Kyle LeBoeuf

I got a chance to check out the new Magic Mouse at work today. The verdict?

It’s chock full of awesome. More to come later.

Kyle

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.

The Google gods have smiled upon me. I got an invite early this morning.

I am really excited. More to come soon.

An email from Apple just hit my inbox. I decided to read this one (I get a lot emails from Apple). It’s an info ad about the new lineup of iPods. If you signed up for anything from Apple, then I’m sure you got this email. I would post it up on here, but I’m sure that violates some kind of copyright law. Anyway, the ad focuses on the upcoming iPod lineup. There’s only one thing that’s missing:

The iPod Classic. Seriously. Where’s the love Apple?

I’ve read countless reports and articles over the past year related to the direction in which Apple is heading with the iPod market. Most tech pundits agree: the iPod Classic is quickly approaching its demise. If Apple still carries the iPod Classic, then it doesn’t make sense to exclude it from the promotion and marketing material for the Classic, unless they are trying to get rid of it.

With flash memory becoming less and less expensive and their chips becoming smaller and smaller, there’s plenty of opportunity to simply offer iPods that have large flash-based storage capacities. Flash-based storage works better for music players for a few obvious reasons. The first of which is its resistance to physical movement. A hard drive-based iPod is susceptible to abuse and damage because of the spinning platter. But flash memory is movement-friendly and perfect for things like exercising. Another benefit to flash memory over hard disks is power consumption. Power efficiency is much better on flash-based devices rather than hard disk-based.

Despite the obvious phase-out, I don’t understand why Apple can’t continue to tout the original design as long as they are continuing to produce more units. I owned an iPod Classic for almost a year; then it was stolen. And I mourned its loss. Seriously. There’s still a significant market out there for people with big music libraries who need a device with enough capacity to fit everything.

In the end, I am sure that Apple will replace the Classic with large-capacity iPod Nano and iPod Touch units (or even a new class of iPod all-together).

iPod Classic, even though our time together is drawing to a close, we still love you.

Kyle

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

I drank the kool-aid.

My new Toy

And I love it. More to come later.

I wonder if Palm actually expected to get away with this?

[USB forum sides with Apple in Palm Pre sync dispute] AppleInsider

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)

Saw this article today on TechCrunch stating that Twitter is taking in another round of financing at a $1 Billion valuation.

This is insane. $1 Billion for a company that has zero profitability? Wow.

[Twitter Closing New Venture Round At $1 Billion Valuation] via TechCrunch

I’ll admit to being intrigued by the idea of netbooks when they first started to creep into the portable computing market. Portable, affordable, and packing a ton of battery life, it was really easy to see why they took off, especially with the economy in the state that its in.

But the problem is that you get what you pay for. What you get in affordability and portabilty, you lose in usability.

I’m not just talking about raw computing power. While the computing power in these little machines is laughable, you don’t really need a lot of computing power to surf the web, check email, and maybe type a small paper in Microsoft Word. I’m talking about being able to use the computer for long periods of time, or actually get any serious work done.

I understand the need for small computers. I have owned and used a small 12″ Dell notebook for the past year-and-a-half, but that computer had a full sized keyboard (meaning actual keysizes); I didn’t get hand cramps when typing big papers.

With all that in mind, it intrigued me a bit whenever I read this article today talking about the popularity of netbooks over Apple’s portables among students purchasing computers for this upcoming school year. While I understand the idea behind spending only a few $100 on a computer, I don’t agreee with it.

I work for an Apple reseller, so I am well aware of the cost of Apple’s portable computers when compared to what competitors have on their shelves and websites. But at the same time, having worked with both sides of the market (PC and Mac) in the past 4 years, I also understand the benefits gained when using Apple products as opposed to PC products, including the low-price netbooks that have gained so much popularity today.

I am currently typing this post on a 13″ white Macbook. I love this thing. It always works and I never have any problems with it. Its worth about $1000 and it may seem expensive for being the cheapest portable Mac, but its way more functional than the netbooks out there today will ever be.

I am waiting for a company to come out with some kind of ground breaking product in that market before I change my sentiments on it and actually break down and buy one of the stupid things.

I have a strong feeling that such a ground-breaking, industry-changing product can only come from one place.

I’ll give you a hint, their offices reside in Cupertino, California.