Aluminum MacBooks, LED Cinema Display

Well, the day arrived! Sure enough, Apple has released new aluminum MacBooks and MacBook Pros. As is obvious from the pictures, these are beautiful machines with a stunning design. The MacBook Air has also been ramped up a bit. Here are the highlights:

• The new MacBooks and MacBook Pros are now equipped with glass Multi-Touch trackpads, and as a unique design change, the entire trackpad is clickable with no separate buttons.
• The graphics chip is upgraded to a 256 MB GeForce 9400M on the new MacBook and Air and a 256 MB 9400M or a 256 or 512 MB 9600M GT on the Pro.
• The displays are now all LED-backlit glossy displays.
• The processors have been ramped to 1066 MHz frontside buses, with a 3MB shared L2 cache on the MacBook, 3 or 6 on the Pro, and 6 on the Air. Also, the new MacBook Pro is upgradeable to 2.8 GHz.
• The MacBook Pro 17″ (still the old design) comes standard with 4GB of memory.
• Battery life is improved to 5 hours for the MacBook line
• Pricing: $999 for an old-style white MacBook, $1299 for a 2 GHz MacBook, $1599 for a 2.4 GHz. $1999 for a 2.4 GHz Pro, $2499 for a 2.53 GHz.

Another announcement I don’t think anyone was expecting was the 24″ LED Cinema Display for the MacBook. At the moment, it appears that it is ONLY compatible with the MacBook, but hopefully Apple will release additional models and this will change. The display is beautiful, with the same design as the current iMac but with no “chin” and white Apple logo. The back is solid aluminum instead of black plastic, and the stand is has a taper so the front edge of it is almost like a wedge. It includes 3 USB ports.

Go check them out on the Apple site!

MacBook

LED Cinema Display

MacBook Pro

iPhone Firmware 2.1 brings bugfixes, Genius playlists

The recently released iPhone 2.1 firmware is meant to address many of the problems found in the current firmware, including slow response, crashes, and overall… bugginess. The new update also brings the Genius playlist functionality to the iPhone. Following is a full list of fixes, or visit Apple’s website for more details.

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

Apple releases new iPods, iTunes 8

iTunes 8

4th Gen iPod Nano

2nd Gen iPod Touch

Apple yesterday released a group of new products related to the keynote theme: Music. The first announcement was the new iTunes 8, which has several major new features.

Here are the new iTunes 8 features:

• HD TV shows ($1 more than SD)
• Accessibility improvements
• New Browsing (Album Grid view – very similar to iPhoto 08′s Events)
• Genius (automatic playlists and smart music suggestion)

The major part of the keynote consisted of iPod news.

The first in the three announcements was a price drop and consolidation in the iPod Classic lineup, which now offers a single 120 GB model, the same size as the old 80 GB, for $249.

The next announcement concerned the new iPod Nano. As some of you may have seen from the rumors and leaked photos, it is similar in size to the 1st and 2nd gen Nanos, but has a portrait-orientation screen and a very smooth, clean look. Here are the key features:

• New curved aluminum design
• Thinnest iPod ever
• Enhanced user interface
• Accelerometer
• Genius playlist creation
• Lower Price: 8 GB for $149 and 16 GB for $199

Finally, a new version of the iPod Touch was released along with a price drop. Here are the new iPod Touch’s features:

• Even thinner than the previous model
• Integrated volume controls
• Genius playlists
• App Store
• Nike+ Receiver Built In
• Lower Price: 8 GB for $229, 16 GB for $299, and 32 GB for $399

These new products are amazing, so go check them out on Apple’s website. Here are three direct links to the pages:

iTunes 8

iPod Nano

iPod Touch