So Snow Leopard is now running on my year and a half old MacBook Pro… how’s it doing?The big Snow Leopard reviews have already come out from other people, so now it’s my usual late turn! I haven’t updated this blog in forever, but things have been pretty busy here and school is about to start.

Snow Leopard is HOT. My MacBook Pro runs hotter daily than before on Leopard. Most likely, OpenCL, which utilizes the GPU for CPU tasks, gives my Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT more reason to heat up more than usual. And since it normally heats up too much, adding CPU tasks onto its to do list just makes it worse. The heat difference isn’t noticeable while doing day to day tasks, but when watching Youtube or using flash…. there goes the fans.

But other than that, Snow Leopard is quite amazing. 64 bit Safari is FAST! Web pages load much snappier than before, and Google Maps sees an extreme performance boost, to the point where loading maps is instantaneous. Of course, I’m using Verizon FiOs which is a very fast internet service, but DSL and Cable users should also see a major improvement.

Quicktime X’s interface is quite interesting, and is a new idea to see a window without any sign of its frame. However, I don’t use Quicktime too often because a lot of the videos I download and watch are in a format supported by my favourite, VLC Player. Fortunately, it still works in Snow Leopard.

What doesn’t work in Snow Leopard is iStat Menus. They’re supposed to be working on an update, but iStat Menus has been very useful to me in Leopard, and in Snow Leopard I have to judge certain things based on how loud the fans are spinning (therefore guessing the temperature and how much CPU the computer is using). It’s true I could use Activity Monitor, but it takes up room on my screen and looks very clumsy.

I love the new stacks and Expose. It makes life so much easier. Before, to go into my utilities folder, I would open my applications stack, click on the utilities folder, wait for finder to open, and then double click on the utilities folder again, and finally get to open whatever application I am looking for. Now in Snow Leopard, I simply click on my applications stack, click on utilities, and open the app.

Finder is much smoother than before. Cover flow especially sees a major performance boost; before in Leopard, cover flow would take a long time to load the icons for apps. Now with the 64 bit Finder, Cover Flow loads icons very fast, so it is actually useable. However, it still isn’t my favourite way of using the Finder, so I still don’t use it.

Dock expose is quite useful, but there’s a little improvement they could make; when using dock expose on applications such as safari, it would be useful to be able to actually see different tabs of a web browser. Usually, most of my web browsing is done in one window with multiple tabs, which makes expose useless for Safari in my case.

I still have to try out that chinese input thing, but unfortunately, my MacBook Pro does not support it. I’ll just have to wait until I install Snow Leopard on my dad’s MacBook Pro unibody to see how well it works.

iChat’s video quality has improved, but there’s also a problem. Because the video is now 4 times the resolution, that means my Mac has to work 4x as hard to render that video. Which of course, means even more heat produced by my nvidia geforce 8600m gt. Wonderful.

My apps also open faster. Whether it’s Photoshop or Final Cut Express, apps just feel like they’re faster and more streamline. Indeed, Snow Leopard is an upgrade that involves tweaking things in the background. On the outside, it looks exactly the same. Well, almost. Just waiting for Apple to release that update that fixes the heating, and also waiting for that iStat Menus update.

My teachers and classmates were quite shocked when, during class on June 10th, I said I could not wait for September to come. Of course, I did not mean I could not wait for school to start once more; I was referring to the fact the Snow Leopard is to be released in September, and I cannot wait for its release, for Snow Leopard is the one piece of software that has me interested far more than iLife or iWork. It’s something I’ve been waiting for for a long time.

To explain the reason why Snow Leopard is such an exciting release for me, first I must tell you about Mac OS X Leopard, the operating system I am running right now. Leopard has plenty of excellent features and is definitely the best operating system I have ever used. However, I have many quirks with it, all of them related to behind the scenes “stuff”.

One reason that Leopard was quite annoying is stability; Tiger was definitely more stable than Leopard. Leopard seemed to be a bunch of fancy features that were extremely useful, but unfortunately also rendered the operating system less stable and more… Windows esque. It’s a poor description of Leopard, because it is more stable than Windows, but it definitely wasn’t as good as Tiger.

Not only that, some times Leopard does not use the CPU very well. Time Machine Backups hog the CPU and set the fans running high, and small tasks often drain too many resources. Startup and shutdown has dramatically slowed down from Tiger, and iChat almost always has problems connecting to others attempting a video chat or audio chat.

Snow Leopard promises to fix Leopard. With Snow Leopard, the transition of Mac OS X to 64 bit is complete. Most core applications will be 64 bit, such as Safari, Mail, iChat, etc. Being 64 bit helps improve the performance of a program, and will probably help out Safari loading flash. According to Apple, the Safari 4 that ships with Snow Leopard will be 50% faster than Leopard due to it being 64 bit, and it is also crash resistant, so no more cooliris or adobe flash crashing Safari.

With Snow Leopard, there is also Grand Central Dispatch, which will help allocate the CPU’s resources more effectively. Instead of Time Machine Backups taking up most of my CPU, it will focus on the application that needs it, such as Safari or Pages or whatever is using the CPU most. When programs aren’t being used, they will also use much less resources on the CPU, unlike in Leopard where idle applications use almost as much resources as when they are running full time.

Startup and shutdown are also going to be much faster, up to 2x faster according to Apple. Snow Leopard also takes care of many small things, such as taking up 6GB less of disk space. Exposé and Stacks  have been updated, with Stacks now having the ability to view into folders (something I’ve always wanted) and Exposé is now much neater, with the windows arranging themselves like a grid, making it easier to get to the window you want. Dock Exposé is quite interesting, because it has the capability of replacing traditional Exposé, since you now no longer need an Exposé key to launch Exposé.

In general, Snow Leopard is promising a huge user experience upgrade. Somewhat similar to the subtle but also very useful upgrade of the iPhone 3GS, Snow Leopard is going to bring a faster Mac to your already feature filled computer.

PS – If you’re wondering why I haven’t written something for so long, it’s because I’ve been studying chemistry and reading books on Xcode.

The iPhone 3G S boasts about a new camera, digital compass, and double speed of the iPhone 3G.After visiting an Apple Store and trying the iPhone 3G S, I will admit, there is a noticeable speed difference, but only if you pay attention to it. In the iPhone 3G, sometimes after you opened an application or clicked on a menu there was a slight pause before the content appeared on the screen, which isn’t really a big deal, since you’re only waiting a little bit. But on the iPhone 3GS, that wait has pretty much disappeared, and now opening apps and menus feels extremely smooth.

But if you don’t have an iPhone 3G next to it, you most likely will not notice the speed difference, unless you’ve had an iPhone 3G AND you think that the 3G is slow. Otherwise, the speed isn’t a big enough of a change to be worth upgrading to the iPhone 3G S. It probably isn’t twice as fast, and in general it’s not a big deal unless you’re using some sort of more intensive application.

However, there is one subtle change that is very useful; the iPhone 3G S’s screen is much more fingerprint proof than before. Actually, not finger print proof really, but easy to clean. A single swipe of the screen can probably wipe off any fingerprints you’ve managed to get on it. Yet despite this change, the screen still feels the same as before, although it’s true that it feels less like glass.

I wasn’t able to test out the camera’s focus in the Apple Store because I didn’t want to take pictures of people walking around me, but the manual focus does work when you tap on it, and  the camera tries to adjust to the way you want it. I wasn’t able to try out video recording either, but based on just moving the camera around, it doesn’t look incredibly different from the iPhone 3G. The video recording is probably the most important difference, but you could get that on the 3G if you jailbreak it. However, the video is much smoother and the camera is much faster than the iPhone 3G.

The digital compass does not lag at all. Spinning the iPhone around, the compass changes to match the direction the top of the iPhone is pointing in. Also, maps now has the feature where it changes the view of the map based on what direction your iPhone is facing. This is a major upgrade for you if you travel or go to unfamiliar places a lot, or simply need directions to somewhere. Because now you are able to know which direction you are facing, so you know you are moving in the right direction. Before, you would need to walk a certain distance and look to see where the little bubble indicating your location has moved. This makes it much easier for many users and is a definite plus.

Voice control seems to be a nice and useful feature, but it’s been available for many years now in other phones and frankly, it’s not that useful and gets quite annoying sometimes. If you say a command wrong, it takes a long time to get something done, and it’s extremely annoying when it repeatedly fails to understand what you are saying. Of course, I did not test out how well the iPhone 3G S recognizes your voice (since it’s very loud in the Apple store) but I don’t think it could be that much better than other voice control phones.

In general, the iPhone 3G S is very good, and it’s a much better buy than the iPhone 3G 8GB for 99 dollars. However, if you have an old iPhone, you don’t have an incredible lot of reason to upgrade with. In general, think of the iPhone 3G S as something like a new Mac. Sure it’s faster and it’s different and all, but that doesn’t make your technology outdated. iPhone 3G S is like a spec bump. It’s not like the difference between the 3G and original iPhone.

So if you’re a new iPhone switcher, get the 3G S. Don’t get the 3G, it’s older, and it’s not as worth it. But if you own the older iPhone 3G, don’t waste your money on an extra expensive 3G S and contract increase. It’s not worth it.

MacBook Pros have come very far from what they originally were, and this year’s MacBook Pro family is quite unlike any before it.Apple has announced the 13″ MacBook Pro, which is simply a 13″ Aluminum MacBook with a FireWire 800 port, SD Card Slot, backlit keyboard, and the sealed battery. The prices across the line have dropped as well, with the 15″ MacBook Pro starting at 1699 and the 17″ at 2499.

However, in my opinion, there are now two types of MacBook Pros, the MacBook Pros and the pseudo-MacBook Pros. And the reason I say that is because both the 1699 15″ MacBook Pro and the 13″ MacBook Pros use the Nvidia Geforce 9400M, and have no dedicated graphics card. In my opinion, that separates them from the rest of the family, starting at 1999, that has the Geforce 9600M GT, a much more powerful, dedicated graphics card.

Anyone getting the pseudo-MacBook Pros are simply buying an overbloated MacBook, and in a way, that’s great for Apple to give even better systems to its consumers. But these machines shouldn’t have the name MacBook Pro on them simply because the MacBook Pro is all about performance, and these machines don’t hit the pro level because of their graphics cards.

However, the price decrease on the upper end MacBook Pros are very welcome. It’s probably more worthwhile to spend your money on the 2299 MacBook Pro now instead of the 1999 version because, unlike before, you only pay 200 dollars to upgrade to the highest end model, while it used to be 400 dollars. The 17″ model is also very worthwhile now because it has been decreased in price by 300 dollars.

So with these updates, Apple has made it better for both consumers and pro level users, with cheaper MacBook Pros, and also bringing more pro level features to a consumer line. However, they have united the MacBook and MacBook Pro line (almost) and the MacBook Pro name almost creates an illusion that what you’re buying is a Pro machine and that it’s incredibly fast, and for most people, that’s enough convincing to make them upgrade from buying a plastic MacBook to a 13″ MacBook Pro. What does an average person know about Intel or CPUs or GPUs, when all he can see is an aluminum laptop, less than an inch thick, called the MacBook Pro?

However, there are Pro users who would buy the 13″ MacBook Pro because they wanted a lot more portability. And that’s fine too, but their needs are different from the true MacBook Pros, which are really about power compared to the MacBook line. The added FireWire 800 and SD card slot make it easier for both photographers and anyone else using these ports, to travel on the go and still have a full featured laptop. However, if any professional truly wants their studio to go, they would have to stick with either the higher end 15″ models or the 17″ model.

In general, I like the new MacBook Pro family, but I do not like that Apple still have not given people an anti glare option on the 15″ MacBook Pro. Perhaps professional level users like it, but some users who do not use it for what professionals do like anti glare screens as well, and do not like the glass, glossy screen. The point is, Apple should give users the CHOICE to pick, since we’re paying over 2 grand for one of these and then even more for the anti glare screen. Until they release a 15″ with the anti glare screen, I doubt I would buy a MacBook Pro 15. I have a Santa Rosa MacBook Pro from mid 2007 and it works fine and it’s anti glare and I like it.

So in conclusion, the MacBook Pro line is not complete. It’s now accessible to so many more people because of price and size, but there are things that need to be fixed before the features of the MacBook Pro are complete. And even after that, new technology and more powerful systems will be released, but there is an error right now with the BUILD of the MacBook Pro. Of course, a lot of laptops aren’t even close to the level that the MacBook Pro is at, but the MacBook Pro is not perfect either. Comparing a modern day MacBook Pro unibody to an aluminum PowerBook, there probably isn’t enough of a change. The only changes are the unibody, the LOSS of useful ports, and the glass screen which is controversial. Apple still needs to pick up the pace with the MacBook Pro. However, if you find that you do not mind the glass screen, and you need a laptop, this is perfect for you. Go ahead and get one, and if you’re a PC user, welcome to the world of Macs.

It’s been quite a while since I wrote here, but you know, finals and regents and all those excuses. Palm Pre is out, but how well does it do compared to other competitors?First off, the Palm Pre is exclusive to Sprint at the moment. That means most people will have to switch carriers in order to get the Palm Pre. Sprint isn’t a very large wireless carrier, and in New York City it seems to be okay for cell phone reception, but out of it, there’s very little. Even in New York, carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and even T-Mobile are much better options. I would not switch to Sprint just to buy the Palm Pre. I would switch to AT&T for the iPhone, since AT&T is a very large company with money to back it up, but Sprint is different.

Now let’s get to the Pre itself. The Palm Pre definitely does not go for the slimmest possible body, which Apple usually goes with. Instead, it looks like a brick, and that would most certainly make it feel better in your hands. However, with the iPhone, Apple has made it the perfect size to hold in your hand, and with the iPhone 3G’s curved back, it feels even better in your hand. However, the Palm Pre feels more like a brick, so you can easily get a grip on it, especially since it’s screen is also a bit smaller.

The physical keyboard on the Palm Pre does not look like a good idea at all. I’m a big supporter of the iPhone’s software keyboard, and I definitely think that the iPhone has a better keyboard, although another competitor, the Blackberry Storm, loses to Palm Pre for the keyboard. However, that’s not because the Pre is good, it’s because the Storm’s screen is just bad for typing. Looking at other devices, the T-Mobile Sidekick and G1/soon to be G2 all have physical, QWERTY keyboards that feel very good. Typing is very easy and quick on all of these devices, and it feels almost as easy as on your laptop. However, a disadvantage to the physical keyboard is that you do not get a software keyboard, where the iPhone wins. With iPhone OS 3.0, you can have a landscape keyboard for easy typing, but you can also have, for example, a Chinese keyboard where you can actually draw the character. This means that the iPhone’s capabilities are only limited by the creativity of the developer, whilst the Palm Pre and other physical keyboard devices are limited by their hardware.

The Palm Pre’s screen does look very nice, and being smaller than the iPhone’s by 0.2 inches makes it have a higher PPI, so better images as well. Some users have said that the Pre has a more responsive screen than the iPhone’s, and that switching between landscape and portrait modes is much faster on the Pre. However, comparing this to the iPhone 3G is a rather bad comparison; the iPhone 3G is, after all, hardware from a year ago. However, once the iPhone 3GS comes out, we’ll know whether the iPhone can beat the Pre using modern specs.

The OS of the Pre is rather annoying to use based on looks. It seems to require a lot more flicks and presses than the iPhone’s does, especially with things like closing apps and opening apps. On the iPhone, you have your apps out in front of you and you just press your app’s icon to open it. In OS 3.0, you’ll also get the search feature right next to your home screen so that you can easily launch an app several pages away. On the other hand, on the Palm Pre, you can either launch an app from your shortcuts bar, or you have to open a menu with all your apps and then go to the correct app. Somewhat similar to the Windows start menu, the Palm Pre requires a lot more flicks to open an app, since it has no search feature.

Closing an app on the Palm Pre requires pressing the home button, and then flicking the app’s “card” out of the screen. On the iPhone, press the home button and you’re out of the app. There’s also the fact that Palm Pre’s apps are web apps, meaning they require the internet to run, and they also take longer to open because they’re loading through the internet. However well the apps run, they’re web apps and aren’t very optimized for more intensive tasks. On the other hand, with the iPhone 3GS’s new hardware capabilties, video is going to be rendered better, and 3D graphics will also be better. Since apps aren’t web based, developers can focus on delivering powerful features, instead of compromising on them in order to make them web apps.

The touchstone dock that sells for the Palm Pre for 70 dollars is quite outrageous. According to outside sources, the touchstone dock is worth 5 dollars of materials. So it’s just crazy to sell it for 70 bucks, even 30 is quite high.

The Palm Pre is, ultimately, a first generation product. However, it’s OS is smooth and everything, and the overal design is very nice, but it needs to get a software keyboard and have a better OS. Compared to even the original iPhone, I would rather get the iPhone than the Pre. And please, don’t pick Sprint as your wireless carrier. Pick someone big like Verizon or AT&T.

The title makes no sense, but it’s about Christopher Paolini and his Inheritance CycleIf you guessed correctly, then you’d know this post is about what’s going to happen after the Inheritance Cycle for Chris Paolini. And I just wanted to share my opinion on this because it’s a subject of much wonder since he’s pretty much a new author and you can’t really tell based on his previous releases what he might want to do next.

In my opinion, I think he should make a guidebook containing all the details of the ancient language, dwarf language, and urgal language. Instead of the glossaries he has in the back of the Inheritance Cycle books, it should be full length guides–the same kind of guide for French, Spanish, and other languages. And it should be detailed enough so that you could actually learn how to speak the language itself. It would also be interesting to see a guide to learning how to write the Liduen Kvaedhi, but that might take too much work on his part.

Now why is spending a lot of effort into writing these after books a good idea? Shouldn’t he just proceed to whatever story he wants to write next?

I think that, since this is his first series of books, it should be more special. Another writer also has made her first series more special; JK Rowling has several books about spells in Harry Potter as well as some Quidditch rules book I think. Perhaps, if Chris Paolini writes a book on the languages spoken in his stories, it would be very nice add ons and decorations to his fan websites.

This is just an idea though. It may sound too outlandish or too much work on his part, but I like it. It would be a very fun way of tricking your teachers during class by writing messages using his ancient language instead of english, but perhaps that would be asking for too much.

The new iPod Shuffle that has no buttons came out quite some time ago, so why am I writing something about it so late?

The reason is because there isn’t much to say about it. It seems rather obvious what kind of device it is. Despite having voice over and the ability to have playlists, I think that the new iPod Shuffle has not improved much. It’s almost a downgrade for you to buy it because you’d have to get new earphones, unless you have no problems using the Apple earphones which I feel are horrendous.

Most users, however, don’t have a problem with the Apple earphones, and might even think of the earphone controls as slick. Looking around the subway, you will see some people using third party earphones, but most use Apple’s. And the iPod Shuffle is for those people.

Even if you like the iPod Shuffle, I’ve always thought it was rather unpractical. Sure, it’s nice to have a really small iPod for jogging or whatever you do, but is it really that hard to carry a nano on a wristband, a few ounces heavier? Do you really need to get more than one iPod? Perhaps if you had an iPhone then you might want a Shuffle for exercising, but the Shuffle is overpriced for that. There aren’t any special features in it, besides the fact that it’s an iPod. I’d rather buy some 30 dollar USB flash drive MP3 player and live with it.

It’s been exactly one year since I bought my MacBook Pro. So how’s it going?Generally, everything is fine with it. There are some problems, but they’re just small common issues that most MacBook Pros come to experience. I’ll start off with what I’m happy with.

Before I owned my MacBook Pro, I had a Dell XPS M1530 that literally drove me nuts. It had a slow, 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor running Windows Vista Ultimate, and an Nvidia Geforce 8400M that wasn’t powerful at all. Despite that, I used it to edit my videos and do the stuff I needed to. Eventually, I sold it and bought my MacBook Pro because I just couldn’t stand it anymore.

There were several problems that my Dell had that my MacBook Pro didn’t. The keyboard on the Dell was very flimsy; after only a month, the space bar became loose and the keys felt squeaky when pressed. The touch sensitive controls weren’t sensitive enough, and the trackpad had many software glitches. And finally, the brushed aluminum palm rests showed two large dots where my palms rest when typing.

Although I hammer on my MacBook Pro’s keyboard everyday (well not exactly hammer, but still..) none of the keys has loosened. It feels the same as when I first got it, a very sturdy keyboard that was extremely comfortable to type on. The anodized aluminum on the MacBook Pro shows no sign of wear, the trackpad is much bigger and works just like when I had gotten it. And the MacBook Pro doesn’t use touch sensitive multimedia controls, so I had no problems with raising the volume, unlike before when I had to hold down the button for a long time just to get the volume up.

To summarize all of that, basically, the MacBook Pro is a much more durable and solid laptop than the Dell XPS M1530 was, which is why it doesn’t show the same kind of problems that the Dell had. That wasn’t the only improvement I had though; the MacBook Pro is much more powerful than the Dell. With a 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4MB of L2 cache, and an Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT, it made the Dell look redundant.

Some of the problems with the MacBook Pro were rather annoying. The biggest issue is definitely the heat; other problems seem to be related to it. The Nvidia Geforce 8600M GT and the Intel CPU are definitely “egg cookers” and heat up a lot with redundant tasks. The genius at the Apple Store tells me flash causes the heat, but basically he’s telling me watching Youtube is going to overheat my Mac. Which is, frankly, ridiculous. Especially watching HD content on Youtube, heats the thing to 70ish degrees very quickly, and using it on your lap hurts quite a bit. The new Nvidia Geforce 9400M integrated chip is less powerful than the 8600M GT, but it also produces MUCH less heat.

The top case of my MacBook Pro also gets slightly loose, to the point that I can press down on the sides and feel it move. Although this isn’t really a problem with normal usage, something makes me feel that the top case will just pop off someday. Hopefully that won’t happen.

The fans in the MacBook Pro are definitely more tired than when they were new. You can hear a kind of buzzing from them that wasn’t there from when they were new, and this is, of course, expected. The heat kicks the fans up quite a bit, and there’s usually never a day when the fans aren’t spinning high when I’m using it.

Overall, the MacBook Pro has been a very excellent experience. Some problems plague it, but it’s definitely in a class higher than most laptops. Although it doesn’t have the extreme performance of a 17″ gaming PC laptop, it definitely is very powerful, especially considering it’s only an inch thick. And the new version eliminates some problems such as extreme heat, and the unibody enclosure which wouldn’t have the problem I’m having.

If I were to rate my MacBook Pro, I’d give it a 4/5. The heat is something that, I feel, Apple should have spent much more effort on fixing. Other than that, it’s almost perfect.

Firefox is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, and today I’m focusing on the Mac OS X edition of Firefox 3.0Firefox on the Mac is quite different from Firefox on Windows. If you use Windows as your main operating system, you will notice that Firefox fits into Windows very well, and integrates with the rest of the operating as well as most of the other programs on Windows. Most of the programs on Windows don’t integrate very well, so Firefox seems very normal.

However, in Mac OS X, the programs are all very integrated with each other. For example, with Safari, downloads are downloaded to the “Downloads” stack and a progress file is shown while the file is downloading. However, Firefox doesn’t have this level of integration with the system. In fact, Firefox feels like a foreigner to Mac OS X.

Unlike most Mac OS X programs, when you press the plus on Firefox, it actually maximizes the program, which is different from a program like Safari where pressing the plus button only removes scroll bars. Firefox also has slightly more pixelated buttons than Safari or other Mac OS X programs. And when you click on menu on a web page, the items are shown in a drop down menu, unlike with Safari where a menu pops out and you use your pointer to move up to down, and the menu grows in size as you scroll down the list. However, with Firefox, the drop down menu requires scrolling with the mouse, and it stays the same size. It certainly isn’t as elegant as Safari.

These are all very important things that Mozilla needs to improved on for Firefox on Mac OS X. As it stands, Safari has better features and certainly a better interface. The only thing that Firefox has to fight Safari with are add ons, but they aren’t like most Mac OS X programs. Any Mac OS X fan or someone who likes integrated programs would use Safari.

Firefox on the Mac is, simply put, a Windows application that’s been ported over with a Mac OS X looking interface. However, it still lacks the kind of detail behind a native Mac OS X program, and Mozilla certainly needs a lot of work on it. Although Firefox 3.0 was a major improvement in terms of interface over Firefox 2.0, it seems that Firefox remains a program meant to remind Windows switchers of the operating system they once were on.

The new Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, and Apple keyboard updates were also part of the desktop updates, but they were much quieter and were left out of the spotlight.However, I think they are very important updates, especially on the Airport Extreme/Time Capsule side. The Apple Keyboard’s update was rather small, but it has a rather big impact on consumers.

The Airport Extreme and Time Capsule both received three new major features: Dual band, Guest networking, and Accessing your drive through the internet.

Dual band is my favourite; there are many wireless devices that I have, but they use different wireless types. My iPod Touch uses Wireless G, as well as my mom’s iPhone, and my dad’s PC laptop. However, my Mac uses wireless N as well as a newer Dell laptop that belongs to a friend who comes over often. Because of the wireless G devices, my wireless N router is, most of the time, broadcasting on wireless G, which basically makes it pointless to be wireless N.

However, with dual band, the new Airport Extreme or Time Capsule can now broadcast wireless G with one antenna and use the other antennas for wireless N. This allows wireless G and wireless N devices to mingle and still have both devices reach the best speeds they are capable of. This is a very useful feature, because there have been too many times my download speed has been dropping during the day.

Guest network isn’t a really big feature for consumers, it’s really a big feature for people in more public places. For example, if I were to let someone onto my normal wireless network, it would probably be a friend who was coming over. I wouldn’t really need to bother with hiding my printers or network activity from him/her.

However, let’s say Starbucks was providing wireless network for their cafe, and at the same time, they wanted to have internet for… their employees and a server. However, a hacker could easily hack into their server if they were on the same network, so they would most likely have to use some high level security or just use a different router. This would prevent most amateur hackers from getting in. However, this also costs extra, and makes networking more complicated. Instead of that, running guest networking would provide an almost the same solution, and still would be convenient and not require extra hardware.

Accessing your hard drive through the internet is another feature I’m very fond of. There are too many times we forget files at home, but if you back up your entire Mac to your time capsule, being able to access it means that there’s no such thing as forgetting your powerpoint presentation. Anywhere with internet can connect back to your time capsule or hard drive attached airport extreme. This really turns the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme into a mini server for consumers. It’s also very useful to small businesses any anyone else who travels on the go. If this feature is reliable, then it’s possible for people to buy a Macbook Air and not worry about bringing files with them at all; they can just access it over the internet. With the 500GB or 1TB internal hard drive in the Time Capsule, this is more than enough for most people. If you need anymore than that, you probably are good enough to buy an xserve and set it up with more space, but for most people, 500GB or 1TB is more than enough.

And of course, the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme still have the other features it always had. Printer sharing, hard drive sharing, wireless n, etc. This makes the Time Capsule/APX much more worthwhile, especially considering the price that Apple is charging for it. A lot of people believe that Apple products are over priced, but this is, in most cases, not true. The Airport Extreme is 179 bucks, and most wireless n routers can be found for 100 dollars cheaper, but the APX comes with printer sharing built in. To get that with another router, it would cost another 100 bucks to add a wireless G print server, which basically ruins your network speeds. And there’s also hard drive sharing, that you would also need an adaptor for with other routers. Add dual band, guest networking, and accessing the hard drive through the internet, and the Airport Extreme is worth much more than other routers.

The Apple Keyboard was also updated, but very slightly. The wired keyboard, which always came with a num pad, is now available in a smaller version that does not have a num pad. Now, a lot of people would say “oh that’s dumb” and buy the wired version with the num pad, but I disagree. In my opinion, the version without the num pad actually has less space between the keys, which actually makes it more comfortable for me to type. This is why I’ve only liked the wireless and laptop versions of Apple’s chiclet keyboard. However, this is now available on the wired version, and giving us the choice between the two is, referring to recent updates, a rather rare thing for Apple these days.

But it’s not just to me it appeals to. The version with the numpad is also a LOT smaller, and with a lot consumers, smaller is cooler, better looking, and more appealing. Just like how the MacBook Air draws the attention of people, when they see a giant 24″ iMac and a small keyboard, it leaves a rather interesting impression on them. To a lot of consumers, thinner IS better. And Apple is aiming for that crowd. What does your average Joe care about how fast his cpu is as long as his computer runs Firefox? This is why the new Apple keyboard is a cosmetic change, and a favourable one too.

So these are the updates for the APX, Time Capsule, and Apple keyboard. Very positive updates, and we all hope that future Apple updates to their Mac line will give us a choice again.