Tag: MacBook

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4 Essential Menu Bar Utilities for Mac OS X | OSX Daily

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Menu Bar Essentials

Mac OS X includes a few system-level menu bar items that are incredibly useful, but if you’ve ever wanted to have a few extras to your menu bar consider these four essentials. All free, they’ll bring a wide variety of function to the menu bar, where you’ll be able to quickly see the weather, make using your computer at night much easier on the eyes, control sleep and screen saver behavior, and even toggle some really useful system functions.

Check out each below, and don’t forget to let us know in the comments if we’re missing a menu bar essential.
Continue reading “4 Essential Menu Bar Utilities for Mac OS X | OSX Daily”

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Review: Slickwraps Personalized Skin Apple Devices | 9to5Mac

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Slickwraps

Slickwraps sent us some of their awesome MacBook Pro covers starting at $20 this month to give a test drive on our Retina MacBook Pro. These are basically hi-tech ‘stickers’ that you apply to your Apple device. Application is easy and bubbles and warps are easy to smooth out.  What you see above is the result of about one minute of application of the ‘carbon fiber skin’. If I had spent a little more time, I probably could have aligned things exactly. These things are made to exactly fit Apple’s devices. Continue reading “Review: Slickwraps Personalized Skin Apple Devices | 9to5Mac”

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[Rumor] Slim, Quad-Core & Air-Like MacBook Pros To Arrive In Late April Or Early May | Cult of Mac

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iMac and MacBook updates tend to happen on a fairly predictable cycle that isn’t determined by Apple so much as it is by the release of suitable new Intel chips. Since Intel leaks info about upcoming chips a lot more than Apple leaks about upcoming products, this makes it a fairly easy thing to predict when updated Apple laptops and desktops are going to come down the pipeline.

Now Intel has gone and leaked a load of dates on when consumers can expect to see the oft-delayed Ivy Bridge quad-core desktop and mobile processors landing on shelves: April 29th. Don’t expect new MacBooks or iMacs until then.

Continue reading “[Rumor] Slim, Quad-Core & Air-Like MacBook Pros To Arrive In Late April Or Early May | Cult of Mac”

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Personal iDevices In The Workplace? | Cult of Mac

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BYOD is certainly one of the biggest technology buzzwords right now. The concept of users supplying their own iPad, iPhone, or even their own MacBook can create challenges for IT, but it can also provides advantages. Users choosing the devices and apps that they feel most comfortable and productive using is one. Businesses not needing to pay for mobile devices themselves or plans to support them is another.

One of the basic assumptions when it comes to considering, testing, and implementing a BYOD program is that the ability to bring personal tools into the workplace is something that users ultimately want and think will improve their work. The rest of the discussion, including practical issues like device or data management and the range of devices to be support, is predicated on this core assumption that BYOD is desirable on the part of users.

Continue reading “Personal iDevices In The Workplace? | Cult of Mac”

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New MacBooks Coming Soon; Will They Be Airs, Pros, or Both? | Technology Tell

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New MacBooks coming Soon; will it be Air or Pro or both?

It’s a pretty safe bet Apple will soon announce a 15″ laptop with a thin wedge form factor, and powered by Intel’s forthcoming Ivy Bridge Core i CPUs, likely before mid-year. The operative conundrums for Apple laptop watchers and fans like me are 1.) whether this new 15-incher will be called a MacBook Air, a MacBook Pro, or perhaps both; 2.) whether Apple will continue offering both a 13″ MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, and 3.) whether they will they keep selling the late 2008 form factor 17″ MacBook Pro model for power-user professionals, or eventually transition the 17-incher to a thin, wedge, form factor as well.

The 15-incher has been the central focus of recent rumor speculation, with some dissonance over whether it will be an Air or a Pro. Will Apple just choose to scuttle the MacBook Pro category except for the big 17-incher?

Continue reading “New MacBooks Coming Soon; Will They Be Airs, Pros, or Both? | Technology Tell”

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Ultra-Thin 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros Already in Production? | MacTrast

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New MacBook Airs?

Claims of a significant redesign for the MacBook Pro are reiterated by Digitimes this morning with claims that new slimmer 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models without optical drives have already entered production.

The report contrasts with previous claims that Apple may phase out the MacBook Pro in favor of new MacBook Air models, although the timing of the production tends to support that article’s claim that new models may be released in April.

Continue reading “Ultra-Thin 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros Already in Production? | MacTrast”

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iFixit Teardown: 2011 13″ MacBook Air [w/ Video] | MacTrast

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iFixit has just gotten their hands on one of the new MacBook Airs, and have just recently finished doing what they do with every new toy they get – they tore it apart! By taking the new MacBook Air apart piece by piece, they’ve managed to learn a few interesting things about it.

The new machines pack new ULV Sandy Bridge processors and an SD card slot, come pre-installed with OS X Lion, can restore their own operating systems from the internet, and feature Apple and Intel’s powerful new Thunderbolt I/O technology, as well as something less expected – bluetooth 4.0!

Continue reading “iFixit Teardown: 2011 13″ MacBook Air [w/ Video] | MacTrast”

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Do the New Mini and MacBook Air Mean the End for Physical Media? | FOM

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Apple release two new computers yesterday, neither of which was equipped with a SuperDrive or any optical disk. Lion is already installed on these devices, but it wasn’t required to be thanks to its digital distribution via the Mac App Store. So what happened to optical drives? Apple never supported Blu-Ray boldly stating, “Blu-Ray is a bag of hurt”. Steve Jobs went on to say, “I don’t mean from the consumer point of view. great to watch movies, but the licensing is so complex. We’re waiting until things settle down, and waiting until Blu-ray takes off before we burden our … Continue reading Do the New Mini and MacBook Air Mean the End for Physical Media? | FOM

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MacBook Air 2011 Benchmarks Show Huge Speed & Performance Gains | OSX Daily

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The first benchmarks for the MacBook Air 2011 refresh (released alongside Lion) are rolling in, and they show that the Intel Core i5 processor in both the 13″ and 11″ variation are screamers. How fast? Well, just check out the Geekbench scores, which for both models are at least double the speed of the 2010 Core 2 Duo’s they replaced. In fact, the new MacBook Air’s are so fast that the speed of the new 1.7GHz Core i5 13″ model is faster than the 2010 MacBook Pro 17″ that was a 2.6GHz Core i7, as ElectricPig says: To put these … Continue reading MacBook Air 2011 Benchmarks Show Huge Speed & Performance Gains | OSX Daily

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In Addition to Lion, Apple’s Faster MacBook Airs Revealed | 9to5Mac

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Later this week, Apple will officially launch their new MacBook Air line. We previously detailed that these new MacBook Airs will include Thunderbolt ports, i5 and i7 processor options, and a design with little to no changes from the current models. Now, thanks to our source Mr. X, we have all the specifications of the brand-new MacBook Air line.

11.6 inch models:

  • The base model will include a 1.6 GHz processor, 2 GB of RAM, and 64GB of flash storage.
  • The more expensive standard configuration also includes a 1.6 GHz processor but upgrades the RAM to 4GB and the storage space to 128 GB.
  • A built to order model will also be available from the online store. This option includes a 1.8 GHz processor (first for an 11.6 inch MacBook Air), 4GB of RAM, and for the first time in an 11.6 inch MacBook Air, 256 GB of flash storage.

Continue reading “In Addition to Lion, Apple’s Faster MacBook Airs Revealed | 9to5Mac”