Mac Book

From the durable unibody enclosure to the radiant LED-backlit display, the new MacBook is the must-see notebook of the season.

Durable unibody enclosure.

A mere 1.08 inches thin and even lighter at 4.7 pounds,¹ the sleek new MacBook cuts a slim profile on any desk (or in any backpack or briefcase). It features a new seamless, more durable unibody enclosure with rounded contours that make it easy to pick up and slide into and out of your bag. And it’s made of rugged polycarbonate that withstands the rough and tumble of everyday life — at school, at work, or while traveling. Even the bottom of the new MacBook feels different. Covering its entire surface is a nonslip material that keeps your MacBook right where you put it, whether on a desk, table, or airplane tray.

Unibody design

The breakthrough unibody design of the MacBook Pro comes to MacBook.

Quality screen time.

MacBook now features an LED-backlit 13.3-inch glossy widescreen display for an even more spectacular viewing experience. Documents, videos, photos, and games look incredibly sharp and detailed. The LED backlighting delivers stunning colors and instant full-screen brightness the moment you open the lid. And its 1280-by-800 pixel resolution offers an outstanding balance of luminous color and easy readability in a perfectly portable size.

Spacious glass Multi-Touch trackpad.

The new MacBook Multi-Touch trackpad has no button because it is the button. That means there’s plenty of room to move your fingers around, and you can click anywhere — left, right, center, and everywhere in between. The trackpad features a silky smooth glass surface that feels great to the fingertips. Use it to perform familiar functions such as right-click or two-finger scroll as well as Multi-Touch gestures: pinch to increase font size in a document, rotate your fingers to reorient photos, swipe to navigate through web pages, and more.

A comfortable keyboard your fingers will love.

MacBook portability doesn’t happen at the expense of key features. The keyboard is full size, with keys that are curved to contain your fingers and highly responsive to your touch. Its low-profile design integrates perfectly into the unibody enclosure, so you’ll get a comfortable experience whether you’re typing a quick email or writing a lengthy research report. The keyboard also gives you one-touch access to music and video controls and Mac OS X features such as Dashboard and Exposé.

Magnetic latch

Because the latch has no moving parts to snag, jam, or break, even opening and closing your MacBook is a pleasure.

Easy access to connections and ports.

The connections and ports on MacBook — MagSafe power, Gigabit Ethernet, Mini DisplayPort, USB, and audio in/out — are all smartly integrated on the same side of the notebook. So your cables stay neatly organized, and connecting and disconnecting your devices is easy and convenient.

MagSafe Power Adapter

The power cord is held in place magnetically, so if someone should trip over it, the cable disconnects harmlessly and your MacBook safely stays put.

Clean, simple interior design.

MacBook is as well designed on the inside as on the outside. Turn it over and you’ll notice a seamless, sturdy, single-piece bottom case with no battery compartment. That’s because the lithium-polymer battery in the new MacBook is strategically built right into the enclosure. In addition to providing extra overall durability, this integrated design eliminates the space-consuming parts required by a removable battery. This allows more room for a larger-capacity battery that can run up to 7 hours on a single charge² — all in an enclosure that is just as thin and even lighter. When you remove the bottom case, you’ll discover a clean, simple interior layout that makes it easy to add more memory or a larger hard drive.

Mac Mini features

Full - Size features.
A faster processor, more memory, more hard drive space, and more power fit inside one small square. And Mac mini makes room for even more.

Memory and processors.

Mac mini is anything but mini under its hood. With either 2GB or 4GB of memory, Mac mini gives you twice as much memory as the previous generation. So now you can run more applications at the same time. You also get a 2.26GHz or a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a blazing-fast 1066MHz frontside bus, and 3MB of L2 cache.

Graphics.

The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor in every Mac mini gives you outstanding graphics performance. It brings pure power to the latest 3D games and graphics-intensive applications. And you’ll notice a big difference when you work with high-resolution photos and high-definition video.

Wireless.

The latest 802.11n wireless technology is built into every Mac mini.¹ Once you set up a Wi-Fi network, you can surf the web, print, and stream your music wirelessly. Bluetooth capabilities are also built in, so you can connect Bluetooth accessories such as a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Plenty of storage.

Choose your hard drive.

Now you can get a 160GB, 320GB, or optional 500GB hard drive² and pack in your photos, movies, music, and more, more, more.

Room to burn.

You can play and burn all the DVDs and CDs you want with the ultrafast, slot-loading SuperDrive. So load up on photos, movies, and music, and burn them to DVDs whenever you want.

Special server configuration.

When you order Mac mini with Snow Leopard Server, you get two 500GB hard drives for 1TB of storage.² Whether you want to bring your email in house, host wikis and websites, or record and host podcasts, that’s plenty of storage to make it all happen.

Mac Mini

Brilliance Squared

There’s nothing like Mac mini. At just 6.5 inches square and 2 inches tall, it’s designed to take up far less room — and use far less energy — than any other desktop computer.

Small. Simple. Beautiful.

Mac mini has a sleek, anodized aluminum case and clean, white surface. It’s small, elegant, and unassuming. In fact, it looks so simple it's hard to believe it’s a computer at all.

Packed with power.

Mac mini was engineered to fit a lot of computer into a little space. It’s powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, with advanced NVIDIA graphics and fast DDR3 memory. There’s plenty of storage space — up to 500GB¹ — for just about anything. And it comes with Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the world’s most advanced operating system. Who knew something so small could be so huge?

Plug. And play.

Mac mini includes five USB 2.0 ports and one FireWire 800 port, so you can connect your keyboard, mouse, iPod, iPhone, digital camera, DV

camcorder, external hard drive, printer, and any other peripherals you use. Mac mini even lets you connect up to two displays, including your TV, with the mini-DVI port and Mini DisplayPort. On the front of Mac mini is the ultrafast, slot-loading SuperDrive for playing DVDs and CDs — or burning your own.

The many uses of Mac mini.

Because Mac mini is so small, it can be just about anything you want it to be. And be amazing at it, too. Officially, Mac mini is a desktop computer. But because it can go places no other desktop can go, it’s been used everywhere from boats to server rooms, as the heart of an entertainment center — and even to power robots.

Magic Mouse

It began with iPhone. Then came iPod touch. Then MacBook Pro. Intuitive, smart, dynamic. Multi-Touch technology introduced a remarkably better way to interact with your portable devices — all using gestures. Now we’ve reached another milestone by bringing gestures to the desktop with a mouse that’s unlike anything ever before. It's called Magic Mouse. It's the world's first Multi-Touch mouse. And while it comes standard with every new iMac, you can also add it to any Bluetooth-enabled Mac for a Multi-Touch makeover.

Seamless Multi-Touch Surface
Magic Mouse — with its low-profile design and seamless top shell — is so sleek and dramatically different, it brings a whole new feel to the way you get around on your Mac. You can’t help but marvel at its smooth, buttonless appearance. Then you touch it and instantly appreciate how good it feels in your hand. But it’s when you start using Magic Mouse that everything comes together.

The Multi-Touch area covers the top surface of Magic Mouse, and the mouse itself is the button. Scroll in any direction with one finger, swipe through web pages and photos with two, and click and double-click anywhere. Inside Magic Mouse is a chip that tells it exactly what you want to do. Which means Magic Mouse won’t confuse a scroll with a swipe. It even knows when you’re just resting your hand on it.

Laser-Tracking Engine

Magic Mouse uses powerful laser tracking that’s far more sensitive and responsive on more surfaces than traditional optical tracking. That means it tracks with precision on nearly every surface — whether it’s a table at your favorite cafe or the desk in your home office — without the need for a mousepad.


Wireless

Magic Mouse connects wirelessly to your Mac via Bluetooth, so there’s no wire or separate adapter to worry about. Pair Magic Mouse with your Bluetooth-enabled Mac and enjoy a reliable and secure connection up to 33 feet away. When you combine Magic Mouse with the Apple Wireless Keyboard, you create a workspace free of annoying cables.

And because Magic Mouse is wireless, it can venture beyond the confines of your desk. A quick flick of the on/off switch helps conserve battery power while Magic Mouse is tucked in your bag. Even when it’s on, Magic Mouse manages power efficiently, by detecting periods of inactivity automatically.

Make one great gesture after another.

Multi-Touch technology on the iPhone and iPod touch introduced a breakthrough way to interact with your content. Magic Mouse, with its Multi-Touch surface, does the same thing for your Mac. When you use gestures, it’s as if you’re touching what’s on your screen. For instance, swiping through web pages in Safari gives you the feeling of flicking through pages in a magazine. And scrolling with Magic Mouse isn’t your everyday scrolling. It supports momentum scrolling (similar to iPhone and iPod touch), where the scrolling speed is dictated by how fast or slowly you perform the gesture.

Laptop with flexible Display

Brave German designers are not shy about experimenting with form. Of course, the day when such a concept could be put into practice, will not soon, despite the existing achievements in the field of flexible OLED-screens.

The idea is simple - there is a small tube with a wire, standard connectors and speakers.
At his literally wound rolled in a tube display, which is practically a slight movement of the hand can be easily turned into a laptop screen with a keyboard and large display.

And with great desire in the display still appears and folding legs. We all love these concepts precisely because of what they look spectacular and much promise.

Nokia Enters Netbook Market with Booklet 3G

After months of rumor and speculation, Nokia has officially announced its entry into the netbook market with its own machine in the Nokia Booklet 3G.

Nokia has chosen the well-traveled path of many other manufacturers with specifications that equal or exceed those in other competing models with an Intel Atom processor, integrated 3G HSPA modem with A-GPS support, 10-inch glass front HD resolution display, aluminum bodyshell, HDMI port for video output and Windows XP along with a claimed 12 hour battery life.

As with other competing netbooks, Nokia will be bundling its own suite of online services with Ovi Suite which can pinpoint location in seconds with the Ovi Maps widget and built-in A-GPS.

The Nokia Booklet 3G also includes other Ovi functionality such as using Ovi Suite to sync seamlessly with a Nokia smartphone to the Booklet 3G, to the internet.

Sony to Launch New PSP Starter Pack Next Month

Sony has revealed a new PSP Starter Pack to coincide with the launch of the PSPgo.

The new Sony PSP Starter Pack will be launched next month for $39.99 and features the 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo Mark 2 memory card and the midrange MDR-EX32LP earbuds with a 6-23,000 Hz frequency response, 3.9ft cord and three sizes of earbuds.

Both the memory card and earbuds are compatible with the PSPgo.

IKEA's Switch to Verdana Causes Stir Among Typography Geeks

You probably missed this earth-shattering news, but Ikea IKEA, the Swedish furniture and other assorted home decoration products company, has switched fonts. The company always used the Futura font for its catalogues, but the latest edition has ditched it in favour of Verdana. This has caused quite the stir among typography geeks.

Red Hat takes aim at Microsoft, VMware with virtualization, cloud strategy

Red Hat this week lined up nose-to-nose with VMware and Microsoft laying out its bid to become a top-tier provider of virtualization and cloud computing infrastructure software for both the enterprise and service providers. more

Gmail outage caused by overloaded servers

A worldwide outage of Google's Gmail online e-mail system on Tuesday was caused by a traffic jam on its servers, according to Google's official Gmail blog.

The problem was that some recent changes designed to improve traffic flow on request routers, servers designed to direct Web queries to the appropriate Gmail server, overloaded the system after workers took some Gmail servers offline to perform routine upgrades.

The overload resulted in people around the world being unable to access Gmail for about 100 minutes, Treynor said, though he noted that IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally.

Nokia Unveils Booklet 3G Specifications, Price

Not too long ago the news got out that mobile phone company Nokia was about to enter the netbook market with its Booklet 3G. Specifications were unavailable then, but today at Nokia World '09 the company announced all the details around this slick netbook.

Windows 7 RTM arrives for Volume License customers

Windows 7 RTM has been made available to Volume License customers. Windows 7 Professional has been marked down 15 percent for the next six months.

Microsoft today made it possible for businesses to order Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 upgrades from a Microsoft Volume License Reseller. The Volume Licensing (VL) option is for businesses that don't already have Software Assurance and want to upgrade their existing business PCs to Windows 7.

A recent survey found that the majority of businesses were not planning to deploy Windows 7 before the end of 2010, so it's not surprising Microsoft is doing everything in its power to push the new operating system. more

AMD aims to stay in the race with Magny-Cours 12-core CPU

At the recent Hot Chips conference in Palo Alto, AMD outlined its upcoming 12-core server processor, codenamed "Magny-Cours." The new CPU will arrive in 2010, and will fit into the same power envelope as the existing six-core Istanbul processor. But to make that happen, AMD had to make some compromises.

Due in 2010 on AMD's 45nm SOI process, Magny-Cours uses the same basic core microarchitecture as the current Shanghai quad-core server processor, so if there's any improvement in per-thread performance it will have to come from better system design.

The basic idea behind Magny-Cours is simple: take two six-core Istanbul processors, downclock them a bit to reduce power, and squeeze them into a multichip module (MCM) so that they can fit into a single socket. By using an MCM, AMD will be able to fit 12 cores into the same thermal and power envelope as Istanbul.

For system architecture reasons, AMD's MCM picture is a little more complex than was Intel's, because each Istanbul chip has its own on-die dual-channel DDR3 memory controller, along with four HyperTransport links. Obviously, you can't push each chip's full interconnect bandwidth through a single socket, so AMD had to cut out some links.

The company's MCM 2.0 design has four total HT ports (two per chip) and four DDR3 memory ports (two per chip) on each MCM. For each individual chip, one of the links is x16 and another is x8. The two chips are connected inside the module by a x16 HT link.

Even with four HT links and four memory channels to keep the MCM fed, 12 cores is still a lot to pack into a single socket, and bandwidth starvation is a concern. To help alleviate the bandwidth pressure AMD's Istanbul made a very smart tradeoff in the form of HT Assist, and this tradeoff is carried over to Magny-Cours, where it's even more necessary.

One of the big challenges in multiprocessor system design is keeping the various processors' caches in sync with one another; solutions to this problem all involve some amount of communication among the processors, and this "snoop" traffic eats up valuable bus bandwidth. The solution that AMD has adopted with Istanbul and Magny-Cours involves setting aside 1MB of each chip's 6MB cache to store a directory of the contents of the other chips' caches, so that by consulting this local directory each chip can avoid broadcasting a significant number of traffic-increasing snoop requests to the other chips. more

iPhone not exclusive in China, talks with China Mobile go on

The three-year deal Apple made with China Unicom is not an exclusive one, and negotiations continue with China Mobile. Still, regulatory hurdles may prevent Apple from launching a Chinese App Store.

Apple has confirmed that its agreement to sell iPhones via China Unicom, which lasts for three years, isn't exclusive. China Mobile says it is still in talks with Apple to carry the iPhone, though Apple hasn't said what Chinese carriers it is in talks with. And while that company—China's largest mobile carrier by a wide margin—cited control issues with how the App Store is run, there may be further legal hurdles to cross before Apple can offer apps via the App Store to Chinese users. more

Talks of RISC OS Porting to ARM Cortex-A8

"US-based company Genesi, which builds ARM Cortex-powered appliances that could be compatible with the RISC OS Open Beagleboard work, is said to be in talks with RISC OS companies over a possible port of the OS to its products. It's hoped ROS 5 could be made to run on the lightweight EFIKA MX Open Client, which sports a 800MHz Cortex-A8 processor, 3D graphics hardware, 512M RAM, wifi networking and more. Genesi analyst Matt Sealey said: 'RISC OS is really popular in the UK and the last dedicated RISC OS box - the Iyonix - has been discontinued for six months. We are currently questioning the relevant companies in the UK, including [ROS 5 owners] Castle, about collaboration and marketing efforts, and the support they'd need to make it a reality.'" more

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Arrives for Free

Ars writes: "The final release of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 (1541.1MB) has been posted on the Microsoft Download Center. This release of Microsoft's standalone virtualization server for small- and mid-sized business customers is a vast improvement over the first version." more

Google Chrome Comes Bundled on Sony Laptops

Google said August 31 that Sony is bundling the Chrome Web browser on its Sony laptop computers, the search engine company's first such bundling deal to help the now one year-old browser reach more users. Sony did not respond to requests for comment but a Google spokesperson confirmed to eWEEK that Sony is bundling Chrome. The spokesperson declined to provide financial details but claimed: "Users' response to Google Chrome has been outstanding, and we're continuing to explore ways to make Chrome accessible to even more people." more

Netbook Market Keeps on Growing

According to Apple, the netbook market is not a market they want to partake in, because they believe the current crop of netbooks is not good enough. Well, good enough or not, netbooks ales are still growing like crazy, according to the latest figures from DisplaySearch. more

Universal kernel code to keep computers safe

A "microkernel" that can underpin any operating system could make computers more reliable and secure... more

Nanolasers offer super-tight focus

Lasering on the nanoscale is now possible using a laser a hundred times more tightly focused than conventional beams more