Apple Readies MacBook Air Add-Ons
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Apple is taking orders for an optical drive and an Ethernet adapter that plug into the MacBook Air's USB port.
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Systems with the miniature Intel Core 2 Duo CPUs developed for the MacBook Air will appear soon, makers not revealed.
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Apple has pulled an ultrathin notebook out of its innovation hat. The company unveiled the wireless MacBook Airat the Macworld Expo on Tuesday.
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A new wafer-thin laptop and a movie rental service for iTunes starred in this year&#39;s keynote from Apple CEO Steve Jobs at Macworld Tuesday.The notebook, called the MacBook Air, wasn&#39;t the ultraportable that pundits had predicted, but it is &quot;the world&#39;s thinnest notebook,&quot; according to Jobs, who produced it from a manilla office envelope to make his point.Priced from $1,799, the notebook has a 13.3-inch widescreen display and a full-sized backlit keyboard. To keep the MacBook Air compact, it uses the same 1.8-inch hard drive found in the iPod and a smaller version of Intel&#39;s Core 2 Duo processor built especially for Apple, Jobs said.The model shown at Macworld was in brushed silver. It is three quarters of an inch thick at its thickest part and just 0.16 inch along the front edge, Jobs said. He compared it to another popular thin laptop, the Sony TZ series. At 3 pounds (1.3 kilograms), it is about the same weight, he said, but the new Apple notebook is about half its thickness.&quot;To fit an entire Mac in this thing was a major feat of engineering,&quot; Jobs said.The MacBook Air will ship in about two weeks. It lacks an optical disk drive, which could make it tricky to load software. To get around that, Apple developed a program called Remote Disk, which allows users to download software from the optical drive of a nearby computer using its built in 802.11n wireless connection.The standard configuration comes with an 80GB hard drive, 2GB of main memory, and a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo. Options include a 64GB solid-state drive and a faster 1.8GHz processor.Intel developed a Core 2 Duo chip package for Apple that is 60 percent smaller than the standard version, according to Jobs. &quot;It&#39;s the width of a dime and as thick as a nickel, with 400 million transistors,&quot; said Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who joined Jobs onstage.Apple will sell an optional portable optical drive for $99, Jobs said. He promised a battery life of 5 hours while surfing the Web and with Wi-Fi enabled.Many had expected Apple to announce an ultraportable notebook, which would have filled a gap in Apple&#39;s notebook product line, noted Robbie Laughlin, an assistant retail manager with Apple reseller Carbon Computing in Toronto.&quot;They had a 12-inch PowerBook a few years ago, and I&#39;d like to see something small like that reintroduced,&quot; he said before Jobs began his speech.Still, Apple&#39;s computer business is riding high from the popularity of its iPods and iPhone, Laughlin said. &quot;They&#39;re still on an upswing. We&#39;ve seen a huge uptick in switchers the last six months, people who wouldn&#39;t normally walk into an Apple store.&quot;The other big focus of Jobs&#39; speech was movies, including a movie rental service for iTunes and a new version of Apple TV that allows renting and downloading movies directly to a TV without using a PC.Apple signed major film studios -- Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Sony, Universal, and Paramount -- to sell movies through the store. Rentals are $3.99 for a new release and $2.99 for older films, or a dollar more for high-definition versions.The movie rentals are available in the United States from Tuesday, and later this year internationally, Jobs said. Apple pledged to have 1,000 films available by the end of February, and films will come to iTunes 30 days after their DVD release, he said. Users will have 30 days to watch a film after renting it, and 24 hours to finish watching it after they have started.Apple TV wasn&#39;t more successful because it was sold as &quot;an accessory for your computer,&quot; Jobs said. &quot;That&#39;s not what people wanted. ... So we&#39;re back with Apple TV 2. It still syncs with your computer [if you want it to], but no computer is required.&quot;Apple TV also received a price cut to $229 from $299. The new version will be available in two weeks, Jobs said, and existing customers will be able to update to the new software.He didn&#39;t show a 3G iPhone as some had expected, but he did announce software updates available from Tuesday, including the ability to map an iPhone user&#39;s location with Wi-Fi hotspots and cellular towers. The iPhone update also lets people send a text message to multiple users.The iPhone shipped 200 days ago and 4 million have been sold since, Jobs said. The software developer kit for the iPhone will ship in February, he said.Jobs also introduced a wireless backup product called Time Capsule, a companion to the&#160;Leopard operating system&#39;s Time Machine, which constantly backs up work to a desktop hard drive. Time Capsule will ship in February and is basically an Airport Extreme base station plus a hard drive, Jobs said, &quot;so you can back up your notebook wirelessly.&quot;Time Capsule will come in two models, with a 500GB offering for $299 and a 1TB version for $499.
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Recently posted document throws a little light on a key feature of the next edition of Mac OS X.
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With Apple Computer&#39;s next iMac expected to be unveiled as soon as next week, Mac fan sites are buzzing with speculation over the design.
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Apple Computer has scheduled a special event for next week, fueling speculation that the company could be ready to introduce an updated model of its iPod digital music player.
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Apple touts eleven specific features it says will make Leopard secure.
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New Mac docking station and dual USB adapter debut at Macworld  Expo.
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Our reviewer take a closer look at the MacBook Air, and finds, on inspection, that it's still one of the snazzier new devices he's seen.
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By Paul Jackson, senior analyst. With its new iMac G5, Apple Computer has once again come up with a unique package of design, power and ease of use.
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A MacBook Pro with the same multitouch trackpad found on the just-released MacBook Air could arrive within a couple of weeks, according to the rumor mill.
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Appleâs new version of Leopard lists 300 new features, including a Braille font and a Danish spelling checker.
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Two PC makers plan to adopt the miniaturized Intel Core 2 Duo processors designed by Intel specifically for Apple's MacBook Air.
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If my hunch is correct,â writes Julio Ojeda-Zapata , âbusiness-class airliner cabins will be filled with corporate types whipping out their MacBook Airs for work amid admiring glances from seatmates.â MacBook Air, after all, âis one sexy portable,â a laptop that âscreams luxury with its extra-bright display (a newfangled light-emitting-diode variant) and a full-size, backlit keyboard that has a great, firm feel.â Ojeda-Zapata suggests that âbusiness types needing ultraportability with style and comfort wonât be able to resist the Air. They can even wedge Windows in there (I did so with no trouble).â
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Photoshop beta will have native Mac support; also coming are CSS Advisor and Ajax tools for Web designers.
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Musings about what might Apple announce at Macworld in January.