Apple Event a Success?

by Ravenizer

Hey guys, its around 2.10 am where I live right now. We will be back with the updates of the Apple event later in the day. However, here is a quick recap on what was announced today and which rumours were proven true.

Firstly, the Brick process. It is indeed true that all the new MacBooks made from Aluminum all start out as a block. They are then anodized and treated and carved. This process however, is not new. It is the exact same procedure that was used to manufacture the MacBook Air.

The next two things announced were mainly the meat of the event. Firstly, Apple has ditched Intel integrated graphics. The new MacBooks all carry the NVDIA 9400 M cards. These perform up to 5 times faster than Intel’s Integrated Graphics.

The MacBook Pro turned out to be just like the spyshots we have been seeing. So are the new MacBooks. But more of this will be covered later. The Old MacBook is still stating though. New MacBook, Old Revised MacBook and New MacBook Pro ship today. All aluminum machines now have option to go SSD.

All new MacBooks have Glass Trackpads with the exception of the ‘Old’ MacBooks and the Air. This tracpad has no buttons, buy instead, is clickable to function as one button. It is multi-touch and supports up to 4-fingers for funtions. No screen is observable under the tracpad though.

The MacBook Air is getting a specification upgrade. I must say I am particularly not too happy with this announcement. The new Airs will have with them a 120GB HDD, and the new NVDIA Chips. Apple has also released a new DisplayConnector port dubbed Mini DisplayConnector. It replaces the micro-DVI port on the Air as well as Display ports on all the new MacBooks. This coupled with the new Graphics card, the Air can now drive a 30 inch display. It could only handle 24 inches before this revision. These new upgraded Airs are available in November. I think this revision came too early. Especially on the account of the NVDIA GPU. However, like still goes on.

Not discussed today were the iPhone OS Software 2.2 as well as further information on Snow Leopard. I have a feeling that Snow Leopard will be released during WWDC ’09. As for the iPhone OS, only time will tell.

So that is all the recap that we have for now on the Strictly Notebook Event. Was the event a success? Well, it felt pretty dry to me. But more on that later. Be sure to check INFINITECH’s homepage later for more updates.

Spotlight Event

by Ravenizer

 

Hey guys.

The infinitech Team would like to apologize for not bring able to update the blog in the past fornight. All of our writers have been extremely busy with acedemic examinations. But all those aside, the Rumor Mill is back, spinning faster than ever. It’s MacBook Week over at Apple Campus and the invites have been sent out. No, we are not going but we’ll definitely have the juicy details.

The story so far is that the entire MacBook line is going Aluminum. Snazzy I must say. The biggest targets thus far are the Macbooks and the Pro. Talks are going on about a possible Apple TV update but I’m not too sure. The eventual speculations of a wireless USB hub is also interesting. That would certainly add funtionality to the MacBook Air. Although one thing that I would question would be its source of electricity. Guys and Gals out there hoping for a more functional and cheaper MacBook Air will probably have to wait it out. Having only been released for less than a year, this is as improbable as Bill Gates becoming CEO of Apple. However, due to the nature of the Notebook, I do not think that they would make any major changes to the air. It really perfect the way it is. It fulfills all my requirements as a high-school student. And because its OS X, the Operating System is nicely optimized for the less-than-average processor. In fact, you cannot feel much difference when on the Air or on the normal MacBooks. Thus, expect a possible Capacity and Processor update in next year’s MacWorld Expo. Until then, its definitely a no-go.

On a different note, the Infinitech Team would be headed down to the iPhone Tech Talk World Tour in Singapore. It’ll be held on the 4th of November at the Songspore Convention Centre. Graphickz, Spikey and I have already booked out slots and eagerly await our confirmation. So yeah, we’ll be back with more news soon. Hang in there folks! Infinitech Is back at Full Capacity.

One last thing. We are going to skip the iPhone Review firstly because, hey, we all know its the Jesus Phone. Secondly, the team has been really busy and we could not find the time to do it earlier. We believe we have passed the deadline. So yeah…. sorry about that guys.

Let’s Rock, Indeed

 

Okay folks. We gave just seen El Jobsco releasing a whole plethora if updates and new product releases. This was perhaps one of the most leaked event in the history of Apple events but hey, even Old Jobs was cool about it! So here is the event wrap up.

 

Firstly, Jobs started the whole Keynote with a simple sentence about reports of him dying. He called them ‘exagerratrd’.

 

iTunes 8.0
The first major announcement for this keynote address was in fact the release of iTunes 8. This was one of the 2 software releases. As rumoutrd and claimed by Digg founder, Kevin Rose, there is in fact a feature known as Fenits. What genius is basically, a Automagic Playlist maker. With one click, a user can crwate an entire playlist of 25, 50, 75, or 100 songs, all that sound perfect together. I used to sit down and do this manually, because that is how I like to listen to my music. They all need to fit right. But with Grnius, we can all take this one step further.

So how exactly does genius work? Well that’s really simple. I was thinking along the lines of BPM, artist locale, genre and such. Well, it’s all if that, plus more. You see, computers, no matter how advanced, will never be able to approviate and let alone understand music the way we do. So, how did Apple pull this off? Simple. They got help from humans. Not just one or two humans, but the entire population of the world that usues iTunes. Genius uses algorithms written specially for this feature. It reads playlist compilations from all over the world and remeners them. It also uses other factors like BPM and Gener to figure out the beat possible listening experience that a user can get. One thing though, the team at Infinitech is not sure if this works with non-iTunes purchased music. It will be a pity if it doesn’t. Seriously. The Infinitech Team discovered that Genius does indeed work with our own music.

Apparently, to turn Genius on, one would require an iTunes Music Store Account. Thus, this new feature would be a bummer for folks living in Places without one. However, Genius is really very easy to activate. The whole process is automatic. However, it does take a while if your Library is really large.

To make sure that Genius appears on your iPods, you have to enable this feature in your Computer. We believe this measure only affects the iPod Touch devices.

Activating Genius is a Simple, 3-Step Process

Other updates that we have seen to the new iTunes include more accessablilty options. These are a Mac related feature and do not seem to be present on the Windows version of the Jukebox. Another great feature is a new colour code for Applications on the Capacity Bar. The Capacity Bar is an indicator at the bottom of any iPod’s Screen in iTunes, that shows a graphical representation of your iPod (or iPhone’s) capacity and its usage. In iTunes 8, Appls a coloured green instead of being lumped with Others as seen previously.

 

Apps now appear Green

 

iPod Galore
This event also saw one of the best line-up of iPods that Apple had ever brought to the table. With new refreshes and upgrades, we think Apple is all set to earn more money in the coming months. Stock holders, get ready for some rise and profits!

The iPod Nano is probably the most purchased iPod due to it’s small and convinent size. However, people were bit really happy with the “fat nano” that Apple released last year. This event brings to us the new Nano. Images of this iPod has been floating on the net for nearly over a week now. And Lo and Behold, we get Steve introducing this iPod to use today. So, what is new? A ton of stuff. This includes many thing borrowed from the iPhone. The new nano brings to us a new interface that has a Now Playing screen similar to that of the iPhone’s. The software for this iPod has integration for the new Genius feature. You can make Genius playlists right on the Nano. Just press and hold the Centre Button to access a new popup menu. We also see an inclusion of the Accelerometer, a first for anything outside of the Multi-touch interface product range. This, together with a whole new range of 9 colors dubbed Nano-chromatic, makes the Nano, the funkiest iPod in town. The structure of the iPod is now made of Aluminum. This makes the iPod free from any scratchable materials resulting in a Very Durable iPod.

4th Generation iPod Nano

 

The next big thing this morning was the iPod touch. Heralded as the next best thing to the iPhone, this baby just got better this morning. The 2nd Generation Touch sees the inclusion of a Volume Control. This has been the most sought after feature on this iPod. Another interesting upgrade is the inclusion of speakers. I believe that this would make the most sense as the iPod can now play games and such that can be downloaded from the straight AppStore. The new iPod Touch also features an in-built receiver for the Nike+iPod module. All you need to do is to get the foot module that you would have to put into the shoe. Apple now seem the Touch as the funnest iPod after all those upgrades. The structural aspect of the iPod seems to be a little iPhone inspired. There is the inclusion of the tapering sides, as well as a change in material. The back of the Touch is now Stainless Steel. Not completely scratch-proof, but less prone than the Chrome that we are used to seeing. Looks like Apple is finally making all of it’s products more durable!

2nd Generation iPod Touch

 

Apple has also discontinued the Fat Classics and increased the capacity on the Thin Classic to 120 GB.

Software and The Environment

The next Software announcement made today would hebrelease of the 2.1 update that everyone has been waiting for. It is free for Both the iPod Touch and the iPhone, but most importantly, Steve has promised us a stable software and all bugs fixed. So, no more crashing Apps! Also, songs are now listed with thier Artist Names and Albums unedr them in grey. A nifty little improvement I must say!

The new update is out for iPod Touch today, and iPhone on Friday (USA), and Saturday (Singapore and Asia).

Apple has also been very environmentally conscious about it’s new products. All of it’s new iPods are Fully Recyclable.

Google Chrome

Ravenizer here! Well, we know we are an Apple Centric blog, but one cannot help but express the utter amazement that one feels when looking at the new browser that Google has released. This brand new web browser is unlike anything I have seen. I am a serious FireFox user and a great Safari fan. However, both of those browsers have got absolutely nothing when they are placed against Chrome. I mean, Google have outdone themselves by redesigning the paradigm of the Web Browsers that we have come to be familiar with. The browser is such an innovation!

After installing the beta, which is a relatively quick process, I went round to using. I have only one word for it. Stupendous. Seriously, this is the fastest browser I have ever used. Safari had it for awhile but Chrome, she just blew the competition away. The way chrome works is fantastic. Basically, Google turned the browser into a mini OS. Instead of the single thread situation that we see in most browsers, Google redid that and made one processor for every single process that the browser has to handle. That is to say, Java has it’s own processor, the URL loader has it’s own processor and so on and so forth. Futuremore, Google also went on to create an interesting new tab situation. Due to the multi thread nature of the browser, should one tab ‘cock up’, only that particular tab will die. Google describes this situation as the ‘sad tab’ situation. There is now no more need to close tabs to free up memory on a laggi browser. Google also inverted the tabs position on the browser. Instead of tans being below the buttons and the address bar, Google decided to place the tabs above everything else. This way, each tab has it’s own set of customizable and required controls. Speking if the address bar, the address bar in Chrome also serves as the search box. You can search your default engine right in the address bar, or Omnibar as Google puts it. It even tracks your history.

The final unique thing about the Chrome is when you open a new tab. Opening a new tab displays a page that shows you the top 9 pages that you have visited, your previous searches and a couple of your bookmarks and history. Convinient huh? Speaking if which, Chrome also has an Incognito mode that let’s you do some private surfing, without having to remember to clear your cache and history later on.

So, that’s our take on the Google Chrome. We really hope that this becomes the model for the browsers of the future. I believe that the Chrome would be able to give Mozilla a run fir third money, as well as soil Microsoft’s launch of the Internet Explorer 8 Beta. We’ll catch you soon with the IE8 review!

Regards,
Infinitech Team