Apple Announcements from Macworld
January 15, 2008
Some of todays key announcements from Apple at the Macworld Expo
Apple introduces MacBook Air—the world’s thinnest notebook
Apple today introduced the world’s thinnest notebook: MacBook Air. It measures an unprecedented 0.16 inches at its thinnest point while its maximum height of 0.76 inches is less than the thinnest point on competing notebooks. In addition to a stunning 13.3-inch LED-backlit widescreen display, MacBook Air offers a full-size and backlit keyboard, a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing, and a spacious trackpad with multi-touch gesture support, letting users pinch, rotate and swipe. The new notebook is powered by a 1.6 GHz or 1.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4MB L2 cache, and it includes as standard features 2GB of memory, an 80GB 1.8-inch hard drive, and the latest 802.11n Wi-Fi technology and Bluetooth 2.1. Starting at just $1,799, MacBook Air begins shipping in two weeks. [Jan 15, 2008]
Introducing Time Capsule—wireless backup for all your Macs
A backup appliance that works seamlessly with Time Machine to automatically and wirelessly back up everything on one or more Macs running Mac OS X Leopard, Time Capsule combines an 802.11n base station with a server grade hard disk in one small package. “Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voilà—all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. When it ships in February, Time Capsule will be available in models featuring 500GB and 1TB hard drives for $299 and $499, respectively. [Jan 15, 2008]
New software update enhances revolutionary iPhone
iPhone Software Update 1.1.3, a free software update available today via iTunes 7.5 or later, brings significant new features to iPhone. After installing the update, iPhone customers will be able to automatically find their location using the redesigned Maps application; text message multiple people in one message; create Web Clips for their favorite websites; customize their home screen; and watch movies rented from the new iTunes Movie Rentals right on their iPhone. [Jan 15, 2008]
Major software upgrade available for iPod touch
With the installation of this major software upgrade, the best iPod becomes even more: the world’s best Wi-Fi mobile device. The upgrade—available from iTunes for just $19.99 or £12.99 for us brits—adds five more great mobile applications to iPod touch: Mail, Maps, Stocks, Weather, and Notes. It also includes such new features as Web Clips, a customizable home screen, and the ability to watch iTunes Movie Rentals on iPod touch. [Jan 15, 2008]
Introducing iTunes Movie Rentals
Available today with the free download of iTunes 7.6, iTunes Movie Rentals allows customers to rent movies for as little as $2.99 and watch them on their Macs or PCs, all current generation iPods, iPhone and Apple TV. Featuring movies from all the major movie studios—20th Century Fox, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal Studios Home Entertainment, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Lionsgate and New Line Cinema—iTunes Movie Rentals is expected to offer more than 1,000 movie titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles featuring stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. Movies can be rented directly from a widescreen TV using Apple TV. [Jan 15, 2008]
Apple announces new software for Apple TV; lowers price to $229
Available as a free automatic download later this month, the new software announced today lets movie fans rent movies on the iTunes Store directly from their widescreen TV. With iTunes Movie Rentals and Apple TV—and with no computer required—customers can effortlessly rent movies just by clicking a button on their remote. By the end of February, they’ll be able to choose from a catalog of more than 1,000 titles, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound. DVD-quality iTunes Movie Rentals cost just $2.99 for library titles and $3.99 for new releases. High-definition versions are just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 and new releases at $4.99. [Jan 15, 2008]
Introducing iTunes Digital Copy
Twentieth Century Fox and Apple today announced iTunes Digital Copy for iTunes, which provides customers who purchase a DVD of a Fox movie title with an additional Digital Copy of the movie. The iTunes Digital Copy can be transferred effortlessly to iTunes and then viewed on a PC or Mac, iPod with video, iPhone or on Apple TV—just like a movie purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store. In fact, the first DVD to debut with iTunes Digital Copy is being released in stores today. It’s the Special Edition DVD premiere of the Family Guy “Star Wars” parody, “Family Guy Presents: Blue Harvest,” and the first of many more to come. [Jan 15, 2008]
Zoho app for the iPhone
January 10, 2008
Zoho have released a new web app for the iPhone. This app lets you view existing documents in your account as well ass regular Word processing and Spreadsheet Functions.
The app also gives you the ability to view and enter data in the database application.
This is now listed under Productivity Applications section on Apple’s iPhone website.
UK to enjoy cheaper iTunes Songs
January 9, 2008
The European Unions Antitrust body said that the move would bring to an end it’s proceedings against Apple.
“The Commission is very much in favour of solutions which allow consumers to benefit from a truly single market for music downloads,” EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement.
Us Brits are currently paying 10% more for music than the rest of Europe, and this announcement means we can now get the DRM flavoured music at the same price as the rest of you Europeans.
Apple Introduces New Mac Pro
January 8, 2008
Apple today introduced the new Mac Pro with eight processor cores and a new system architecture that delivers up to twice the performance of its predecessor*. The new Mac Pro combines two of Intel’s new 45 nanometer Quad-Core Xeon processors running up to 3.2 GHz, powerful new graphics and up to 4TB of internal storage to offer the ideal system for creative professionals, 3D digital content creators and scientists. The standard 8-core configuration starts at just $2,799.
“The new Mac Pro is the fastest Mac we’ve ever made,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With 3.2 GHz 8-core Xeon processing, a 1600 MHz front side bus and 800 MHz memory, the new Mac Pro uses the fastest Intel Xeon architecture on the market.”
The new Mac Pro features the latest Quad-Core Intel Xeon 5400 series processors based on state-of-the-art 45nm Intel Core microarchitecture running up to 3.2 GHz, each with 12MB of L2 cache per processor for breakthrough performance and power efficiency. With a new high-bandwidth hardware architecture, dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses and up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC FB-DIMM memory, the new Mac Pro achieves a 61 percent increase in memory throughput**.
Every Mac Pro comes standard with the ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of video memory. The Mac Pro includes a new PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot that delivers up to double the bandwidth compared to the previous generation, and supports the latest generation of graphics cards from NVIDIA, such as the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of video memory, or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5GB of video memory and a 3-D stereo port for stereo-in-a-window applications. With support for up to four graphics cards, the new Mac Pro can drive up to eight 30-inch displays at once for advanced visualisation and large display walls.
The Mac Pro is the most expandable Mac ever, featuring four internal hard drive bays with direct-attach, cable-free installation of four 1TB Serial ATA hard drives, totalling 4TB of internal storage and support for two SuperDrives. With optional 15000 rpm SAS drives that can deliver up to 250MB/s of RAID 5 disk I/O performance, the Mac Pro is ideal for film and video editors. Combined with SATA or SAS drives, using an optional Mac Pro RAID card offers the ultimate data protection and disk I/O performance on the Mac Pro. The Mac Pro is easily and conveniently accessible in front and back so users can connect external devices with five USB 2.0, two FireWire® 400, two FireWire 800, optical and analog audio in and out, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and a headphone jack.
Every Mac Pro includes Leopard™, the sixth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system. Leopard is packed with more than 300 new features and introduces a brand new desktop with Stacks, a new way to easily access files from the Dock; a redesigned Finder that lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs; Quick Look, a new way to instantly see files without opening an application; Spaces, an intuitive new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them; and Time Machine™, an effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac. Featuring an improved scheduler and other multi-core technology, Leopard is a perfect companion to the Mac Pro, making applications faster and helping application developers take advantage of multi-core systems.
The new ultra-thin aluminium Apple Keyboard now ships with every Mac Pro and built-in Bluetooth 2.0 makes it easy to reduce cable clutter with the optional Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple Wireless Mouse.
The new Mac Pro is shipping today and will be available through the Apple Store®, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorised Resellers.
The standard 8-core Mac Pro, with a suggested price of $2,799, includes:
- two 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors with dual-independent 1600 MHz front side buses;
- 2GB of 800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM memory, expandable up to 32GB;
- ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory;
- 320GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive running at 7200 rpm;
- 16x SuperDrive™ with double-layer support (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW);
- two PCI Express 2.0 slots and two PCI Express slots;
- Bluetooth 2.0+EDR; and
- ships with Apple Keyboard and Mighty Mouse.
In addition to the standard configuration, the Mac Pro offers numerous build-to-order options including: one 2.8 GHz, two 3.0 GHz, or two 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors; up to 32GB of 800 MHz DDR2 fully-buffered ECC memory; up to four 1TB Serial ATA hard drives running at 7200 rpm or up to four 300GB SAS drives running at 15000 rpm; Mac Pro RAID card; up to two 16x SuperDrives with double-layer support; NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT or NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 graphics cards; AirPort Extreme 802.11n; Apple USB Modem; Apple wireless Aluminum Keyboard; Apple wireless Mighty Mouse; and Mac OS X Server Leopard. Complete build-to-order options and pricing are available at www.apple.com/macpro.
Send an address to your iPhone
January 1, 2008
Want to send a street address from your computers web browser to your iPhone? well now it can be done in two clicks with the new iPhoneSender, a nifty new web browser add on.
The software makes it easy to send a Google map link to an iPhone highlight the address, right click and send, the link is then sent to a chosen email address. The iPhoneSender converts the address into a link that will launch the Google maps application on your iPhone.
The iPhoneSender is a free download and works with both Safari and Firefox
iPhone 1.1.3 Firmware Video?
December 30, 2007
For the past couple of days now rumours have been circulating the web about Apples new iPhone firmware version and more importantly what were the new features. Gear Live had the photos but people were saying they had been photo shopped so to quash that theory they released a video. Doesn’t look right to me, looks like it’s been set free from Jail, what do you think fake or not?
Our iPhone 1.1.3 news has been blowing up the Internet. Quite a few people think the images in our iPhone 1.1.3 image gallery were fake, so we figured, why not put up a video? Here is our video proof that iPhone 1.1.3 firmware is, in fact, real. Any questions you want answered about it? Let us know in our iPhone 1.1.3 thread.
Meantime, the video shows you all the features that we have found (so far) in the 1.1.3 update. That includes the home screen shuffling and reorganising of the icons, the multi-person SMS sending, the new “Locate Me” feature in the Google Maps application, Hybrid mode in Google Maps, and creating web bookmarks and putting them on your home screen.
Zannel Optimized for the iPhone
December 17, 2007
Zannel, the instant media messaging service that allows people to instantly update their friends and start real-time conversations by sharing video, has now created a mobile site optimized for the iPhone
Zannel’s iPhone mobile web interface retains the design elements commonly found on the Web, such as persistent navigation and seamless transitions between sharing, viewing and discussing content. Zannel combines the active messaging and always-on presence of mobile with the media experience found on the Web.
To get the service on your iPhone, simply type Zannel.com into the phone’s browser. The service requires no download and launches instantly.
