Apple Docking Patent Works Great with Ultra-Slim MacBook PIC

Macbook made to fit-in-to iMac, whoa… Macworld 2008.

“This Apple docking station patent shows a screen base in which you can slide in a MacBook through its side. While this would be difficult to do with current MacBooks, it fits perfectly with the idea of the ultra-light, ultra-slim MacBook that allegedly will be presented at MacWorld.” The images and description looks quite cool.

read more | digg story | photo gizmodo

MacWorld Publishes Mac Book Pro benchmarks.

James Galbraith

Apple began November introducing a revamped line of MacBook laptops. Let’s close out the month with a few words about another product announced alongside the MacBook updates—a build-to-order configuration of the MacBook Pro.

If you remember, on the same day Apple boosted the processor speeds and made other internal changes to its MacBook line, it also announced the availability a new, faster 2.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor for the MacBook Pro. The 2.6GHz processor is a $250 upgrade over the $2,499 and $2,799 models that ship with the 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo.

Macworld Lab ordered and received a 15-inch MacBook Pro with the faster processor. It should come as no surprise that this custom-built MacBook Pro is the fastest portable Mac to date.

Apple Updates MacBooks to Santa Rosa, GMA X3100

As rumored, Apple has quietly updated the MacBook tonight to the Santa Rosa architecture with mild speed bumps and the new GMA X3100 integrated video. The Video Card is the real story here, before it was piss poor, now it is a bit more professional, bring on Civ III ! See my experieince with the macbook that iSold. Story

• New Macbook Chipset
• New better Graphics Card
• macbook hard drive increase (up to 250!)
• Mac Book pro goes up to 2.6 gig with 250 gig hard drive…

http://thunkdifferent.com/2007/08/01/isold-my-macbook-selling-it-was-easy-heres-why/read more | digg story

Apple store is down, macbooks? leopard?

At this point when the Apple store closes, its like, yeah… you wont be open for a few hours. But really, do they need to take all their stores off at once? No way jose, they do it as marketing.

It s a good trick really, it gets people asking, wondering, wanting to look around and maybe even bring it up to other people. Best of all when they are up again, it is up t the web surfer to find things out for theirselves, which means more apple hits and likely more Apple sales. Oh what will the day bring?

Dear Real Steve Jobs… Thank you for iLife ’08.

Dear Real Steve Jobs,

Thank you. The iLife ’08 released today looks to be the most revolutionary media software package on earth. The iMacs… incredible, .Mac – Thank god, Numbers – expected, but thanks. All is all, iLife ’08 fills in the gaps that the Leopard keynote was missing, and then some. iMovie… who is that guy who simply came up with this idea, the idea that changed media forever? I want to buy him a gift on Facebook, and then buy him a real one, doesn’t matter what it is, a beer, candy, a rainbow, whatever he wants. He deserves it. He deserves to go on more vacations. Send him to india, the pyramids, the wall, stonehenge. I’m interested to see what he comes up with. iThink we all are.

Last minute iMac & Macmini rumors.

With less than 24 hours to go before Apple is scheduled to host a Mac-related media event on its campus, several small tidbits regarding new iMac pricing and the fate of the Mac mini have surfaced…

New iMacs

According to one source, Apple has issued to suppliers three new iMac price points for models that are expected to be immediately available following their introduction on Tuesday.

Yeah, Why don’t iMac have batteries?

Why don’t iMacs have batteries?

Yes, I really asked that question. Why don’t iMacs have batteries?

The reason I ask is because things happen. Someone is building a building and cuts the power to a whole city block. Oops. Or a storm brews up and knocks down a tree and the lights go out. It happens, the power goes out and then my iMac goes dead. So why don’t desktop computers have batteries?

Now, I’m not asking for much. Just a small battery that lasts maybe 10-30 minutes. Giving the user just enough time to save everything and shut down the computer safely. I’d think there would be enough room for a mini battery inside my iMac.

Or maybe, someone like Griffin Technologies could come up with a battery pack accessory. It could plug into your USB or Firewire slot and keep you safe.

Granted, I don’t even know if this is possible for a third party accessory, but I thought I’d ask as I’ve had the power go out a couple of times in the past few days and it’s really annoying. I haven’t lost anything, but even five minutes is enough time for me to save whatever I need and shut down.

Now buying a big UPS backup is overkill in this situation. So don’t even suggest it. I want something small and handy for just a few minutes of power.

What do you think? >>>MORE.

iSold my Macbook. “Selling it was easy, here’s why…”

Ahhh, a new Apple product. All problems are solved. My life is better, more people like me, i’m smarter… wait, none of this happens. So when I bought a macbook with Windows Vista AND The Adobe Creative Suite 3, i was so excited until i really started to use it. I bought the white one and here are the main issues with it.

• The screen is too small. iRealized iLiked my 1999 powerbook g4 screen better immediatley. First off the glare from the “glossy” screen is annoying, it is said it makes colors more vivid and vibrant, REALLY, I don’t think so. It is also cut for HD, but at 13.3, the height feel less than 10″ so it does seem smaller that the G3 12″ iBook i had and less eye-friendly than my 14″ Lombard powerbook.
• The Design does not feel durable, it dirties quickly. At first it seemed solid. Then little”nano” loosens would affect the body, imagine a slight ticking sound on either side. i could micropress the sides in near the grooves which would get dirty. The keyboard and palm rest also get dirty very quickly, and are not easy to clean without fear of rubbing off the letters or doing permanent damage to your keyboard.
• It feels like a toy and serious design is all but impossible. This sadly is the biggest factor. i was torn between the macbook pro & a 15.4″ good screen size and graphics card, or the macbook with the slightly smaller screen size and terrible graphics card. i chose intelligently, but not wisely, now i know and that’s half the battle.

C’mon a macbook is half the price and the specs are the same!

Hold on there OS TigerTrainer, not so.

The graphics card matters. YouTube and Quicktime sometimes have slight issues loading. Scaling and zooming also have trouble, where the macbook will skip frames and a Dell inspirion will handle it smoothly. So will the Macbook pro obviously, plus the macbook pro screen DOES FEEL twice and large. It feels work-able, and that is what is really important.

The specs are NOT the same. The processors are near identical, but the macbook can’t use all that power. Sure it can render things fast, but it is hard to see what you are rendering. Adobe CS3 was unworkable with it. iWas so excited to get this included as well as Vista and got it for a deal on ebay, i ended up losing about $100 when i sold it, but, got to use it for a month and used the hell out of the macbook. iSold it is great condition, but i feared if i kept it any longer it wouldn’t have lasted in good condition. The screen is flimsy and the speed of the computer makes little difference if the graphics can’t cut the mustard, more like cut the cheese. Ok, bad one – life is gouda and i’m much happier to have money in the bank and to save up for a macbook pro with Leopard, WITHOUT VISTA see here, and wait for the 45″”" nanotechiture energy saving designs from intel due late this year or in the Spring.

OVERALL:

Not a bad, toytertainment product. Seriously for students and upper income people that want this as a secondary computer where durability, hardrive (sp? why not make it one word?), and graphic design/ contact management is not an issue. 2.75 out of 5 stars. Good: Price, processor, battery. Bad: See above.

My BlackBerry Vs. My iPhone.

Nice title huh? not entirely true… however keep reading and you’ll see some interesting differences between my blackberry and my (future) iPhone.

RIM’s Blackberry:(7130e)

“Push! Push! Push!” While this may seem to be the mantra of la moz coach, it could also be the marketing mantra of Reasearch In Motion’s (RIM) Blackberry Products. Ohhhh how excited i was to get my Blackberry through Verizon. I literally couldn’t wait. At this point i heard speculation that the iPhone was coming, but it being September 2006, knew that the latest “smartphone” was the best option. I couldn’ve went for the treo, but i think it looks stupid (seriously) or the Motorola Q which was a tough choice, but as it ran Windows mobile and couldn’t push quite as hard as the blackberry, I went for the RIM product due to the teathered modem capabilities and international access abroad. This last point is especially important b/c at the time i was traveling back and forth between south american for business.

So what did i first think of the Blackberry?

WTF? basically. It was a few years since i lived in the states and had a US cell phone, but when I did it was a Nokia 3605, the far bar kind with every feature known to man in 2003 and a circlish rotary like dial. You’ve seen it. At any rate, I missed it immediatley.

MY blackberry phone wasn’t at all what I thought it was going to be. it was fat, black, and featureless. My Noka was fat, white, and featureful. Yes, Blackberry’s at the time didn’t come with cameras, video, good games, or shit basically, but man could they push.

Then came the pearl, the Blackberry pearl- but as Verizon was who I had to go with, I couldn’t get this, b/c it wasn’t offered under their service plan yet, they said it would be, but I couldn’t tell when, and said, “f**k it, a lot of people like this thing, and I do lot of mobile and international business, must be the ticket!”

An expensive ticket to hell. The blackberry sucks. I sort of think about that every time i use it. Well, sometimes. Yesterday for instance I was sucking back an iced coffee in Bryany Park Mid town Manhattan and my sister called with an emergency. She needed to take a medical test, i was like, Shit, i ain’t no doctor! Then it dawned on me, i know a few and nurses too. So i called them to ask for hlp, they got the message, and I’m not sure if my sister passed her test or not, we’ll see.

Anyway, the email capability of the blackberry is good, but the typing sucks, and internet browsing is a joke. Everything stacks up and the major services that help haven’t so I haven’t been hard pressed to “push” for a new better browser on such a lack luster device, an email device that doesn’t little more than supply me with a junky web connection and an unbeatable stage on River raid, called San Lorenzo.

Internet Connection EV-DO vs. Edge.

I’m allegedy on the 700 kbs/sec EV-DO, I question that. I have been to three different Verizon stores and seriously their technical assistance as nothing more than a technical difficulty. The stores are always crowded, and the workers are very best buy-like… as in hired because they submitted an application and if they don’t know your questions, call corporate, who of course tells you to go to your friendly (over/angry crowded store.) Ay ay ay.

I have gone and asked about how to hook up the teathered modem with the enterprise account, and no one has helped, i know it can’t be done with a mac, but i have vista and bootcamp for this reason, but at this point screw it, i’m used to the blackberry web browser which is more like 10 to 20kb/sec and not that easy to use. Writing is the worst, error correction is a joke, sometimes you have to erase a full sentence b/c one letter or word makes everything look screwy. This wastes time baby.

The whole thing is screwy. The software often screws up and I have to rip out the battery and push it back in, although I had to do that with my old feature packed Nokia too. The spellcheck, internet, and dare i say it, e-mail programs are all complicated and not anything special. The customer service as i have said is ungodly awful. Remember I can speak for the cities of Chicago & New York regarding the Verizon service, it is T–errible in these places.

Ok, now to the iPhone. Tell me what you guys got, how is your service going?

iPhone touch screen for next iMac…

iT has been reported that the next iMac may indeed have touch screen capabilities. Personally, I doubt it. I don’t think the Cupertino company wants to move that fast. (That would cut into profits and they are on such a roll, have you seen the Apple store foot traffic?) However, APPL has surprised us before.

The move from the g4 to the g5 imac was a major boon for the product. The iMac pretty much takes care of those that want professional design in one sleek product. The Mac Pro is notably better, but of course brings a hefty price tag to the fan inducing Xeon processors that need a housed unit of its size holding over 15 gigs of ram and Terabytes of info. Back to the Mac.

The iMac is great. I own a PPC G5 20″ i wish it had a built in camera and were a 24″ to get the 1080 HD, but hey, I’m not complaining. The next ones are rumors on Think Secret & Apple insider to have “Brushed Aluminum.” i bet they are black. Good glossy, 80 gig ipod/8 gig iPhone black. Brushed aluminum is what the macbook pro does. It is high end, it is what the mac pro does, high end things. So why would Apple bust out the 2001-2003ish brushed aluminum? It just seems to make sense. The general consensus is that they will, it looks good. Not so much on safari, but when you can touch it- look out, it feels like we are taking part in the NASA SETI program. It’s futuriffic. Shiny black is sweet too, so perhaps they will do both, but who knows, a launch later this month or next will reveal all new imac details.

Now that is just the housing, how about the screen? You know touch screen is coming. to the iPod, but what if it is the iMac next? Check out the iphone vs. iHaveAbigAssTable entry. haha. iT makes sense though.

Imagine pluging in your iPhone and having it function on your desktop, something like’s Steve Job’s keynote did at Macworld. imagine if you can touch it. Dang, maby for $199.00 or something you can get a virtual iPhone, i’d check out the trial run if my iMac was touch screen sensitive. Anyway, we are free to dream.

i suspect the next iMac will be metal, black, white, 20, 24, with perhaps a 30 inch, and if not an update to their displays. “Check out the Vista.” They will say, or Vrroom with a view as they have said.

“C’mon Cupertino, you know you wanna…“