Apple has released its much rumored tablet PC now called the iPad and along with it comes a big bag of MEH! This thing is nothing special at all; it is garbage. Basically it is a giant iPod Touch for more of your hard earned money. Some of the features include:
No multitasking – I see you haven’t learn from the iPhone
No camera or SMS ability
No FLASH – seriously Apple?
Nice size screen with a 1024 x 768 resolution
eBook implementation
$499 price tag – One thing Apple is good at, overcharging
I am guessing the lack of features are so Apple can release a version next year with some of them and proclaim it as another innovative device by Apple! Woo hoo! This thing is a turd. On top of that, they have shot themselves in the foot in releasing a Mini or Nano version because the iPhone and iPod Touch already exist. However, I am sure Apple will find a way to con its fanboys into thinking it is something new and amazing. Shame on you Apple for bringing out this piece of crap.
Kevin Rose on Diggnation has proclaimed that the next iPhone OS, iPhone 3.0 will finally incorporate copy and paste into its software. Kevin goes on to say that this release will bring the interface up to the level of the Palm Pre. Check out the link below for the video of his predictions. Or you can just wait until the 17th and see if his predictions are true.
Well Apple finally refreshed the Mini along with other desktop products. It looks like the rumors were kind of true; the products were right but the date was wrong. But coming out earlier is nice too. However, the price of the Mini is very disappointing with the entry level model starting at $599 – ouch! The entry level is pretty bare with only 1GB of RAM and 120GB hard drive. I think a much better price point would be $399 and would gain Apple of ton of new Apple users. The next model is even more of a rip off with Apple charging an additional $200 for a meager 1GB extra RAM and a 320 GB hard drive for $800! I am not sure what Apple was thinking when pricing these models, but they are way too expensive. They models do look nice though which is important to some.
The latest rumors about the Mac World is that Apple is planning an event for March 24th and the theme will be desktop hardware. This may finally be the time when the unibody Mac Mini will appear. After the nice video leak a while back it would sure be a welcome release. I am not sure on the possible updates for the iMacs but a refresh of the CPUs and DDR3 RAM would probably be expected. The two sites calling this rumor are World of Apple and My Apple Guide so we shall see how this plays out.
After the picture surfaced that claimed to be the new Mac Mini, an entire video showcasing the new model has been leaked. This should put a stop to those who claim the picture was a photoshop job. Looks pretty good, just hope it is real and not a moded Mini. Possible specs:
- Intel Core 2 Duo
- 2GHz
- 3MB L2 cache
- 2GB RAM DDR III, 1066MHz
- Super Drive is SATA
It appears Steve Jobs’ health is worse than previously thought and the CEO of Apple is taking a leave of absence until the end of June. In his letter (see article below for full letter) he appoints Tim Cook to be responsible for the operations while he is on leave. The last time Tim Cook had taken control was in 2004 while Jobs was being treated for pancreatic cancer. However, there has been no sign of the disease since his successful treatment. Taking himself out of the limelight was a selfless thing to do and a good move in order to help the company overall. Too many people were focused on his health rather than the health of the company itself which is in remarkable shape right now. During after hours trading, Apple’s stock was down 8% on the news.
Here’s hoping the best to Steve and hopefully he gets well and is able to return to his post at Apple in fine form. He has brought a lot of innovative products to the tech world and he is not done yet.
Well it was a slow news day for the most part, but of some interest, some people already have Windows 7 working on a Macbook Pro. Quite a slap in the face of Apple right? Well, probably not really, that feature has been one of the Macbook’s selling points; to run Windows and run it well. Check out the link below to see how it was done and there is also a video for your enjoyment.
According to a recent Wired article, Apple will release a new Mac Mini at January’s Macworld Expo in San Francisco. If you don’t know what the Mac Mini is, it’s the extremely small entry-level tower computer from Apple and the only computer that is below $1000 from Apple. This news comes after months of speculation that the Mini was headed toward an end of life and it has received a reprieve.
The new Mini will fall into line with the update the Macbooks have recently seen and sport an aluminum casing. The recyclable casing along with its low power consumption will cause it to be labelled the ‘Greenest Mac Ever’. There will be two models like there are now, one at 2.0 GHz and one at 2.3 GHz. The higher end model will also have Nvidia graphics, a decent upgrade for the Mini, and the lower end will have Intel integrated graphics. Finally, the Mini will come with 2GB standard upgradeable to 4GB and a 160GB hard drive standard. Should be a nice upgrade since the Mini hasn’t seen any love since August 2007 and even then it wasn’t a huge update. Hopefully these reports come true!
Mac users rejoice, Mozilla engineers are working hard to bring to you more and more multi-touch goodies for the Firefox browser. Starting with FF 3.1 beta 1 Mac users have seen added support for multi-touch gestures. Now, in beta 2 there are even more gestures such as allowing users to toogle through tabs with a twist. However, adding this support wasn’t easy as Apple has been very secretive with providing the necessary APIs to developers to fully support the supported gestures on OS X. They have been criticized for keeping them to themselves and using them to enhance only their products such as iPhoto and Safari; a Firefox competitor. Mozilla hasn’t opening broadcast these features mostly because of the way they had to discover them and add support. Mozilla isn’t the only company though that has had to resort to reverse engineering to add functionality to their programs. While Apple is working on making the API available to developers they seem to be dragging their feet to retain a competitive advantage by only officially supporting the gestures in their programs for now.
If it is on a Powerpoint slide it must be true! Right? If this is true, Apple is making good on their promise from the Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 in which they said Snow Leopard was about a year away. Most likely it would make its appearance at Macworld San Francisco 2009 if this release date holds true. Apple’s focus for this release is to fine tune the OS and not so feature packed. There will be added support for multicore systems as well as better handling of GPU processing. Maybe there will be an Apple Supercomputer in the near future if combined with the new Nvidia Tesla GPU, haha!
