The IT Nerd

So, in case you missed what Apple announced on Monday, here’s the highlights:

• Apple announced the MacBook, with prices starting at $1,299 US. This one features a 12-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2304 x 1440, offers a full Mac experience in the lightest and thinnest Mac form factor ever made. It has a redesigned keyboard, featuring a new butterfly mechanism for the keys to make them both more stable and more precise. The edge-to-edge keyboard offers keys with 17 percent more surface area and a redesigned feel. There’s also a new trackpad, with built-in Force Touch which can detect the amount of pressure placed on the trackpad, introducing a whole range of gestures. They have a Intel Core-M processor that starts at 1.1GHz with Intel HD 5300 graphics along with no fans and sporting up to 10 hours of battery life. One thing that concerns me is the use of a single USB-C port which combines several functions into a one port. Namely power, USB data transfer, DisplayPort, HDMI, and VGA capabilities. That means the MagSafe adapter is gone. With one port, you risk killing the notebook if you damage that port.
• Apple decided to also update its MacBook Air and 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro lines. Both the 11″ and 13″ MacBook Air models have been upgraded to 5th generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, Thunderbolt 2, and Intel HD Graphics 6000. The 13″ MacBook Pro will receive the brand new Force Touch trackpad too. Other new additions to the Pro lineup include: 5th-gen Core i5 and i7 processors with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 3.4 GHz, 2x faster flash, “faster integrated” Intel Iris Graphics 6100, and an improved 10-hour battery life. Strangely, there was no update to the 15″ models. I wonder what’s up with that?
• That watch you’re heard about finally has a ship date and pricing associated with it. The Apple Watch will be available in nine countries beginning April 24, with pre-orders starting on April 10. Those countries are the United States, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan and United Kingdom. The Apple Watch will be available for purchase by reservation at Apple Stores, online and at select authorized resellers in China and Japan. the Apple Watch will have 18 hours of battery life on a single charge. How much will it cost? Apple Watch Sport will cost $349 USD for the 38mm model and $399 USD for the 42mm model. The stainless steel Apple Watch will range between $549 USD to $1099 USD. For those of you with more money than you know what to do with, the 18-karat gold Apple Watch Edition will cost between an outrageous $10,000 USD to $17,000 USD. Bands will retail for between $49 USD  and $449 USD, with additional magnetic chargers costing $29 USD for a 1-meter cable and $39 USD for a 2-meter cable. Get in line now.

Two other things came from Apple that I should tell you about:

• iOS 8.2 became available today. You need it to use the Apple Watch of course. But it also includes the usual bug fixes and improvements. Oh, it puts a big Apple Watch app on your home screen. The first thing I did upon updating to iOS 8.2 is hide that icon.
• There was a security update made available to several versions of OS X which among other things, fixes the FREAK issue that I spoke of last week.

If you want to see the whole event, here’s a link to the video.

This entry was posted on March 10, 2015 at 5:45 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.