve Jobs answered shortly again:

"Yes".

A man calling himself Julio R. was wondering, if we can expect a universal mailbox on the iPod Touch or iPhone. Jobs reply:

"Yep".

TheAppleLounge reader mailed this:

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This week Steve Jobs answered an email question from Sweden. The question was from Jezper Söderlund:

I'll keep it short.

I'm Jezper from Sweden, a long time Apple fan, currently about to replace the very last computer at home with a brand spanking new iMac i7. I'm also awaiting the release of the iPad. However, I have one question:

Will the wifi-only version somehow support tethering thru my iPhone?

Two devices, based on the same OS, with already built-in technology to share one data plan suggests a secondary contract could possibly be redundant.

From the look of your keynote, where the iPad sits well between my MacBook Pro and my iPhone, I was hoping the three of them could interact as seamless as possible.

All the best,
Jezper Söderlund

This is a very interesting question, since iPad's network settings with tethering were found recently. Here is Jobs' answer:

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We're back on reporting about the apps and gadgets presented on the MWSF 2010. Now we'll talk about iV Plus - the solution to turn your iPhone into remote; FloTV - the service to watch TV in the USA; Square Up service to pay for everything you need only with your credit card and iPhone; and Wissair's USB DisplayDock Set will get the screen from your laptop to the HDTV-set wirelessly.

U-Socket turned to be out a very interesting solution, but FastMac was found to offer something more. The thing on the pictures below is called The iV Plus. It helps to manage a set of your home devices and consists of IR Remote, Battery Pack, Flash LED and case that wraps around the iPhone. FastMac will also provide free Universal Remote software to work with this creation. The iV Plus will be shipped expectedly in the second quarter of 2010 for $130.

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We're continuing to cover news from the MWSF 2010, and this time the talk will be about MacSpeech Scribe app, MusicSkins accesories, Kanex adapter and CarMD device.

MacSpeech is known for its MacSpeech Dictate program that allows user to speak to Mac and wind up with formatted text. At the MWSF company released MacSpeech Scribe (US 149$), which turns recorded audio into RTF-files (that are readable by any word processor). It doesn't create text with punctuation and you have to train the program by correcting its mistakes, but with the Nuance engine from the previous app it looks really impressive.

MusicSkins was also present at the MacWorld 2010. This time there were vinyl skins not only for Apple devices, but for any gadgets known (at least they say they add 5-10 devices to their roster per week). Company reps told us the accessories for the iPad are also ready to be printed, but before it’ll go to the market they want to make sure their production will work well and fit correctly to the device. At this moment skins for iPod and iPhone (US 15$) and for the Macbook (US 30$) are available.

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From now on sausages are not the only substitutes for human fingers; Electrorack presented an interesting rack enclosure for Xserves; Shake allows you to listen music without earphones; U-Socket solves a problem of USB-rechargable devices.

As you remember few days ago we wrote about sausages as the best substitutes of human fingers for iPhones. Well now it is not. Two companies at once presented their capacitive capable gloves that allow you to use iPhone even when it's cold. iTouch Gloves offered high end leather gloves (start with  $99.95, on the left side) and Telefingers offered thinner, less stylish and cheaper solution (for only $15, on the right side).

That really looks like oversized Mac Pro, but indeed this is a rack enclosure for Xserves and RAID configuration presented by Electrorack. The latter also offers a variety of other server racking solutions.

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MacWorld Expo 2010 started on the Feb, 11. We'll show you how that day and the MWSF generally started.

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