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Apple today introduced iPad, a revolutionary device for browsing the web, reading and sending email, enjoying photos, watching videos, playing games, reading e-books, and much more. Its high-resolution Multi-Touch display lets you interact with content — including 12 innovative new apps designed especially for iPad and almost all of the 140,000 apps available on the App Store. At just 0.5 inches thick and 1.5 pounds, iPad is thinner and lighter than any laptop or notebook. iPad will be available in March starting at the breakthrough price of just $499. -Apple
You can get more info here.

About 1 week ago Apple released the it’s new operating system Snow Leopard.  It was basically a improved version of Leopard with a few new features but not a lot.  It was priced very reasonably at $29 for a single user license upgrade.
There’s been a lot of people talking about how it isn’t much different and breaks some compatibility with some old applications, so some have not upgraded and some have rolled back to Leopard.
Myself I have upgraded all of my Macs and I find that it is much faster and responsive.  The sleep and wake function now works really fast and as I’ve been using it for the past week, I have slowly started to notice new features that weren’t on the previous OS Leopard.  Some of these updates like when you click on the WiFi icon you can now see the signal strength of all the wireless networks detected which can make choosing one easier.  Also expose is much better now and can now show what’s been minimized in the dock.
Overall I think Apple was going for stability and not so much for new features as that is what they mentioned in the last WWDC.  One feature that works now for the address book that didn’t before and left my address book unable to work was adding a smart group that shows all the contacts that are not in a group.  That use to make my address book hang and I would have to reset some settings to get it to function again, but now it works fine.
Also a big change was the ability to run in 64 bit native mode which only some macs can do.  You can hold 6 + 4 during boot to force the OS to boot into the 64it kernel which makes the OS all 64bit but you may find compatibility issues if you do so.
I think most of the new features will be more apparent once developers utilize the new programming features like grand central dispatch and Open CL.
You can find out more about Snow Leopard here – http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Tomorrow September 9th Apple is holding a event in San Francisco which rumor has it they will be showing off their latest new iPods.  Stay tuned for a post tomorrow on whats new tomorrow.

Apple released a new iPhone 3GS recently and although I have bought every new iPhone on the release date, this time around they didn’t allow for me to get the updated pricing until 12/12/09.
The newest iPhone adds a few features that the older 3G doesn’t have.
Few of the new features include video recording, voice control, better 3MP camera with tap to focus, built in compass, and a faster processor.
Since I didn’t upgrade and have had my current iPhone for over 1 year, I decided to Jailbreak my 3.0 firmware using RedSnow.
After Jailbreaking my iPhone I now have Video recording and a few features that I really like.  For example I can now tell if I have received mail without unlocking the phone.  Also I was able to add five icons to the bottom dock.  Stuff like that really makes using the phone much better in my opinion.
I have yet to decide if I want to get the 3GS when December 12th rolls around since they probably will release another version next summer.
Apple promised MMS with 3.0 firmware update, but they haven’t rolled it out and now they announced it will be ready September 25th.  2 years late, but better late than never.
More iPhone information can be found here - http://www.apple.com/iphone/

I haven’t blogged in a while so I figured I’d catch up on some posts and give some information on the new line of Apple products and software.

I’ll start off with the new line of MacBook Pro laptops that Apple released in early June.  Now even the 13″ model is considered a Pro.
I’ll start with the pricing and then go into the features they have added.
The 13″ now starts at $1199 and for $1499 you get a slightly faster processor, more memory, and storage.
The 15″ now starts at $1699 and for $1999 and $2299 you will respectively get a faster processor and storage but the $1999 model comes with a GeForce 9600M video card with 256MB vram in conjunction with the GeForce 9400 video card.  The $2299 model adds a GeForce 9600M with 512MB vram in conjunction with the GeForce 9400.
Finally the 17″ now is priced at $2499 and has the same specs as the last model 15″ but includes a 17″ screen and still has a express card/34 slot.

All models use the GeForce 9400M with the last two 15″ and 17″ having the option to switch to the more powerful 9600M video cards to do tasks that require more graphic processing.
All models now come with a Firewire 800 port.
All models but the 17″ dropped the express card slot and added a SD card slot instead.
The 13″ models only have a line out/shared optical out port now with support for the Apple stereo headset with microphone that is used for the iPhone.  The 15″ and 17″ models have both a line in and out / shared optical in and out port with the out having support also for the Apple stereo headset with microphone.
All models now have a backlit keyboard.
All of the models have support up to 8GB of ram.
All of the models now follow the previous 17″ design of having a long life integrated non removable battery.  (You can still unscrew the bottom case off to change the battery, hard drive, or add ram)

In my opinion these are the best notebooks Apple has released and the lower pricing is definitely a better bargain than what was previously offered.
You can find out more information here – http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/

+

= File/Media Server

About a month ago, I picked up a Drobo and stopped using my Vista PC for my raid storage.  At first I picked up the Droboshare with the Drobo which is a network interface for the Drobo which has gigabyte Ethernet.  I thought that would be good, but turns out the connection to the Drobo is still USB 2.0. So it basically has a bottleneck from 1000Mbs to 400Mbs.  Also when testing out the Droboshare over my gigabit network I was getting constant disconnects from the Droboshare.
I later decided I would pay about 400 more and just get a new Mac Mini that has Firewire 800 and hook that up to my Drobo and share it over the network.  This solution worked and has been very reliable so far.  I can also run Boxee and other media related applications on the Mini which is a plus.
If anyone is planning on getting a Drobo and a Droboshare, I would highly reccomend checking out this common solution instead.

Earlier this month Apple released a New Mac Pro and updated the Consumer Desktop line which consists of the new iMacs and Mac Minis.
The new iMac’s and Mac Mini’s are based on the new NVidia chipset like the unibody MacBooks and run on 1066mhz DDR3 ram.
I recently picked up a new Mac Mini and a Drobo storage device to setup as a file/media server and will be posting a little about my setup later on.
You can buy and find out more about the new:
Mac Pro here – http://www.apple.com/macpro/
iMac here – http://www.apple.com/imac/
Mac Mini here – http://www.apple.com/macmini/

A few weeks back Apple released it latest version of it’s small portable music player.  This new version doesn’t even have buttons on the device but instead it incorporates controls on the headset sorta like how the iPhone has a mic and button to hang up calls or skip or stop songs.
The negative part about this new setup is the inability to use 3rd party headsets that people might already have.
I’m sure 3rd party companies will offer better aftermarket headsets with controls and better sound quality but I really think that will be a turn off for some buyers.
The new player is extremely small and incorporates a built in clip that makes it easy to attach to the listener.  It also boasts a 10 hour playback time when fully charged.
But the most amazing thing about this player is VoiceOver, the ability to speak track and artists names and also playlist names since the device has no readable LCD display.
You can buy and find out more about the new iPod shuffle here – http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/

Apple has recently released Safari 4 Beta for the Mac and PC.
It has a few new views like cover flow and supposedly loads up Java and Web pages faster.
It also moved the tabs to the top of the window in the title bar.
Here are what the new views look like:

You can download Safari 4 Beta and find more information here.

I’ve been using Aperture for a while but now that iPhoto ‘09 has all these new features like Face Recognition, Flickr and Facebook integration I figured I wanted to be able to use iPhoto.
Problem is that I’ve been exporting all the photos from my camera to Aperture and not iPhoto.
To get your Aperture photos to iPhoto you need to export the masters from Aperture into a folder and then drag that folder into iPhoto and it will import the photos in.
I choose All Photos in Aperture, and selected all the photos. (I selected the first photo, scrolled to the last photo, held down shift and clicked on the last photo to select all photos)
After selected all the photos I clicked File -> Export -> Masters, and choose to export the masters into folders based on the project name.
After all the masters were copied to the specified folder I dragged that folder into iPhoto and everything was copied over.
Now I just gotta wait for the new iPhoto ‘09 to be released and try out all the new features.

Wordpress just recently released Wordpress 2.7 “Coltrane”
Here’s the webpage summarizing some of the new features.
http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/
Coltrane