GADGET REVIEWS Just another GADGET NEWS

Looks like in this weak economy, low-cost netbooks are the perfect buy. Check out this Asus N270 netbook priced at $299 from Best Buy.

The specs are pretty good for the price. A 4GB solid state drive, 1 GB memory and a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor. The netbook has an 8.9-inch screen and runs Linux operating system.

It seems to be the cheapest netbook out there right now as even Target has it at a similar price.

Know anything else that’s priced even lower?

{via jkOnTheRun]

Photo: Asus N270/ Best Buy

Posted under Gadget Reviews

 
Too cool. On Wednesday we gave you a glimpse of the new Objet Alaris 30 desktop 3D printer. That’s right — a $40,000 printer capable of processing 3D CAD images and carving them into polymer models. The video above shows a model car produced by the Alaris 30. The wheels even spin — giving you an idea of how the "printer" gets everything down to the nitty gritty details.

The machine works by jetting photopolymer materials in thin layers onto a tray one a time, according to its manufacturer Objet. Each layer is cured immediately with a UV light, eventually building up to a complete model.

Talk about an industrial designer’s dream come true. What would you do with an Alaris 30 if they became affordable to consumers, Gadget Lab readers?

See also:

• Objet Desktop Printer Churns Out 3D Models

Boing Boing Gadgets]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

3D is all the rage now with printers, cameras and now a webcam.

The Novo Minoru 3D webcam looks a lot like Disney/Pixar’s Wall-E robot and brings the promise of 3D video home.

In an attractive red color, the webcam has two cameras spaced roughly

the same distance apart as human eye. Imagess from the two are mixed together into a single stream to create the 3D effect.

It’s not going to be terribly comfortable to use though. Viewers have to wear special red and blue colored goofy glasses to see the 3D image. The good news? Five pairs of glasses are included with the webcam.

Minoru, which means "reality" in Japanese can be used with most instant messengers and video conferencing packages, say the British designers who created the product. The camera can also be used for still pictures or record
3D video for YouTube, in addition to its use as a 2D webcam.

The webcam has been developed for the i-stage competition run by the Consumer Electronics Association.

Though right now in prototype stage, production is expected to start in December, says David Holder, one of the designers of the Minoru. The webcam will be priced around $80, he says.

 Photo gallery of the Minoru webcam

Posted under Gadget Reviews

T-Mobile G1

Between the Youtube videos, fan sites, and ever-cranking rumormills, it’s like we knew all about the first Googlephone before we ever got our mitts on one: a boatload of apps available through the Market, built-in Amazon music store, 3G, Wi-Fi, Google Maps with Street View, that crazy shape-driven lock code, and so on. Sure enough, all those message board stars are present and accounted for on the G1, but don’t worry: There are still plenty of surprises to keep you entertained.

Surprise #1: Android is pretty freaking on-point for a first-gen software release. Sure, it has bugs—Web pages don’t automatically re-size and the zoom feature blows—but it’s also remarkably polished, bristling with nifty tricks. Take the long touch: Not unlike the windows-born right-click, it brings up useful contextual menus. Long touch a field of text, for example, and you get the option to select it, copy it, or paste something in (take that, Jobs!). And though Android’s first home is a touchscreen phone, you can tell that the OS was designed to work with hard-buttons as well.

In fact, if you can’t abide fingerprints, you can get around the G1 quite well without ever smearing the glass. There’s a BlackBerry Pearl-esque trackball in the center of the button bank that lets you cruise menus, websites, or any other screen you can bring up. Five other buttons flank the trackball: the ubiquitous green and red phones, “back,” “home,” and “menu.” The keys are useful, but their physical location is a problem that ties into the most noticeable G1 bugaboo: its size. This is a big bitch for us—nearly a half-inch thick—and its problematic girth is made worse by an annoyingly curved-up section that makes the phone frustrating to pocket: that button bank. If you want to rock a G1, be prepared to bust out the manpurse or multi-pocketed raver jeans (sorry, Hipsters).

The phone’s main interface is a 3.2-inch touchscreen that swivels out of the way along an arced path to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is fine, but that frakking curved button bank (which also houses the mechanics of the arced hinge) makes typing uncomfortable. Also, since the screen swings to the right, non-lefties will have to reach across the phone to flip it open with their thumbs—and no amount of soft-touch plastic is going to keep them from dropping the G1 from time to time.

The capacitive touchscreen is fine—neither the best nor the worst we’ve seen in terms of appearance or sensitivity. G-Mobile uses a half-assed haptic feedback mechanism (the phone vibrates) to confirm touches, but you can (and should) turn it off.  —Joe Brown

WIRED Android is legit, and future iterations should get even more impressive. 3G on a T-Mobile phone. Tons of apps that will keep you entertained for the duration of your 2-year contract—and all of them are free until Google decides on a way to charge. Relatively cheap, and data plans include T-Mobile hotspot subscriptions. Snappy processor never seems to get bogged down, even with multiple apps running. Decent battery life: a day of heavy use or three if you have no friends. Mounts on both Mac and PC as an external drive, allowing you to drag-and-drop music or videos.

TIRED Fugly. Bulky. No 3.5mm headphone jack and no adapter that lets you plug your own buds into the HTC mini USB multi-port. T-Mobile’s 3G network not as quick as AT&T’s, and nowhere near as pervasive. We don’t mean to whine about free stuff, but the included 1GB MicroSD card seems a little dinky compared to the 8-gig iPhone you can get for $20 more.

$179 with 2-year contract, t-mobile.com

(Photos by Jon Snyder for Wired.com)

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Is the first ‘Google’ phone, HTC’s G1, truly ready to free the wireless web, or is it a half-baked version that’s only acceptable to those trapped in the T-Mobile ghetto? 

In this week’s Wired Gadget Lab Videoblog, Daniel Dumas and Joe Brown take a first look at the highly anticipated multimedia phone and find that it is still not as good as the iPhone.

While the handset comes with interesting features, like the quality Android OS, the OK 3G network and some useful applications, the unexciting hardware design and not-quite-there feature set stands out. There’s no headphone jack, no multitouch and a half-baked App Store!

If the video below is not working, please click here to view it: Gadget Lab Videoblog: Review of the First Google Phone.

You can also check out all of our previous videos at Wired’s channel on YouTube.

This episode of the Gadget Lab Videoblog was created by Annaliza Savage (producer), Henry Young (camera), and Fernando Cardoso (editor).

Posted under Gadget Reviews

An environmental group is applauding Apple for its new laptop manufacturing process, which reduces the use of harmful chemicals.

Greenpeace, an environmental blog, commends Apple for cutting down on
the amount of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) used in its notebooks and new
cinema display. The new products’ internal power cables are now
PVC-free, and Apple says it’s continuing to work toward completely
PVC-free products.

And although some parts of the notebooks still contain the
chemical, Apple eliminated their use of two other toxic chemicals, chlorine and bromine, Steve Jobs said in his "Greener Apple" statement.

"By far the most significant announcement that will resonate within the
industry is fact that Apple is on course to be completely PVC and BFR
free across in product range by end 2008," Greenpeace writes. "This will be a first for a
computer maker and lays down the challenge to competitors such as HP,
Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba…. there’s no excuse for any of these companies not to follow
Apple’s lead on toxic chemicals elimination now and not wait until the
end of 2009."

Since 1987, Greenpeace has been advocating a global phase-out of PVC — a widely
used thermoplastic polymer — claiming that the
chemical produces dioxin, a dangerous carcinogen, during the
manufacturing process.

Jobs also promises that Apple will constantly recycle the cuttings and waste resulting from the new manufacturing process, which involves using lasers and water jets to shape notebooks out of bricks of aluminum.

Steve Jobs greener Apple update [GreenPeace]

Photo: Darren Hester/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

If you are considering buying a Scooba robotic floor cleaner from iRobot in the next few days, it may take a little longer than you expect for the product to be delivered.

All models of the Scooba are sold out on iRobot’s website. One of the company’s most popular models, the Scooba 350, has been out of stock for nearly two months.

"This is an inventory issue," says Charles Vaida, a spokesperson for iRobot in a statement."It doesn’t have to do with any changes in the manufacturing process or a restructuring of our Scooba line."

Currently iRobot’s website, a major sales channel for the company,
is offering a three to four weeks timeline for the Scoobas to ship. However, major online retailers such as Amazon.com and Bed, Bath &
Beyond have products available immediately.

The stock out on iRobot’s website is the result of unexpectedly high sales in the last few months, claims iRobot.

Till recently iRobot had been offering special prices for the Scooba on the Home Shopping Network. For instance, it made the Scooba 340 and the robotic vacuum Roomba 535 model available for $400 compared to the regular price of $650.

The HSN special sold out, says Vaida, and iRobot is working to replenish its stock of units.

The good news for potential buyers is that iRobot says it will be fully stocked for the holiday season.

 Photo: Scooba/iRobot

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Hewlett-Packard wants you to touch its products. There’s no shame in that.

The
Wall Street Journal cites "people familiar with the matter" saying that
HP will roll out a touchscreen notebook by the end of the year. Beyond
that, the sources weren’t familiar enough with the matter to disclose
any details on price or specifications.

The rumor shortly follows an earlier report by WSJ, which said HP is also planning to manufacture a touchscreen smartphone. But details of that report were equally scarce.

It’s certainly believable that HP is sensitive to the ever-growing appeal to
touchscreen devices, as made evident by the iPhone. And the touchscreen
landscape is still a green pasture that a manufacturer has yet to
claim. 

Think HP will be able to pull it off? I’m placing my bets on "No." My
brain associates HP with dismal, gray printers. If HP hopes to
grab this segment of the hardware ecosystem, the company’s going to
need to liven up its products with a lot more than just touchscreens.

Those are just my gut-reaction thoughts. I defer to you, Gadget Lab readers. What do you think about HP and touchscreens?

H-P Making Touch Screen Laptop [WSJ]

Photo: wlodi/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The US Stock Market died, and far from slipping quietly into the water, it selfishly refused to let go of anybody who reached in a hand to help, dragging everyone down into a watery grave along with it.

In our world, the world of gadgets and hardware, this has led to much speculation, much of which has focussed on Apple and its soon-to-be-announced notebook computers. Even notable speakers are speculating on an $800 MacBook, citing the “current economic climate” as a reason for Apple to go cheap.

This fails for two reasons. One, a product takes a lot more than a couple of months to get to market, especially at Apple, where products remain in gestation for a long time, with Jonathan Ive’s team carefully honing designs to perfection before they are born into the world. That Apple, or any tech company, could design a brand new computer and put it on sale in a matter of weeks, purely in response to that “economic climate”, is nonsense.

If Apple releases a cheaper notebook today it will be part of a plan which has been unfolding for months or years, not a knee-jerk market reaction. It would follow the price drop in the iPhone and iPod lines, which is likely a reflection of both lower manufacturing costs and a drop in the price of the market as a whole.

Two, Apple products are not expensive. Not its core products, anyway. While the displays and cables remain something of a rip-off, the computers, iPhone and iPods cost the same or less than the equivalent products from rivals. The point is, Apple doesn’t make a cheap computer*. Sure, you can buy an $600 PC laptop, but Apple doesn’t make a $600 Mac laptop. The entry level, $1100 (as of this writing) MacBook doesn’t compete with $600 PC notebooks. It competes with $1100 and higher PC notebooks. Complaining that Apple doesn’t make a cheap, bargain basement MacBook is like moaning that BMW doesn’t make a $6000 runaround.

If Apple does announce a cheap Mac today, it won’t be in response to the perceived market shift. It will be because Apple has decided to enter a new market, the market of cheap PCs, and it has worked out how to do it without dropping its profit margins to a commodity level. We know about Peter Oppenheimer’s mysterious “product transition”, which could indeed mean trading margin for market share, but those margins will never be as low as those of the MSIs of the world.

While we’re here, another thing has been bugging me. The iPod is supposedly dying. Everybody has one, and sales will stagnate and finally drop off. Even Steve Wozniak says so. And you know what? He’s right, because the MP3 market in general is dying and going the exact same way as the PDA market. But while, say, Palm didn’t see the cellphone domination coming, the iPod already has a successor. The iPhone.

Photo: arquera/Flicker

*OK, the Mac Mini is pretty cheap.

Posted under Gadget Reviews

That cheap, $800 Mac everyone is talking about? It might not even be a Mac. And it might not be $800.

MacRumors and Apple Insider are both reporting that Apple will be announcing a new Cinema Display today, and it will cost $900 for 24 inches. It’s about time — aside from price reductions Apple hasn’t updated the line since the launch of the current aluminum models in June 2004. Back then the 30″ cost a quite astonishing $3300, with the 23″ at $2000 and the 20″ at $1300.

We don’t expect much innovation. The most likely change is to the bezel, making it shiny and black to match the iPhone, the iMac and the (probable) new MacBooks. The image is fake, by the way, whipped up in Photoshop from the current iMac design.

Apple’s New $899 Product is an LED Display and Not a MacBook? [MacRumors]

New photo reveals MacBook Pro, new display also expected [Apple Insider]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

That the USB thumb drive is the natural descendent of the floppy disk is certain. They both suffer from the same advantages and problems: portable and convenient, yet cheap, plastic and all too delicate. Thomas O’Connor’s concept design takes the retro disks and retrofits them with flash memory.

The sliding metal gate becomes an optional flip-out stand and the spindle contains the obligatory blinking LED to let you know it’s still working. He even makes his CAD mockup is authentic 80s colors, complete with terrible 3D rendering. I’d actually buy this.

Project page [Coroflot via Oh Gizmo!]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

UK software company, the “Very Cool Software Company”, sadly missed a trick when naming its forthcoming iPhone version of the Stylophone. The application is called the “Dubreq iStylophone”, but it should clearly be named the Style-i-Phone.

It will, of course, be touch controlled, obviating the rather satisfying need to press a stylus onto the metal contacts. The application, to be released on December 1st, appears here on a first-gen, speaker-less iPod Touch. This is great news for anyone who remembers the original — fun to play, but so intensely annoying to listen to that you’d begin harbouring murderous thoughts towards the musician after mere moments.

It’ll be $6. You could buy a real one for $26.

Crave]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

More MacBook details are dragging themselves from the fertile pond of Apple rumors, this time flapping their wet, scaly tentacles onto the desks of MacNN.

MacNN’s source confirms the dropping of FireWire in the consumer MacBooks, which makes sense. The only thing most MacBook buyers need FireWire for is to hook up an external drive, and those all come in USB flavor anyway. It will be a shame to use the rather useful FireWire Target Mode, though, and the rather less useful (and infinitely more finicky) FireWire networking.

The dual GPUs in the MacBook Pro will apparently be a mixture of a dedicated graphics processor and an integrated chip sat on the motherboard. The Pro notebook will also be getting faster RAM (DDR3/1,066GHz), a top processor speed of 2.8GHz and, best of all, a longer-life battery, perhaps a nine-cell design instead of the current six-cell (hey, if MSI’s Wind is getting one, why not the Mac?)

MacNN also claims that the the Pro will see a new video-out socket which looks something like an HDMI-out port. We’d hazard a guess that Apple has somehow shoehorned both a Mini DVI and an HDMI capable output into one socket, which means that we’ll have another couple of proprietary $30 adapters to buy.

Stay tuned. We’ll know for sure come 10AM (5PM GMT), or five hours from now.

Specs, photos of MacBook Pro up to 2.8GHz [MacNN]

Illustration: Jesus Diaz/Gizmodo

Posted under Gadget Reviews

CUPERTINO, California — Steve Jobs announced new refreshes of the MacBook, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air that will feature faster processors, better graphics, and a uniform design language of aluminum and glass. Jobs also unveiled a new 24-inch cinema display made especially to accompany Mac laptops. Here are the most important gems we gleaned from the announcement:

1. New MacBook Pros

• Starts at $1999.
• 2.4 GHz processor
• 15-inch 1440 x 900 glossy display.
• 0.95 inches thick, weighs is 5.5-pounds.
• Nvidia GeForce 9400m graphics card.

2. Refreshed MacBooks

• Starts at $1299.
• 2.0 GHz processor.
• 13-inch LED-backlit 1280 x 800 glossy display.
• 0.95 inches thick, weighs is 4.5-pounds.
• Nvidia GeForce 9400m graphics card.

3. MacBook Air

• Cheaper. (The SSD model is now $2500)
• Integration of Nvidia 9400m means 4x faster graphics.
• Faster front side bus.
• Mini-DisplayPort.
• Aluminum and glass design as seen in the MacBook and MacBook Pro

4. New Cinema Display

• 24-inches
• LED backlighting.
• Integrated iSigh.
• 1920 x 1200 resolution.
• 3-port USB hub.
• Stereo speakers.
• Mini display port.
• Out in November.

Wired Liveblogging Team: Words by Mark McClusky, Photos by Jim Merithew

9:46am: Alright. In the room classical guitar music playing….weird!

We’re in the Town Hall meeting rooms at 4 Infinite Loop, at Apple HQ in Cupertino.

More classical music, cello concertos.

9:56am:  "Please silence all your cellphones as a courtesy to the presenters onstage and your fellow attendees."

Getting ready to rock here.

Although the music is still like the most mellow music in the history of any Apple event. More string quartet stuff.

We’re going for a high end vibe today, apparently.

Lights are dimming. Here we go.

Steve Jobs takes the stage, looks teh same as he did at the last event.

"We’ve got some fun stuff to share with you. Today’s about notebooks, we’ve got some new ones to show you."

"I want to zoom out and cover the state of the Mac" Tim Cook, COO at Apple to cover it.

Cook: "Last reported quarter 2.5 million Macs sold."

Been growing 2-3x the market’s growth rate.

Why are we growing faster?

10:01am: 1) Better computers. iMac, Macbook Air.

2) Better software. Leopard. "Virtually everyone agrees that Leopard is far ahead of Vista."

3) Compatibility. Boot Camp. Parallels, VMWare.

It’s removing the fear for switchers.

4) Vista. This is something we didn’t do. You may wonder why Vista
is on the list. I think it’s fair to say that Vista hasn’t lived up to
everything MSFT hoped it would. That’s opened doors to lots of people
thinking of switching.

5) Marketing.

The Mac/PC ads have struck a chord with a lot of switchers.

10:04am: They tell a story.

6) Retail stores. Started this over 7 years ago. 250 stores now in 8 countries. 400,000 visitors a day.

10:05am: 50% of the Macs they sell are people who are new to the Mac.

These are the 6 reasons we’d attribute the momentum to.

As I said, this just didn’t begin. If you look at the history, Mac has outgrown the market 14 of the last 15 quarters.

Retail share: 17.6% market share of unit sales.

Revenue share: 31.3% of retail sales.

10:07am: One out of every three dollars spent on a computer in US retail is spent on a Mac.

Education: We’ve surpassed Dell and become the top supplier of Notebooks, 39% of all notebooks.

10:09am: Many universities now require a computer. That school selects a list of computers, and the students get to pick.

Total Mac units: 4.5M in 05, 5.3M in 06, 7.1M in 07, 7.1M in three quarters so far this year.

Jobs is back: "Let’s talk about notebooks."

We want to talk about some new ways of building notebooks.

Jony Ive coming up to talk about that.

(Not much Steve today so far)

Ive: I want to tell you about a real breakthrough we’ve had on how we can design and build our notebooks.

Currently, here’s how we build our 15 inch Macbook Pro.

10:11am: When you’re designing something that’s thin and light, the trick is making it strong and robust and rigid.

The Aluminum enclosure makes a small contribution to the structure.

It’s the internal frame that holds it together. Currently magnesium die casting.

10:12am: Series of stiffening plates and frames that are
welded to the top plate. Then we add the plastic gasket between the top
and bottom of the case.

The current version is best in class in size and weight, but we’ve been looking for a better way to build a notebook.

10:14am: We had a really significant breakthrough that culminated in the Macbook Air.
You couldn’t build a product as thin, light and strong as the Air with the old way.

Rather than start with a thin piece of aluminum, and then add
material, we started with thick piece of aluminum and then remove
material.

That’s how they do the Air’s palmrest.

(Showing the milling of the Air’s top plate.)

Constantly recycling the cuttings and waste.

Start with a slab that weighs 2.5 lbs. and end up with a .25 pound
plate that forms the structure of the Macbook Air. That unibody
construction made the Air possible.

Obviously, this has relevance beyond the Air.

We’ve been working hard to design new enclosures for new notebooks.

(Jobs back onstage.)

"We also have new graphics on Notebooks."

Nvidia came to us to talk about a new graphics part. It would
combine a chipset and graphics processors all in one part for a desktop
computer. We said we’d like to use it in a notebook.

10:18am: Nvidia GeForce 9400M

Chipset and GPU on one die. 70% is GPU. 16 parallel graphics cores. 54 Gigaflops.

5 times faster than intel integrated graphics.

Call of Duty runs 6.2 times faster, Quake 4 five times faster.

82% as fast as the nvidia chip in the MacBook Pros.

10:20am: So still not the high end option, but big upgrade.

New trackpad. Multi-touch, and glass.

39% larger area. Multi touch. Glass for smooth travel. Entire
trackpad is the button. Multi button via software. new four finger
gestures.

(No physical button!)

New gestures for expose and app switching.

10:22am: So let’s take these technologies and make notebooks.

New MacBook Pro.

Black bezel.
LED backlight.

All connectors on one side.

Aluminum unibody.

Next gen graphics.

Glass trackpad.

Mini Display Port connector. This is going on all our products.

Black keyboard.

The unibody saves us 50% of the weight on the major structural parts.

Going to pass around one of the unibodies.

10:25am: Have people on the aisle to hand them out. Nice stagecraft.

Waiting to get it…

Teams of 100s of people have worked on this for many months.

10:26am: Just handled it. Super stiff, very light. Really is cool engineering.

(Our row is holding up the process…)

Lights back down.

You’re the first to get your hands on it.

We’re got the GeForce 9600M GT.

Both chips are in the computer! the 9400M, and the 9600M GT. 5 hours
of battery with the 9400, 4 with the 9600. Can switch between them.

10:29am: Superdrive.

Magsafe, ethernet, FW 800, no FW400, 2 USB 2.0 connectors, Mini display, audio in and out (Optical and digital.)

Expresscard 34.

Mini Display Port: new industry standard. Going in everything we make.

First Pro that we offer SSD on. Can access battery and drive.

10:30 802.11 N BT 2.1

.95 inches thick. Thinnest pro ever.

2 models.

$1999, 15.4 LED backlit, 2.4 Core 2 Duo, 3 MB, L2 2 GB memory, both graphics chips, 250 GB HD.

Shipping today. Should hit stores starting tomorrow.

Lots of new tech, but we’re just as proud of all the things we left out. We’re working on leaving out toxic chemicals.

First time we’ve earned an EPEAT gold environmental rating.

Now, we want to talk about the Air.

10:34am: Update with some new technologies.

Putting the 9400M in the Air, get 4x faster graphics for the air.

120GB HD instead of the 80.

And have 128 SSD as option.

Mini-display port.

799: 13.3 LED display, new graphics chip, 2 GB ram, 1.6GHZ Core 2 Duo.

10:35 2499 1.86GHZ proc, SSD drive.

New Air: early November.

Also, new 24-inch LED backlight cinema display.

Corner to corner glass.

10:36am: Cable from back — power cord, USB, mini display. Just plug the three things into your computer, and you’re set to go.

1920 x 1200 pixel, iSight and mic. Stereo speakers.

$899

10:37am: available in November.

A great companion to the MacBook Pro.

There’s one more thing. Of course, that’s the Macbook.

This is an amazing product. The best-selling Mac ever.

Entry price right now is $1099. Now, entry price is 999. We’ll just keep on selling these for a long time.

We’re heard from a lot of macbook customers. They want a metal enclosure, faster graphics, and they want LED backlit display.

These are the top three things we’ve heard, and we’re bringing them to the Macbook line.

New generation on top of the white plastic notebook.

It’s all new. Corner to corner glass, LED backlit display.

Unibody aluminum enclosure. Next gen graphics. Glass trackpad, Mini display port connector.

GeForce 9400M, 5x the performance of the old integrated graphics.

New trackpad with gestures.

New display connector.

5 hour battery life.

New display connector.

5 hour battery life.

10:41am: Also EPEAT Gold rated.

2 models.

$1299 entry level.

$1299: 13.3. display, 2.0GHZ core 2 duo, 3 MB cache. 2GB memory. 160GB HD. GeForece 9400M

$1599: 2.4 GHZ proc, 250GB HD, and backlit keyboard.

10:43am: Shipping today, should hit the stores tomorrow.
This is the sweet spot of our market. We’re going to give it to them at $1299.

Two new notebook families.

New way to build them, new graphics, new trackpad, and LED backlit displays,

Playing video, a little documentary.

Jony Ive talking…."We just decided to start over."

10:44am: (Battery display is now on the side of the computer)

Showing the manufacturing on the unibody.

13 milling operations from solid block to the finished part.

(Video is really rehashing much of what we’ve already heard.)

Oh, on the video, we just found out that the trackpad *is* a button. You press down on it to click.

So there still is a physical button — the trackpad itself.

10:50am: They’re really hitting the environmental message hard.

Ive: "I love how we don’t reserve our best ideas for our high end products."

Mark McClusky: "I haven’t said it yet, but they really are beautiful computers. Hope to get hands on with them."

But first, Q & A.

10:52am: Jobs: A few caveats: no questions about earnings, which are coming a week from today.

My blood pressure: 110/70. This is all I’m going to talk about on my health today.

Third, we’re not economists. So we’re not going to talk about the global financial meltdown.

Phil Schiller and Tim Cook up there with Steve.

Relationship with Nvidia: We’re the first to take this new chip to market. I know we’re going to be using lots of them.

10:54am: Blu-ray? Display Port?

As you know, HDMI is limited in resolution, so you can’t do our big 30-inch display.

Schiller: You can get to HDMI with connectors, we think display port is the connector of the future.

Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great from consumers, but the
licening of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting until it takes off.

Schiller: we also think we have a great HD solution in iTunes.

17-inch pro?

It will still be available, being refreshed.

Stealing demand from high-end to mid-end with the MacBook?

10:57am:

We might, but we’ll see what happens. We’ll see a refresh cycle triggered in both spaces, I think.

Size and weight difference on MacBook:

1.08 to .95 inches thick.

Weight 4.5 pounds on the MacBook.

Matte screen in the future:

We’re going straight glass screens. The vast majority prefer the glass screen. Image is crisper, colors are brighter.

You offset it by pushing a lot of light through it.

Netbook from Apple?

That’s a nascent market that’s just getting started, and we’ll see how it goes.

11:02am: Did Apple design the motherboards?

We design them all in house. (Says Steve, laughing)

Touchscreens?

We’ve experimented with it, but it hasn’t made a lot of sense to us.

Hands on area in the other room.

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Despite a raft load of nifty new features, Apple’s new Mac notebooks will have a hard time moving off store shelves during the economic crisis, industry analysts say.

"There
will be a lot of people looking at a lot of stuff at the Apple Store,
and they’ll probably come out with [iPod] nanos or shuffles," said Roger Kay, an analyst with Endpoint Technologies. "That’s
what people are going to feel like they’re going to afford this year."

At its special notebook event Tuesday, Apple refreshed its entire notebook line, adding faster processors, multitouch trackpads, aluminum enclosures and NVidia graphics
chipsets. In addition to adding new features, Apple is also making moderate price cuts for the MacBook and MacBook Air. However, analysts say Apple’s price cuts are not enough for the company to remain competitive in the face of a broad financial collapse.

"Out of all the [companies] who
will be under pressure, it will be Apple because the price points are
still significantly higher," ThinkPanmure analyst Vijay Rakesh said in a phone interview.

The entry-point MacBook
dropped from $1,100 to $999; the high-end MacBook Air equipped with a solid
state drive dropped from $2,600 to $2,500, but its standard
configuration offering remained at the same $1,800 price point. The
MacBook Pro prices remained static — with a $2,000 starting point.

Early in the event,
Apple boasted grabbing 39 percent of the notebook market in education,
surpassing Dell, one of its major competitors. Despite the significance
of this figure, it’s unlikely
Apple’s notebook refresh will enable Apple to retain its grip on this
market segment, Rakesh said.

"If you
look at the educational side, the question is, do public school
budgets suffice for next year?" he said.

Just
days before Apple’s notebook event, Rakesh and other analysts — including
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster and RBC Capitalist’s Michael Abramsky — said they were anticipating a sub-$1,000 notebook from Apple in order
for the corporation to hit its gross margin guidance for the fourth quarter.

Rakesh said Apple’s $999 MacBook was a disappointing entry into the sub-$1,000 category: Most analysts were hoping for Apple to announce an $800 or $900 notebook.

Rakesh added that Apple still has yet to set foot in the netbook market — cheap, low-powered devices designed for internet use that are soaring in popularity. However, in a Q&A session, Steve Jobs said the netbook category is too immature for Apple to enter.

"That’s a nascent market that’s just getting started, and we’ll see how it goes," Jobs said.

Meanwhile in trading, while Apple had gained a record-breaking 13 percent in share prices Monday and Tuesday, the stock deflated 5 percent by the end of the notebook event. However, stock drops have historically been
the case during Apple keynotes, and some are viewing selling stock during product announcements as a trading
strategy for investors.

See also:

• Hands On With the New MacBooks
• Steve Jobs Unveils Newer, Sexier Aluminum MacBooks
• Liveblog: Apple MacBook Event 2008
• Apple Teases New Notebook, Rumored Under $1,000
• Photos: Is This the MacBook ‘Brick’?
• Rumor Says That Apple Brick Will Be A Metal Brick
• Apple’s Brick: A Dual-Screen, Foldable Netbook?

Photo: Apple

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Mark McClusky just got to spend a bit of time playing with the new line of MacBooks. Here’s what he had to say about his experinces:

On his initial impression: They’re really beautiful pieces of hardware. The milling eliminates the plastic gasket around the front — this makes a huge difference. The MacBooks now feel sturdy and super-solid, much more polished than the plastic version.

On the Macbook Pro: It’s thinner, yes, but in actuality, just a hair wider than my old (one year old) MacBook Pro.

On the displays: They’re very bright. Colors are vibrant and pop more naturally. 

On the line-up as a whole: They’ve now got the same design language across their whole line…iMac, displays, and notebooks — all with that black bezel. This is a very solid update, and a lovely design tweak. But there are no huge game changers here. They’ve galvinized a lead, and let’s face it: no one can trigger object lust like Apple. 

[Editor's note: Instead of waiting for review samples to become available from Apple we're going to just purchase a top shelf MacBook and MacBook Pro. Expect a set of reviews in a few days, Labbers.]

(Photos by Jim Merithew for Wired.com)

Posted under Gadget Reviews

What better way to yell out your geek credentials than to snap on some cuff links (when you absolutely have to!) that have photographs of your favorite molecules on them?

Michael Davidson, a research scientist at Florida State University, has been taking photomicrographs or pictures through a microscope of molecules for years. Some of his work has appeared on neck ties and bed sets among other things.

The latest to carry his work are stainless steel cuff links that feature photomicrographs of the caffeine and testosterone molecule.

Davidson who works at the Optical Microscopy Division of the National High Magnetic Laboratory is open to custom photomicrographs of alloys, liquid crystals, superconductors and proteins among other things.

But those wanting to take the easier road can just get testosterone cuff links for $30 from ThinkGeek.

Photo: Molecular caffeine cufflinks/ ThinkGeek

[via Gadgettastic]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Can’t live with them, can’t live without them! Those black power cords are almost always annoying but there’s no way around it – unless manufacturers can license Fulton Innovation’s wireless power technology.

Fulton did a demo today integrating its technology into a blender to show how it can work in a “high powered device.” The blender works without a power cord or cable. It is placed on what Fulton calls countertop that has ‘eCoupled-enabled’

Here’s how it works. Fulton, which is a subsidiary of Amway, splits a power supply coil into two parts, one of which is built into a surface (hence the eCoupled-enabled surface) and the other is incorporated into the device to power or charge.

A shared electromagnetic field is generated when the power supply and receiving coils are positioned near each other, wirelessly transferring power to or charging the device, says Fulton.

An eCoupled-enabled surface recognizes devices with similar embedded technology technology and power is transferred from the supply coil to the receiving coil in the device.

There’s also an element of intelligence as the surface and the device communicate to monitor and adapt the power to meet the needs of the device, says the company.

So far Fulton has demonstrated the idea in cellphones and MP3 players that require lower power (five watts or less) but now it says it can wirelessly power kitchen devices such as blenders, grills and coffee makers that require kilowatts of power.

But here’s the catch. Fulton has been promising this for at least two years now.

It showed the technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2007 and offered the same list of partners – Motorola, Leggett & Platt and Herman Miller- that it says it is working with to make power and charging cords obsolete.

Fulton says its engineers have been working on the technology for nearly 10 years now.

So while its latest blender is neat, it looks like Fulton Innovation hasn’t made much progress beyond the concept stage.

The video of the wireless blender:

Posted under Gadget Reviews

A thread on AdGooroo have declared that the internet (and its younger, tech-savvy partisan users) allowed the Illinois senator to bypass traditional media and claim the Democratic nomination. Recently, the Obama campaign released an iPhone app that helps followers recruit supporters.

UC Berkeley Public Policy professor Jack Glaser told Wired.com in an e-mail that people’s feeling of powerlessness in the election process makes them resort “to all kinds of related (but inefficacious) activities.” And it’s especially true “when they pay close attention” like they are in this election, he said.

Most of the symbols depict Sen. Barack Obama as cutting edge, Sen. Joe Biden as wise, Sen. John McCain as old, and Gov. Sarah Palin as ditzy, and are created by people compelled to express their support.

Still, Glaser says, these are mostly funny “but not too deep.”

Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia thinks there’s something more meaningful to this categorization-type of thinking. He suggests the “Obama equals something” illustrations that involve technology could indicate a trend that is tapping into the power of brands.

In an unpublished study by Project Implicit, a public research project where people explore their own biases and attitudes, Nosek reveals they’ve found that “liberals are more pro-Apple and conservatives more pro-Windows … The same is true when the contrast is Open Source versus Microsoft.”

For example, Apple’s slogan “Think Different” is a decidedly unconventional and authority-challenging statement, according to Nosek. “Apple’s brand emphasis on style, hip culture, creativity are all associations that liberals tend to find more attractive than conservatives, and this appeal appears to extend to implicit evaluations of the companies and brands.” So it’s not a huge stretch to say the same type of people would be equating Obama’s barrier-busting candidacy to these same type of gadgets.

Then again, the apparent authority of Apple as a liberal mainstay doesn’t always hold true. Famously conservative pundit and radio shock jock
Rush Limbaugh is a huge Apple fan, as he noted earlier this year in one
of his broadcasts.

All Project Implicit findings are made through the famed Implicit Association Test, which measures the “strength of automatic association between mental representations of objects (concepts) in memory,” and was famously profiled in the book Blink as a measure of racial attitudes.

But the makeup and general interest of the illustrations also suggest that they go beyond political associations, especially the ones featuring the iPhone and the browsers.

Sriram Natarajan, also with Project Implicit, says that if the creative interests of the people who posted these were measured, you’d find similar personality types.

For example, a Flickr user from New York named Andrea posted over 100
of the illustrations she liked best from the Fark site to her own photo
page, in “a fit of boredom and amusement.” A self-described “bleeding
heart liberal,” her favorite illustration is the one depicting Obama as
the iPhone, Biden as a Blackberry, Palin as a toy phone, and McCain as
a lost carrier pigeon.

Natarajan says Andrea’s reason for posting these is likely due to
her savvy understanding of tech culture, even more than just knowing
how to upload Flickr pictures. She is likely a “creative individual” and “probably works in the tech industry and very much plugged
into pop culture,” he said. “It was probably intrinsically rewarding for her.”

Measuring these associations using the Implicit Association Test would be possible only if the people taking the test are familiar with the distinctions between the different gadgets, Natajaran said.

So just like many other internet memes that grow beyond their bounds,
these images tell us more about the people creating them than about the
content implicit in the original images. They also show that people’s election
obsessions easily plug in to their already-established obsessions,
observations, and inevitably, their wish fulfillment.

So when a gadget-happy tech insider sees Obama, they’re likely to envision a multifaceted, high-tech device that will change their lives.

Let’s just hope that if Obama wins, there are no 3G-type, cut-and-paste bumps in the road for his administration.

Posted under Gadget Reviews

A Christian university in Texas recently invested a lot of faith — and
money — in Apple when the school treated its 1,000 freshman students to their
choice of a free iPod touch or iPhone.

Abilene Christian
University’s freshman class has been using the devices as part of a
pilot mobile learning project, with which teachers are exploring the
possibility of enhancing education with the internet and multimedia.
The university even programmed its own suite of web applications for students to use in class.

About 650 students chose the iPhone 3G, and 300 picked the iPod touch, according to a NetworkWorld story. Students who opted for the iPhone are responsible for paying their own monthly plan with AT&T.

“I use [the iPhone] in four of my five classes,” said Halie Davis, an ACU student, in an interview with NetworkWorld.
“If your teacher says ‘get out your iPhone and look up a word’ you can
do a Google search or check Wikipedia on the Internet. It’s really
fast.”

ACU isn’t the only university looking to incorporate the iPhone into education. Recently, Apple launched its iPhone Developer University Program, which provides universities with free resources to teach students how to develop iPhone apps. Stanford University was one of the first to offer an iPhone app developing course as part of its computer science program.

iPhones go to front of the class at Texas university [NetworkWorld]

Posted under Gadget Reviews

The quirky Ame de Wataame (Cotton Candy from Candy) device is a miniature cotton candy machine that turns hard candy into allegedly delicious fluffs of sugary goodness.

Like a real cotton candy machine, the Ame de Wataame contains a heater, which melts the candy in a small compartment and blows the sugar out through tiny holes that can be twirled into a fluffy ball on a chopstick.

All for the low price of $160 (not including shipping from Japan). What are you waiting for? It’s like a carnival in your house, minus the roller coasters, clowns and lost children.

Check out the video below the jump.

Product Page [Japan Trend Shop via DVICE]

Photo: Japan Trend Shop

Posted under Gadget Reviews

As the number of computing devices used by the average user increases – desktop at work, notebook at home, mobile phone for email and web browsing- moving data across these has become a challenge.

Two researchers at IBM have devised a way to make it easier to manage multiple devices and transfer files, images and other information seamlessly.

Think of it as instant messaging for your computing systems, they say, where different devices are almost like friends on your buddy list and can be connected with depending on whether a particular device is online or offline.

Data management is an emerging yet a growing problem today, says Michael Gartenberg, vice president at research firm Jupitermedia.

“They are absolutely 100% on the right track here,” says Gartenberg. “What they are doing is very, very important because consumers are using a whole host of devices and very few, if any, are thinking how to make that device usage seamless.”

A quick survey of 27 IBM researchers and Stanford faculty showed that most people carry nearly six devices including their PCs at work, home and mobile phones.

“We have more devices than ever that we work with but each assumes it is the only one,” says Jeff Pierce, a researcher at IBM’s Almaden Research Center who will be presenting the software at a user interface software conference in Monterey, California next week.

Most computer users today have a USB stick to shift information from one device to another or email documents and presentations
back and forth.

“It’s like your devices don’t want to co-ordinate with one another,” says Pierce.

That’s why Pierce and colleague Jeff Nichols have created a
nifty program with a rather cumbersome name, Personal Information
Environment or PIE as they like to call it.

The idea is to allow applications on a device to easily send information, events and commands to each other, says Pierce.

The system detects whether a device is currently switched on and works through firewalls, dynamic IP addresses and machines behind proxy servers.

PIE is based on the instant messaging architecture. It uses Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol also known as Jabber or XMPP and has multiple clients connecting to a server.

Users have to create a single account and each one of their devices is authenticated by the server. By default, an application only receives messages from the user’s own devices. Individual applications connect to the client and it handles routing messages to and from the server.

Each device from a user has a small client program running on it and transferring data is as easy as drag and drop.

Once the devices are connected to through the PIE system, Pierce says, middleware services can be added on top of it.

The system also lets users search across devices from a single point. A keyword is typed into a central interface but the search is executed locally across the many devices connected to the system.

There isn’t anything quite that promises the kind of seamless data synchronization across devices that PIE does, says Gartenberg. “What we do have is a little bit of data synchronization here and there and depending on the back end systems calendar synchronization,” he says.

Currently, the PIE software is available to some IBM employees for test. Based on feedback, IBM could either choose to integrate it into one of its email and messaging products from its Lotus division or make it available through alphaWorks, the company’s website that showcases emerging technology. An iPhone App could also be a possibility, says Pierce.

Gartenberg says if IBM can get the software out it could have a winner on its hands. “This problem isn’t something that most people are paying attention to right now,” he says. “So whoever gets it right can win very, very big.”

Posted under Gadget Reviews

Twenty three universities have agreed to share and combine their digitized content, including millions of scanned books and documents, in one gigantic, 78-terabyte library that launched Monday.

Called the HathiTrust, the depository contains digital content from 11 University of California libraries and a 12-university consortium that forms the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, which includes the University of Michigan and the University of Chicago.

Before the HathiTrust launched, digital content was isolated to each university library, according to John Wilkin, associate university librarian of the University of Michigan, who was named the executive director of HathiTrust.

“This effort combines the expertise and resources of some of the
nation’s foremost research libraries and holds even greater promise as
it seeks to grow beyond the initial partners,” Wilkin said in a press release.

HathiTrust is similar to Google’s Book Search project, which has formed partnerships with several major universities and public libraries who have lent their materials to the search-engine giant for digitization. However, while Google Book Search’s seemingly altruistic mission is to provide “a tool that can … help remove the barriers between people
and information and benefit the publishing community at the same time,”
the corporation profits from advertisements displayed near digitized pages.

HathiTrust, by contrast, exists purely for universities to share their
information with one another, with the goal of fostering advancements
in research.

Nonetheless, the HathiTrust project will likely encounter controversy regarding copyright infringement, as Google has in the past. Critics of Book Search have said the service commits “massive copyright infringement,” even though Google argues its digital content sharing is considered Fair Use.

Press Release [HathiTrust]

Photo: Dawn Endico/Flickr

Posted under Gadget Reviews

There’s no doubt many are sitting on the edge of their seats over what Apple, the fashion designer of computers, will unveil at Tuesday’s special event.

To take the edge off, Edible Apple has come up with a drinking game dedicated to the occasion. Sounds like jolly good fun. I’d especially like to see #2 and #12.

See also:

• Apple’s New Notebooks: What We Should Expect
• Apple Teases New Notebook, Rumored Under $1,000
• New Leaked Shots of MacBooks and MacBook Pros
• Photos: Is This the MacBook ‘Brick’?

Steve Jobs Drinking Game [Edible Apple via Digg]

Image: Edible Apple

Posted under Gadget Reviews

A new application enables iPhone owners to stick it to the man with the powers of social networking.

Trapster, a free app developed by a company that goes by the same name, follows a driver’s location as a dot on a map. If the driver passes by a police officer camping out with a radar gun, the driver can tap the iPhone to plot a speed-trap point. Trapster transfers that data point to a server, and then other drivers using Trapster will be alerted of that speed trap when they come across the same location.

It’s unclear how well this app will work, seeing as it relies on user-reported data. I’m slightly pessimistic that it would help much: When I see a cop on the street, the last thing I want to do is touch my phone, seeing as I could be pulled over because of the new hands-free handset law.

You can see a video demo of the product at Trapster’s web site.

Download Link [iTunes via Twitter]

Photo: Trapster

Posted under Gadget Reviews