Is the Macbook worth the large premium that Apple charges for it? In short it depends on what you are going for. If you are going for having the thinnest and best looking laptop that exists today then yes it is for you and you would think it is worth it. But if you are interested in a good computing power to weight ratio as well as concerned with price then it is definitely not worth the large price just for a thin laptop. You would be better off with a Macbook pro for example. To explain you could get a Dell XPS M1330 at a similar price to the base Macbook Air and get double the hard drive space on a faster hard drive, A 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, and for an extra 100 dollars, you could also have double the RAM. So in essence if you are looking for the best bang for the buck then do not go with a Macbook Air but if you are going for looks then this is the thing to buy.
Today at the annual Steve Jobs Keynote to MacWorld he released 4 different things. The main of which being the all new MacBook Air. This is by quite a bit the thinnest laptop i the world at only .76" thick at its thickest point. It is available for preorder now with units shipping in 2 weeks. This is more of a for show computer rather than a powerful one. Although it ha 2GB of RAM and an option for a 64GB Solid State drive, the measly 1.8Ghz processor may feel a little slow to many people. The SSD option is also an extra $1,000 although should perform much better than the 4,200 RMP 80GB Hard Drive that comes standard. In other news he also released a NAS Storage Device to be used with Leopard’s new Time Machine Backup feature. It comes in either 500GB or 1TB Sizes. Also released was the long awaited Itunes Movie Rentals and along with that a redesigned User Interface for the Apple TV as well as a price drop. The Movie Rentals work the same as most in that you have 30 days to start watching the movie after it was purchased and after you have started the movie you have 24 hours to finish it and watch it again. Also released was the Ipod Touch/ Iphone firmware upgrade bringing many different and new features to both devices. (For a full list hit up Engadget.com)
Photo from Engadget.com
As most of you already know Macworld is starting tomorrow at 9AM sharp with Steve Job’s annual keynote. The main rumors going around are the recent postings on different blogs about the new MacBook Air and its possible release tomorrow. The rumors hint at a very small laptop, almost a cross between an unltraportable and a thin and light laptop for it is rumored to not have a disc drive as well as the possibility of not having a wired LAN connection. Which means that the latopt would rely solely on Wi-fi or some other means of wireless communication (WiMax???). The other subject that Jobs will most likely talk about is the upcoming launch of the Iphone/iTouch SDK release in February. Probably a pricing system and the details of the whole operation will be talked about tomorrow. Hopefully this year his talk lives up to the overwhelming amount of hype that his keynote always garners(it usually does).
Photo from Wired.com.
Engadget reports that Microsoft has come out and oficiialy released the Keyboard that snaps onto the Xbox 360 controller. This keyboard is a full keyboard and will work with the Spring Xbox Update. Included in the Update is support for Windows Messenger which will be the main reason for owning one of these new keyboards. the keyboard itself snaps onto the bottom of the controller adding to the bulk. It goes into the headset jack on the controller and comes with its own headset to be plugged into what looks like a single jack. The people that have actually used the keyboard have said that it has a very nice feel to it and that people with bigger hands will benefit more from the keyboards becuase of the spacing and the size of the keys. The whole keyboard is backlit so that during those long tournaments of Rainbow Six late into the night you can still chat with your friends. The Spring Update for this year includes a lot of needed upgrades. First off release date is set for the week of May 7th. The Marketplace will have its own tab in the Dashboard. The update will also feature the ability to watch partially downloaded things, some new UI tweaks, and Windows Live Messenger will be integrated into the system and people online will be able to see what you are playing. This will definetley up its posistion on the PS3 a little bit as the PS3 only has some basic keyboard options. Other than that it just adds to the already great Xbox Dashboard System.
Origional at Engadget.com
Engadget.com reports that the Black Xbox 360 that people have been speculating about is on its way sonner than we think with some amazing specs. It will be sold with the Premium and Core
bundles. Its model will be the Elite. It had a 120Gb Hard Drive, HDMI Output, and will run cooler than the original Xbox 360. It will cost $479. The HD DVD drive is not bundled or built in to the devidce however but I do not think that Microsoft had any plans to do so anyway. I think this would definetley up the market share in the future of the Xbox 360. The hard drive will also be available as an add on in the sub $200 range. This would definetley put the PS3 to shame because now the hardware is the same or better on the Xbox 360 and the PS3's
software is no better than the Xbox 360's. We will have to see how this plays out in the future.
Engadget.com
The image is of the original Xbox 360 Developers Kit.
Xbox Live for Windows is launching May 8th. We will finally find out who is better, the keyboard and mouse, or the console controller. Unfortunately you can't choose whether you go up against a keyboard or a controller so that may ba a problem but otherwise a great thing to counter the announcement of the Playstation Home concept. This completes Microsofts vision of a unified experience between PC and all the other electronics in the home. This is directed straight at the gamer audience who were in heated debates over the keyboard versus the controller and it complements the Xbox Live Gold Service very well. If you have Xbox Live Gold it will work on your Vista powered computer as well. You will use the same gamertag as on Xbox Live. Achievement Points will be added for doing things in the games that are supported. The durrent games that are supported are Halo and Shadowrun. It requires Xbox Live Gold to play online and also requires Vista on your computer to work.
Image from Engadget
AMD is working on bringing Xbox 360 quality Graphics to cell phones in the near future. This could possibly point to the dawn of the Xbox 360 portable (however Unlikely) or jsut more advanced Cell Phone Graphics. Developer kits have reportedly already gone out and cell phone compnaies are already working with them. It will incorporate OpenVG 1.0 and Open GL ES 2.0 along with the very nice Unified Shader Architecture that the Xbox 360 is using to make everything look so real in the games. Heopefully we start seeing this pop up more in cell phones. As time goes on the cell 0phone will become more of a media hub for people rather than just for calling people and emailing. Mobile TV and the increased bandwidth of cell phone networks are already sure signs of this. The cell phone market is being revamped as newer and better graphics processors get smaller and consume less power. Along with that the battery life of cell phones is just going to continue to increase with the dawn of new technology and better processors. The dawn of projectors that could be incorporated into cell phones is right around the corner as illustrated at many past consumer electronics shows. We'll have to wait and see how this unravells in the future.
Origional at Engadget.
This war between consoles has been going on for a while now (read: 4 Months) and many are wondering whether or not a winner has been decided. You could include the Wii in this war but I find that it is in a separate new class of casual gaming and semi-physical gaming. Anyways the Xbox 360 having been out for a much longer time has obviously sold much more consoles but by comparing their numbers at lauch you can somewaht predict a winner. The Xbox 360, launched November 2005, sold 325,902 in the first month of its launch. The PS3 on the other hand only sold 195,000 units in the first onth of launch. That is a huge gap. Also during the PS3 launch the Xbox 360 sold 511,000. You could balme this on the bad production management of the PS3 but the Xbox 360 had the same problem at launch so that claim really is not valid. This would mean we could declare a winner in the first round but the second round is blazing forward with PS3 shortages still rampant to my knowledge and Xbox 360 being bought more and more. The Xbox 3660 being bought more an more could be becuase the people that wnated the PS3 were turned away by the price or by the shortages. We'll have to see how it plays out in the future.With a possible Xbox 360 Version 2 and the Fall 2007 Title Halo 3 coming, Sony had better have something up its sleeve to counteract all of those sales that those options will bring.
This is by far one of the most useless Xbox 360 Mods I have ever seen. from a technical standpoint this is pretty good considering the cooling issues the Xbox 360 has encountered, adding a 5.5" screen to it would not cool it off anymore. But tyring to really play on this little tiny monitor would almost be impossible. It would be good I guess for a travel Xbox 360 but then you could just loook up the Xbox 360 Laptop by Ben Heck. The screen gives you the full capability that any other screen that you hooked the Xbox 360 up to would have.
Original at Engadget.
Well as many of you we were not at the Vista Launch Party (school ugggghhh), and this is what they gave away there. This seems like it would be worth a lot to sell but other than that it isn't worth that much. The Office 2007 and the 360 Controller would be the only valuable things to me as my Vista Experience has been terrible (I am the colleague of the latest Vista article). Well it all adds up to probably around 500-600 dollars which is quite a bit of money if you were to sell all of it. Anyways the contest has already ended on Gizmodo.com to see who gets the bag eau Vista. Hopefully in the near future we are lucky enough to attend events such as these. Not much else to say about it. There are more pictures over at Gizmodo.
Original at Gizmodo.
