Apple Of My Eye

In a move confirmed today by some of Apple's iTunes representatives, the Apple music store will see lower prices for albums across the board. After an announcement yesterday that Universal would not be continuing their partnership with Apple, there must have been some nervousness in the Apple headquarters. It seems the announcement that many albums' prices will be lowered to around 6 dollars could not have come at a better time.

Artists who will be selling cheaper albums include LCD Soundsystem, Peter, Bjorn and John and Hot Chip, and I'm certain we will see many more music labels signing up over the next few weeks. As an added bonus, some of the tracks are iTunes Plus, so there is no DRM. This- and the fact that the albums are cheaper than you would find them in a bargain bin- will only help to close iTunes hold on the internet music market. So if you're contemplating puchasing a new album over the next few weeks, check out iTunes before you head down to your overpriced local record store...

It's really wierd that when you have been waiting so long for something and you finally get it, it takes on some kind of higher meaning. During a rainstorm last night, I was awoken because I though water was dripping through the ceiling onto my beloved Macbook Pro. Normally I would have slept right on through it, but the thought of a drenched Macbook Pro brought me out of my slumbers. The good news is that it was all just my imagination, and after a couple more hours of use the Macbook Pro is still going strong. I am starting to learn more about the UI (User Interface), such as how to scroll down using two fingers, and the way the touchpad works. I calibrated my battery yesterday, and downloaded a few more widgets (try iStat Pro, the best one I've seen so far.

Another thing I noticed when testing the laptop was the battery indicator on its underside: by pressing a button on the battery, you can see how much battery remains without turning on the Macbook Pro. Not new, I know, but still very handy... I tried out a few more of the programs yesterday, such as Adress Book and iTunes, which are both solid pieces of software; I know the functionality has been around for a while now but Cover Flow is fantastic: seeing all your albums artwork fly by and then picking one out is much more satisfying than choosing from a list, don't you think? This evening I am thinking of trying out Boot Camp and installing XP.

Take a closer look; you may have glanced over the image above this post, but if you know your way around Apple's product you will be able to see that this is a wireless Mighty Mouse with a twist. All those little squares and arrows you see on the image are the pieces of technolgy which are used in Multi-Touch, Apple's latest innovation. The accompaniing notes will have a completely transparent shell, with a strong light source contained inside. The multi-touch effect is created when the user touches the shell; reflecting some of the light back where there is contact. The internal sensor then uses positional software to interpret the user's movements. In theory at least, this could help move all of Apple's computer products forward without requiring Multi-Touch to be integrated into the hardware. This would present a low cost way of furthering Apple's lead in terms of innovation.

We can only hope that they do something good with this idea, rather than using the patent as a barrier to other companies who are considering testing out Multi-Touch.

I was so infatuated with my new Macbook Pro last night that I couldn't bear to be separated from it, and thus I didn't really want to write a review. Instead, I wrote a little bit about my first thoughts: this post is a redux review, if you like.... I am now at work so I can't play with my new toy!

Well, there are many things I didn't cover in my "review" yesterday, and they are mostly small things. The weird thing is, with Apple products, its the small things that make the difference. For example, I was astounded when my Mac picked up our wireless network as soon as I turned it on, even as it was still installing the Operating System. Once you get Safari up and running, you will notice that pages load very quickly, much quicker than your average PC web browser such as IE or Firefox (until Safari for Windows came out..): this is partly to do with the pipelineing of Safari-it loads pages before all the information has been obtained, rather than waiting until everything has been transferred to your computer.


I was really curious to see how the Macbook Pro deals with sound as it has unusually large speakers on either side of the keyboard. I copied the new Editors album into iTunes yesterday (quickly, but more on that later), and then blasted out the first track at full volume. I'm not bragging, but this laptop must have the best speakers on the market: by making them bigger, the sound quality is great, without that trademark tinny feedback- the compromise you make with small speakers. As an added bonus, the audio team at Apple have somehow managed to produce lots of bass from the speakers, something which I have never seen in a 15" laptop. The CD drive, as I highlighted early, is very quick whilst remaining quiet. The only time it makes any noise is when you put a disk inside, one of the features which I love most about this piece of technology. In terms of its speed, it copies CD's fast, although it takes about a minute to get up to full speed. Once the CD is inside there is no audible noise, and the drive has not caused any scratches on any of my test CDs so far.

One of the main selling points of an Apple computer is the software it comes packaged with. Previous incarnations have had people complaining that there is nothing to replace theOffice suite (Word, Excel) you get but that problem has been eliminated with the invention of Boot Camp and Parallels. The presentation of Vista shows massive similarities with Tiger, which was around before Windows had even thought of creating a new OS. Can you imagine what Leopard's going to do to Vista's (already poor) market share? I can only laugh: Vista is pretty crap, and isn't having the impact expected: Leopard is going to come along and whipe the floor with Windows, hopefully increasing Apple's market share in the computer market. But enough on that: the software included is really cool to use: things like Photo Booth and Garage Band are great time wasters and you even get free trials of .Mac, Aperture and Office Mac. Aperture is a great way to test the inbuilt camera, which has seen an upgrade from 1.3 to 2 Megapixels.
Finally, something which has been covered many times before, but I just can't get over why someone didn't think of it before. The Magsafe system (whereby the power cable is held in by magnets, and pops out if pulled) is so smart, and it really works. Tugging the power cable accidentally no longer results in your laptop crashing to the floor or being pulled off a surface: the power adapter simply pops out. This cheap idea really makes you think... most companies would want their laptops to fall and break, as then consumers would buy a new one. Apple are different: they really do care about their customers!

Its the small things which count? As Apple shows with this intelligently designed product, that definitely is true. Well, over the next few weeks I'm sure you will probably be seeing a Redux Redux version, as I discover more about the latest addition to the Macbook Pro line.

I can't quite express how I feel right now, but today something happened which I have been waiting for for a long, long time. Due to a great deal of luck and some extreme generosity from my parents, I am now the proud owner of a 2.2 Ghz Macbook Pro. Yes, one of the new ones, with the Santa Rosa platform and the LED screen.

I'm not sure why, but when I started inquiring about the new Macbook Pro's a couple of weeks after they were released, I was sent a message saying that there was limited stock. After calling all my local stores every couple of days, I was so happy today when the representative at my local store told me they had 5 in stock. My Mum went down (I was at work) this morning, and came back to the house clutching a nice looking box labeled Macbook Pro. When I got home, I was so excited about this amazing piece of design that I took about 10 minutes getting the box open. After I did that, I was again privy to one of the most intuitive pieces of packaging I've seen in my life.

The coolest thing about Apple products is their simplicity: once I got the thing out of it's box and unpackaged all the accessories, I turned on the laptop and it began the initialization sequence (Apple ID etc..). Once I had restarted after installing updates, it worked perfectly, straight out of the box. That in itself is a very impressive aspect of this product, but it only gets better as you spend more time with it. The first thing you notice when you take it out of the box is its design: its hard to deny that this laptop is a sexy machine, all sleek silver and perfectly rounded corners. The next thing is the screen: one of the main selling points of this laptop is the fantastic LED screen: the resolution is nothing short of incredible and the contrast ratio must be huge (bright whites, and dark blacks.

Once you log on, you will be struck by the speed of the machine- rather than tacking things together like most PC producers, Apple have put together a well rounded machine with fully integrated systems, and it shows. The processor is very quick, and doesn't struggle under heavy usage due to the 2Gb of RAM which is 667 Mhz, a step up from the previous incarnation. There is also a better graphics card this time around, but I haven't had time to test the 3D abilities of the Pro. In terms of the hardware, I can't really fault it, other than the fact that it's quite expensive (although you are paying for a quality product).

Said laptop is calling to me at the moment, so I'm going to have to stop there before I bore you. I would be more than happy to continue writing about this if anyone in the blogosphere is curious about the new Macbook Pro. If you want to contact me about some particular aspect of the laptop, leave a comment.

Official figures have not been released yet, but there has been confident speculation that over 700,000 iPhones were sold over the 3 day period since Friday. This would make the iPhone launch the biggest of any commercial product ever, which is very impressive. Apple can be confident in the fact that although they have not produced the best specced product, the great user interface has attracted a huge audience: with this insight it looks like that 10 million target could be reached by the end of the year. You can only hope that now the iPhone hype is over, Apple will transfer more resources back to their other products and release them to the same success.

Another interesting tidbit: Steve Jobs is giving free iPhones to everyone who has worked for Apple for over a year. Business Times figures state that the official figure will be 17,000. That's a lot of iPhones to give away, but its great that Apple are showing their reliance on their employees.

You would think that a company who are known to have "street-smarts" like Apple would think things through before launching a new product. But no, instead of looking over the net to see what domains were available, Apple named their product the iPhone. Now we have all heard of the Sisco-Apple debacle which occured when Apple first tried to name their product, but it turns out that there have been more recent going-ons concerning the phone. According to sources, Apple have been losing a huge amount of potential website traffic due to one website, www.iphone.com. If you click that hyperlink, you will notice that it redirects you to the Apple website, but this was not always the case. The domain name, previously owned by entrepeneur Michael Kovatch, was bought by Apple yesterday for an undisclosed seven-digit sum. The funny thing is, Kovatch was planning to build a business around the title iPhone since he aqcuired the domain in 1995, but it looks like Apple beat him to it!

Imagine my surprise when a "source" revealed earlier this morning that there was to be a serious upgrade on the macbook line this October to coincide with the release of Leopard. It seems Apple were waiting for the dust to settle after the iPhone weekend before releasing any information or continuing work on any of their other product lines; it was announced this morning that half a million iPhones were sold over the weekend. But I'm not writing this post to talk about the iPhone, which I think has received more than enough coverage over the last couple of weeks. I heard through the grapevine early this morning that Apple is going to be integrating multi-touch™ software into their computers over the coming year. In particular, the macbook was mentioned, which would lend itself well to a multi-touch upgrade. There has even been talk of including multi touch technology in the touch-pad of the 13.3" notebook, rather than making the whole screen multi-touch compatible, which would likely rack the price up by a large proportion of the original cost.

Whatever Apple chooses to do, there is a massive amount of potential in terms of how this could affect the way Apple laptops work. If they play their cards right and fully patent this technology on laptops, then they could increase their market share considerably (from the 6% they have at the moment). Think about it; can you imagine how cool it would be to scroll through your iTunes library with cover flow on your small multi-touch scrollpad whilst doing some intense photo editing with CS3?

Just found some images over at AppleInsider of Steve Wozniak, Apple's co-creator, who was first in line at Santa Clara retail store, just as he had said he would be. He waited patiently for hours to buy the phone, even though Steve Jobs had promised to send him one on Saturday. And his reason; he wanted to "see the future early" and the wait in the line was a celebration: as the iPhone had finally been finished.

Wozniak sounds really cool; although he was treated like a VIP once inside the store, he was perfectly happy to mingle with the crowd whilst in the queue, and he stayed behind after he clamped his hands on the beatiful little box housing one of the phones, rather than making a quick exit. He even handed out t-shirts similar to his own, all of which said "The line starts here" on the back.

Update: The 1800 or so AT&T have sold out of iPhones, according to official spokesperson Mark Spiegel. The status of the apple stores around the USA wasn't revealed. If you are looking to order off of the Apple website, they will be shipping the 8GB versions in around 4 weeks.

Well, it seems the initial hype for the iPhone which caused thousands of people to wait in massive queues was slightly over exaggerated; once the dust setteled- from the iFever that has dominated the press for the last 6 months- it turns out that there are still piles of iPhones sitting idly in stores across the USA. Gizmodo have said that when they called up a selection of Apple stores every one had a plentiful supply of the phones. This bodes very well for Apple and Steve Jobs in particular; rather than having a dry spell for the next few months whilst more of the phones are produced, Apple's sales can continue to rise because they have produced more iPhones than the initial demand. If you were on of those who didn't bother to visit your local AT&T dealer or Apple store, get down there now and you might have a chance of laying your hands on one of the phones before they sell out. Just bear in mind that you might have an excruciatingly long wait before you can actually start using it; there have been thousands of complaints that people's iPhones aren't activating. It seems the AT&T EDGE system is struggling with the initial demands of that many iPhones, but I'm sure that will settle down.