I took the LA Besace bag with me to Macworld and boy am I glad I did!
This bag is an absolute pleasure to use. Its semicircular front opening is a superb design that makes everything highly visable and accessible. No more wasted time digging around for stuff in bags!
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
I love the latest Horseman laptop bag from Crumpler.
The best thing about Crumpler’s Horseman Bag is its size, which I think is optimum for a messenger/laptop bag. I have owned messenger bags that are too big, really just a huge cavernous void for your stuff to rattle and roll around in.
The other end of the spectrum are bags that are too small, which I personally think look a little on the feminine side on a fully-grown man. Not The Horseman though.
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
For the ultimate wow factor, bring the Knomo Bristol laptop bag to your next meeting or job interview. This well-made leather laptop bag is the ultimate accessory for white-collar workers.
The Bristol looks professional and so will you. Sold at Apple’s retail stores, this $150.00 bag is from Knomo, a posh new company from the West End of London.
Founded in 2004, Knomo’s mission is to make accesories that are as stylish as they are functional. With the Bristol bag they’ve outdone themselves.
Note: It’s Bag Week on CultofMac.com. We’re checking out some of the latest and greatest bags on the market. Read all the bag reviews here.
Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is a curious man ape: loud, purple-faced, drenched in sweat, and hirsute but for his head. But at least the man’s got a good sense of humor: upon being handed a MacBook by a student at Trevecca Nazarene University, Ballmer happily autographed it with the message “Need a new one?”
Presumably, Ballmer was making a tongue-in-cheek jab at his rival, but he possibly also knew exactly how much an ironically autographed MacBook signed by Microsoft’s CEO would get on eBay.
We criticize Microsoft and Ballmer a lot here at CoM, but this was a cute and classy gesture, especially considering it’s almost impossible to imagine Steve Jobs doing the same thing without hurling the Windows laptop to the ground and apoplectically smashing it to atoms with his feet.
When is the last time you paid $80 for a book? When it held your MacBook, of course. Mac lovers have gone through countless attempts to disguise and protect your Apple laptop, from high-end leather briefcases we saw at CES to a faux newspaper. Now comes Mac developer Twelve South with the BookBook, a case that looks exactly like a vintage hardbound book.
The leather-bound “book”, along with two rigid book covers, also includes a padded leather spine to keep your 13-inch or 15-inch MacBook safe and secure. “When it comes to safeguarding your Mac, there is no comparison between BookBook and the typical, floppy neoprene zipper bag,” claims the company.
The techno-sweatshops of Beijing have never seen an Apple design they weren’t willing to ineptly rip off, but these MacBook Air knock-offs spotted by M.I.C. Gadget are the first I’ve actually liked.
Basically, what we have here is a white plastic simulacrum of the MacBook Air’s aluminum unibody chassis, crammed with the innards of your stock, last generation netbook: an Intel Atom N280 processor with up to 2GB of RAM and a 320GB hard drive.
I love it, right down to the lid’s pulsing, multichromatic logo! If Apple ever introduces a plastic unibody Air, this is exactly what I would imagine it looking like. It’s unfortunately a Windows machine, but at around $249 I’m tempted to pick one up anyway, just to see if it’s as easily Hackintoshable as my Asus Eee PC 1000HE. What a coup one of these MacBook Air netbooks with Snow Leopard installed would be for my gadget cred next time I showed up at the blogger’s hall at CES.
An archeologically stratal cross-section of the port placement of Apple’s metal-skinned professional line of notebooks over the course of the last decade, courtesy of photographer and Mac enthusiast Robert Donovan. Fireflies dance in the background.
From top to bottom, the notebooks pictured are:
• The 13-inch Unibody MacBook Pro (2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)
• The 15-inch Titanium PowerBook (400MHz G4)
• The 15-inch Aluminum PowerBook (1.25GHz G4)
• The 15-inch MacBook Pro (2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo)
For me, this is morbidly erotic. It’s like four ex-lovers stacked nakedly atop each other, two of whom were dumped for their younger, hotter sisters, one of whom ran off on me because of my drinking problems, and the last so emphysemic from passive smoking that she’s due to cough up a lung any day now… a medical emergency definitely not covered by Apple Care.
Intel’s decision to marry their new mobile Core i5 and i7 CPUs with integrated graphics has reportedly not gone over well with Apple, who are rumored to be demanding custom-designed chips from Intel for an update to their MacBook and MacBook Pro line of notebooks.
But perhaps there’s another solution. Gizmodo noticed that NVIDIA, maker of the MacBook line’s ubiquitous GeForce 9400M GPU, is now teasing a new notebook technology called Optimus that is supposedly capable of achieving the performance of discrete graphics in a notebook while still delivering great battery life.
It’s probably just scalable performance, but if the Optimus tech is as good as NVIDIA is bragging, it would allow Apple to ditch the substandard switchable GPU configuration of current unibody MacBook Pros, which requires a reboot, to a discrete-only solution, like the earliest MacBook Pros and PowerBooks.
In January of 2009, I spent almost $2,500 on a top of the line, 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro, glutted with as much RAM and hard drive space as its belly could handle. Less than four months later, it was stolen.
Oh, it was my own fault. The whole tale involves a midnight rendezvous with a bartender I had my eye on at the time. She had the face of Natalie Portman, the eyebrows of Roger Moore and the constitution of Oliver Reed; in her presence, one drink became two, and two became twelve, and when we stumbled back to my apartment, I somehow forgot my laptop bag back at the bar… but only for five minutes! Alas, five minutes was too late, and by the time I’d rushed back, it was gone.
Since then, I’ve spent a good amount of time upbraiding myself about the loss. What has always bugged me most about the theft was that I always knew that there were countless programs available (such as Undercover) that would help you track down your Mac if it was stolen. I knew about these programs. I wrote about them, even. But I never once installed one. I just couldn’t imagine the scenario where I would have my laptop stolen. Dumb.
The news feeds bring me further fodder for my self-incrimination this morning. Over at TUAW, they are reporting that one of their readers. Jim, managed to safely recover his stolen Macbook using the MobileMe’s service, Back to My Mac, to take pictures of the perps and gather information about them gleaned from watching them surf the web.
It took Jim many months to get his laptop back: it had changed hands at least five times since it was stolen, at least once as payment in a drug deal. But when he got it back, it was in surprisingly good nick… with most of his files still intact on the disk.
That’s great news for Jim, but as another object lesson in my own amazing stupidity, it’s like a punch to the gut. Guess who also didn’t have a MobileMe account when his MacBook Pro was stolen? Yup. What a maroon.
If you’re set to automatically grab new updates, you’re likely to notice Apple’s Software Update burbling insistently in your dock for your attention, after Apple released a couple of updates of both their Airport software and the MacBook / MacBook Pro’s EFI.
The Airport Client Update 2009-002 is a routine update, fixing a few routine issues. The update solves the inability to turn the AirPort on or off in some cases after upgrading from Leopard, as well as an occasional loss of network connectivity when using Wake on Demand and the inability to create computer-to-computer networks or share Internet connections on some MacBook, MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers.
The MacBook and MacBook Pro EFI Update is more interesting, in that with the installation of SuperDrive Firmware Update 3.0, the optical drive of these machines should no longer sound like Cookie Monster trying to chew his way through a sheet of plate glass when waking from sleep or start-up.
As usual, you can either load up Software Update to automatically suck them down and install them (restart required), or you can grab the latest updates from Apple’s support page.
[via TUAW]
Apple likes Intel’s desktop line of Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs well enough to put them in their iMacs, so it makes sense that they would want to avail themselves of Intel’s three new Core i5 and i7 mobile CPUs (codenamed Arrandale) for any forthcoming refresh of the MacBook line. But things may not be that simple.
One way the Arrandale line of processors differs from previous Intel mobile CPUs is that the chips include mandatory integrated graphics. According to the Bright Side of News, Apple’s not interested in that: even the most inexpensive Macs now contain NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPUs, which offer far superior performance to integrated graphics solutions.
httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynzIh8MjcmY
Squeezing some green-friendly juice out of the sweet orange of the sun to charge your MacBook isn’t a totally unpleasant thought. Picture an azure-skied spring day, taking your work to the park, without worrying about that incessantly draining battery icon. You’d probably be willing to drop some change on such a device, right?
But would you pay $1,200 for a solar MacBook charger? That’s the price Quickertek wants you to swallow if you want to pick up their new, fifty-five watt Apple Juicz (yeesh) charger, which can refill your Mac’s battery in only six hours.
Let’s put this in perspective. For $1,200, you are getting a solar charger that is over ten times the size of the MacBook it is charging, although it folds up to the thickness of a sheet of looseleaf. For that price, and at that scale, it can’t even keep pace with the drain of a running MacBook. For that price, you could buy twelve additional MacBook batteries, or even a second MacBook to open up when your MacBook quits.
We’re all for solar-power here at Cult of Mac, but this is the problem with photovoltaic solar sensors in consumer products: accessories like Apple Juicz cost so much, you have to be frothing green foam from your mouth to justify buying one. Far better to just invest in solar powering your solar powered home, cash in your tax credits, and save money in the long term with solar power, charging any device you want with your existing electrical sockets.
They don’t do it often, but when they do, Apple doesn’t like to mess around when it comes to suing other electronics companies for infringing upon their patents and intellectual properties. No, Apple lawsuits tend to end like a round of Mortal Kombat, at least figuratively. Close your eyes and you can mentally transpose Steve Jobs for Sub-Zero; as the judgment comes down, he holds aloft the fluid-spurting spinal column of a defeated opponent while screaming and staring into the sun. The internet then provides the commentary: FATALITY.
Bad news indeed, then, for Media Solutions Holdings, who must already be feeling the twinge of legal lumbar pain. Last week, Apple filed a patent infringement lawsuit against them, claiming that the company is using a host of different websites (such as laptopsforless.com, laptopacadapter.com and ereplacements.com) to sell knock-off MacBook and MacBook Pro MagSafe power adapters.
The main selling point of the Logitech Anywhere Mouse MX is that it works anywhere, even on glass.
It does as well. It even worked when I scrolled it over my construction hard-hat.
Full review after the jump.
One of the great things that comes with Apple steadily biting off and swallowing little mouthfuls of the PC market is that we get our very own gadgets. Like the regular stuff, but better — Apple-ized for our computing pleasure. Take the The FreeAgent Go Pro for Mac: a portable hard drive that looks as though it was designed by Apple’s own Jonny Ive.
Full review after the jump.
iFixit’s teardown of the new white polycarbonate MacBook reveals nice, tight construction, but also some scrimping.
Apple has added a faster processor, a bright LED display, a big new built-in battery that adds two hours of extra life (Apple claims) and an improved Bluetooth antenna that promises to improve reception. The MacBook also has a space-age heat sink to cool the faster chip.
But Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away. Gone is the FirWire port and IR sensor, making it the only shipping Mac portable with no remote control.
Gone also are the two fake screws on the left side of the old MacBook that Steve Jobs insisted on to make the machine look symmetrical.
Announced today, the new MacBook costs $999, the same as the machine it replaces.
Hit the jump for more teardown action.
Apple does an excellent job of making all its products look beautiful, and these latest new products are no exception. Even the inside of the new MacBook is lovely.
Have you ever left your MacBook on the train or in a cafe, only to return and find it gone? Maybe the best bet is to hide that sleek know-it-anywhere Apple design behind something more mundane, like a newspaper. That’s the concept behind a zippered laptop case that appears to a passerby as just a discarded newspaper. The advantages of the faux newspapers may be limited to the myopic thief, as Gadget Lab’s Charlie Sorrel notes:
“Spanish readers will note that the name of the paper is spelled wrong (it should be La Vanguardia, with an extra “i” before the final letter).” For English readers, the company also offers “Herold Tribune.” The obvious misspellings are likely due to copyright issues, but it could affect the coverup’s effectiveness. Maybe a licensing deal could be worked out to offer real newspaper front pages?
An alternative is the DIY route, using a common container to hold your valuable Mac. Sorrel puts his MacBook in a Jiffy Bag protected by a Fed Ex envelope. Could these new coverups be the backlash to a plethora of bling iPod/iPhone and MacBook coverings?
[Via Gadget Lab and BBG]
The Shanzai.com blog has posted pictures of a butt-ugly MacBook Air knockoff. It promises to be dirt cheap but misses the point by being fatter and uglier.
The knockoff also has a smaller screen — 11″ instead of 13″ — runs a shit processor and has no RAM (1.6GHz Intel Atom and 1GB DDR2).
Amusingly, the blog claims the Air’s design has been “improved” by the addition of some missing features, namely: a removable battery, two USB ports instead of one, and an internal slot for a 3G card (the Air has no 3G support built-in).
No word on pricing, availability or whether it can be hacked to run OS X. It does have a Windows key on the keyboard though.
More pictures and the full specs after the jump.
Are you looking for options to keep your desk sleek and uncluttered but don’t want to give up the iMac, iPod, Mac mini and associated gadgets you must have nearby? Maybe you need a makeover. Twelve South, a new All-Mac company, offers two choices: the Book Arc and Book Pack.
The Book Arc is a creative way to vertically store your MacBook. The Book Arc accommodates a closed MacBook (up to 17-inches) or MacBook Air in a 10-by-4-inch slip with silicone cushions specifically designed for these laptops.. The product creates a desktop or workstation from your laptop and display. Running your MacBook closed stops your video display from splitting its resources, causing a noticeable operating speed increase in such intensive applications as Photoshop, the maker claims.
The Book Arc costs $49.95 for individuals or $249.99 for six people. Free shipping for a limited time.
UPDATE: The MacBook stand can actually give your MacBook 13″ a speed boost, claims Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel. Using lower-end MacBooks (those without dedicated GPUs, like the new 13-incher) with the lid closed frees up the CPU from refreshing the screen, boosting the speed of whatever you’re working on.
Because we’re all geeks these days and need bags for our laptops, the market for fashionable computer bags has mercifully grown. Gone are the days when the only laptop bag you could buy was black and rectangular.
A particularly stylish entry onto the fashion laptote market is Ibint, a company that sells a range of good-looking laptop bags called Loopbag. The Loopbags have distinctive zippers that loop around the front and back of the bags — hence the name.
We’ve been testing a pair of Loopbags in New York for the last couple of weeks, and they’ve held up exceptionally well, especially because this summer has been exceptionally wet.
Hit the jump for the rest of the review.
Displaying an impressive level of tech savvy, Ice-T took a claw hammer to an old PowerBook he’s getting rid of.
In this 4-minute video, you can watch Ice-T smash his old PowerBook to bits. At first, it seems the former rapper is getting revenge on a glitchy machine.
“This Mac gave me a lot of hell,” he says. “It’s kinda like payback.”
But as the video goes on, it’s clear Ice-T is trying to remove and destroy the hard drive, which he’s afraid might fall into the wrong hands.
“I’m gonna get this hard drive out of here, make sure none of my secrets are in here, if somebody should find this computer,” he says.
In the comments, Ice-T takes a lot of flak for destroying the machine (and a bunch of racist garbage). The geniuses on YouTube rip him for not taking the machine to an eWaste facility and releasing toxins into the environment.
While the toxins criticism might be on target, Ice-T was right to destroy the hard drive first. Data is incredibly easy to pull off old hard drives, whether the drive has been erased or not, even in multiple passes. There are plenty of cases of identity theft from old machines. And just weeks ago, journalism students were able to buy a drive full of government secrets from a dump in Ghana.
As the actor knows, the one sure-fire way to destroy all data on a hard drive is to destroy the hard drive. “There’s probably a better way to do it, but i just said, ‘fuck it,'” the Law & Order actor says.
In fact, if recycling an old laptop, it’s a good idea to drill several holes into the case and right through the hard drive before taking it to an eWaste facility (Only if the drive can’t be easily removed obviously, which is the case with many older PowerBooks and iBooks).
There are a lot of envelope-style sleeves for your Mac: leather from Bally, a sturdy vinyl version and plenty of handmade fabric ones, too.
A nice variant on the theme: these from Spanish company iSobre have a spark of color on the inside. Hand-made leather, they’ll provide protection for the MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. They come in basic manilla, plus black or white with pink, green, or blue insides.
So you can show your the world that, yes, your computer is thinner than the presentation your boss insisted on printing out for clients.
Available online at iSobre.
I walked into the Apple Store in San Francisco tonight fully expecting to walk out with a brand-new MacBook Pro — the 2.53 GHz model, if at all possible. After 30 minutes playing with all of Apple’s latest laptops, I was stunned to find myself instead walking out the door with a 2.4 GHz MacBook and a smile on my face.
The Top Line: The Aluminum MacBook is the perfect heir to the 12″ PowerBook G4. It’s light, rugged, and meant to be used as a true laptop — it actually runs cooler than my 12″ PowerBook from 2003. Apple hit it out of the park with this thing, and I couldn’t be more delighted. To learn why, click through.
The Apple Blogotubes are a-buzz with boffo Interblag bloviating at a rumor from 9to5mac.com that Apple’s rumored “Brick” product was actually a nickname for a new manufacturing process that will use “lasers and jets of water to carve the MacBooks out of a brick of aluminum.” More, it’s a “game-changer;” “totally revolutionary;” “Apple’s biggest innovation in a decade.”
…Yeah, maybe not.
As Adam Richardson, an industrial designer at consultancy frog design and CNet blogger, points out, lasers and waterjets have been used in manufacturing for ages — by Apple.
The glowing LED that appears behind a “solid” front face of the MacBooks is apparently achieved with laser-cutting to thin out and partially perforate the wall in that one area.
Richardson also speculates that the existing iPod Shuffle is manufactured using a similar process, and even the MacBook Air has some telltale signs that it draws on really interesting and unusual manufacturing techniques. But would Apple actually carve an entire laptop out of one block of aluminum? And would it save any money?
On such a small product this is do-able. On a large product like a laptop this would typically result in a massive amount of waste (so kiss your green credentials goodbye). And the notion that this is somehow cheaper than stamping thin sheets or molding plastic is completely wrong – it’s much more expensive.
Yeah… no.
I’ve been talking with other industrial designers about this issue, and they all agree that the reasoning behind the current Brick rumor doesn’t add up. One friend of mine guessed it would add up to $50 in manufacturing costs and might not be any stronger or lighter than more traditional manufacturing approaches.
Does Apple have a game-changing laptop in the wings that will reinvent the MacBook and MacBook Pro design language? For their sake, they’d better. Will it be milled from a single block of aluminum? Not in this lifetime.