Photo: Apple

At their special ‘Back to Mac’ event, Apple unveiled the new iLife suite. The company also took the opportunity to discuss how they applied their learnings from Mac OS X to the iPhone when that launched. The iPhone itself then influenced the iPad, with the iPad now influencing Mac OS X Lion, the new operating system unveiled. But all of that seems trivial next to the new hardware Apple unveiled. The new Macbook Air is that hardware, and while going into the event I didn’t care for it, Apple sure has my attention now.

13.3-inch and 11.6-inch

Apple unveiled two computers – a 13.3-inch LED backlit air with a 1440×900 display, as well as the long-rumoured 11.6-inch Macbook Air with a resolution of 1368×768. The defining feature is that the computers have no optical drives whatsoever, while storage is provided by SSD drives.

Why this is huge

The announcement of this computer is a particularly big deal because it could be a deathblow to the already ailing CD. Who uses them anymore? Well, hardly anybody. So we may as well kill them altogether, yes? Yes.

It’s also particularly huge because it places the new Macbook Air right in line with the current Macbook. Starting at $999 (£650) in the US for the 11.6-inch model and ranging to $1,599 (£1,040) for the top of the range 13.3-inch model, at the sacrifice of a tiny bit of processing power – still an Intel Core 2 Duo – with 2GB of memory out the box, we’re excited about this computer’s prospects. Keep your eyes peeled for our review, and if Photoshop doesn’t make it fall over, we may have a new crush.

Photo: Western Digital

So you’ve just picked up your fancy Western Digital external hard drive and you want it to start putting in work, but it isn’t formatted properly or, even worse, formatted at all, what do you do? Here’s a dead simple guide to formatting an external hard drive using a Mac computer.

First: NTFS, FAT32, and Mac OS X

First things first, it is likely you want your hard drive to work on pretty much any computer you install it, right? Right! So you need to be careful to avoid compatibility issues across platforms by selecting the correct hard drive formatting procedure.

If you format your drive on a Mac OS X without selecting specific settings, only other Macs can read it – as in Windows won’t even see it. If you format your drive on a Windows OS using NTFS, you will have read-write issues on your Mac.

If, however you format your drive on Windows or Mac with FAT32, well you’re sorted – you can read and write data across both major desktop operating system platforms.

How to format your external hard drive using a Mac

Now to the actual hard drive formatting procedure: remember, when formatting a drive, you will lose all the data you may have on their (if any), so make sure to back it up if its important to you.

Now, formatting an external hard drive on the Mac for use on Windows and Mac is a dead simple eight step plan:

Step 1 – Plug in your drive, naturally.

Step 2 – Select Finder > Application > Utilities

Step 3 – Double click the Disk Utility application

Step 4 – Within the Disk Utility app, select the drive you’re formatting in the left hand column

Step 5 – Select the erase tab

Step 6 – Now at the ‘Volume Format’ option, select ‘MS-DOS File System’. This is basically the FAT32 disk type that will let your drive work on both Windows and Mac machines.

Step 7 – You’ll be asked to confirm you’re formatting for both Mac and Windows, followed by an erase prompt. Select that erase prompt. (Warning: this data will be gone if you have not backed it up so make sure to back it up first!)

Step 8 – you’ll be asked to confirm that you really do want to perform the erase procedure. Select the erase button again to affirm that you do want to.

When you know what to do, hard drive formatting isn’t nearly as difficult as it may seem, and we hope this guide has made the process as dead simple as it really is.

Photo: Microsoft

Remember those once classic ‘Get a Mac’ ads that ran for so long they got pretty, well, boring toward the end? Yes? Well, get this, in a move as strange as it is revelatory, Microsoft has its own ‘Get a PC’ page – if you will – helping potential users choose between the two platforms.

Strange positioning, huh?

The widely discussed ‘Deciding between a PC and a Mac’ page is a decidedly strange move for a Microsoft riding on a Windows 7 high. And it also shows a Microsoft with its back to the wall – somewhat unnecessarily, too.

Tell us how you really feel

Essentially the page takes the old ‘Get a Mac’ archetype and tells the story from a Microsoft perspective. Harsh comment after harsh comment soon followed. ‘You can’t get a Mac that ships with a Blu-ray player, TV tuner, Memory Stick reader, or built-in 3G wireless. You can with PCs running Windows 7’ reads one comment that was preceded by a ‘Macs might spoil your fun’ comment. On top of that Microsoft harps on about everything a Mac cannot do, or does badly. Macs ‘have a learning curve’ and they ‘don’t like to share’ plus they ‘don’t let you choose’. Macs might not even like your ‘PC Stuff’. Them be fighting words, Microsoft.

Super strange Twitter feed

Photo: Apple

And what’s more, Microsoft have a clearly filtered ‘what the buzz is about’ scrolling Twitter feed on the right hand column of the ‘deciding between a Mac and a PC’ page. All the feel-good things people are saying about the company pop up, but not one of the not-so-happy comments make it through. Not even a neutral comment creeps through, taking away from the authenticity of the ‘conversation’. Really, if Microsoft believes in the product that much, perhaps they should let users also voice their opinions.

Honestly, this ‘Get a Mac’ or ‘Get a PC’ or ‘PC vs. Mac’ thing is tired. Microsoft would be better served if they focused on making sublime products. Windows 7 OS is one such sublime product, no question, but what’s next? ‘Get a Mac’ got tired because it was overdone. Computer shoppers are at the point where, in all honesty, quality is everything because information on what is quality is readily available. The best things tend to bubble to the top that way – didn’t your earnings report confirm that, Microsoft?

Photo: gynti_46 / Flickr

It was inevitable that the unmitigated success that is Windows 7 would soon pass the unmitigated disaster that was Windows Vista. That has now happened, with research indicating Microsoft’s latest OS is installed on more computers than its predecessor.

Windows market share breakdown

Research by Net Applications indicates that Windows 7 has 14.46 per cent of the global OS market share, leaping past the 14.34 per cent Windows Vista accounts for. What makes this particularly remarkable is that Windows 7 has only been around for less than a year – closer to 10 months, in fact.

However, Windows 7 celebration and ubiquity aside, Microsoft latest OS has a long way to go before it even gets a look at XP. Arguably Microsoft’s most significant operating system in terms of impact, Windows XP holds 61.97 per cent of the worldwide OS market share, which is more than four times that of Windows 7. Collectively, Microsoft’s OSes has over 91 per cent of the operating system market.

Everybody else’s market share breakdown

Mac OS X, the operating system found in Apple laptops and desktops, holds about 5 per cent of the global OS market share, sliding for the fourth consecutive month and 0.3 per cent off its lifetime peak of 5.3 per cent. That’s not to say that Macs are no longer selling, because they are selling like hot cakes, it is to say that PCs are outselling them and the abandonment rate of other Windows OSes for Windows 7 is accelerating.

Down the pecking order, open source operating system Linux accounted for 1 per cent of the global operating system market share. Just below Linux, believe it or not, is Apple’s iOS operating system that now accounts for 0.7 per cent of OS market share across the globe. That’s a ton of iPhones, iPads and iPods being sold.

Research methodology

The study, which was compiled by web analytics firm Net Applications, was compiled by monitoring the visitors to websites that are clients of the firm. This amounted to around 160 million visitors across over 40,000 websites Net Applications monitors on clients’ behalves.

And while we often dismiss some studies for being statistically unsound, the sample size hear is simply too big to ignore.

Photo: Apple

Rumours have been swirling that the Apple Mac Mini and Macbook Air laptop would be revised. One of those rumours has now been confirmed, with the new Mac Mini revealed.

Slick lunch box

The new Mac Mini has an aluminium casing, and measures in at 7.7 inches in length and width, and at 1.4-inches thick (thin, to be fair), making it look like a slick little lunch box – in a good way. As per usual, Apple has bundled its iLife suite of applications in the package.

Two versions

The new Mac Mini will come in two variations, a standard version and a beefier version with Mac OS X Snow Leopard server.

The standard HD Mac Mini is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo running at 2.4GHz with 3MB of L2 Cache (shared). A 320GB SATA hard drive running at 5400rpm is in the box. Memory is expandable to 8GB DDR3 RAM running at 1066MHz, but the standard RAM the Mac Mini ships with is 2GB. In terms of connectivity, an HDMI slot has been added, with Apple also including an HDMI to DVI converter for those who still use the DVI format. Networking is provided by built-in 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and graphics processing is done by an integrated Nvidia Geforce 320M processor.

Photo: Apple

The premium Mac Mini with the Snow Leopard Server pack has a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 3MB shared L2 cache. 4GB DDR3 RAM comes standard, with hard drive space totaling a 1TB with two 500GB SATA drives running at 7200rpm. Networking is identical to the options as the standard Mac Mini, and the same applies to graphics processing.

Availability

The updated Mac mini is already on sale, with the standard edition priced at £649 and the server version costing £929.

Photo: Amazon

The Amazon Kindle, the world most popular e-reader, is arguably the best on the market as well. Outside of the Kindle device, Amazon has heavily supported its Amazon Kindle platform, which boasts 80% of all eBook sales around the world. Amazon has since made the Kindle app available for other devices, most notably the iPhone, and now Apple’s Mac computers finally get in on the act.

Kindle on Mac

Photo: Apple

The application, available for all Macs with OS X 10.5 and above, will work like it does on other platforms, using Whispernet to sync bookmarks – and books – on any Kindle eBook across all devices. Being in beta mode still, many functions such as text search, highlighting, and note taking are not available; however highlights will be displayed if taken previously on another device. It aims to turn the function of using a computer as an e-reader into a less clumsy experience.
Two strategies: hardware and software

This reconfirms that Amazon is not so precious about its Kindle device that it will lock people into using it as opposed to wanting to get people tied to the platform, even if it means delivering the content to different devices. Put differently, Amazon realizes that it is a content business and not a hardware business, and they want scale. By their very nature, Mac users make up a large percentage of the eBook readership and Amazon wants to deliver its content to them.

What of the stand off?

Photo: Apple

What is particularly fascinating about the Amazon Kindle app for Mac is its release comes after Apple made it clear they were gunning for Amazon in the eBook market, both in terms of  content and the e-reader. So Amazon’s response – even if it isn’t intentionally so – is to fight Apple on its own turf, its own hardware. In addition, as Amazon indicate in their press release, plans for an iPad Kindle app are in the works and its release will pit it head-to-head with Apple’s iBook.

This should make for a very interesting battle, while being a great development for Kindle users who own Macs.

Photo: Apple

Gizmodo held a competition where it encouraged its users to submit their own idea of how the iPad should look and work. While many entries were highly imaginative, one entry stood out more than others.

Introducing the Macbook Tablet

Photo: Apple

Say hello to the Macbook Tablet. The name is indicative that this device is essentially a Macbook and iPad hybrid. When the iPad is attached to the keyboard dock, the operating system automatically transforms to Mac OS X, and when detached it reverts to the modified iPhone OS that powers the iPad.

Campaign slogan and all

Photo: Apple

This industrious user even came up with a campaign slogan for the device that would impress Apple’s revered marketing team: ’Dock. Detach. Dash.’ When the heavy lifting needs to be done, dock it and use it as a Mac. In the event that you need to dash, presumably all your media files consumable on the road will be readily available to use in iPad mode.

Not too far off from the truth

Though it is unlikely that Apple is working on this type of device, rumours have been swirling that Apple is developing another tablet device using a modified version of Mac OS X in lieu of the iPad’s modified iPhone OS. This strategy, if true, seems odd and counter to Apple’s usual strategy of keeping things simple and avoiding segmenting its market. But the iPad could very well be the iPod Nano to this alternate tablet’s iPod Touch.

The echo chamber

Rumblings around the Apple Tablet have been incessant since its unveiling. Pundits are saying it is going to fail, while others claim the second-generation iPad is the one to look out for, much like the second-generation iPhone was. The extent to which the iPad will live up to people’s expectations remains to be seen, yet what is clear is that Apple is capable of generating buzz and consumer enthusiasm around a product like no other company in the world.

After the long wait the Apple MacBook Pro (MB990B/A) arrived in the market; craved out from a single block of aluminium that symbolises a true engineering achievement. The presence of the unibody aluminium enclosure provides the Apple MacBook Pro (MB990B/A) with superb durability and style. Apple’s designers and engineers worked thoroughly through every stage of product development to innovate this extremely durable, stylish and high performance machine for day-to-day business.

The Apple MacBook Pro has a breakthrough battery that lasts for up to seven hours on a single charge, and due to the presence advanced chemistry and Adaptive Charging, it can also withstand about three times more charge cycles than a conventional laptop battery before it needs to be replaced.

The Apple MacBook Pro offers is enhanced with LED-backlit widescreen display that offers 60% greater colour gamut for richer and more vibrant colours. The seamless glass enclosure makes this display strong and durable. Another quality of the Apple MacBook Pro (MB990B/A) is that the entire track pad is the button, so the user can click anywhere. Without a separate button, the spacious track pad provides plenty of room to move hands on the large, silky glass surface. The user can use two fingers to scroll up and down a page, pinch to zoom in and out, rotate an image with fingertips, swipe with three fingers to flip through photo libraries and swipe with four fingers to show desktop, view all open windows or switch applications. The NVIDIA GeForce 9400M brings amazing graphics performance to MacBook Pro, so the user can enjoy their favourite 3D games with fast, seamless game play. Graphics-intensive features in iPhoto and iMovie are smooth and responsive.

Let the Specifications of the Apple MacBook Pro (MB990B/A) speak out for its superiority that revolutionized the industry. The Specifications include:-

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo – 2.26GHz – 3MB level 2 cache
Memory: 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
HD Capacity: 160GB SATA 5400 RPM
Display: 13.3″ widescreen display
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Optical Drive: 8x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Networking: AirPort Extreme (802.11 a/b/g/n), Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
Features: iSight Intergrated Web camera, Front Row, iLife, Mini DisplayPort output with support for DVI, Dual-Link DVI, and VGA video
Battery Life:Up to 7 hours of wireless productivity
Installed Software: Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard (includes Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools) / iLife ‘09 (includes iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand, iWeb, iDVD).

With a 13.3 inch display screen, Apple MacBook MB466B/A 13.3 Inch has a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor that can run multiple programmes at once. It has 2GB RAM and a 160 GB Hard Drive that offers ample storage space for all your media, music, files, photos and other items. It has Mac 10.5 Leopard as its operating system. It has been encased in one single solid aluminium body; it is thinner, lighter and stunning. Robust and durable, the computer has been designed to handle the knocks and tumbles with ease and can be easily carried from one place to another.

Compact and thin, the MacBook from Apple is extremely lightweight; it can fit easily in any backpack or briefcase. It uses a graphics processor that economises space. Unlike a traditional computer logic board that contains multiple components, the logic board of this MacBook contains only two components – the CPU and a graphics processor. Also, all of the core logic has been built into a single chip. Seamless design and a gleaming LED-backlit display are highlights of the Apple MacBook MB466B/A. The screen offers full brightness while the aluminium enclosure goes well with a glass overlay that stretches to the edge of the notebook. Moreover, the LED-backlit display is power efficient, mercury-free and arsenic-free. Equipped with GF 9400M Shared Video Memory (UMA), Gigabit Ethernet, WLAN and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR, the computer weighs a mere 2kg. It comes with a one year warranty and has stereo speakers, wireless LAN aerial and Bluetooth aerial as its built-in devices.

Loaded with features, the new Apple MacBook Pro is a high performing machine. Equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor, it has a 15.4″ TFT display screen that ensures you get the best picture quality. It is a system type note book with 4GB of installed RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. With plenty of memory, you can store all your music, files, photos, videos and all other media easily and still have plenty of space left. Weighing only 2.5kg, the laptop from Apple is light and thin and very portable. Its ultra thin LED-backlit display is spectacularly flat. The track pad has been redesigned to give more room to the user to move. Efficient and highly productive, the Apple MacBook Pro has built-in stereo speakers, wireless LAN aerial and a Bluetooth aerial. It also has an integrated optical storage DVD±RW (±R DL). An integrated camera and a sound card for audio output are its other features. Powered by lithium polymer batteries, the machine has a maximum running time of 5 hours. Its operating system is Mac OS X and it confirms to environmental standards through EPA Energy Star.

The case of the notebook is made of aluminum and is thin and light. Streamline and durable, the gadget delivers faster discrete graphics performance to high-end 3D games and pro applications. The Apple MacBook Pro (MC026B/A) contains a 2.66Ghz processor with 4GB of DDR3 Memory, a multi-touch track pad, illuminated keyboard with ambient light sensor and a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M + 9600M GT with 256B as its other cool features. The full screen brightness allows brilliant picture quality corner to corner. Since its more power efficient and mercury and arsenic-free, so it is greener than most other machines. For gaming enthusiasts, the Apple MacBook Pro has amazing graphics applications that allow the user to enjoy a new level of high-speed, high-end game-playing power.