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Yojimbo 3 and Yojimbo for iPad Released
Yojimbo, the personal organizer for the Mac from Bare Bones, has been updated this week, alongside the introduction of a new companion app, Yojimbo for iPad. Yojimbo now lets you sync over Wi-Fi with the app for iPad, so you can view all your Yojimbo items on the go.

In case you’re new to Yojimbo, you can check out our coverage here at TheAppleBlog. The app lets you store and tag all the flotsam and jetsam of your digital life for later use. You can drag and drop files and clippings using a handy Drop Dock applet, paste your current selection into the app with keyboard shortcuts, or type content into a pop-up Quick Entry panel. You can also send PDFs to the application directly from any print dialog.

Bare Bones also introduced the ability to scan documents or images directly using TWAIN-compliant scanners in the latest release of Yojimbo.

The new iPad app has the quality and polish one would expect from any Bare Bones release. While the absence of the ability to add new items will disappoint some, many Yojimbo devotees will be thrilled to be able to carry their database with them. I had a chance to talk with Rich Siegel of Bare Bones just before the release, and he explained that adding items on the iPad is something they would like to do at some point in the future.

The lack of iPhone support is another gap for the time being, but it makes sense from a purely practical perspective; the iPad is great for viewing content now and the iPhone will be great for adding items when that feature gets added.

Yojimbo 3.0 is a free upgrade for 2.0 users, and a $20 upgrade for those with earlier versions. An individual license will run you $39. Family and educational pricing is also available. Yojimbo for iPad is $9.99 in the App Store.

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Has Apple Given Up on iWeb?
iLife ’11, unveiled at the latest Apple event, brings no update for iWeb. Users should rightly wonder what the fate of the app will be. It’s a shame iWeb is being ignored, because it made web design accessible to all levels of Mac users, but maybe it’s just time for a new model.

iWeb’s Origins

The design philosophy behind iWeb is summed up best in the Keynote slide pictured below, from Macworld 2006. According to Steve Jobs, software was either too simple for producing web sites that looked good, or too complex for the average consumer. Instead of HTML editing, iWeb used customizable themes and a WYSIWYG interface.

It was easy to use, and things looked good, but cross-browser compatibility proved to be difficult. iWeb’s solution caused immediate problems, most notably the creation of multi-megabyte webpages that substituted .png images for elements like text to ensure iWeb designs looked the same in all browsers. Even then, there were issues with compatibility, and the HTML iWeb generated was pretty ugly.

Update History

Not surprisingly, a large update was quickly issued that addressed complaints about generating and publishing pages. A year later, iWeb 2.0 in iLife ’08 added more themes, blog comments, photo gallery pages, widgets, user-generated “HTML snippets” on web pages, and integration with domain names hosted on MobileMe. This was a big update, and demonstrated a high level of commitment to the software on Apple’s part, but then something happened.

With iLife ’09, iWeb got… more widgets. Development had dropped off sharply. Now, with iLife ’11, the drop has ended with a splat, as any development efforts seem to have become simply code maintenance. So has the program indeed been abandoned?

It probably has, and it could be that Apple had no choice, since making iWeb work across all platforms would be nearly impossible. But it could also be the case that iWeb’s replacement will be even more elegant.

iWeb’s Fatal Flaw

The main problem is the document model. In iWeb, a single bundle is created for all web pages and websites from which HTML pages are rendered when publishing. While this allows for an incredibly rich and easy-to-use development environment, it also means iWeb documents can balloon into huge files over time.

More importantly, the document file can only be accessed by iWeb from the Mac it resides on. That means you can’t create a gallery page with pictures just taken from your iPhone, or blog from your iPad. iWeb was created before these devices really became established as tools for producing content, and now its single-location model looks antiquated.

The Solution

Somewhat ironically, the solution to iWeb’s computer-centric dilemma is also built into the program: MobileMe. While iWeb does not strictly require MobileMe, server-side features like blog comments, passwords, search, and domain name association require it. The future of iWeb development is to fully integrate it with MobileMe.

For photos, that future is already here, too. MobileMe Gallery already duplicates the functionality of photo galleries in iWeb. You can even create a Flash—don’t tell Steve—widget in iWeb that links to a MobileMe gallery.

Why can’t the same services be set up for blogs, podcasts, and web pages? Now that Apple has finally announced the end of .Mac HomePages, perhaps that’s what will happen. Instead of giant documents on one computer and spaghetti HTML, we could have HTML5, Ajax, H.264, all kept in the cloud and accessed via MobileMe from anywhere.

Of course, it’s highly unlikely there’d be a way to integrate current iWeb sites into that MobileMe future, so iWeb’s past would be lost, but at least there would be some way to create “beautiful websites, so simply, so easily” from Macs and other Apple devices.

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Screencast: New iPhoto and iMovie '11 Features
iLife ’11 was announced on Wednesday at Apple’s press event. As it was immediately available (and not too expensive), I picked myself up a copy and got straight to checking out the new features. Here’s a peek at some of the suite’s most impressive new abilities.

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The Exciting Future of Apple's MacBook Line
In 12 months, Apple’s notebook lineup will be so different, we’ll barely recognize it. Physically, the computers may look the same, but the teaser that is the MacBook Air makes very clear the changes we can expect to see rolled out across the entire MacBook line.

“MacBook Air. The next generation of MacBooks.”

This is Apple’s tagline for the new MacBook Air. I believe it means everything that’s good about the Air will make its way into the MacBook and MacBook Pro within the next year. Let’s look at what’s next for Apple’s notebooks.

Battery Life

The older Air I own has a claimed battery life of five hours, but I never see more than three and a half with brightness all the way down and Wi-Fi off. The new Air claims seven hours of battery life in Apple’s “Web-test” which, according to the company’s performance page, “measures battery life by wirelessly browsing 25 popular websites with display brightness set to 50%.”

We can expect this new test to become the standard for how Apple measures battery life specs across the board going forward and I expect seven hours to be the new minimum standard for the rest of the lineup. Most Macs meet this now, in fact, so 10-12 hours may be a more realistic expectation from next year’s MacBook Pro, as long as Intel continues increasing the efficiency of its chips at the current rate.

SSD As a Standard

Solid State Drives (SSD) enable quick booting, instant on and faster launch times of applications. I believe every new MacBook Pro sold will come standard with an SSD, with an option to drop down to an HDD for $200 less if you just needs lots of storage (500GB+). For most users, 256GB is all they’ll ever need, and for huge media libraries, an external drive is always an option.

SSD is great, and it’s finally achieving a price point where Apple can include it as part of a base configuration. Remember, only a little over two years ago, a 128GB SSD add-on for the MacBook Air cost an additional $999. Now, the $1699 model comes with a 256GB drive standard.

Sorry, No Optical

I’ve talked to a lot of people in coffee shops, at conferences and even my less-techie friends and they all come to the same conclusion: Optical drives are kind of pointless. If all software manufacturers provided direct downloads or flash drives for physical installs, there’s be absolutely no issue.

The optical drive, as far as Apple is concerned, is dead. The company has the largest collection of digital media available for sale, and with the Mac App Store, Front Row and Apple TV, why would you ever need to burn content to a disc? The external Air Superdrive is still available, and it’ll probably gain compatibility with the rest of Apple’s notebooks as the internal drives disappear.

Thinner and Lighter

SSD and the lack of an optical drive will mean thinner cases across the board. The MacBook Air’s logic board in 2008 was a thing of beauty: smaller than the length of a pencil, and it powered the entire computer. I think the move to SSD flash storage that’s soldered to the logic board, paired with removing those gigantic optical drives, will mean most Mac laptops will slim down. We’ll see this in new revisions that come out in 2011.

Higher Resolution Displays

As I said in July’s post about iPhone 4′s Retina Display, Apple will be beefing up the resolution of all of its displays, starting with notebooks. The MacBook Air already has an improved display; the MacBook Pro is next. How high a resolution is too high? We’ll see how Apple navigates the line between display quality and the concerns of users with weaker vision or older eyes. Unlike on the iPhone, you can always change the resolution on your Mac if it makes for a better reading experience.

Conclusion

I’ve always been sure that the MacBook Air was a test bed for innovation, and a peek at what’s to come from Apple portables. Cupertino’s clearly gone “all in” techs like flash storage and battery improvements that it pioneered with the Air, and it’ll be genuinely exciting to see those developments trickle down to the rest of the line.

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Lion's App Resume: How it Will Probably Work
In my coverage of the OS X Lion preview Wednesday, I wondered how the app resume feature would work. I noticed that in the preview, the activity indicators in the Dock (those white dots) were all gone. Poof. I squinted at the image below until I was certain that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Then I realized: You never see activity indicators in iOS.

See, no glowing white things!

If Apple’s goal is to bring the good from iOS into OS X, then this move makes sense. iOS’s multitasking behavior would allow you to open applications like normal until you run out of RAM, then the app resume model kicks in and applications will start suspending themselves in memory, available quickly if you need them, making activity indicators redundant.

This would give OS X a huge advantage over Windows. Imagine never running out of RAM again, and yet never having to quit an application again. The OS will manage it for you, just like in iOS. That’s what Apple’s aiming for here. The need to quit and start apps to begin with was only really a convention put in place because memory had to be managed in some way so that the user could control what got prioritized. An app resume feature eliminates that need.

The only problem is launching the applications fast enough to make the experience perfectly mimic iOS. How would Apple do that? Using flash storage. Apple’s already using it exclusively in the MacBook Air, so I think we can expect a flash-only MacBook Pro in the future.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to an always-on future, or dreading it?

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Apple Passes RIM in Global Smartphone Share
Despite Steve Job’s obvious distaste for the company, Research in Motion (RIM) has long remained ahead of Apple in the global smartphone market. Not any longer, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, which reported yesterday that the iPhone shipped more units than did BlackBerry during 2010′s third quarter.

However, it wasn’t really a terrible loss for RIM, as the entire smartphone market grew 78 percent overall. Though Apple did surpass RIM in sales volume (and seems poised to ship even more in the future, since supply constraints provided a choke point in 2010), it still has a long way to go before it approaches Nokia, the reigning king of the smartphone hill.

Nokia shipped 26.5 million devices during the three-month period. Apple, by contrast, shipped only 14.5 million, almost half as much as its biggest rival. Nokia benefits from a much greater presence in Asia and Europe, and will be hard to shake from its lofty perch, though it’s losing ground. It held 34.4 percent of the market in this latest scan, down from 37.8 percent from the same period the previous year.

Apple’s market share grew from 17.0 to 18.3 percent over the year. The BlackBerry’s take dropped as much as Nokia’s, falling from 19.6 to 16.1 percent; RIM shipped 12.3 million devices during the quarter. The Canadian company is missing out in large part due to “a limited presence in the high-growth touchscreen segment” according to Strategy Analytics.

According to analysts from Canacord Genuity, a firm 0perating in RIM’s own backyard, Apple’s lead in the smartphone market may be insurmountable at this point, even for Google.

Following Monday’s conference call, the firm raised its target price on Apple stock to $421 and called Apple “unbeatable.” Analyst Micheal Walkley said simply, “We agree with his views,” referring to Jobs’ claim that “we’ve now passed RIM and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future.” Analysts also agreed that Android was too fragmented, and argued that the App Store’s head start in terms of its software library is a market-defining advantage.

Unbeatable is a strong word to use in a sector as prone to transformative change as mobile tech, but Apple is currently occupying a position in the market that almost no one would’ve predicted five years ago, so perhaps in this case, it’s merited.

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Still More Victims Caught in Apple's Wake
It’s inevitable. Each Apple event now changes the industry: sometimes for the better; other times… well, depends on who you ask. The latest Apple event may not be as obvious a game changer as others this past year, but its effects will be felt nonetheless.

Dead or on Life Support

It’s been a little over a month since the last Apple Media event. The aftershock in the tech industry from that has yet to be fully felt, and there are some additions to the casualties I listed in September.

If Apple and Facebook can work things out regarding Ping, the final nail in MySpace’s coffin may be struck. Some of the new features in iTunes, like the artwork viewer, make certain add-ons like Sophiestication’s CoverSutra a little less appealing. Rogue Amoeba is sitting on the fence waiting to see if it’ll be able to participate in the updates to iOS 4.2 regarding Apple’s new AirPlay. While competition is still healthy among GameCenter’s competing services, iAd is starting to pick up some steam as it continues to innovate in the smartphone advertising space.

Next in Line for Execution

That’s what happened last time around. Here’s a short list of what’s on the chopping block after yesterday’s revelations:

The End of Disks (and Discs, Too) — A Timeline
- The floppy drive was the first to go in 1998 when Apple released the iMac G3. Rather than pursue disk-based alternates like the Ultra High Density Floppy disk, Zip disks or an Imation drive, Apple opted for a USB port.
- In the last several releases of iLife, one of the original cornerstone software programs, iDVD, has not seen any new features or updates.
- Apple has also been very vocal in its reluctance to support Blu-ray.
- Earlier this year, the icon for iTunes was updated, removing the disc from the icon entirely.
- When the iPod lineup was refreshed this year, the only model not updated was the iPod Classic, the one with an HDD inside.
- Then, following the quarterly earnings call where Steve proclaimed Apple’s love of flash, Apple announced an update to a drive-less MacBook Air: a MacBook which already lacks a SuperDrive.
See the pattern? Hard drive manufacturers sure do. Western Digital has warned investors that with the advent of the iPad and the decline in low-end notebooks, the hard drive market is slowing drastically. The MacBook Air announcement couldn’t have helped matters much.

Online Software Version Trackers for Mac

As developers flocked to iOS, many OS X development efforts were left high and dry. There was a notable dearth of new titles on the market, and bundle programs like MacHeist started offering wholesale pricing to boost sluggish sales. App discovery, purchase, download, install, and update are what Apple sees as missing. Yet that’s exactly what I use MacUpdate for. We’ll have to see how quickly developers adapt to Apple’s Mac App Store, and also what value-add sites like MacUpdate and CNET’s Downloads.com (formerly Version Tracker) can offer in order to stay afloat.

Apple Desktop Widgets

This one isn’t quite as clear as it could be. It appears as if iOS apps or something like an iOS app could run in some capacity on OS X. Changing the paradigm and allowing for multi-touch gestures and full screen apps could spell the eventual end of dashboard widgets as we know them today on OS X.

There’s a good reason everyone pays attention to Apple when they decide to speak to the media. Apple’s successes spell success for other companies as well. Samsung, a major flash supplier, no doubt benefits. And LG, supplier of the iPhone’s Retina Display, makes out pretty well. But not everyone comes away a winner when Steve Jobs opens his mouth. For some businesses, in fact, Apple’s idea of progress marks the end of the line.

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New MacBook Air Hits the Web Working Sweet Spot
The iPad is a pretty nice mobile web working tool. But the new MacBook Air, with more processing muscle, better graphics and access to OS X and all the applications that go along with it, is the better tool for the road warrior.

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A Developer's Take on the New Mac App Store
When Steve Jobs announced the Mac App Store yesterday, my first feeling wasn’t excitement, but rather worry. My concern is that the Mac App Store will, perhaps in two or three years, become the only effective channel through which Mac developers can sell their apps.

The Best Place to Get Apps…

Jobs mentioned in yesterday’s announcement that the Mac App Store won’t be the only place to buy apps but that he “hopes it will be the best.” I’m sure it will be the best. Apple is providing a gorgeous storefront from which to browse and purchase apps, and it’ll ship with every new Mac once OS X Lion is introduced.

The whole process, from searching, to purchasing and downloading, to launching and later updating, will just work, like it does with Steam. Apps won’t merely be enhanced dashboard widgets, they’ll be full-blown desktop programs. The entire iLife and iWork suite were already up there during the demo.

The store will be an immense success, and Jobs will certainly be showing off the stats at one of next year’s Apple events. With that success will also come a shift in the app distribution landscape and a shift in the mindset of users. The Mac App Store — while it won’t be the only source to downloads apps — will most likely eclipse all others.

… Becomes the Only Place

Here’s my worry: Two or three years down the line, Jobs will say, “The Mac App Store has been a massive success. It has revolutionized app distribution for developers and app purchasing for users. The best thing though is that we’ve seen the quality of apps for the Mac go through the roof. Apps for the Mac App Store look better, work better and feel better. And it’s good business for the developers too.”

Jobs would then go on to explain that on the new range of Macs and MacBooks, the App Store will be the location from which to download apps. The only location. The only escape will be upgrading to Apple’s Pro computers, which won’t require apps to be installed through the App Store.

From Apple’s point of view, this wouldn’t stifle development, as the Mac App Store would be a proven success (so why distribute on your own?) and, if you’re developing something for that niche Pro audience, you can still reach them with or without the Mac App Store.

Earlier this year, Cory Doctorow wrote an article over at Boing Boing titled,”Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t either).” I bought an iPad, and I dig my iPad. However, Cory’s article came to mind during yesterday’s announcement.

Software Upgrades Only

Cory talks about “infantalizing hardware.” With the iPad, you can’t physically open it. The idea is that you don’t improve your device by hacking or tweaking, but rather by purchasing. Purchase an app, and you improve your device.

Think about the new Macbook Air: a sealed box. Purchase apps from the Mac App Store and improve it. It’s not that great a leap to imagine the Mac App Store being the only channel through which you can purchase apps for all future Apple notebooks, too, which will likely be similarly closed.

The Gatekeeper Dilemma

Then there’s the “Wal-Martization of the software channel” as Cory puts it. I’ll skip over the whole DRM issue, and I’ll quote Cory on the thing that concerns me most, “… as a copyright holder and creator, I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable for me to create.”

I am a creator. I am a copyright holder. And I don’t want to see a future where I only have one option for distribution on a platform that was previously open. A future where I would have to seek approval from a central authority before my creations can be released.

For the record, I’ve released apps on iOS. I’ve been through Apple’s approval process before. That’s the nature of iOS though. It’s always been like that, and I’ve never known any different for that platform. OS X is different though, I can create anything I like and release through whatever channels I like. I don’t want to see that change.

If that does change, would we see amazing creative tools like Pure Data or Ableton Live anymore? I think we still would, but there’s a caveat. These apps would have to compromise on their features or functionality in order to gain Apple approval. It’s easy to see how this could stifle innovation.

But then, none of this has happened yet, and indeed it may never happen. Especially if developers make sure that Apple knows this isn’t what we want.

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Chatroulette Clone for FaceTime Mac Already Here
FaceTime for Mac only came out yesterday as a beta download from Apple, but you can already get weird with it, Chatroulette style. A new app called Facelette, created by developer Zach Holman in about an hour, lets you chat randomly with strangers, on either your FaceTime-compatible iOS device or your Mac.

All it requires is your FaceTime ID, and it’ll connect you with random strangers. Take note of what’s going on here: You’re handing out your email or phone number for public dissemination. It’s probably a good idea to set up a separate account specifically for the purpose if you’re thinking about indulging. Luckily, Holman seems to have your privacy in mind, even if you don’t, so Facelette will render your ID inactive if you stop using it for two minutes. He also plans to purge inactive accounts regularly.

I doubt I’ll be trying this myself, since nothing about the Chatroulette experience seemed that appealing, but judging by the success of the original, something tells me more than a few of you will.

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Books and Video Win on the iPad, and Users Are Buying
Although the iPad is still relatively new, early indications are that a majority of users are willing to pay for content — whether it's apps or games — and that news and music are the two most popular forms of media consumed, with books a close second.

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The New MacBook Air Is Underwhelming
Thinner, yes. But better?

I am one of the few, proud MacBook Air (MBA) owners in the world. Every article you’ve seen from me in the past was written on the petite beauty. In one last month, I wrote:

I'm only here to make a case that anyone that hasn't used one should give it a shot and that Apple needs to throw some marketing dollars behind it so everyone else knows what we MacBook Air owners have known for a long time: It's the best notebook Apple makes and it also happens to be the smallest.

This is exactly what Apple did yesterday, and yet, I was severely disappointed. It seems as if Apple is finally throwing marketing dollars behind the MBA, and I watched my Twitter stream as thousands of geeks’ heads exploded at how thin it is. But I felt a little weird reading this on my MacBook Air and thinking out loud, “I know. It’s been that way for years.” It’s thinner, yes, but not significantly. That’s the whole story in a nutshell.

Pricing & Marketing

On the whole, the reason Apple’s MacBook Air wasn’t a hit before now was price. Imagine the iPad started at $999. Fewer people would own one, and those that did and sang its praises it to friends would be immediately be greeted with the response that it was simply too expensive for a tablet. Basically, Apple just dropped the price. The MacBook Air of today is largely unchanged from what we had before, and that’s disappointing.

11.6″ Model Versus the Sony TZ (circa 2008)

Consider Engadget’s live-blog from Macworld 2008, when the Macbook Air was introduced. Steve initially compared the MacBook Air to Sony’s TZ series. His biggest gripe was that the processor speed maxed out at 1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, and the display was only 11 inches.

The 11.6-inch MacBook Air is “too cramped” and “too slow” according to the Steve of 2008. To be fair, the Air isn’t the same as the TZ in every way. I haven’t used the new keyboard, but Apple claims it’s full-size and the body is still a bit thinner.

Let’s Talk Speed

Current MacBook Air owners won’t see a significant speed bump if they own the Revision C model (1.8/2.13GHz) released last year. In fact, not much has changed about the machine at all.

MacBook Air Revision C (Jun. 2009)
- 1.86 ($1499) or 2.13GHz ($1799)
- 3.0 Pounds
- 6MB of L2 Cache w/ 1066Mhz Frontside Bus
- 120GB HDD or 128GB SSD
- 2GB RAM (DDR3-8500 at 1066Mhz)
- 13.3-inch screen w/ 1280×800 resolution
- NVIDIA GeForce 9400 w/ 256Mb of VRAM (shared with main memory)
MacBook Air Revision D (October,2010)
- 1.86Ghz ($1,299) or 2.13Ghz ($1699)
- 2.9 pounds
- 6MB of L2 Cache w/ 1066Mhz Frontside Bus
- 128GB SSD or 256GB SSD
- 2GB/4GB RAM (DDR3-8500 at 1066MHz)
- 13.13″ screen w/ 1440×900 resolution
- NVIDIA GeForce 320m w/ 256Mb of VRAM (shared with main memory)
Of course, I’m only comparing the 13-inch models, but you’re getting a machine that’s basically the same speed with an option to add more ram and more storage, plus a high-resolution screen which isn’t something I’d recommend to everyone. Some (especially those over 50) will prefer a lower resolution. Even I had trouble using a 17-inch MacBook Pro and eventually sold it.

What you are getting is a drop in price. Last year, a 2.13GHz machine with 2GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD would cost $1799. Today, that same machine costs $1699 with double the storage, and it’s only $100 to upgrade to 4GB of RAM.

Real World Performance

Will HD Flash movies on YouTube perform better? No. Will Photoshop CS5 filters apply faster? Maybe with a RAM upgrade. Nothing about this upgrade is impressive if you’re a current MacBook Air owner looking for more speed.

Why can’t Apple squeeze more juice out of this machine? Apple didn’t talk speed at all. They didn’t throw their famous “2x Faster” graphic up on the “buy now” page. Apple does tout the 2.9x faster graphics card, but I can guarantee you the Air released yesterday is only marginally faster than last year’s model, despite the introduction of the 320M, because that’s a video card using shared RAM, meaning the graphics performance goes down as you open more applications.

I was underwhelmed by today’s announcement, but the MBA was already a good notebook. I was hoping Apple would make it even better. It didn’t. “One more thing” was simply a minor evolutionary product refresh, and that’s too bad.

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FaceTime for Mac Video Demo
For those without access to a computer that can use FaceTime, or if you just haven’t had a chance to test it out, here’s a demo by GigaOM’s Chris Albrecht. As you can see from the clip, it works pretty much exactly the way it should.

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Firemint Announces Flight Control for Mac
The Mac App Store was only announced a little less than a day ago, but we’ve already had one developer announce it’s planning on developing software for it. Firemint, the studio behind Flight Control and Real Racing, has already started work on Flight Control for Mac.

Clearly, the Mac App Store is something Mac developers are excited about, as it should bring more publicity, and therefore more revenue, than other distribution means. However, if the list of restrictions on what can actually be sold through the App Store is anything to go by, there will definitely be many who decide they’d rather carry on as before.

As for the game itself, I don’t see myself buying Flight Control for the Mac. The game’s appealing if I’m drawing the flight paths with my finger, but using a mouse seems like it’d be too much of a hindrance. Of course, you could use a Magic Trackpad, but having to keep it clicked in while you draw a line sounds difficult. Then again, perhaps Firemint has thought of that already, and is working on an innovative control solution. iOS device as wireless controller, perhaps? We’ll have to see.

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Apple Quietly Adds MacBook Pro Processor Options
Yesterday, Engadget observed that Apple didn’t just release a new MacBook Air but also added a nice built to order option for their 15- and 17-inch MacBook Pros. Now, for an additional $400, you can upgrade to a 2.8GHz Core i7 processor.

Previously, there was an option for a Core i7 processor running at 2.66GHz over the standard Core i5, clocked at 2.53 GHz, for an additional $200. That options remains, but for true power users, this may be a nice way to eliminate the need for that Core i7 iMac and simply add a 27-inch Apple Cinema Display to your home office if you’re often working from the road. My preferred configuration is to get a new MacBook Air and go with the Core i7 iMac, but the new Air may not meet your processing needs.

The $400 price is pretty steep for the upgrade, but that’s just a reminder that despite lower prices among its other offerings, Apple still caters very much to the high end of computing market.

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New MacBook Air Is the Future of Notebooks
Beginning his presentation by waxing philosophical on the impact of iOS devices on Apple industrial design, Jobs rhetorically asked what would happen if an iPad and a MacBook Air “hooked up?” The result is the new MacBook Air. Proving the rumormongers right, the new MacBook Air will come in two distinct models, with screen sizes of 13.3 inches and 11.6 inches respectively.

Both models will share the aluminum unibody construction design, and a number of features, including Core 2 Duo CPUs, NVIDIA GeForce 320M GPUs, full-size keyboards, multi-touch trackpads (no button) and a FaceTime (not iSight any longer) camera.

The biggest internal change will be the use of solid-state storage across the lineup, which was a major rumor circulating about the new MacBook Air. The new storage system, which doesn’t appear to be upgradable, will have “instant on” capabilities similar to iOS devices, and be up to twice as fast as standard hard drives. This will also allow for a standby time of 30-freaking-amazing days.

Sporting an even more wedge-shaped design, the new 13.3-inch MacBook Air will have a backlit-LED with a resolution of 1440 x 900, making for a higher pixel density than the current MacBook Pro line. Only 0.68 inches at its thickest point, and 0.11 at its thinnest, it’ll be thinner than the previous MacBook Air. At 2.9 pounds, it’s also lighter than its predecessor.

In terms of battery life, it appears not even Apple can defy the laws of physics, as the new MacBook Air will only jump from five hours to seven hours under normal usage. However, Jobs said Apple is using a new method to test battery life that should produce more accurate results. Even so, battery life may be an issue with the 11.6-inch model, which is reported to get only five hours. However, that’s made up for by an even greater degree of portability, since the computer weighs only 2.3 pounds.

As for price, the new MacBook Air will start at $999 for the 11.6-inch model, the same price as the 13.3-inch MacBook. The new 13.3-inch MacBook Air will start at $1,299, $100 more than the low-end MacBook Pro. RAM is upgradable from the stock 2GB to 4GB for an extra $100. CPU speeds will start at 1.4 GHz on the low-end, 11.6-inch model, and go up to 2.13 GHz for an extra $100 on the 13.3-inch model. Here, many of the rumors, which asserted everything from 2GHz-plus Core 2 Duos to Intel’s Core i-series, were just plain wrong.

You won’t need to get an external optical drive to reinstall software with this generation of MacBook Air. Instead, Apple introduced a flash-based Software Reinstall Drive that ships with the computer. Just stick that into one of its two USB 2.0 ports, and you’re good to go. Other ports on the Air include a Mini DisplayPort, a MagSafe adapter, and a headphone jack.

Arguably, the CPU and battery life are probably the biggest disappointments in the new MacBook Air, but this is more than balanced by the aggressive pricing, at least for Apple, which appears to have no problems playing with the price divisions of its carefully segmented Mac portable lineup, and that may be the biggest change to come out of today.

When Steve Jobs said he believed “all notebooks will be like this one day,” (meaning no optical drives, flash storage, lightweight and small), you can bet that we’ll see the rest of the MacBook lineup take on these changes down the road.

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