MacBook Air 11.6″ — A Steal At $999, But For Whom?
Much has already been written by now about the newest revision to the MacBook Air. Apple has seemingly once again done a number that has managed to get everyone talking about them and their crazy gadgets, and now that I’ve had the chance to play with one, I understand why. It’s no secret that Steve Jobs seems to have his finger on the pulse of what people want, but I wasn’t convinced that I’d want the new smaller, more diminutive, less powerful MacBook Air. But I do.
MacBook Air Late 2010 — the Good, the Bad and Why It Will Sell
So yesterday Apple had their event at the town hall on their campus, and among other things that they announced, the world seems to be focused on the new MacBook Air. Of course, in another few months that focus will change to the OS X App Store, and then a little further down the line it’ll change to OS X 10.7 Lion, and somewhere in between all of this will be Facetime for OS X. Whew, there were a lot of announcements! Oh, and let’s not forget iLife ’11, but then, I don’t really care about that one right now, so we’ll ignore it for the time being. What I really want to do is talk about the MacBook Air and why it’s the perfect computer for most, and that even though I love small form-factor systems, why it’s not right for me (and probably a few of you, too). (more…)
iPhone 4 For Me, Or, Goodbye Samsung Captivate
This is actually a little overdue. Okay, it’s a lot overdue. By a matter of weeks, even. But just the same, I couldn’t hang with the Samsung Captivate, better known the world wide as the Samsung Galaxy S. It’s not that it’s a bad phone, because it isn’t (though I did have reception issues), and it’s not that it’s not pretty enough (sure, it’s no work of art, but it’s nice enough), and it’s not that it’s made by Samsung because they make all sorts of quality products (including the Samsung N120 netbook I’ve spoken highly about (and I may have even pre-ordered — I don’t remember now)). No, it’s really no fault on Samsung’s part, in so much as we’re discussing hardware. The fault belongs to Google. Yeah, Android is the problem.
6 Killer Apps For iPad
Sure, Apple’s iPad isn’t even out yet, but with the recent announcement that you’ll be able to pre-order your iPad in the US at the end of this week and it’ll be available on April 3rd, this seems like as good a time as any to point out a few apps (and their genres) that are going to make the iPad itself a killer app (app as in appliance). There’s a lot of speculation at this point about whether or not the iPad is going to be a success, but at this point, it almost seems like an absolutely lock thanks to the App Store at iTunes. While the iBookstore and App Store are going to be big reasons why the iPad cleans up in the e-reader market (never mind it’s a lot more than an e-reader), it’s important not to overlook one company that knows the device better than anyone else and also understands how people do work: Apple So, without further ado, let’s start the list of things you’ll be wanting for your Apple iPad.
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Penguin Reinventing Books Via iPad
This is something that, as a writer, has been on my mind for quite some time now. While Amazon’s Kindle is definitely a quality device, and as a book reader, very good, it does little more than actually present the equivalent of the print copy of a book. Yes, I’m well aware that you can buy books/magazines/blog content on the device, and I’m also well aware that it has a web browser on it, but let’s be honest: as cool as the Kindle is, it doesn’t have the horsepower or the display to do real multimedia content. The iPad, however, does. And Penguin, one of the big publishers, is looking to take advantage of that.
Microsoft Courier Tablet PC – Courier vs. Apple Tablet?
If you haven’t seen Microsoft’s Courier, the “secret” tablet they’ve been working on, then let’s start this by showing the video that’s been going around that has a mock-up of what it may look like to use the device:
Is the iPod Touch/iPhone the New Netbook?
If you caught the Apple “It’s Only Rock and Roll” event this week then you may have seen the following picture.
Photo courtesy Engadget
If you paid attention to what Phil Schiller was saying while he was on the stage, he was basically implying that the iPod Touch (and I think more so, the iPhone) is Apple’s answer to the netbook market. Sure, he didn’t come right out and say just that, but if you remember that Apple has said in the past that they have no interest in getting into the “nascent” netbook market, then this kind of makes sense as being their answer to it. The funny thing is that the answer has been there in front of us for over two years now.
So, this brings us to the question: is the iPod Touch/iPhone the new netbook?