PMPs – Serious Gaming platforms ??

 

 

 With the announcement by Microsoft yesterday that Zune would be getting multiplayer gaming it enters a new domain  , one in which Apple has long involved with. Apple’s launch of the iPhone and iPod touch increased the expectations of users as to what kind of games can be played. And with the imminent announcement of the iPhone/iPod touch SDK , its guaranteed that apple would soon be selling games developed by game industry leaders such as Gameloft( who are supposedly developing games for apple) .

Mac Vs PC – Fight!!!!!!

Ah ! The ever waging war between the apple fanboys and the windows users never seems to die down. One of the basis of comparison is the cost.Many people use the price comparison as a way to validate their choice for what platform they are using as if somehow saving $100 will justify the all the time spent on this computer rather than that one. Normally it starts off with a pc troll boasting how a Dell with a similar config costs $400 less.Then the Mac Zealot will counter with how different the specs really are and when he goes to the Dell site, it’s actually $175 more. Cue the recent Dell buyer who claims he got his for $450 below the listed price by using the last Friday of the month special code. Then of course Linux Larry jumps in with how he built his Linux box from spare parts in Mom’s basement and only spent $17 for a new power supply and did it over a fun-filled three day weekend!!

Apple posts Leopard Guided Tour

Apple’s been all about the video guided tours lately, and with Leopard just around the corner, the company’s gone ahead and put John, The Classy Salt-and-Pepper Apple Store Employee, in front of the camera to walk you through the new release. Nothing particularly new to report, but it’ll keep the fanboys warm for another week.

Leopard: final features and further upgrade details

Few of the Features u shld look out for!

• Users who bought Apple machines from October 1st on can participate in Apple’s Up-To-Date Program, which provides free Leopard upgrades (for $10 shipping).
• Boot Camp’s beta Assistant software expires at the end of 2007, meaning Tiger users that want to continue editing / creating Windows partitions on their Macs need to do so before January, or upgrade to Leopard. Post-January you’ll still be able to boot to the partitions you’ve created, though.
• Users shouldn’t expect expanded sync capabilities between Mail.app and the iPhone, although it looks like you’ll be able to read iPhone notes on your desktop machine now.
• File system is, indeed, still HFS+; OS X now supports read-only ZFS, as we’d heard.
• Don’t forget to peep the new features / changes list on Apple’s site.
• Call us crazy, but with a 6:00PM Friday launch we think you should expect lines — but not for Apple to sell out.

A few features we’re looking forward to (besides the obvious ones):

• Google Maps integration with Address Book.
• Tricked out AppleScript.
• Automator UI recording / playback.
• Japanese dictionary support.
• New, easily-printable font books.
• Front Row now looks more like “Back Row” (the Apple TV interface) — too bad it’s still not more like Media Center.
• New AirPort menus that show WiFi encryption.
• Disk encryption now supports 256 bit AES.
• Built-in grammar checker. Lord knows we need it ’round these parts.
• Tabbed terminal.

Apple Officially Announces Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

Today Apple announced that Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) will go on sale on Friday, October 26th at 6 p.m. at Apple retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. Apple’s online store will start accepting pre-orders as of today.

“Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve
ever released,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And everyone gets the
‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just
$129.”

Apple has also updated their Mac OS X Leopard pages with a new look.

Ultra-Portable Mac Connector System?

Appleinsider points to a a patent application as a possible connector design for the rumored ultra-portable Apple laptop.

Apple explains that “as notebook computers are becoming increasingly thinner … connections systems need to be reduced in size to accommodate smaller form factors.”

One limiting factor, however, that prevents further size reduction is the actual size of the largest connector port (such as the Ethernet port, or Firewire port). To work around this limitation, Apple has proposed to essentially create collapsible ports housed in a “connection system” that you an open and close. In the closed position, the ports collapse to a smaller size, allowing the entire form factor of the computer to be thinner. When open, the ports expand to their full size.

Accordingly, this collapsing function enables a substantial reduction in the size of the connection system and thereby enables a substantial reduction in the form factor of a device implementing the connection system”

The patent application was first filed back in September of 2005, so may or may not find its way into a future Apple product, but Appleinsider has been expected an “ultra-portable” Apple laptop later this year or early next.

Intel’s Penryn Xeon Processors Due in November

TheRegister.co.uk reports that the first Intel Penryn chips will be formally launched on November 11th. The report apparently comes from Intel’s own website for dealers.

The first of the Penryn processors will be Xeon CPUs and come in 2.00GHz, 2.33GHz, 2.50GHz, 2.66GHz, 2.83GHz, 3.00GHz and 3.16GHz speeds with 1333MHz frontside buses. The 45nm chips are expected to be Quad-Core chips with 12MB of L2 cache.

Apple currently uses Xeon (server-class) processors in their Mac Pro computers. According to our Buyer’s Guide the Mac Pro was last updated to an 8-Core configuration in April of this year. However, the base Quad-core configurations have not been updated since their first release in August 2006.

The current Mac Pros offer Quad-Core configurations of 2.0GHz, 2.66GHz, and 3.0GHz (65nm, 4MB L2 Cache per Processor) and a 8-Core configuration at 3.0GHz (65nm, 8MB L2 Cache per Processor).

iLife ‘08 Introduced

Today Apple introduced iLife ‘08. The suite will ship on all new Macs starting today. Alternatively, the suite will be available to prior Mac users for $79. If you purchased your Mac on or after August 7th and did not get iLife ‘08, you can get it for $9.95.

iPhoto
-Events is a new way to automatically organize ever-expanding iPhoto libraries into events.
-Automatically hide/show photos based on star rating
-New Books and Calendars
-.Mac Web Gallery: Enhanced, web 2.0 photo galleries compatible with any browser. “Contribute from anywhere”… Allows you (or anyone) to add to web gallery from the internet or from the iPhone.

iMovie
-Completely new, designed to create a movie in 30 minutes or less.
-Video Library manages video source material
-Takes video from “any source” (HDV, still cameras that do video, AVCHD, etc…)
-Share menu includes support for exporting for iPod, iPhone, Apple TV. “Large resolution is better than DVD”
-.Mac Web Gallery and YouTube integration

iDVD
-”Professional Encoding”
-Better performance
-New themes

Magic Garageband
-Multi-take recording
-A way to experiment via auditioning multiple genres
-Visual EQ
-New Vocals Jam Pack

iWeb
-Web Widgets: live content from other sites
-Google Maps and Adsense
-My Albums: Simplify navigation by dragging your photo albums to a sleek, animated index page.
-Enhanced Photo Pages: Display up to 500 photos per album, complete with auto-pagination and viewing options.
-Theme Switching
-Personal domain name support

A Guided Tour is available.

Apple has also issued a few software updates for iLife ‘08:

iPhoto 7.0.1
This update to iPhoto addresses issues associated with publishing photos from an upgraded library to .Mac Web Gallery.
Front Row 1.3.1
This Front Row update provides for improved iPhoto compatibility.
Aperture 1.5.4
Aperture 1.5.4 is required for compatibility with iLife ‘08. This update is recommended for all Aperture users.

New iMacs Released

Apple has announced new iMacs at its press event today. The iMacs start at $1199 and come in 20 and 24″ form factors, as rumored, and will feature a more professional look.

Features:
-Up to 2.8 GHz Core 2 Extreme Processor
-Up to 4 GB Memory
-ATI Radeon HD Graphics
-Up to 1 TB Hard Disk
-Wireless 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.0

Also, Apple indicated that the keyboard that was previously leaked is indeed the new keyboard for the iMac.

Word of the iMac redesign first appeared in March from AppleInsider, though ThinkSecret was later able to corroborate the story and provide an exact date of release.

The new iMacs are available from the Apple Store (UK Store).

More Pics here

Latest iPods to be flash-based, only up to 16GB?

Taiwanese paper DigiTimes put out a report (read: rumor) on this year’s iPod line (supposedly due this September), which is said to be primarily flash based (up to 16GB), eschewing hard drives entirely. 80 down to 16GB? One step forward, two steps back — so yeah, we hope so, but not really.

read more here