Kyle LeBoeuf

In case you live under a rock, Apple released some new products today:

Re-designed Macbook: Polycarbonate unibody design, borrows design elements from the MacBook Pro line, but still maintains its low-end feel. Also contains the 7-hour battery. Multi-touch trackpad, mini-displayport. Specs: 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD. $999. Competitive and awesome.

Re-designed iMac: Two new models: 21.5-inch display and a whopping 27-inch display. Wow. Minimum 3.06 GHz dual-core processor, quad-core options available on the 27″.  These things are legit. 16:9 Widescreen resolution. 21-inch model comes with a 500GB HDD, 27-inch comes with a 1TB HDD, upgradable to 2TB. Oh, and get this, it comes stock with a wireless keyboard and the new “Magic Mouse“. Oh, and the 27-inch sports input support! So you can plug in your HDMI source directly into the iMac. Nice. Starts at $1199 for the 21.5-inch, and $1699 for the 27-inch. Quad-core 27-inch models starting at $1999.

Updated Mac Mini: The Mac Mini saw some speed bumps, featuring a 2.26 GHz processor for the low-end, and 2.53 GHz processor for the high-end models. Both models also saw a bump in memory capacity, 2GB and 4GB  for the low-end and high-end, respectively. Interestingly, Apple also introduced a Mac Mini Server, a 2.53 GHz, 4GB Mac Mini, which substitutes its built-in super drive for an additional hard drive, allowing it support 1TB of storage (through its two 500GB hard drives); it ships with Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server. Users who need optical disk capabilities can either use the Remote Disc feature pioneered by the MacBook Air, or use the MacBook Air USB superdrive. The Server model sits at $999.

Magic Mouse: Apple replaces its wireless Mighty Mouse with the multi-touch sensitive “Magic Mouse” (name change likely resulted from the patent recently granted to another company on the “Mighty Mouse” name). Its hard to explain its features in text, but there’s a video on Apple’s features page, to hit the link on this paragraph to check it out.

There were other updates that were supposed to be dropped today (including new Airport products) but they haven’t shown up yet. Apple could’ve pulled them at the last second. We’ll see what happens. (Update: Apple did, in fact, update the performance in the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule by adding a better antenna).

Kyle

Update: Most of the internet has yet to catch on to the fact that Apple released a new Apple Remote. Not very big news, but its worth noting.

Last Tuesday, I got my iPhone 3GS. The verdict? I love it. Its an amazing entertainment device and productivity tool wrapped into one. I can make notes on-the-go with applications like Evernote with my iPhone, and view them later via automatic syncing on my MacBook Pro. I can transfer photos to my Mac or view PDF documents and other files over-the-air using the Dropbox application. These are just a few of the uses I have had for my iPhone over the past week.

Even though I love the iPhone and think it’s an amazing device, I do have a few caveats, majority of which have to do with AT&T. The first of which is the signal on UL campus. While walking along Johnston St. to McDonald’s yesterday, I watched as my signal bars did this dance that went from 1 bar, to 3 bars, to 5 bars, to 2 bars, to 4 bars, to 5 bars, and so on. Whenever I’m actually walking through the campus I will go lengthy periods of time without getting any signal at all. This is especially true when I am sitting in class:

No signal on my iPhone

Other caveats I have include the battery life. It stinks. I used to be able to go 2 days with my blackberry before it needed to be charged. I’m lucky if I make it through 5PM on the same battery charge, must less a whole day.

Other than these minor hiccups, I love the device. One of the coolest toys I have ever owned.

Now, about that data bill…

Kyle

Great idea from Nicholas Deleon: lets solve all of the music downloading and royalty issues by banning music.

The article is meant largely in jest, but its message rings true…

I’m sorry, but we have to ban music. That’s just the way it is. (via TechCrunch)

I made a comment this morning on Twitter about an article on Techcrunch on Twitter Search. Robin Wauters of Techcrunch makes comments on some of  the (ridiculously stupid) trending topics on Twitter Search. When Twitter Search debuted in its current form last year, it was deemed by many as one of best and quickest ways to get breaking news information, since normal, everyday people on the scene of a major event can tweet just like the journalists and the mass media.

As Robin points out, trends in Twitter Search are quickly becoming overtaken by corny internet chain-letter-style memes (Like “3 Words After Sex“). Some of you may wonder why this is such a big deal, but bear with me for a second.

Think back on when E-mail first started becoming popular (seems like forever and a day ago, but its not that far back). It was orginally seen as a way of communication between friends, family, co-workers or clients/customers. Fast forward 15 years or so later, and everyday I am emptying my inbox of corny, annoying chain latters that contain jokes, funny pictures and videos, or petitions for me to sign and pass on.

Lets look at another popular internet service: Facebook. When Facebook debuted, it quickly became popular among college students as a way to keep in touch in more interactive ways than just e-mail. It wasn’t over-crowded with your entire family (even your grandma), and it was easy to find your friends amongst the riff-raff. The interface was simple, straightforward, and it worked. Go figure. Fast forward a few years later, and guess what? Facebook is packed with all kinds of people, welcome (your classmates, old friends) and unwelcome (your mom, your boss). Not only is it packed with all kinds of people, there’s also companies who on Facebook that are always in your face about getting you to “become a fan” of their product, and they spam with you stuff. Also, as Facebook adds more features and changes things around, it begins to lose the simplicity that was one of the service’s biggest appeals back when it was the newest web trend on the block.

When a service breaks into the mainstream, companies usually try to change the service around to meet the needs of the mainstream user. Most of the popular websites of today (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.) have become a victim to this.

Twitter is already showing signs of this, removing some features that might actually be useful to some folks but may be too complicated for the mainstream attention the company is starting to gather.

Is breaking into the mainstream a bad thing? For the companies, not really. Mainstream attention can turn into a hefty profit, but it usually sucks for power users, because the services lose a lot of the funtionality that attracted attention in the first place.

My official designation for mainstream is Oprah. When Oprah joins your service, your doomed.

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com

Engadget, Infoworld, and various other technology news sites are reporting on a new Microsoft OS project code-named “Midori”. Midori, rather than being based on previous architecture (such as the NT kernel for NT/2000/XP/Vista), will be based on an entirely new kernel, or maybe not even a “kernel” as we know it at all.

They are claiming that Midori will remove dependencies between hardware and applications using virtualization technology that exists today and taking it to the next level. While all of this sounds cool, Microsoft would have a hard time pulling it off.

Every time an OS company makes major changes to their product, they have to add compromises that cater to the desires of customers running legacy applications when moving a product from R & D to production. We’ve seen this in every major release of the Windows operating system, as well as releases in other operating systems, such as Mac OS (example: OS 9 to OS X, then OS 10.1-10.2-10.3 etc.)

Microsoft is already deep in development of Windows 7, the next version of it’s flagship product. Between supporting that product and any offshoots from it, a significant change in architecture probably isn’t in the pipeline anytime soon.

On top of all of that, you have the fact that the Windows brand is universally recognizable. That’s like telling Sony to rename their console series to something besides “Playstation”. That’s like Apple calling their new OS anything without “Mac” in it. It’s just not feasible.

Microsoft is putting a lot of R & D into pushing products out to the cloud, but they are all branded under the Windows Live brand. Read: Windows. Even with it’s cloud computing initiative (which is probably where MSFT is heading with Midori), it’s still retaining the Windows moniker.

Even if there is a completely different Microsoft OS out there in the future, don’t be surprised if it retains the famous/infamous Windows branding.

Then again, losing the Windows brand might be the thing that makes Microsoft look like a different company. Perhaps we’ll see within the next 5-10 years.

Kyle [at] kyleleboeuf.com