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.

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

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably heard about the ads that Microsoft recently released, targeting what tech-pundits call the “Apple-tax”, or the high premium on Apple products when compared to products from other companies that are released to the same markets. 

There clearly is a premium involved when purchasing Apple products, but the problem with accusing Apple of jacking up prices for better margins is that most people are aware of the premium for Apple products.

Something that many tech-pundits and big tech companies do not understand, is that the customer is always right.

Always.

People pay a premium for Macs because customers of Apple products claim they are a superior product. If someone wants the reliability that a Mac affords, they are going to pay the premium. Someone buys a Mac because they are willing to pay the price what they want

These ads make it seem like the premium a veil before people’s eyes. It isn’t.

Hey Microsoft: how about working more on making your product not suck, instead of wasting marketing dollars on crap like this? Someone in Microsoft forgot about the EPIC FAIL that is Windows Vista.

This ad from Apple says it all:

disclosure: I am an Apple Certified OS X Support Professional 10.5 and am employed by an Apple Value-Added Reseller and Authorzied Service Provider.

So as of Friday, I’m officially an Apple Certified Support Professional.

Problem is, I do not have a Mac.

I work for an Apple Authorized Service Provider (and Value Added Reseller), and am hoping to move up in the company. figured that would be a good way to start.

Funny isn’t it?

Update (4-6-09): Yeah I definitely did not proofread this post before I threw it on here. My apologies.

Since lunchtime has already passed, I figured I’d call this something else. I took some time to sift through my Google Reader updates and share some nice read links with you.

- CrunchGear comments on RealNetwork’s claim that it will sell ReadDVD as if “nothing ever happened” if it wins its lawsuit with the MPAA. I don’t really see this going in favor of RealNetworks. Even if it leaves the CSS intact, it still lets you copy the DVD, thus guaranteeing a MPAA freak-out.

- Also on CrunchGear is an interesting post about a girl who sent over 14,528 messages in a single month. That’s insane. I text a lot, but I only have about half that number for the previous month.

- Lifehacker offers up an alternative to XP users who want to get the Windows 7 eye-candy but still remain within the safe zone of stable release software via several desktop customization hacks

- Shirt.woot seems to have run into a FUBAR-situation with it’s planned shirt for the day,  so instead, it’s offering another random shirt day. Joy. In for 3.

- There’s been lots of discussion in the blogosphere over the past couple of days over Google Chrome’s development path, and it’s only been increased following this CNET interview with Chrome’s product manager. He claims that a Mac version is not far away. Is it just me, or is the development for this thing moving at a very high pace? Or maybe Google has a facination with version numbers…

That’s all I have for right now. Maybe I’ll update the post later.

Kyle