Apple today announced a wealth of revisions to it’s products, almost entirely to it’s desktop line, and also to it’s airport devices.

Apple unveiled new Mac Minis.

a new Mac Pro.

new iMacs (at lower prices)

a new airport extreme.

and a new time capsule.

All of these have neat and significant upgrades and features, stuff hard to find done (or done well) by anybody else.

For example, the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule operate simultaneously in the 2.4ghz and 5ghz range, meaning Macs, Apple TV’s, and iPhones connected to the Airport automatically use the fastest option available to those devices, for example, an Apple TV and MacBook Air will use the 5ghz frequency(that has blazing speed) and the iPhone and an older iBook will use the 2.4ghz frequency.

The Airport and Time Capsule also feature Disk sharing over the local network as before as well as shared disk capabilities across the internet, using MobileMe. This is huge, even though gheeks for years have been attaching their hard drives and NAS drives to their home gateways and trying to reach them over the net with smart techniques like DynDNS and specific Port opening, internet accessible home hard drives is now within reach of every Mom, Child and regular person, Stunning!

The New Mac Minis are beefy, with awesome graphics capabilites, good ram options and good hard drive options, they’ll be very tempting for professionals now…

The Mac Pros build and build on their power, they are now ridiculously strong.

The 24″ imac got speed and power bumps, but most importantly got their price dropped to $1499, making them also very attractive…

Gosh, it’s just a bunch of great stuff!

The unifying invisible ties that flow through technology and nature are hard to grasp, at first glance, technology and nature seem opposite forces, but as time evolves, technology shows how it is in harmony with nature, and rather than a seperate force, is actually helping the human race do more, communicate farther and use less resources than before.

The new Burning Man application under development by the discreet Burning Man Earth team looks simply amazing in it’s simplicity, and will contain an interactive GPS enabled city map, a database (presumably of installations and Theme camps) and an event calendar, all but the GPS functionality will reside in memory and not require Cell or Wifi signals.

Head over to Danger Rangers photo stream on FlickR to see the full size image.

Update: It looks like this image has been taken offline…

Well, despite dampening expectations by giving Macworld Expo the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, Apple showed up in style to the MacWorld Keynote and put on a stellar performance, showing once again how well Steve has chosen the Men around him.

Phil Schiller, one of Apple’s senior Vice Presidents and one of Steve’s main men gave a presentation that excited the Mac faithful, has me reaching for my wallet and should get you excited too.

Here are some of the key annoucements made.

- iTunes Music will now be DRM free

- iTunes music tracks will have three price points, 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29

- iTunes music will be purchasable over 3G networks

- iWork has been revamped.

- iLife has been revamped

- iWork has an online component called iWork.com that allows you to store and share your documents online.

- Keynote got an iPhone remote application that’ll really make giving presentations simple and amazing.

- Pages got a fullscreen mode, that blocks out everything (a la Writeroom) and lets you focus.

- Numbers got some really slick updates, some technical (like linking spreadsheets to pages and keynote files so the presentation stays current) and some flashy (like great looking graphs)

- Garageband, iPhoto and iMovie saw the most updates in the iLife update, though iWeb etc are all new too (meaning probably lots of themes)

- All the iLife iWork Apps got tons of new templates.

- Garageband now can show you “Learn to play lessons” from Sting, Norah Jones and more that teach you how to play piano or guitar and more, i beileve these cost $4.95 each, which sounds pretty reasonable since my local neighbourhood guy is $45 per hour for guitar lessons.

- iPhoto has a wealth of new feature, Facial Recognition means your photos can now be sorted by faces as well as the older “Event”, “Date” and “Keyword” methods. Face recognition is simple, easy and well implemented and also interacts with FaceBooks facial recognition system, meaning all the work you did up there will sync with your iPhoto library.

- iPhoto has Flickr integration and FaceBook integration.

- iPhoto gained Location awareness in iLife 09 too, it can sort your photos by the location they were taken in, giving you latitude and longtitude, showing you a map, and allowing you to give that place a name, like “Yosemite” or “Safari”

- iMovie got a bunch of user interface upgrades added as well as great location based features, allowin you to implement cool Indian Jones style segues to your vacation videos

- iMovie got engineering advances like Jitter removal, useful for video shot from a moving automobile, and tons of new transitions, as well as timeline and project building advancements.

- iLife 09 and iWork 09 require Leopard, and to make this whole package of fun and sharing tools easy and affordable, Apple is bundling Leopard with iWork and iLfe into a “Mac Box Set” for $169

- iLife ’09 will retail for $79 or $99 for a Five Pack family edition

- iWork ’09 will also retail for $79 or $99 for a Five Pack family edition

- Mac OS X Leopard still retails for $129

- The Mac Box Set saves you $120, almost the price of the Leopard itself, making it a no brainer.

- To use Leopard on your computer, you’ll need a 1ghz processor, 512mb Ram, and a good 12gb of hard drive space available.

- All this new stuff comes as standard on a new Mac (apart from iWork which is a $49 extra)

If you’d like to know more about the new Apple software released or, like to know how to maximize the use of your current Mac setup, please contact Brendan at 415-871-9683, I’ll be happy to show you some of the great features that can make your Mac even more useful for you, if you can imagine what you want your Mac to do, I can show you how to do it!

Segway’s now former CTO Doug Field, has just joined Apple, working directly with Johnathan Ive (arguably todays DaVinci, he creates some of the most beautiful functional design around), The executive is rumored to be working on a scooter for Apple, imagine that! Wouldn’t that be awesome?! 

From the Article:

“The 20-year death grip that Microsoft has held on the core of computing is finally weakening—pried loose with just two fingers. With one finger you press “Control” and with the other you press “right arrow.” Instantly you switch from a Macintosh operating system (OS) to a Microsoft Windows OS. Then, with another two-finger press, you switch back again. So as you edit family pictures, you might use Mac’s iPhoto. And when you want to access your corporate e-mail, you can switch back instantly to Microsoft Exchange.This easy toggling on an Apple computer, enabled by a feature called Spaces, was but an interesting side note to last fall’s upgrade of the Mac OS. But coupled with other recent developments, the stars are aligning in a very intriguing pattern. Apple’s (AAPL) recent release of a tool kit for programmers to write applications for the iPhone will be followed by the June launch of iPhone 2.0, a software upgrade geared toward business users.” 

Read more here: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2008/tc20080410_206881.htm 

I’ve been enjoying my Macbook.  I am interested in learning more about the inner workings of the Mac.  What sites or forums beyond Apple’s own do you recommend for accuracy and depth of expertise for the Mac platform?

One of the best sites is ArsTechnica, their educated and calm coverage of Apple News by John Syracuse is great: http://arstechnica.com/apple.arsAnother good site is  Daring fireball, written by John Gruber, it’s more op-ed than Ars Technica: http://daringfireball.net/Both of these often link to the really good and exciting news and developments in the Apple community so they’re both on my must read list.

From the WSJ: ”Yahoo Inc.’s board plans to reject Microsoft Corp.’s unsolicited $44.6 billion offer to acquire the Web giant, a person familiar with the situation says.” This is a wonderfully audacious and spirited move by Yahoo! who are grossly undervalued at the moment, their stock when Microsoft made the offer was only $19 per share, the lowest in over two years, and doesn’t represent Yahoo!’s talent at picking great upcoming companies from Silicon Valley, (something Apple is also quite good at, but something I’ve never witnessed Microsofty do well).  In recent years, Yahoo! has fostered Del.icio.us, FlickR and upcoming.org, they’ve also developed gorgeous pages for the iPhone, widgets for the iPhone, Push IMAP email for the iPhone and UNLIMITED email storage space (to compete with Gmails 6Gb limit).Yahoo! brought in revenue equal to a almost a half of Google’s last quarter and has a P/E ratio almost half of Google’s, this alone should put it’s market price near $70billion (Msft offered $45billion) and when one see’s that Yahoo!’s properties (a large the largest base of email users, ties to AT&T, great ocean front properties (FlickR, Del.icio.us, Upcoming, iPhone hooks), it makes one think, “hey maybe Yahoo is actually a damn steal at $70billion”(which may be what Msft’s offer is come Monday morning…  

MacBreak Weekly, hosted by Leo Laporte and part of the TWIT network, has been getting better and better recently, The Macalope has made a few appearances and this week in episode 64, John Siracusa, writer of this wonderfully intricate review of Leopard on Ars Technica
, is a guest and provides fantastic details of how and why Mac OS X Leopard is such an important step.

Listen to it over on http://www.twit.tv/mbw64

Macworld is an enticing, exciting oppurtunity to see Apple’s new products and developments, Steve Jobs always provides an exciting Keynote, and last year, visitors were treated to the amazing iPhone revelation which made the whole week very exciting.

There’s lots of after parties, connections, and discounts on great Mac accessories and software to be had so run over to the website and grab your four day pass for just $25!

Via TUAW

I am happy to report that registration for Macworld 2008, happening in San Francisco January 14 through the 19th, 2008, is open.
If you register before October 5th you can get a free Exhibit pass (using Priority Code: 08-E-VF01) or special rates for the higher end passes (which allow you into the various classes and labs offered at the Conference).

This glorious week began with the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC) at the Moscone (or Mascarpone) center in San Francisco, the WWDC is a week long event for Developers of Apple Software to converge in San Francisco, spend their days in very special Workshops headed by actual Apple Engineers. 

Developers get to meet their peers and also internal Apple Developers who can shed new light on new technologies, how to use them, how to write for them.

One of the biggest events throughout the week (if not the biggest) is the Keynote which is now available on Apple’s Website at this address: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/d7625zs/event/

The keynote is also being discussed thoroughly at various respected podcasts and websites around the Interweb, to catch one of these Podcasts, try my recommended ones first: 

1. Macworld WWDC Roundtable This is the best and most clear discussion of the WWDC keynote that I’ve heard so far, there are however a few alternatives; 

2. Maccast Special EditionThis is a fifteen minute special that Adam recorded in his car and uploaded immediately, its the most concise of all the podcasts covering the Keynote.

3. MacBreak Weekly A lighthearted and opinionated podcast with some renowned Mac Pundits opining on the announcements of Steve Jobs at the WWDC Keynote.